At the Munich Security Conference, where leaders from more than 70 countries gather annually in Germany to discuss international security policy, Vice President Kamala Harris today responded to Trump’s recent attacks on America’s global leadership with a full-throated defense of global engagement.
Recessing the House just now is indefensible. The 118th Congress had conspicuously avoided its responsibilities while in session, but this latest outrage is the worst yet.
The United States must elect and support leadership who will project strength, stability, and unwavering support for our allies and our international treaties.
When the GOP majority in the House betrays their oath to our own Constitution and justice system, projecting stability becomes a bridge too far.
People like Gosar, Biggs, Jordan, Taylor-Greene, Boebert, Perry, Gaetz, Comer, and others (and the voters who elevate them to leadership) are only capable of projecting chaos and incompetence, not stability or strength.
'The Death of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Formidable Opponent'
'The opposition leader, who died in prison, had been persecuted for years by the Russian state. He remained defiant, and consistently funny, to the very end.'
By Masha Gessen in The NEWYORKER (exerpt)
‘Alexey Navalny spent at least a decade standing up to the Kremlin when it seemed impossible. He was jailed and released. He was poisoned, and survived. He was warned to stay away from Russia and didn’t. He was arrested in front of dozens of cameras, with millions of people watching. In prison, he was defiant and consistently funny. For three years, his jailers put him in solitary confinement, cut off his access to and arrested his lawyers, piled on sentence after sentence, sent him all the way across the world’s largest country to serve out his time in the Arctic, and still, when he appeared on video in court, he laughed at his jailers. Year after year, he faced down the might of one of the world’s cruellest states and the vengeance of one of the world’s cruellest men. His promise was that he would outlive them and lead what he called the Beautiful Russia of the Future. On Friday, they killed him. He was forty-seven years old.’
‘Hours after the news of his death broke, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, addressed the Munich Security Conference. “I don’t know whether to believe the news, the terrible news, which we are only getting from state-controlled sources in Russia,” she said, from the conference’s main stage’. “As you all know, for many years we’ve been unable to believe Putin and his government. They always lie. But, if it is true, I want Putin and everyone around him, his friends and his government, to know that they will be held responsible for what they have done to our country, to my family, and to my husband. The day of reckoning will come very soon.”
‘In Russia, Vladimir Putin was visiting an industrial park in Chelyabinsk, in the Urals. He took questions from staff and students, who were seated a safe distance from the Russian President on what appeared to be the plant floor. Putin seemed to be in an unusually good mood. He bantered and flirted with the audience. He boasted that Western sanctions in response to the war in Ukraine had boosted industrial production inside Russia. He hadn’t seemed so jovial in public in years.’
‘In exactly a month, Russia will hold a ritual that it calls an election. With no actual alternative to Putin, who has total control of the media and the so-called electoral institutions, the current Russian President will be crowned for another six-year term, extending his time in power to thirty-one years. Navalny tried to run against Putin six years ago, but the rigged system stopped him. His very name was banished from the airwaves. Still, even when the system shut him out, and, later, when it put him in prison, Navalny remained Putin’s most formidable opponent.’ (by Masha Gessen, The NEWYORKER)
To me, so much of what I like to think of as "strength" is the ability to pick yourself up and adapt when what you thought you knew about yourself or your world was shattered. I think we are testing the strength of our country and ourselves as citizens en mass these past eight years. As the professor illustrates so consistently, most of the American identity is based around competing stories and mythos. Humans are storytellers; we use narrative to organize and give meaning, to make the complex make sense.
For most of us on these pages, the (un-popular) election of tfg was a complete shattering of the simple and comforting story that so many of us had told ourselves about our country: that progress was inevitable, that everyone believes in our basic values, that *it can't happen here.* We were traumatized and have been unable so far to heal. It is no hyperbole to say so, and don't let anyone tell you that it is. Our sense of safety in the place we live was revoked by the same people we live with, writ large. What we knew was gone, and what was revealed to be real was terrifying. That is trauma.
What did we do? If you read these Letters, that means you decided to get up, and get up fast. You didn't lick your wounds and mourn the story you lost, you looked the truth in the face, realized you never had the whole picture... and went looking for it. You decided that what was there was still worth saving, and realized you couldn't save it - save yourself and what you love - if you got bitter or gave in to denial. You reached out to find others who felt the same, either in real life or across the new frontier of the internet. You GREW.
You got stronger. WE got stronger. And then we started winning.
