TFG's Putin envy: Trump is stupid to praise the evil Russian tyrant

#StupidtRump- #TFG continues to show poor judgment

#SIASD - Ben Carson with TFG

 

Echo opinion published in Canton.com The Repository, a daily newspaper in Canton, Ohio.

I admit, I have never felt Donald Trump had the judgment or character to be the president. As his presidency progressed, his actions only strengthened my opinion. 

When the overwhelming consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies was that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election, Trump sided with Vladimir Putin when Putin stated Russia did not interfere. Robert Mueller was able to gather enough evidence to indict 12 Russian intelligence officers for their role in hacking into the Democratic computer system.

Envious of #EvilPutin

Then there was the time Trump tried to extort the Ukrainian president by withholding congressionally mandated military aid to pressure Ukraine to open investigations for Trump’s political benefit. Later, after losing Georgia in the 2020 election, Trump, in a taped call, pressured Georgia officials to “find” votes to overturn the election.

Consider #TFG's Trump’s actions during the seditious Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. After encouraging his supporters march to the Capitol building and “fight like hell” and watching the riot for several hours, Trump eventually tweets about the rioters, “We love you. You’re very special.”

The National Archives confirmed that Trump had “classified” and “top secret” documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency ended. Not exactly a secure location.

Trump showed incredibly poor judgment when issuing complimentary statements about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. World leaders are nearly unanimous in condemning Russia’s aggression. Countries with leaders who have not condemned Putin’s invasion of Ukraine include Iran, North Korea and China. Hardly stellar company!

Considering Trump’s praise of Putin after the invasion of Ukraine, I would suggest that Trump admires Putin, and envies Putin’s dictatorial power. Is this an attribute American leaders should have? When evaluating candidates in upcoming elections, the judgment and character of candidates pandering for Trump’s endorsement should be as suspect as Trump himself.

From Carl Humenik, in Jackson Township

Christians in Russia must cry for Putin to go!

Stand up against Russia echo opinion published in The Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Maine Writer note:  Ukrainian Catholics are united regardless if they are Orthodox or in Communion with the Vatican.

Flag of the Russian Orthodox Church

Where is the Russian Orthodox Church? Why aren’t they condemning Vladimir Putin? Why are there no bishops, priests and seminarians in the streets protesting? People are being arrested and beaten just for saying the word “war.”
The church should protest such actions.

No Orthodox church in Russia has said anything about the Russian Army killing children, and indiscriminately killing as many Ukrainians as they can. (Meanwhile, many Ukrainians are practicing Orthodox Christians.)

The Russian clergy in their magnificent golden churches stand on the sidelines while Putin is totally destroying a beautiful country.

We have heard that a substantial number of people in Russia don’t believe what’s happening. The Russian clergy need to address this and guide the people to the truth.

Russian Orthodox Church logo

Russians are a very religious people; if the Russian Orthodox church would speak out against Putin that would have an impact on the people who support him.

Leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church, it is your calling; it is your duty to support and protect the people. Speak out against the atrocities committed against fellow Slavs. Stop just watching and doing nothing about the barbarous activity in the streets, and speak out against sending unwitting young Russian boys to fight and die for a deranged dictator.

Your silence is tacit approval of what Putin is doing. The blood on his hands is also on your vestments.

Stop this madness.

From Nicholas Homyak, in Johnstown Pennsylvania

Failed Border Wall: You have to believe "to go" ladder shops are popping up in Mexico

 A Section of Trump Border Wall in South Texas Cost $27 Million a Mile. It’s Being Foiled by $5 Ladders.

Echo report published in the Texas Monthly by Aaron Nelsen.

“Ladders and walls go together like peas and carrots,” says one McAllen Border Patrol agent.

A portion of the US-Mexico border wall stands unfinished near La Joya, Texas, on 14 April 

Trump’s $27m-a-mile border wall being scaled with $5 ladders.

Every month for the past decade, Scott Nicol, a 51-year-old artist and activist, has set out from his home in McAllen to roam the Rio Grande Valley in search of ladders used to scale the border wall in South Texas. On a cool and overcast day in early April, Nicol has centered his hunt on an eight-mile stretch of border between the towns of Hidalgo and Granjeno, where an Obama-era wall meets up with a newly constructed piece of Trump’s wall.

The first stop of the day brings him to a dirt field behind a flea market in Hidalgo. A pair of green and white Border Patrol SUVs are parked atop the eighteen-foot-high concrete levee wall, next to a section of bollard-style fence with a closed gate, their noses pointed toward the Rio Grande. Within minutes, Nicol has spotted a ladder roughly halfway up the levee; it’s about a dozen feet long and has only six rungs. “It’s made of cheap, rough wood, quickly nailed together because it is only going to be used once,” Nicol says. “Unlike the wall, these ladders are functional.”

$2.99 ladder available at Hobby Lobby with a 90-return guarantee!

Just a few minutes later, as Nicol is inspecting the ladder, a group of about thirty disheveled migrants emerge from the brush after crossing the river into Texas from Mexico. Young men and women toting small children in their arms walk to the agents, who jot down their information as the new arrivals place their meager belongings into plastic bags. These migrants are not sneaking in; rather, they are seeking out U.S. Border Patrol in this intensely patrolled area. A half hour passes before the agents open the gate and escort the group of migrants through it single file. They shuffle down the levee wall and onto a waiting bus bound for a processing center where they will request asylum. 

It’s early yet, a border agent tells me, and the groups will only grow larger into the evening. As for the ladder? “That’s from our regulars,” one agent quips over his shoulder.

