Приветствую, Небесные танцоры!

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And speaking of bears …

So, as David Rothkopf puts it, “So, as it Turns Out, America Lost the Cold War”. BB and JJ have had a lot to say about Trump’s obvious actions that make it clear whose side he is on. It certainly isn’t that of We the People. Today, the talking heads are, well, talking. This comes from Rothkopf’s Substack, Need to Know.

Trump is America’s Most Anti-Historical President… It’s Why He’s the Most Dangerous and Destructive

It is starting to feel like all the history we learned was wrong.

We were taught we won the Cold War. But today, the president of the United States openly serves the interests of Russia. We have become, in fact, in crucial economic and security matters, a satellite of Moscow. The U.S. chief executive has publicly and repeatedly declared his loyalty to Russia’s head of state. For more than a decade he has openly and covertly been advancing Russian foreign policy, often at the expense of the national security of the United States, the laws of the United States, and the interests of the US and our allies.

It is such a shocking turn of events, so inconceivable to anyone who lived through the Cold War or its aftermath, that many Americans have been in denial about it for years. But the evidence is not only incontrovertible, but in recent days, the U.S. president has made the situation more explicit.

Donald Trump has, in effect, come out of the closet with regard to his loyalties and his serial betrayals of his oath of office and the country he is supposed to serve.

Trump’s recent announcement that he had entered into an agreement with Russia to purchase diesel was a shock even to those who had long been in denial. Not only was Trump setting aside Congressionally mandated U.S. sanctions policy, but he was offering a financial lifeline of billions of dollars to a cash-strapped Kremlin that could and almost certainly would use the extra liquidity to help fund its brutal, criminal aggression against Ukraine. Never mind that the amount of diesel involved would make no impact on U.S. supplies or that Trump could have gotten a better price purchasing the fuel elsewhere. Never mind that the deal failed on its merits, economically and politically, as a form of relief to US truckers and farmers squeezed by high diesel prices.

What was worse and undeniable was that the U.S. was now helping to underwrite Russian attacks that were daily killing Ukrainian civilians and destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure. Furthermore, we were offering to help Russia at precisely the moment that the futility of their four-year escalation of a conflict that began in 2014 was becoming clear. Russia was no longer gaining ground. Russia was paying a huge price militarily, costing them over 1.5 million dead and wounded troops. Russia’s economy could no longer afford the war. Ukraine had momentum.

It’s hard to disagree with that. Orange Caligula is even past denying anything. The question is if it’s desperation from being a certain loser in the midterm, dementia so bad he can’t really assess a decision, or greed.  I’m up for any explanation if you have one. Any which way it is certainly a bad situation for our country and the free world. You may read more of Rothkopf’s analysis at the link.

Next up, thoughts from The Atlantic‘s Tom Nichols. “America Is Now an Ally of Russia. Donald Trump has abandoned the Western order.” Nichols thinks that he’s obsessed with Zelensky and love of Putin’s hard-handed dictatorship.

In the past week, the president of the United States has conclusively turned America into an ally of the Russian Federation.

Donald Trump has now abandoned pretense and is openly aiding the Kremlin in its war against a friend and partner of the U.S. The American commander in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful—and powerful—security arrangement in human history. To judge from the available evidence, he has not done so out of a cold calculation of the national interest. Instead, he has based his decisions on his own interests; his open admiration for Russia’s dictator; his resentment of Ukraine’s democratically elected president; and quite possibly other factors that so far have remained obscured from the American public.

In September, Trump signed a sanctions bill that Congress had passed, named after the late Senator Lindsey Graham, a pro-Ukraine hawk. The legislation sanctioned Russia as well as other countries that are supporting Russia’s invasion and brutalization of Ukraine. The bill was approved with bipartisan support, but some Republicans and most House Democrats voted against the law, arguing that it contained a trap door, a provision that would allow Trump to suspend the prescribed sanctions at will.

Those critics were correct to be worried. Trump pulled the lever on that trap door just two days before the law was supposed to go into effect. In an executive order signed on Friday, Trump said that “such a waiver at this time is in the national interests of the United States”—he declined to explain exactly how the waiver was in America’s interests—and that the law would remain unexecuted until such time as his administration decides otherwise. This waiver came a short while after Trump lifted restrictions on Russia’s sales of diesel fuel to the U.S. and other markets.

Trump’s recent actions in support of Russia are so obvious that they have generated a rare moment of bipartisan disgust: Both Democrats and Republicans now seem to share a horror at the betrayal of Ukraine, and at the president’s reckless abdication of America’s role as leader of the free world.