Don't fear this man, and don't fear his followers. Pity them. When presented with a demagogue, someone who could channel their repressed trauma and fears out onto their neighbors, they didn't have the *real* strength to turn away. They gave in to the cheap thrill of demagoguery, the thrill of seeing someone be as awful and ugly and angry as they wished they could be without consequences. They were not strong enough to build themselves up, so they gave themselves over to someone else's specious displays of phony macho aggression, someone else's promise of "strength". Now their time to realize their story was flawed has come. Their new God-emperor is simply the emperor-with-no-clothes: a fraud in every sense. Do they have the strength we had and have? They do not. They will deny reality because they cannot face it. Because they cannot admit that they were fooled - that they have lost - they will continue to be fooled. They will, most likely, continue losing. How sad for them!
Just because someone seems like they keep getting away with things, does not mean justice will not come. But it will only come if you have the real strength to be honest, resilient, and persistent, to keep the faith and grow. I am so happy to know all of you are out there. And to know that today, even if I don't have 350 million dollars, at least a monster will soon have 350 million dollars less. So satisfying!
What a letter! I can only balance Tucker Carlson's "Every leader kills people" with Navalny's "We don't realize how strong we are." And brava to Vice President Harris's full-throated defense of global engagement and the Biden Administration's support for Ukraine. Let's hope more Americans can identify the real victims here—certainly not the Trumps.
I think we need to acknowledge Navalny's death was no accident. Whether planned or hoped for, he was placed in a position where death was imminent.
This is the future trump (forgive me, I just can't capitalize his name) sees as his right; death to his opposition.
Putin holds his country in a tight hand, squeezing out all opposition to his rule while claiming his love of country. His people are mostly ignorant of the world, but his war with Ukraine is changing that. That is a crack in his armor. It is to our shame that our Republican party is rushing in to spackle that crack when they should be pointing it out as another reason dictatorship isn't good for a society.
I'm going to be completely open here. All I have is a Masters in Comparative Religion. I'm not learned in law in any way. I really don't understand politics, but I do know right from wrong.
The current Right Wing political system is so wrong that anyone who isn't intentionally blinded can see it.
Sadly, those who intentionally choose to see otherwise are beyond reason or help.
I have no idea how to engage on any level with these people.
I've tried.
I've heard conspiracy theories.
I've heard Fox News claims.
I've been literally hit (slapped) for suggesting they've been conned.
I've had my life threatened.
All of this over political differences while being told the Left is the violent party.
Perfect transition ~ “Navalny attacked the Putin regime by calling attention to its extraordinary corruption, and somewhat fittingly, the corruption of former president Donald Trump, who won the White House with Putin’s help, was also on the docket today.”
I don't make deals for the money. I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. __Donald Trump
King of the MAGAs , ‘…Donald J. Trump was penalized $355 million, plus millions more in interest, and banned for three years from serving in any top roles at a New York company, including his own, in a ruling on Friday by Justice Arthur F. Engoron. The decision comes after the state Attorney General Letitia James sued Mr. Trump, members of his family and his company in 2022. (NYTimes)
'‘Trump Fraud Trial Penalty Will Exceed $450 Million’
‘The ruling in Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud case could cost him all his available cash. The judge said that the former president’s “complete lack of contrition” bordered on pathological.’ (NYTimes) See gifted link below.
‘Trump Organization's History of Corporate Malfeasance’
‘In considering the need for ongoing injunctive relief, this Court is mindful that this action is not the first time the Trump Organization or its related entities has been found to have engaged in corporate malfeasance. Of course, the more evidence there is of defendants ongoing propensity to engage in fraud, the more need there is for the Court to impose stricter injunctive relief. This is not defendants first rodeo.’ (Civil Fraud Ruling, excerpt)
‘As Eric Trump testified, Donald Trump sat at the top of the pyramid of the Trump Organization until 2017. Donald Trump professed to know more about real estate than other people and to be more expert than anybody else. TT3487. He repeatedly falsified business records with the intent to defraud. See People v Gordon,23 NY3d643,650(2014) (Intent may be established by the defendant's conduct and the circumstances) People v Rodriguez, 17NY3d486,489 (Because intent is an invisible operation of the mind direct evidence is rarely available (in the absence of an admission) and it is unnecessary when there is legally sufficient circumstantial evidence of intent, “noting that intent can also be inferred from the defendant's conduct and the surrounding circumstances.)’ (Civil Fraud Ruling, excerpt)
'What the Civil Fraud Ruling Means for Trump’s Finances and His Empire'
'Justice Arthur F. Engoron’s decision could drain all of former President Donald J. Trump’s cash, and will set his family business reeling. ' (NYtimes) See gifted link below.