Nicol, an ardent opponent of border walls, can’t help but note the irony: asylum seekers turn themselves over to agents who then escort them through gates in the wall, while so-called regulars—unauthorized migrants—make use of rudimentary ladders to easily climb a barrier specifically designed to keep them out. “These ladders are probably $5 worth of hardware,” Nicol said, “and they’re defeating a wall that cost $12 million a mile in that location.”

Few possess Nicol’s intimate familiarity with the 55 miles of wall intermittently stitched across the Rio Grande Valley. The artist has spent countless hours over the better part of a decade in the shadow of the wall, picking through the detritus of personal effects that migrants leave behind or lose in the chaos of an apprehension. “I try to understand the realities of migration and enforcement,” Nicol explained, “and the ladders show how absurd the idea is that a wall is going to stop anybody.” He has become a sort of connoisseur of ladders, amassing an impressive collection of several dozen photos of them. Some show the ladders strewn about, while in others they are in disorderly piles or set at varied angles of repose against the wall. They are almost always jerry-rigged, cobbled together from scrap lumber, and they are varied in length. Some are as long as the wall is high—about eighteen feet—and others are just tall enough for a migrant to reach the top.

Rope-and-PVC ladders that make use of metal hooks are popular in areas upriver, but along the Granjeno-to-Hidalgo stretch of border, where it is a short dash from the Texas bank of the Rio Grande to the levee wall, simple wooden ladders seem to be the preferred technology. They are heavy, cheap, and rarely used more than once. Border Patrol agents drive their trucks over the ladders to break the rungs, then toss the mangled wood into piles. When the heaps grow large enough, the City of Hidalgo hauls them off to a landfill.

The agents drive off with the migrants after an hour or so, and Nicol continues his search for ladders, by car and on foot, locating four more as the wall stretches westward. He finds still another in Granjeno, where the newly built 1.3-mile Trump wall joins up with a 1.75-mile piece of wall authorized during the Bush administration and built during Obama’s presidency. The cost of the Trump wall in this area—an 11.4-mile stretch from just west of Granjeno downriver to the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge—runs to about $27 million a mile. In recent months, the number of apprehensions has soared. Border Patrol caught more than 171,000 migrants along the southern border in March, the highest one-month total in fifteen years. Nicol is finding more and more ladders—further evidence, he said, that the wall is not about stopping people or drugs. “Border walls are just backdrops for politicians who want to rile up their voters,” Nicol said. “They have political value, and that’s what counts.”

Like something out of a fairytale, a set of shocking pink seesaws sprang up right in the middle of the United States border wall with Mexico.

Despite its obvious vulnerabilities, some border agents maintain that the wall serves a useful purpose. While it won’t stop everyone, it will slow them down and give agents time to react, said Chris Cabrera, a McAllen-based Border Patrol agent and local spokesperson for the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union that supported Trump. “Nine times out of ten we’re going to catch them,” Cabrera said of immigrants who use ladders. But lately, Border Patrol agents have been swamped with the volume of immigrants in the Hidalgo area and cannot effectively respond to climbers. “We have people turning themselves over, and at the same time, when it’s dark we have people with ladders, but we got nobody to go over because we’re tied up.”

One McAllen-based Border Patrol agent, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the media, told me that the number of ladders the agency is finding has increased as well. “Ladders and walls go together like peas and carrots,” he said.

Ladders have been used to counter walls for thousands of years, pointed out Ronald Rael, a professor of architecture at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. “A wall is a medieval war technology, and the responses to it are antiquated technologies that have been proven to surmount it, that includes ladders, catapults, and tunnels,” said Rael, who made headlines in 2019 with a short-lived art project titled Teeter-Totter Wall, which placed pink seesaws between the slats in the border fence that separates El Paso from Juarez.

The fact that a DIY ladder is enough to beat it makes spending billions of dollars on further construction seem folly, according to Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. 

In fact, the sections of levee wall that broke ground under the George W. Bush administration and continued under the Obama administration cost about $12 million per mile. Though contractors are still billing for Trump’s wall, the average cost per mile in Hidalgo County, based on contracts and appropriations, is roughly double that amount. “The companies that build the wall are the ones who are benefiting, not just from building it, but maintaining it and adding technology to it,” said Correa-Cabrera.

Despite securing about $6 billion in funding from Congress and diverting nearly $10 billion more from the Department of Defense budget, the Trump administration managed to complete only forty miles of “big, beautiful wall,” about twenty of them in the Rio Grande Valley. One of its unfinished projects can be found in Granjeno, where a section of levee wall (with no fencing on top) built during the Obama years abruptly ends at the edge of this no-stoplight town. The Trump administration set out to fill in the gap between Granjeno and Hidalgo, building a new section of levee wall topped with steel bollards rising some thirty feet high. But contractors didn’t manage to finish installing all of the bollards before President Joe Biden paused construction. Situated at the base of the incomplete Trump wall is Cabrera’s Bar, an open-air watering hole.

On the day I visited in late March, a band called the House was covering classic rock standards to the delight of a few dozen winter Texans, the retirees who spend their winters on the Texas-Mexico border. I asked the proprietor, Guadalupe Cabrera (no relation to the security expert or border agent), if he had seen any makeshift ladders recently. Without uttering a word, Lupe, as he’s known locally, pulled out his mobile phone to show me a photo of a wooden ladder. It was broken and dumped in his parking lot, he told me, his train of thought interrupted by a pair of white buses with tinted windows driving past his bar in opposite directions. “That would make for a good photo,” Lupe said, “one bus hauling (immigrants) off, the other heading to pick up another load.”

