What to the Blogger is the Fourth of July?

 


Amazing coincidence!  Every couple of weeks a Russian diplomatic flight lands at Dulles to swap out embassy personnel and other chores, the only Russian plane allowed into a US airport.  It parks at an isolated part of the field.  Purely by accident, Trump Farce One happened to park right next to it.  For two days.  A reporter named Andrew Leyden revealed it on June 28 and the mainstream media has yet to take any notice.  


Two days later a United Arab Emirates Air Force plane joined the party, a McDonnell Douglas-Boeing C-17 designed to carry cargo and troops.  As we know, Jack Smith thinks still more classified documents were hastily stashed when the FBI began to search Motel a Lago; they have not yet looked inside Bedminster or other spots.  Why would the Emirates Air Force need to send such a big plane?  What's going on?  Hello?  Is Mr. Leyden the only journalist left?

He may be the only one not thinking up new ways to write "Biden Should Curl Up and Die, Many Experts Say."  The Economist came up with this striking cover:


I don't recall the British being so clever about FDR's wheelchair when he was saving their asses but the ageism is even worse over there, as anyone who has spent a few minutes with a comedy panel show like "Have I Got News for You" will attest.  Here's another Economist cover, just to give you a taste of their humour:


While our free press was speculating on who President Harris will name as her vice-president, the world went on.  A Hezbollah commander named Mohammed Nasser was killed in a strike on Wednesday and the Iranian-backed organization retaliated with fifteen drones and two hundred rockets into Israeli territory.  Although there were no casualties, it's all Netanyahu needs to authorize raids inside Lebanon.  A man looking at prison will do almost anything.  And so the war widens and peace recedes into the distance and guess who gets roped in.  Antony Blinken hasn't unpacked his bags in six months.

"Incidents" in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea appear to be escalating, from North soldiers crossing the border to balloons full of garbage being sent over.  Standing between full-scale conflict is the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission -- five Swiss and five Swedish soldiers.  I hope they're big ones.

Will France adopt fascism without any help from the Wehrmacht this time?  Results in the first stage of the election say it's very possible.  Attacks on government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot and her team have led to 30,000 extra police being deployed ahead of stage two.  It looks to be close, unlike the Labour blowout across the Channel.  

Here it's the 248th anniversary of our founding as a deeply flawed republic which nevertheless built in methods for peaceful and necessary change.  It may be the last.  Sleep well.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I hate the poorly educated...

Image
 ...when they insist on electing one another. There's a halfwit running for governor of  Missour i on a promise to burn books outside the governor's mansion if it's the only way to protect children from "vulgar pornographic material."  It's not clear what set him off, probably The Diary of Anne Frank again.  If his flamethrower is out of gas, he is also open to bulldozing or "launching books into outer space," which is certainly creative.  (The flamethrower may displace the AR-15 as America's National Weapon, depending on how high Biden drives the price of gasoline.)    Book burning is nothing new, Gott weiss,  but its mainstreaming marks a new phase in American barbarism.  We know what we mean by Orwellian and Kafkaesque -- perhaps we need a new word:  Bradburian, and not only for the destruction of books and what they represent.  In Fahrenheit 451  Ray Bradbury posited a future where firemen would start fires instead of putti...
Read more

Malign influence and other features

Image
 I had an odd dream early this morning.  Putin had come to Washington for a first look at his new province and Trump took him to the top of the Washington Monument.  It was a beautiful spring day, the windows were open, and as they looked over the mall a man dressed as Galileo emerged from the shadows and shoved them both off the observation deck to test his theory that the tiny Russian and the hulking American would impact the ground at the same time.  I awoke to the sound of rejoicing. Imagine my surprise when I heard that the boss has indeed been invited to Washington.  An international pariah since 2022, the dictator will meet his creature to carve up  Ukraine  and no doubt receive approval for his next "special operation," whether in Moldova, Poland or the Baltic republics.  It's just COMMON SENSE.  And NATO is too expensive for the US to keep up. While he's here Vlad can get a sit-down with his "girlfriend"  Tulsi Gabbard,  co...
Read more

Catching up

Image
 Kristi Noem is going to have a bad day today.  Even Republicans are complaining about her lack of interest in little details like hurricane relief for  North Carolina,  so intent is she on choosing the most flattering outfit for her next media appearance.  ProPublica tracked down some of the money that's been disappearing in the direction of DHS and found that $11 million had been directed to Naples, Florida, to rebuild a pier after a big-money donor got in touch with her.  Guess what?  She visited the city ten times while she was governor of South Dakota, possibly because Corey Lewandowski owns a home near the pier.  Small world.  (Pro tip:  If you're fleeing wintry South Dakota for a dirty weekend in Florida, don't use state credit cards.) Some colorful new names popped up in the files Congressional investigators received from the estate of  Jeffrey Epstein :  Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon all shared his hospitalit...
Read more