Putin must have “Kompromat” on Trump and perhaps worse than the Steele Dossier. The fact that the GOP has remained silent on Alexey Navalny is beyond hideous. He speaks not only to the Russian people but to all people including us in the USA. Never would I believe a rapist, a philanderer, a liar, a cheat, a racist, a misogynist and traitor be supported by 40% of the country. This says something about the citizens of the United States. How can we be leaders and face the future if we inhabit a swamp of lies and misinformation.
Putin killed Navalny on the day the conference began aimed at ridding the world of Putin:
I wrote in 2021: "Only once in a generation does a leader come along -- like Gandhi or Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. -- who puts his life on the line against tyranny. Navalny, only 44, has been cheating death at the hands of the Kremlin for years. He has been jailed, partially blinded, assaulted, released from jail after mass protests in 2013, then poisoned this summer, and jailed again month. The Russian “street” is still no match for Putin’s army of helmeted riot police or snowballs for bullets. This means that all the world can do is bear witness. And must. Navalny’s cause was just and his selflessness extraordinary.
It was noble … so suicidal, so Russian, so magnificent."
Yay! Kudos! Brava! Kamala. Now come home and shout it all here. We don't need an alliance of two criminals, Putin and Trump. We don't need their vituperative morons in Congress and the Supreme Court either.
Trump can't even run his Potemkin village of a business properly, and continues to be revealed as a fraud ( now proven in Court in a costly judgment.) He mustn't be be given the opportunity again to run this country.
It's been pointed out by others that he doesn't have the liquidity to pay off his more than a half billion dollars in fines, compensation to E. Jean Caroll, etc. -- not to mention other outstanding court actions as well as the ongoing IRS audit which may make him liable for another $100 million plus interest. Where will he get this money? There are heads of state around the world that would gladly be willing to conduct more business with him: money in exchange for information. And that's a horrifying thought.
EDIT: I just read that, assuming he's still around and becomes the Republican nominee, trompy will start receiving TOP SECRET intelligence briefings *in less than 6 months*. I bet the buyers are lined up with wrist bands.
In the 1990s, when things got too hot in the USA for KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke, he went for an homage to Hitler stay in Germany. When things got too hot in Germany, he moved to Russia, met Putin, and began touting him as the Great White Hope for Christian Nationalism. It has taken Charles Koch bagman and Catholic extremist Leonard Leo decades of Federalist Society, and now The Teneo Network, perversions of government to repurpose the American democratic republic as a clerical fascist state - from the top down - through his Supreme Court cronies and now through his legislative MiniMe Mike Johnson. Who's been called David Duke Lite. Meanwhile David Duke has worked from the bottom up, converting the Republican racist right wing religious extremist base to the cult of Vlad the Savior. Way before they elevated Putin fanboy Trump as the apotheosis of Christ Rambo. Now, master of disinformation Putin, sensing their ties might hinder Trump outside the GOP hardcore, and returning the favor for Trump obstructing US aid to Ukraine and opening the door for Russian attacks on NATO allies, has seemed to put his blood soaked fist on the scale for Biden. Seemed. Actually as a way of smearing Biden to help elect Trump. But that's not how it's being played. And Russia for the first time since May has taken a Ukrainian stronghold.
Please contact: House Republicans to get back to Congress; House Democrats to get on board with a dispatch petition for the supplemental aid bill; and members of the House Progressive Caucus to support the dispatch petition and the supplemental aid bill (and put to the test the National Security Memorandum which can halt delivery of appropriated funds to the criminal Netanyahu regime.) That way we can get aid to where it is needed. Especially Ukraine and Gaza.
$50,000,000 - Trump legal fees (so far)
$88,000,000 - Trump total jury verdict to E Jean Carroll
$96,000,000 - Trump interest addon from Judge Engoron
$148,000,000 - Giuliani settlement with Shae Moss
$355,000,000 - Trump fine from Judge Engoron
$787,500,000 - Fox settlement to Dominion
$1,524,500,000 - TOTAL
Over One and a Half Billion dollars.
Lying and other shenanigans is getting expensive these days.