For the better part of the last decade, Granjeno has been smack in the middle of the most heavily trafficked migrant corridor on the southern border. A few of the town’s residents are rumored to offer help to immigrants for the right price, Lupe confided. More often than not, the immigrants Lupe sees around town, and on occasion inside his bar, are doing their best to hide from Border Patrol. “I’ve found them hiding in the bathroom,” Lupe told me. “One guy with tattoos yelled ‘shut the fucking door’ and I knew right away that he was gang member.”

Border Patrol agents and construction crews building the Trump wall also frequent Cabrera’s Bar. After Biden paused construction in late January, leaving a gap in the wall by the bar, some contractors kept on stopping by for a drink. “These guys are making money whether they build or not,” Lupe said of the contractors, “but really, what good is a wall if they don’t change immigration policy?”

A few days before my visit to Cabrera’s, Nicol had paid a visit to the bar. He quickly found a ladder—about twelve feet in length, all wood—lying at the edge of the parking lot. He found another wooden ladder of about the same length on the opposite side of the levee wall. He sent me a photo of each ladder and gave its approximate location using the border wall and the bar as reference points. “There’s a band and the place is packed,” Nicol said of Cabrera’s. “It’s a real party.”

This man cannot remain in power- Vladimir Putin must go

Ukraine: The Stakes for Democracy by 
Michael Waldman in Brennan Center for Justice

The World Is Falling In Love With Ukraine. It’s Beautiful—And Painful—To Watch

The war in Ukraine reminds us that our own democracy is worth fighting for. Do not take democracy for granted. 

We are all mesmer­ized, horri­fied, furi­ous about Russi­a’s barbaric attack on Ukraine. The human toll, the wanton viol­ence aimed at civil­ians, the 2 million refugees . . . the inspir­ing sight of ordin­ary people mobil­iz­ing to fight for their homes . . . all impel us to care so deeply.

Some­thing else stirs our hearts, too: Ukraine is a demo­cracy. Russia is a dictat­or­ship. So the battle for Ukraine today is the front­line of the fight for demo­cracy.

This broader conflict has been years in the making, though not always visible. Demo­crat­iz­a­tion swept the world in the late 1980s. In just a few years, East­ern Europe had nonvi­ol­ent pro-demo­cracy revolu­tions, the Soviet Union collapsed, Nelson Mandela was released from prison and elec­ted pres­id­ent of South Africa. Even in China, a massacre in Tianan­men Square was required to preserve the regime. Liberal demo­cracy, accom­pan­ied by free markets, seemed the wave of the future.

Demo­crat­iz­a­tion now faces a global back­lash, a retrench­ment. In Turkey, in India, in the Phil­ip­pines, in Hungary and Poland, lead­ers were elec­ted and revealed them­selves to be auto­crats. In China, Xi Jinping has hoarded the Commun­ist Party’s power into his own hands.

For a decade, we watched Vladi­mir Putin stir trouble. He backed Brexit and threw his weight around in the French pres­id­en­tial elec­tion. And of course, in 2016 he inter­vened in our elec­tion, hack­ing Demo­cratic emails to help elect Donald Trump. The pres­id­ent whom Putin backed, in the end, tried to over­throw Amer­ican demo­cracy.

It long seemed savvy to say that Putin simply wanted to sow chaos. In fact, he invari­ably backed author­it­arian forces. They often spoke in the language of anti-immig­rant nation­al­ism and reli­gious ortho­doxy. Putin wasn’t just making trouble — he was waging an ideo­lo­gical war for right-wing social and polit­ical values.

It’s easy to forget that Putin’s help came as Trump removed support for Ukraine from the Repub­lican plat­form in 2016. His campaign manager, Paul Mana­fort, was being paid by pro-Russian olig­archs. And Trump’s first impeach­ment was promp­ted by his corrupt bid to black­mail Pres­id­ent Vlodymyr Zelensky, threat­en­ing to deny milit­ary aid unless the Ukrain­ian concocted smears against Joe Biden and his family. (I write about it in the journal Demo­cracy in a review of Rep. Adam Schiff’s book.)

Ukraine is far from perfect. It’s corrupt and domin­ated by olig­archs. Like Russia it has a bloody ethnon­a­tion­al­ist history. But when Ukraine — the coun­try from which my family fled after anti-Semitic pogroms that killed tens of thou­sands — elec­ted a Jewish pres­id­ent without batting an eye, it suggests some­thing very differ­ent and very hope­ful lives there.

No illusions: Evil Vladimir Putin will try everything to bomb the Ukraine into submission

If noth­ing else, the emotional outpour­ing for Ukraine can remind us of why we must fight for our own demo­cracy. When Zelensky and his people talk about “free­dom” and “demo­cracy” they aren’t just spout­ing slogans. They are risk­ing their lives. The images from Kyiv display the beauty and the power of a system based on the accu­mu­lated choices of millions of citizens, and why we must fight for it — and that fight is some­thing we must wage here, in our own home, as well.

Vladimir Putin will never be czar. By the way: does Putin even know what happened to the czars?

Russian tyrant and now international terrorist Vladimir Putin shows the world what evil looks like. 

How many more innocent souls will fall victim to evil Putin's delusions of becoming a tzar? : San Clemente Times news.

Bakersfield.com news in California published this echo opinion sent by Caleb Whitten.

Vladimir Putin must study Russian history.  In fact, the Russian czars are no more.

Ukrainian soldiers and ordinary citizens are fighting for their freedom. They are showing Americans what bravery looks like. Their stories have inspired us all.