Again, more analysis at the link. The bottom line continues to be that we’re no long leader of the free world. So, let’s read a few more. This is from The Bulwark‘s Bill Kristol who still makes me wonder what happened to the normal time line that has made me actually quote the man. “‘Happy Birthday, Vlad. Yours, Always.’ – DJT.  Plus: Democrats’ Closing Argument.”

I just think of Dad bombing NAZIs and all those men and women who served and weep these days. I exist because he came home, but think of all of this as a legacy we lost. Just think of the comments Trump made at sacred cemeteries and the promise he threw away. He stood there during the 100th anniversary of World War I in November 2018 and the 75th anniversary of D-Day in June 2019 We saw it coming.  Remember that in 2018 he was alleged to have referred to fallen U.S. service members as “losers” and “suckers”?  Dad’s Uncle and namesake came home from World War I but succumbed after a terrible illness result from the nerve gas used in the trenches.

This analysis at The Bulwark is from Andrew Egger. It’s about the meetings between Putin and Orange Caligula over the Russian Gas Deal and the bombing of Russian Refineries.

Over and over again since the birthday call, Trump has made his new position on the war clear: Nothing but incentives and wheedling praise for Russia, the war’s imperial aggressor, and nothing but threats and insults for Ukraine, the war’s blameless defender. And yesterday, he gave us his clearest explanation of his thinking yet.

“My decision on Russia is a very simple one,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Why the kid gloves for Russia?

“I . . . don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” Trump said. After all, look how nicely Russia was behaving!

“Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared to what they could be doing, and I want to keep it that way, and will, unless stupid people get in the way.”

And anyway, what was so great about Zelensky and Ukraine?

“[Zelensky] is using Diesel Refineries in Russia as a target, knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including in the United States,” Trump went on. “Farmers, ranchers, and businesses of all kinds are suffering greatly from this, but Russia is, nevertheless, sending, at a low price, millions of barrels of diesel to the World.” Zelensky, Trump added, “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did. He could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now.”

It’s amazing how many of Trump’s psychological pathologies are here on display at once. There is, of course, his bewildering personal adulation of Putin himself, which makes it all too easy for the Russian dictator to feed him out-and-out lies about the state of the conflict and who is responsible. There’s his alpha-dog approach to geopolitics, which he believes shows great strength and in reality shows great weakness: The United States, Trump apparently believes, ought not lift a finger or offer a word of protest if the world’s other great powers decide to invade their neighbors. Instead, those great powers must be cherished and coddled, lest we “drive them away from the bargaining table” and they decide to intervene in our own imperial adventures.

Note how different this argument is from the old MAGA ones about how the whole conflict is an expensive boondoggle halfway around the world that we shouldn’t be involved with at all. Trump, fully in his own imperial era, has jettisoned such provincial “Donroe Doctrine” thinking. He just argues, openly and explicitly, that it’s better for the United States to be allied with Russia. All this is music to Putin’s ears: The Russian dictator, the Wall Street Journal reports, is now proposing a tripartite summit between the United States, Russia, and China to hash out the ultimate fate of Ukraine.

I seriously want to throw-up every time I hear, see, or read the man’s word. He’s going beyond charlatan and narcissist. He’s still those plus a disgusting grifter. I’m not the psychologist here but this guy’s dementia and pathologies should get him locked up at Walter Reed in some padded cell for sociopaths.

I love the observations of Historian Heather Cox Richardson. These are her thoughts yesterday at her Sub.Stack  “Letters from America.”

After ten years of Trump insisting that reports of his cooperation with Russia were a hoax, here we are, watching one profoundly unpopular man tear apart the global system under which we have lived for eighty years in order to climb into bed with Vladimir Putin.

In just over a week, Trump has lifted sanctions on the sale of Russian oil on the global market, a way both to send desperately needed money to Russia to fund its war on Ukraine and to begin the process of reintegrating Russia into the global economy. Either Trump or Musk or both appear to have slowed down Starlink and Starshield—the two systems that manage communications for defense and offensive drones, respectively—making them inoperable during one of the worst Russian bombardments of the war. And on Friday, Trump waived additional sanctions Congress demanded in a recent law named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) two days before the sanctions were to go into effect.

Putin confidant Kirill Dmitriev, who manages Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, reposted an AI-generated image of the U.S. eagle standing next to a Russian bear, snarling at a British lion standing next to the flag of the European Union—the U.S. and Russia standing shoulder to shoulder against the United Kingdom and Europe—with the caption “Things Have Changed…”

Over the post, Dmitriev wrote: “Together.” He cheered on Trump’s waiving of the sanctions imposed by the Graham Act and, in response to a post claiming that Trump’s move to bolster Russia had caused panic in Europe and Ukraine, posted: “Checkmate.”