Recessing the House just now is indefensible. The 118th Congress had conspicuously avoided its responsibilities while in session, but this latest outrage is the worst yet.
Thank you Professor Richardson.
The United States must elect and support leadership who will project strength, stability, and unwavering support for our allies and our international treaties.
When the GOP majority in the House betrays their oath to our own Constitution and justice system, projecting stability becomes a bridge too far.
People like Gosar, Biggs, Jordan, Taylor-Greene, Boebert, Perry, Gaetz, Comer, and others (and the voters who elevate them to leadership) are only capable of projecting chaos and incompetence, not stability or strength.
'The Death of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Most Formidable Opponent'
'The opposition leader, who died in prison, had been persecuted for years by the Russian state. He remained defiant, and consistently funny, to the very end.'
By Masha Gessen in The NEWYORKER (exerpt)
‘Alexey Navalny spent at least a decade standing up to the Kremlin when it seemed impossible. He was jailed and released. He was poisoned, and survived. He was warned to stay away from Russia and didn’t. He was arrested in front of dozens of cameras, with millions of people watching. In prison, he was defiant and consistently funny. For three years, his jailers put him in solitary confinement, cut off his access to and arrested his lawyers, piled on sentence after sentence, sent him all the way across the world’s largest country to serve out his time in the Arctic, and still, when he appeared on video in court, he laughed at his jailers. Year after year, he faced down the might of one of the world’s cruellest states and the vengeance of one of the world’s cruellest men. His promise was that he would outlive them and lead what he called the Beautiful Russia of the Future. On Friday, they killed him. He was forty-seven years old.’
‘Hours after the news of his death broke, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, addressed the Munich Security Conference. “I don’t know whether to believe the news, the terrible news, which we are only getting from state-controlled sources in Russia,” she said, from the conference’s main stage’. “As you all know, for many years we’ve been unable to believe Putin and his government. They always lie. But, if it is true, I want Putin and everyone around him, his friends and his government, to know that they will be held responsible for what they have done to our country, to my family, and to my husband. The day of reckoning will come very soon.”
‘In Russia, Vladimir Putin was visiting an industrial park in Chelyabinsk, in the Urals. He took questions from staff and students, who were seated a safe distance from the Russian President on what appeared to be the plant floor. Putin seemed to be in an unusually good mood. He bantered and flirted with the audience. He boasted that Western sanctions in response to the war in Ukraine had boosted industrial production inside Russia. He hadn’t seemed so jovial in public in years.’
‘In exactly a month, Russia will hold a ritual that it calls an election. With no actual alternative to Putin, who has total control of the media and the so-called electoral institutions, the current Russian President will be crowned for another six-year term, extending his time in power to thirty-one years. Navalny tried to run against Putin six years ago, but the rigged system stopped him. His very name was banished from the airwaves. Still, even when the system shut him out, and, later, when it put him in prison, Navalny remained Putin’s most formidable opponent.’ (by Masha Gessen, The NEWYORKER)
See link below.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/the-death-of-alexey-navalny-putins-most-formidable-opponent
"Leadership requires killing people"?
Is that what jesus would do?
To me, so much of what I like to think of as "strength" is the ability to pick yourself up and adapt when what you thought you knew about yourself or your world was shattered. I think we are testing the strength of our country and ourselves as citizens en mass these past eight years. As the professor illustrates so consistently, most of the American identity is based around competing stories and mythos. Humans are storytellers; we use narrative to organize and give meaning, to make the complex make sense.
For most of us on these pages, the (un-popular) election of tfg was a complete shattering of the simple and comforting story that so many of us had told ourselves about our country: that progress was inevitable, that everyone believes in our basic values, that *it can't happen here.* We were traumatized and have been unable so far to heal. It is no hyperbole to say so, and don't let anyone tell you that it is. Our sense of safety in the place we live was revoked by the same people we live with, writ large. What we knew was gone, and what was revealed to be real was terrifying. That is trauma.
What did we do? If you read these Letters, that means you decided to get up, and get up fast. You didn't lick your wounds and mourn the story you lost, you looked the truth in the face, realized you never had the whole picture... and went looking for it. You decided that what was there was still worth saving, and realized you couldn't save it - save yourself and what you love - if you got bitter or gave in to denial. You reached out to find others who felt the same, either in real life or across the new frontier of the internet. You GREW.
You got stronger. WE got stronger. And then we started winning.