Marine Vitaly Skakun blew up a bridge* he was defending — and sacrificed his life — to stop Russian troops from advancing. Border guards on Snake Island told a Russian war ship to take their surrender demand and shove it — even if it meant certain death. Ukrainian civilians are taking up the fight, too. Women are making Molotov cocktails to defend their homes. And when the U.S. offered President Volodymyr Zelenskyy help escaping the country, he answered for all of Ukraine: “The fight is here: I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Ukraine symbols of solidarity- Flags and sunflowers

The Ukrainian people are fighting back against Vladimir Putin’s cruelty with patriotic courage that will define their nation for years to come. May God bless the people of Ukraine.

"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." — Winston Churchill

— Caleb Whitten, Bakersfield

* “The heroism being displayed by Ukrainians like Vitaly Skakun, or the defenders of Snake Island, is deeply humbling and moving,” British Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke tweeted. “The Putin regime stands forever condemned and must pay a lasting price for its crimes.”

Ginni Thomas is morally vile: More dangerous than I could have imagined

Virginia Thomas, wife of the Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, urged the White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020, election, revealed in texts released by TFG's chief of staff Mark Meadows.

(Check two Twitter messages about Ginni Thomas I cut and pasted into the end of this blog.)

January 6 committee has text messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows

In messages to TFG's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after the 2020 Election Day, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called Biden’s victory “the greatest Heist of our History”, and she told him that former Donald Trump should not concede.- By Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in The Washington Post.

Virginia Thomas, a conservative activist married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a series of urgent text exchanges in the critical weeks after the vote, according to copies of the messages obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.

The messages — 29 in all — reveal an extraordinary pipeline between Virginia Thomas, who goes by Ginni, and former President Donald Trump’s top aide during a period when Trump and his allies were vowing to go to the Supreme Court in an effort to negate the election results.

On Nov. 10, after news organizations had projected Joe Biden the winner based on state vote totals, Thomas wrote to Meadows: “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!...You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”

When Meadows wrote to Thomas on Nov. 24, the White House chief of staff invoked God to describe the effort to overturn the election. “This is a fight of good versus evil,” Meadows wrote. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it.”

Thomas replied: “Thank you!! Needed that! This plus a conversation with my best friend just now… I will try to keep holding on. America is worth it!”

It is unclear to whom Thomas was referring.

The messages, which do not directly reference Justice Thomas or the Supreme Court, show for the first time how Ginni Thomas used her access to Trump’s inner circle to promote and seek to guide the president’s strategy to overturn the election results — and how receptive and grateful Meadows said he was to receive her advice. Among Thomas’s stated goals in the messages was for lawyer Sidney Powell, who promoted incendiary and unsupported claims about the election, to be “the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team.

The text messages were among 2,320 that Meadows provided to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The content of messages between Thomas and Meadows — 21 sent by her, eight by him – has not previously been reported. They were reviewed by The Post and CBS News and then confirmed by five people who have seen the committee’s documents.

Meadows’s attorney, George Terwilliger III, confirmed the existence of the 29 messages between his client and Thomas. In reviewing the substance of the messages Wednesday, he said that neither he nor Meadows would comment on individual texts. But, Terwilliger added, “nothing about the text messages presents any legal issues.”

Ginni Thomas did not respond to multiple requests for comment made Thursday by email and phone. Justice Thomas, who has been hospitalized for treatment of an infection, did not respond to a request for comment made through the Supreme Court’s public information office.

It is unknown whether Ginni Thomas and Meadows exchanged additional messages between the election and Biden’s inauguration beyond the 29 received by the committee. Shortly after providing the 2,320 messages, Meadows ceased cooperating with the committee, arguing that any further engagement could violate Trump’s claims of executive privilege. Committee members and aides said they believe the messages may be just a portion of the pair’s total exchanges.

A spokesman for the committee declined to comment. The revelation of Thomas’s messages with Meadows comes three weeks after lawyers for the committee said in a court filing that the panel has “a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States” and obstruct the counting of electoral votes by Congress.

Trump spoke publicly during this period about his intent to contest the election results in the Supreme Court. “This is a major fraud on our nation,” the president said in a speech at 2:30 the morning after the election. “We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Clarence Thomas fell asleep during oral arguments at the Supreme Court

Thomas has publicly denied any conflict of interest between her activism and her husband’s work on the Supreme Court. “Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet, for an article published March 14.

Ginni Thomas, in that interview, also acknowledged that she had attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse near the White House on Jan. 6, but said that she left early because it was too cold and that she did not have any role in planning the event.

Justice Thomas, 73, is the Supreme Court’s longest-serving current justice and has missed oral arguments this week because of his hospitalization. He has made few public comments about the 2020 election. In February 2021, when the Supreme Court rejected election challenges filed by Trump and his allies, Thomas wrote in a dissent that it was “baffling” and “inexplicable” that the majority had decided against hearing the cases because he believed the Supreme Court should provide states with guidance for future elections.

In her text messages to Meadows, Ginni Thomas spread false theories, commented on cable news segments and advocated with urgency and fervor that the president and his team take action to reverse the outcome of the election. She urged that they take a hard line with Trump staffers and congressional Republicans who had resisted arguments that the election was stolen.

In the messages, Thomas and Meadows each assert a belief that the election was stolen and seem to share a solidarity of purpose and faith, though they occasionally express differences on tactics.

“The intense pressures you and our President are now experiencing are more intense than Anything Experienced (but I only felt a fraction of it in 1991),” Thomas wrote to Meadows on Nov. 19, an apparent reference to Justice Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearings in which lawyer Anita Hill testified that he had made unwanted sexual comments when he was her boss. Thomas strongly denied the accusations.

The first of the 29 messages between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows was sent on Nov. 5, two days after the election.

She sent him a link to a YouTube video labeled “TRUMP STING w CIA Director Steve Pieczenik, The Biggest Election Story in History, QFS-BLOCKCHAIN.”

