Whose war is this anyway?

 Fans of the Great War are experiencing serious flashbacks today with the announcement that Russia is using chloropicrin, a lung-damaging chemical first deployed by the Germans in 1915.  The war was triggered by an assassination in Sarajevo ("some damned foolish thing in the Balkans").  Could the next one be touched off by an accidental encounter in Niamey?  The military junta currently ruling Niger wants the thousand or so US troops in the country to leave, and just by coincidence a bunch of Russian military flew in and made themselves at home in another hangar at Diori Hamani airport.  

As for war between Russia and Europe, Polish prime minister Donald Tusk says it's been on for two years.  Poland spends twice as much on its military as the rest of NATO, while Emmanuel Macron says he would consider sending French troops to Ukraine if requested.  "If Russia wins in Ukraine there will be no security in Europe."  

Of course we have our own problems.

Donald VonShitzinPants (thanks, Mike) had at least a week's worth of bile and crazy stored up from his week of courtroom siesta and he unleashed it during a flying visit to the Heartland.  In Waukesha, Wisconsin, he showed off his vocabulary by promising to sample "vegan food," which he apparently thinks is the cuisine native to Las Vegas.  He tackled the very difficult word "infrastructure" and the word won.  In Michigan he claimed that the gag order he violates six times before breakfast every day would prevent him from testifying at the election interference trial.  (The truth is he can't take the stand without being asked about the recording where he and Michael Cohen discuss the McDougal payoff.)  "I have a judge who gagged me!  I'm not allowed to talk about things!" he told the nodding, gaping crowd.  Then he talked and talked and talked.

He can be sure his crowds, if they read anything, don't read Time magazine and don't know or care about his promise to Hitlerize the United States if given another chance.  He was "too nice" during his first, disastrous term and deserves at least two more because the "China flu" ruined his chances for re-election and besides, who cares about the Constitution anyway?  I'm not usually a fan of the Russian courts but they display defendants in a cage during their "trials" and I'm starting to think that's completely appropriate in this case.  Let him know what it's like to look through bars.  It would stop the snoring and farting.  Take away his phone and his stack of Natalie Harp valentines and feed him a "vaygan" lunch.

Sorry.  I get carried away sometimes.  Everywhere I look there's more of it.  You know what I mean.  To show solidarity with Israel, I guess, Republicans in the House cooked up this Antisemitism Awareness Act, which equates antisemitism with anti-Zionism and says you can criticize Israel only within narrow parameters.  Opposition is coming from some distant parts of the political spectrum.  Rep. Jerry Nadler says it "threatens freedom of speech...while doing nothing to combat antisemitism."  Bernie Sanders goes farther:  it "equates criticism of [Netanyahu's] illegal and immoral war against the Palestinian people with antisemitism."  The born-again Christian contingent has a problem, too:  the bill violates their right to believe in "Holy Scripture," which clearly says Jews are responsible for the death of Christ.  Here we find Matt Gaetz, Margie Greene and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS).  Who's the antisemite now?  Do they really want to turn over that rock just to punish the campus demonstrators and the universities that refuse to expel them?  

At any rate, it's good to be reminded that Christianity, like America itself, is built on hate thinly disguised by fancy rhetoric.  The men who wrote of all men being equal and of the rights of free speech, press and assembly were slave-owners whose words were ratified by other slave-owners.  Together they built a country on genocide and theft, their marble buildings held together by blood.  Fundamentalists also reject the fancy rhetoric about feeding the hungry and caring for the sick, about the blessedness of the peacemakers and the merciful.  They prefer Leviticus to all that wooly wokeness.  Looking back at their history of Crusades, witch trials, pogroms and heretic burnings, I don't think they're wrong.  Monstrous, but not wrong.

The saga of Cruella dePierre continues to amuse and instruct.  "Through my tenure on the House Armed Services Committee," Noem wrote, "I had the chance to travel to many countries to meet with world leaders.  I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.  I'm sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I'd been a children's pastor, after all)."  So much terrifying information in that passage.  That a Christian sect left her alone with children does not surprise me (see above).  What did the "little tyrants" experience when they locked eyes with Pastor Kristi?  Do they still have flashbacks?  Above all, do they now know she's a stone liar?  Her spokesperson Ian Fury acknowledges that the publisher will address "conflated world leaders' names" before the book comes out.  So she may have stared down the mayor of Tokyo, or an aide to the prime minister of Singapore, or the waiter at the Chinese restaurant who didn't bring her more noodles.  It kind of undermines the whole Brave Defender Against Rabid Animals story, or whatever today's spin is beyond blaming the "fake news."  Governor, they're reading from your book.  Didn't you glance through it before the ghostwriter handed it in? 

Still, it looks like Governor Puppykiller will still be a keynote speaker.  Not at the Republican national convention in July.  No, not a state version either.  She's got the Brevard County Republican Executive Committee annual dinner on May 25.   Because Florida Republicans prefer 'gators to dogs.

Let me be frank:  the right is useless everywhere.  In the UK the Tory government passed a law requiring photo ID to vote.   Two MPs were turned away from the polls in local elections this week because they lacked the requisite document.  Both were Tories, one of them -- wait for it -- Boris Johnson.  Possibly he was counting on being the only person in the country who looks like Boris Johnson but the poll workers were implacable.  It's pretty funny.

Boeing engineers/whistleblowers are dropping like pieces of Boeing planes.  Joshua Dean, 45, died from a combination of pneumonia and MRSA.  Let's call it coincidence, for now.

The auditing firm of BF Borgers, CPA, has been charged with "massive fraud" by the Securities and Exchange Commission for its work on more than 1,500 companies.  They have agreed to permanent suspension and a fine of $14 million.  One of their clients is Trump Media.  Shocking.

Retort of the week:  KAITLAN COLLINS:  So you agree that people who break in and vandalize a building should be prosecuted?  J.D. VANCE:  Exactly.  COLLINS:  I'm just checking because you did help raise money for people who did so on January 6.  VANCE:  (crickets)

And now the moment when I agree with Trump:  London is indeed "unrecognizable."  He says it's because "Europe opened its doors to jihad" (i.e., Mayor Sadiq Khan is Muslim).  I say it's the Houston-style architecture.  You be the judge.