Don't fear this man, and don't fear his followers. Pity them. When presented with a demagogue, someone who could channel their repressed trauma and fears out onto their neighbors, they didn't have the *real* strength to turn away. They gave in to the cheap thrill of demagoguery, the thrill of seeing someone be as awful and ugly and angry as they wished they could be without consequences. They were not strong enough to build themselves up, so they gave themselves over to someone else's specious displays of phony macho aggression, someone else's promise of "strength". Now their time to realize their story was flawed has come. Their new God-emperor is simply the emperor-with-no-clothes: a fraud in every sense. Do they have the strength we had and have? They do not. They will deny reality because they cannot face it. Because they cannot admit that they were fooled - that they have lost - they will continue to be fooled. They will, most likely, continue losing. How sad for them!
Just because someone seems like they keep getting away with things, does not mean justice will not come. But it will only come if you have the real strength to be honest, resilient, and persistent, to keep the faith and grow. I am so happy to know all of you are out there. And to know that today, even if I don't have 350 million dollars, at least a monster will soon have 350 million dollars less. So satisfying!
What a letter! I can only balance Tucker Carlson's "Every leader kills people" with Navalny's "We don't realize how strong we are." And brava to Vice President Harris's full-throated defense of global engagement and the Biden Administration's support for Ukraine. Let's hope more Americans can identify the real victims here—certainly not the Trumps.
I think we need to acknowledge Navalny's death was no accident. Whether planned or hoped for, he was placed in a position where death was imminent.
This is the future trump (forgive me, I just can't capitalize his name) sees as his right; death to his opposition.
Putin holds his country in a tight hand, squeezing out all opposition to his rule while claiming his love of country. His people are mostly ignorant of the world, but his war with Ukraine is changing that. That is a crack in his armor. It is to our shame that our Republican party is rushing in to spackle that crack when they should be pointing it out as another reason dictatorship isn't good for a society.
I'm going to be completely open here. All I have is a Masters in Comparative Religion. I'm not learned in law in any way. I really don't understand politics, but I do know right from wrong.
The current Right Wing political system is so wrong that anyone who isn't intentionally blinded can see it.
Sadly, those who intentionally choose to see otherwise are beyond reason or help.
I have no idea how to engage on any level with these people.
I've tried.
I've heard conspiracy theories.
I've heard Fox News claims.
I've been literally hit (slapped) for suggesting they've been conned.
I've had my life threatened.
All of this over political differences while being told the Left is the violent party.
I am so tired of this manure.
Perfect transition ~ “Navalny attacked the Putin regime by calling attention to its extraordinary corruption, and somewhat fittingly, the corruption of former president Donald Trump, who won the White House with Putin’s help, was also on the docket today.”
I don't make deals for the money. I've got enough, much more than I'll ever need. I do it to do it. __Donald Trump
King of the MAGAs , ‘…Donald J. Trump was penalized $355 million, plus millions more in interest, and banned for three years from serving in any top roles at a New York company, including his own, in a ruling on Friday by Justice Arthur F. Engoron. The decision comes after the state Attorney General Letitia James sued Mr. Trump, members of his family and his company in 2022. (NYTimes)
'‘Trump Fraud Trial Penalty Will Exceed $450 Million’
‘The ruling in Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud case could cost him all his available cash. The judge said that the former president’s “complete lack of contrition” bordered on pathological.’ (NYTimes) See gifted link below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/nyregion/trump-civil-fraud-trial-ruling.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WE0.87JN.6EzKNPV9opkY&smid=url-share
‘Trump Organization's History of Corporate Malfeasance’
‘In considering the need for ongoing injunctive relief, this Court is mindful that this action is not the first time the Trump Organization or its related entities has been found to have engaged in corporate malfeasance. Of course, the more evidence there is of defendants ongoing propensity to engage in fraud, the more need there is for the Court to impose stricter injunctive relief. This is not defendants first rodeo.’ (Civil Fraud Ruling, excerpt)
‘As Eric Trump testified, Donald Trump sat at the top of the pyramid of the Trump Organization until 2017. Donald Trump professed to know more about real estate than other people and to be more expert than anybody else. TT3487. He repeatedly falsified business records with the intent to defraud. See People v Gordon,23 NY3d643,650(2014) (Intent may be established by the defendant's conduct and the circumstances) People v Rodriguez, 17NY3d486,489 (Because intent is an invisible operation of the mind direct evidence is rarely available (in the absence of an admission) and it is unnecessary when there is legally sufficient circumstantial evidence of intent, “noting that intent can also be inferred from the defendant's conduct and the surrounding circumstances.)’ (Civil Fraud Ruling, excerpt)
'What the Civil Fraud Ruling Means for Trump’s Finances and His Empire'
'Justice Arthur F. Engoron’s decision could drain all of former President Donald J. Trump’s cash, and will set his family business reeling. ' (NYtimes) See gifted link below.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/16/nyregion/trump-fraud-trial-finances.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WE0.dsdU.Jqbxl7T-9pgO&smid=url-share
Putin must have “Kompromat” on Trump and perhaps worse than the Steele Dossier. The fact that the GOP has remained silent on Alexey Navalny is beyond hideous. He speaks not only to the Russian people but to all people including us in the USA. Never would I believe a rapist, a philanderer, a liar, a cheat, a racist, a misogynist and traitor be supported by 40% of the country. This says something about the citizens of the United States. How can we be leaders and face the future if we inhabit a swamp of lies and misinformation.