Pieczenik, a former State Department official, is a far-right commentator who has falsely claimed that the 2012, massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a “false-flag” operation to push a gun-control agenda.

The video Thomas shared with Meadows is no longer available on YouTube. But Thomas wrote to Meadows, “I hope this is true; never heard anything like this before, or even a hint of it. Possible???”

“Watermarked ballots in over 12 states have been part of a huge Trump & military white hat sting operation in 12 key battleground states,” she wrote.

During that period, supporters of the QAnon extremist ideology embraced a false theory that Trump had watermarked mail-in ballots so he could track potential fraud. “Watch the water” was a refrain in QAnon circles at the time.

In the Nov. 5 message to Meadows, Thomas went on to quote a passage that had circulated on right-wing websites: “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators (elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc) are being arrested & detained for ballot fraud right now & over coming days, & will be living in barges off GITMO to face military tribunals for sedition.”

The text messages received by the House select committee do not include a response from Meadows.

The next day, Nov. 6, Thomas sent a follow-up to Meadows: “Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.”

It is unclear if Meadows responded.

On Nov. 10, Thomas drew a reply from Meadows. She wrote, “Mark, I wanted to text you and tell you for days you are in my prayers!!” She continued by urging him to “Help This Great President stand firm” and invoking “the greatest Heist of our History.”

Thomas added in the message that Meadows should “Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta” — appearing to refer to conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, as well as lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who was involved in Trump’s push to claim victory in Georgia despite Biden’s certified win there.

One minute later, Meadows responded: “I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.”

Nine minutes after that, Thomas replied, “Tearing up and praying for you guys!!!!! So proud to know you!!”

Later that night, Ginni Thomas messaged Meadows seeming to react to a cable news segment. “Van Jones spins interestingly, but shows us the balls being juggled too,” Thomas said, referring to the prominent CNN commentator.

Thomas then turned to her frustrations with congressional Republicans and said she wished more of them were rallying behind Trump and being more active with his base voters, who were furious about the election.

She wrote, “House and Senate guys are pathetic too... only 4 GOP

House members seen out in street rallies with grassroots... Gohmert, Jordan, Gosar, and Roy.” She appeared to be referring to Republican House members Louie Gohmert of Texas, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Paul A. Gosar of Arizona and Chip Roy of Texas.

This was a troubled time for Trump. News organizations had declared Biden the winner on Nov. 7, after a review of vote totals in each state and the electoral count. Trump’s legal operation was divided between his campaign’s official lawyers and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s confidant and personal attorney who was fast asserting control of his campaign’s legal strategy. While many Republicans supported Trump’s filing of legal challenges in several states, his lawyers stumbled in court and many allies by mid-November were privately confiding that Trump’s legal battle would be short-lived.

Yet Thomas urged Meadows to plow ahead, rally Republicans around Trump and remind them of his enduring political capital.

“Where the heck are all those who benefited by Presidents coattails?!!!” she wrote in her text message to him late on Nov. 10. She then told him to watch a YouTube video about the power of never conceding.

Meadows might not have been Thomas’s only contact inside the Trump White House that week. On Nov. 13, she texted Meadows about her outreach to “Jared,” potentially a reference to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser. She wrote, “Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am. Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved.” The messages provided to the House select committee do not show a response by Meadows.

Kushner did not respond to a request for comment.

Powell was becoming ubiquitous on television — and winning the president’s favor, according to several Trump advisers — as she claimed without evidence that electronic voting systems had stolen the election from Trump by switching millions of ballots in Biden’s favor. She claimed, again without evidence, that hundreds of thousands of ballots were appearing out of nowhere and that a global communist conspiracy was afoot involving Venezuela, Cuba, and probably China.

Still, while Trump cheered some of Powell’s commentary, she was a polarizing figure in his orbit. Her views were considered so extreme and unsupported by evidence that David Bossie, a longtime Trump supporter, told others that she was peddling “concocted B.S.” After Fox News host Tucker Carlson contacted Powell about her claim that electronic voting machines had switched ballots to Biden, he told his viewers that he found her answers evasive and that she had shown no evidence to support her assertion. He stopped having her on his program.

Ginni Thomas stood by her. “Don’t let her and your assets be marginalized instead...help her be the lead and the face,” she wrote to Meadows on Nov. 13.

The following day, Nov. 14, Thomas sent Meadows material she said was from Connie Hair, chief of staff to Gohmert. (Gohmert is a Republican and was part of the Tea Party movement). It is not clear if she was passing on a message from Hair or sharing Hair’s perspective as guidance for Meadows. The text message seems to quote Hair’s belief that “the most important thing you can realize right now is that there are no rules in war.”

“This war is psychological. PSYOP*,” the text from Thomas states.
Hair said Thursday that she did not have any specific recollection of that text message.

On Nov. 19, which would be a crucial day for Powell as she spoke at a news conference at the Republican National Committee, Thomas continued to bolster Powell’s standing in a text to Meadows.

“Mark (don’t want to wake you)… ” Thomas wrote. “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”

*Psychological operations are operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.

Tweets:
Maggie McGlothin
@MaggieMcglothin
·Mar 25

If I were a betting woman, I’d bet Ginni Thomas knows the identity of the pipe bomber.

Agolf Twitler Slayer
@bblock29
·Mar 25

Ginni Thomas does not discuss overturning the election with Her husband but texts Mark Meadows and Jared Kushner. Does anyone believe this?

Russian people must remove Vladimir Putin

Russian people must stop Putin!

Echo opinion letter published in the News-Press, a newspaper in Fort Myers, Florida.

Russian people must be reached.

Russian-Ukraine unprovoked invasion

Indeed, the Russian people are the ones who now allow this man to bring us to the brink, close to nuclear war, to where we are.