Putin killed Navalny on the day the conference began aimed at ridding the world of Putin:
I wrote in 2021: "Only once in a generation does a leader come along -- like Gandhi or Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. -- who puts his life on the line against tyranny. Navalny, only 44, has been cheating death at the hands of the Kremlin for years. He has been jailed, partially blinded, assaulted, released from jail after mass protests in 2013, then poisoned this summer, and jailed again month. The Russian “street” is still no match for Putin’s army of helmeted riot police or snowballs for bullets. This means that all the world can do is bear witness. And must. Navalny’s cause was just and his selflessness extraordinary.
It was noble … so suicidal, so Russian, so magnificent."
Yay! Kudos! Brava! Kamala. Now come home and shout it all here. We don't need an alliance of two criminals, Putin and Trump. We don't need their vituperative morons in Congress and the Supreme Court either.
Trump can't even run his Potemkin village of a business properly, and continues to be revealed as a fraud ( now proven in Court in a costly judgment.) He mustn't be be given the opportunity again to run this country.
It's been pointed out by others that he doesn't have the liquidity to pay off his more than a half billion dollars in fines, compensation to E. Jean Caroll, etc. -- not to mention other outstanding court actions as well as the ongoing IRS audit which may make him liable for another $100 million plus interest. Where will he get this money? There are heads of state around the world that would gladly be willing to conduct more business with him: money in exchange for information. And that's a horrifying thought.
EDIT: I just read that, assuming he's still around and becomes the Republican nominee, trompy will start receiving TOP SECRET intelligence briefings *in less than 6 months*. I bet the buyers are lined up with wrist bands.
In the 1990s, when things got too hot in the USA for KKK Grand Wizard and GOP gadfly David Duke, he went for an homage to Hitler stay in Germany. When things got too hot in Germany, he moved to Russia, met Putin, and began touting him as the Great White Hope for Christian Nationalism. It has taken Charles Koch bagman and Catholic extremist Leonard Leo decades of Federalist Society, and now The Teneo Network, perversions of government to repurpose the American democratic republic as a clerical fascist state - from the top down - through his Supreme Court cronies and now through his legislative MiniMe Mike Johnson. Who's been called David Duke Lite. Meanwhile David Duke has worked from the bottom up, converting the Republican racist right wing religious extremist base to the cult of Vlad the Savior. Way before they elevated Putin fanboy Trump as the apotheosis of Christ Rambo. Now, master of disinformation Putin, sensing their ties might hinder Trump outside the GOP hardcore, and returning the favor for Trump obstructing US aid to Ukraine and opening the door for Russian attacks on NATO allies, has seemed to put his blood soaked fist on the scale for Biden. Seemed. Actually as a way of smearing Biden to help elect Trump. But that's not how it's being played. And Russia for the first time since May has taken a Ukrainian stronghold.
Please contact: House Republicans to get back to Congress; House Democrats to get on board with a dispatch petition for the supplemental aid bill; and members of the House Progressive Caucus to support the dispatch petition and the supplemental aid bill (and put to the test the National Security Memorandum which can halt delivery of appropriated funds to the criminal Netanyahu regime.) That way we can get aid to where it is needed. Especially Ukraine and Gaza.
Russian expansionism goes way back. Here's a cartoon map "Beware the Russian Octopus" from 1877. https://forgottenfiles.substack.com/p/beware-the-russian-octopus-1877