Yes, Putin may have the support of some of his military and of his police; but it's the people as a whole who have the power. Just as they did, the day before, in Germany in 1939 and in Japan in 1940.

American leadership has chosen to take the path of peace, by way of avoiding direct conflict. I think that most in America believe that is the right path, but I believe that message is not reaching the Russian people. It hasn't reached the Russian, who stands just behind Putin, his YES men, his support, nor the Russian soldier.

Evil Vladimir Putin continues to order devastating unprovoked attacks on Mariupaul, Ukraine

It is clear, that man has gone beyond the pale: "Outside the limits of acceptable behavior or judgment."

We give our wealth and some means of defense. The Ukrainian people give their homes, their heritage, their lives, their all.

It's up to the Russian people to now save everything. This in which most of us believe; a chance of life on this beautiful planet.

It's now time for the Russian people to stand up and say, "Let's roll!"

We need you, our media to get them the message!

Paul A. Sloan, 1Sgt., USA (Ret), Cape Coral

Ukraine will never agree to be a Russian colony

Kyiv has faced adversity before – and a stronger Ukrainian identity grew in response.

This is not the first time residents of Kyiv have fought to defend the city from an encroaching, larger army.

City of Kyiv Coat of Arms  Michael the Archangel wielding a flaming sword and a shield on an azure field.

This essay by Matthew Pauley, as associate professor at Michigan State University published in The Conversation, and republished under the Creative Common license.  

On Jan. 30, 1918, a force made up primarily of military cadets and hastily armed students took up positions at Kruty, a railway stop northeast of Kyiv, to defend the capital city of the Ukrainian People’s Republic against Soviet Russia. The republic had only declared formal independence a week earlier to rebuff aspirations by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party to control Ukraine.

By the end of the day, the young defenders at Kruty had succumbed to Soviet Russia’s superior Red Army. With the help of aligned local Bolshevik militias, the Reds took Kyiv itself on Feb. 7.
Occupation and identity

Following the battle for Kyiv, the battle for Ukraine is complex and messy. But as a historian of Ukraine, my research has found that this first period of modern independence from 1918 to 1920, is central to a national narrative that maintains Ukraine is a sovereign country, one that is separate from Russia.

This sense of identity makes occupation a hard task, as the Soviets found out in 1918 following Kyiv’s fall.

With the Red Army in possession of Kyiv, the government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic took refuge in the northern city of Zhytomyr. Its representatives signed a peace agreement with the former Russian Empire’s opponents in the ongoing First World War, the Central Powers, and German and Austrian soldiers proceeded to push the Red Army out of Ukraine.
Red Army troops in the Kyiv region in 1918. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Germany put in place a more pliant government in Kyiv. But after the Kaiser’s army collapsed in defeat on the Western Front, Ukrainian forces under the leadership of a former journalist-turned-soldier, Symon Petliura, retook parts of Ukraine, including Kyiv, only for the city to be occupied again by the Red Army in February 1919.

An army comprising volunteer troops, Cossack units and bands of peasants – some of whom shirked their government’s command and committed pogroms against the country’s Jewish minority – fought for the restoration of dominion over Ukraine. After concluding a hasty alliance with Poland, the Ukrainian People’s Republic briefly recaptured the capital with the help of Polish forces.

But in June 1920, the Red Army subjugated Kyiv for the final and last time.

Ukraine was subsequently divided between Poland and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, a Bolshevik-led entity based in Kharkiv. And in December 1922, Soviet Ukraine signed a treaty with Russia and Belarus to form the USSR.

Accommodating ‘national feelings’

The lessons of the successive battles for Kyiv were not lost on Soviet leaders.

Lenin was forced to concede a need to accommodate what he described as Ukrainian “national feelings” in the development of the USSR. The Ukrainian language was given equal standing in the early years of the Soviet Union, and Communists in Ukraine had greater say in the management of their republic under the nominally federal system than they would have had in a unitary state proposed by Lenin’s detractors.

The Ukrainian national movement compelled these compromises. Ukraine — Soviet or otherwise — was not created by “Bolshevik, communist Russia” as Vladimir Putin claimed in a recent public distortion of history that has served as a justification for invasion.

The economic campaigns of Soviet leader Josef Stalin following Lenin’s demise demanded increased political centralization at the expense of some regional autonomy. In the 1930s, Stalin acted to restrict Ukrainian national culture by curtailing the promotion of the Ukrainian language and repressing Ukrainian intellectuals, initially singling out former Ukrainian People’s Republic adherents for trial. A devastating famine, instigated by a state drive for land collectivization, killed millions in Soviet Ukraine, and the secret police imprisoned many more.

Real power rested in Moscow. But even the Soviets acknowledged a separate Ukrainian identity while cultivating the myth of a fraternal Slavic brotherhood. Putin’s vision goes further in subjugating Ukrainian identity, reviving an imperial era construct of Russians and Ukrainian as “one people.”
History repeating?

If Kyiv passes again to Russian forces, as it did multiple times between 1918 and 1920, history suggests this control will likely not last.

A sense of Ukrainian identity has only grown stronger in the century since young men gathered at Kruty to defend Kyiv.

During Ukraine’s first campaign for independence, Ukrainians increasingly thought in national terms, but not all accepted this construct. And some national minorities mistrusted the Ukrainian government’s promises of a broad range of cultural, educational and administrative rights.

Now, Ukrainians of multiple ethnicities and linguistic preferences have taken up arms to defend a potent, pluralistic and democratic vision of their homeland.

In June 1920, when faced with final entreaties for help, British diplomats told Arnold Margolin, the Ukrainian People’s Republic’s Jewish-Ukrainian emissary to London, that his government had to secure its own independence.

It is a task they face again now. It is unclear when or if Russia will occupy Kyiv. But Ukrainian defense of the city has been fierce. While NATO refuses to send soldiers to intervene in the current war, Ukrainian fighters benefit from foreign military support. And there is every reason to believe that should Kyiv yield, those fighters will continue to wage an insurgency with weapons supplied by their allies.

The national movement in Ukraine in 1918 to 1920, was strong enough to complicate, if not defy, Russian and Bolshevik control. And the Ukrainian national idea did not evaporate under Soviet rule. It is likely to animate a tenacious resistance today.

Evil war criminal Vladimir Putin

Putin reveals himself as a war criminal and dictator:

Vladimir Putin wearing layers of bullet proof vests in staged fake rally to spread misinformation-propaganda about the Ukraine invasion.

Echo opinion letter published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

Regarding “’Why? Why? Why?’ Ukraine’s Mariupol descends into despair” (March 16): The world has finally witnessed the unveiling of the real Vladimir Putin, as an evil manifested in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

He is a despicable, abhorrent dictator who’s trying to resurrect the old Soviet Union and cares not a bit how many innocent people his Russian troops slaughter. 

Terrorists shelled Mariupol neighborhoods with Grad rocket systems. Houses destroyed. There are killed and wounded. Source: https://censor.net/en/n321396

Putin rules in the same mold as despots like Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Putin has sought to make freedom-loving Ukraine into a Russian puppet state. I doubt if sanctions will stop Putin, just as they haven’t deterred North Korea or Iran. Evil people like Putin understand only one thing: force.

Evil Putin is a war criminal who has now become a pariah, and hopefully one day he will be brought before the International Court of Justice and tried for crimes against humanity. In the meanwhile, Ukraine continues to teach the world a valuable, profound, lesson in bravery and courage.

From Gene Carton, in University City, an inner-ring suburb of the city of St. Louis, in Missouri.

Vladimir Putin: Sickening deplorable evil

Echo opinion letter published in The Lima News in Lima, Ohio:

Evil of Vladimir Putin:  As I sit and watch the news, I'm appalled about the Ukrainian carnage caused by Vladimir Putin, the Russian dictator who wants to be a delusional Czar:
Deplorable. 

It makes me sick; what can we do about it? Pretty much nothing.

We are in “power” to watch and keep world peace. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his "virtual speech" to the U.S. joint session of Congress said, "President Biden: You are the leader of the nation, of your great nation. I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace. Thank you. Slava Ukrayini."

The Monument of Independence in Kharkiv includes the phrase Slava Ukrayini.

If we lift a physical finger, it will be an all-out war. It will become worldwide and come to our shores.

To the point. Vladimir Putin makes some of the world’s other cruel leaders look like kittens. He has invaded a perfectly calm and evolving nation and is trying to destroy it and its citizens.

From what I see, it’s for nothing but to make himself look important.

He’s such an evil man, trying to get his own way. Does it matter if he has ruined lives, killed innocent people, displaced children and old people? No, it’s all about him!

I pray the world can find a way to circumvent this madness and save the world.

But I do have to wonder: How can Donald Trump, in his words, still support that evil "smart and very clever man"?

Please join in whatever you and I can do to help this world. 

My answer is to pray. Join me if you can!

Louise Myers, Cairo, Ohio

Putin as Hitler reincarnate: Maybe proof of evil reincarnation

Although I consider myself to be "agnostic" about the possibility of human reincarnation, the personae of Vladimir Putin is providing more evidence about how this belief in "life after live" may have credibility. Unfortunately, evil is the creature that is being revived.

Echo opinion published in the Addison County Independent newspaper in Middlebury Vermont.

There is no doubt that Vladimir Putin has succeeded in achieving one of his life purposes. He has become a vilified world-historical figure. All the world knows who he is, and all the world fears what he is up to; I suspect this applies even to members of his own household. 

He probably enjoys the distinction of being the most hated man in the world. Most likely this pleases him. For the world’s hatred is an acknowledgment of his power, and fear that he will not hesitate to use it to destroy his opponents.

Not since Hitler has anyone emerged on the world scene with such power, with such ruthlessness, without a conscience. And when he’s gone — for death will surely take him someday, historians will preserve his memory. His story will become legendary, and artists will embellish it. He may become the central figure of a great Russian opera of the 23rd century. I have never heard him speak, but in this opera the role of Putin should be sung by a bass.

Right now, Putin is an existential threat to the human race, and a great deal of nature along with it. A nuclear holocaust has become a real possibility. Journalists who have observed him suggest that he is mad, that he has become unhinged. And as the leaders of nations throughout the world consider how to restrain him, he seems like a rabid beast prepared to strike against them.

Madeleine Albright writes how Vladimir Putin has a serpentine personality.

What sort of creature is he? Madeleine Albright, who served as Secretary of State, knew him well. She has written that his appearance is serpentine and his character follows suit. His face could have been that of the clever serpent who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. For he is no doubt very clever, and of ill intent to anyone in the way of his purposes. 

Putin is the sort of face that one might inscribe on a dart board; a form of immortality he richly deserves.

But that doesn’t give us any useful sense of what we’re dealing with. And I’m speaking not only for myself, or my family, or my friends, or all the inhabitants of Middlebury, but of all people generally. For there is no doubt that Vladimir Putin is evil. He is an evil madman of world-historical proportions. Lord Acton’s comment about power — that power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely — fits him perfectly.

But that doesn’t tell us what we need to know. Hatred is not sufficient to defeat world-historical criminals. Recall what it took to exterminate Adolf Hitler.

So, what sort of man is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (b. 1952)?

He is a politician, of the sort political theorists classify as a political realist.

And, what is that?

To begin with political realism is a theory that warrants the use of any means of power at hand to promote, secure and defend one’s political interest. The theory also subscribes to a doctrine of moral realism: that human nature is inherently selfish. This fits Putin perfectly. We might even say that Putin is an archetypical political realist, entirely ruthless (which is consistent with his realism), unscrupulous, a nihilist that rejects moral principles.

In this respect, to suppose that he is unhinged and that his actions are expressions of madness may prove misleading, for supposing that he is mentally disturbed, we may be misled by the expectation that he will soon self-destruct. Remember, the serpent in the Garden didn’t self-destruct. It still lurks in the shadows of our minds.

We must rather regard Putin as a very determined political realist. His actions are rational (rational behavior is not always a good thing); we know his interest: secure for Russia the status of a major world power on a par with the U.S. and China; and he doesn’t care about people getting hurt; he has no scruples — but that goes with being ruthless. He’s very intelligent, a skillful politician, and he has plenty of power to use. In this context, you could say that Putin’s aggression against Ukraine is perfectly rational.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a political realist, but not a politician. He was a theologian and social moralist. He saw that political conflict rarely leaves us rational, or better, he recognized that political conflict can unhinge reason, cause it to become demonic, cruelly rational. And were he living now, he would have perceived that Putin’s lust for power has not destroyed his reason, but made it demonic and all the more dangerous, and capable of unrivalled cruelty. He would caution that the nations that oppose him (and right now that seems to include much of the world) must size him up. I believe he would have agreed, Vladimir Putin is a demonic political realist. Very dangerous. And like a wild rabid beast, he must be destroyed.

We must become realists also.

Victor Nuovo
Middlebury

Russian war euphemisms

Echo opinion by columnist Leonard Pitts published in the Northern Virginia Daily newspaper:

When Russian bombs began to fall on Ukraine, Julia Tymoshenko called her aunt in Moscow.

She told her about spending a night in the basement as explosions thundered overhead. Her aunt was unimpressed. "Well, you don't know who did that," she said. "We're seeing one thing on the news, you're seeing another thing on the news."

Tymoshenko, who is 22, sent her aunt photos: the bomb shelter, the refugee train packed with fleeing people. "It's not the news for me," she told her aunt. "It's my reality, and it's what I see with my own eyes."

In response, her aunt blocked her.

That story, told last week on "CBS News Sunday Morning," suggests that, for as much as this is a war against buildings, bodies and a legitimately elected government, it is also a war against objective truth. Richard Pryor, channeling Chico Marx, once put it like this: "Who you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Well, this is a war against your lying eyes.

Evidence abounds. It includes Russia's attack on TV towers in Ukraine, its crackdown on social media and other independent information sources, its detention and intimidation of journalists and its new law mandating up to a 15-year prison sentence for reporting so-called "fake news," i.e., news that contradicts the Kremlin. Some Russian TV journalists have quit rather than parrot Moscow's lies about the "special military operation" they are forbidden to call a war.

More ominously: At this writing, four reporters have been killed by Russian forces. War being as heinous as it is, it's impossible to say definitively whether journalists Brent Renaud, Pierre Zakrzewski, Oleksandra "Sasha" Kuvshynova and Yevhenii Sakun were specifically targeted. 

But Russia, being what it is, it sure seems likely the journalists were targeted. (Check the website: Committee to Protect Journalist ).

Four journalists killed covering Russia-Ukraine war
Two Ukrainian journalists missing since start of conflict

Yes, every nation at war seeks to control the flow of information, to shape the narrative to its advantage. That's why television and radio stations are prize targets for invading armies. But this feels like an Orwellian step beyond that, an extension of something with which we've become sadly familiar in this era of preposterous social-media conspiracies and multiple-choice truth. Meaning, an attempt not just to lie, but to overwrite reality.

America, unfortunately, has extensive recent experience with that.

So it's hard to watch this with any sense of detachment, to observe as though through some intervening window, as the very idea of knowable things is mauled. No, this is frightening stuff.

Julia Tymoshenko's aunt is, what you'd expect her to be, under a regime that weaponizes lies and interdicts truth. And Lord knows, truth has trouble enough even without that. "You can't handle the truth!" Jack Nicholson famously snarls in "A Few Good Men," but the thing left unsaid is that many of us don't really want it anyway -- all protests to the contrary notwithstanding -- because it challenges what they choose or need to believe.

In other words, truth is hard, but QAnon is easy. And defending truth grows harder still, not only in Ukraine, but also in Lafayette Square, where journalists were gassed, in Ferguson, where they were arrested, in Minneapolis, where police shot one in the eye. This, as some of us wait for John F. Kennedy to return from the dead and Donald Trump to be restored to the White House. All of which makes it difficult to have any sense of remove from Moscow's war on reality.

You'd like that war to be just some scary thing far away, glimpsed safely through a window. But it's actually a mirror reflection of us.

Distorted, yes. But not nearly as much as you'd like to believe.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

Maine Writer post script:  I continue to be mystified about the delusional effectiveness of euphemisms: A mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.
"“downsizing” as a euphemism for cuts"

1984 in 2022: In George Orwell 's novel 1984, the government 's highest class, called the Inner Party, (could be a euphemism for "Putin's Party) uses multiple tactics and pressuring mechanisms such as using slogans/propaganda, persuasive surveillance and Newspeak to maintain social control. The Inner Party uses language as means of social control by using ¨doublethink¨ which is a major way the Party controls the Outer Party and Proles. They do not question the elimination of words from the vocabulary.