The Dastardly Motive behind the Russian Coup Attempt.

This whole coup attempt was staged by Putin to divert the world's attention from the January Sixth Insurrectionist window-breaking incident at the Capitol in D.C., as well as the many crimes of Donald Trump. Putin, who is not known as the forgiving type, graciously pardoned everyone involved in the "Militarized March on Moscow," just to make Joe Biden and the Democrats appear petty and vindictive in their pursuit of justice. If he can forgive the downing of high-tech spyplanes and attack helicopters, the Dems can forgive a few broken windows. It is Russian interference in our Judicial System, plain and simple.

Limp Noodle

Prigozhin has called off his march on Moscow. Previously, I wrote that Noodles Romanov wanted to become Tsar Romanov.  But now he's just all wet.

He should stay away from windows and swimming pools. I suggest a world tour -- make that an anonymous would tour after plastic surgery.

They done-gone crossed the Don.

Update: This was a quick take on Pregozhin's mutiny. Interestingly, he didn't follow the oldest advice in politics: when you strike at the King, kill him.

Suddenly, Ukraine against Russia is Ukraine against a Russia that's against itself, as the recent uncivil arguments among military leaders turn to civil war.

Someone has done-gone crossed the Don -- both the "Rubicon" River Don and the Don of the top Russian crime family. Yevgeny Prigozhin has launched his Wagner group at the throat of his Godfather, Vlad-the-invader. Maybe Putin putting this "criminal cook" at the head of a powerful, well-armed, independent, and ruthless military organization was a bad idea. Or a good one, depending on your point of view.

"Tsar" is the Russian form of Caesar and Prigozhin is doing a Juilius -- except Julius Caesar won his wars before he crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome. Yevgeny behaves like he's Noodles Romanov but aims to become a Tsar Romanov -- successor to Putin the Terrible. I anticipate the Male Heirs of any Prigozhin era will be male errors. OK, enough with the puns.  

The conflict between Prigozhin and the rest of the Crime Family went on a slow boil last year. The Ukrainians holding on to the City of Bakhmut turned up the heat as the slaughter progressed. At first, I thought the dispute with the Defense Minister was contrived but it became so public I soon believed it was real. 

Could we see a repeat of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of a century ago? Aspiring Tsar Vladimir Lenin relinquished much of the Russian Empire to exit World War One and launch his Communist Red Army at the Bourgeoisie Whites in a bloody civil war. By announcing the withdrawal of Russian forces in Ukraine to the 2/22/2022 lines, Putin could free up troops to come at the Wagners from the rear while splitting NATO into "war-continuing" and "peace-declaring" camps. He should do this now while offering some sort of joint military guarantees for a semi-autonomous Crimea that the West -- if not Ukraine -- will quickly accept.

Interestingly, Prigozhin made a statement attacking the premise of the invasion of Ukraine that could well be a bid for support from NATO countries. If Putin doesn't act, Prigozhin may get it. The offer of a quick end to sanctions by the West in return for withdrawal to the 1991 borders with Ukraine would help Wagner Inc. win the support of the Russian elites.

The West will want a quick settlement here, if possible. A prolonged Civil War in Russia could quickly spread throughout central Asia and beyond.

Wagner is Going to Moscow.

Indiana Jones and the National Socialists

 

Indiana Jones 5 is DOOMED, claims Nerdrotic.

I like that he refers to the Nazis as the National Socialists throughout his presentation (I'm one of the people who watch him without subscribing). For decades I've referred to the Nazis as the National Socialists. Socialists would tell me the Nazis weren't true socialists and I'd point out that they claimed to be the true socialists and millions of Germans believed the National Socialists were the True Socialists. So it's a bit like Russian Roulette with no empty chambers.

Why are Progressives so Obsessive?

Leeja Miller, the fast-talking left-wing lawyer on YouTube, wonders why conservatives are so obsessed with Trans Kids. I think"Kids" is the operative word here. Progressives love to launch society-wide social experiments and then walk away from the awful results (The Great Society Program an attempted to recreate the "New Deal" of the Great Depression but instead recreated the Great Depression in the industrial heartland). The left-wing slogan "Forward" means leave wreckage in our wake as we blissfully sail into calm waters that will become storm-tossed as we arrive.

The old Progressive slogan for taking governmental control was "fight childhood hunger" (resulting in widespread obesity among the young, and, as a result of that "wide-spread," the Body Positive Movement).  Now they tell us, "A baby's sex at birth is just God guessing."

I can remember when "low self-esteem" caused people to steal, rape, murder, or be irritating at work. For about a decade, we were all supposed to work on, not only improving our own self-esteem but everyone else's as well. So, when being mugged, you should try to make your mugger realize his true worth as a human being -- but carefully, in a way that won't get you killed.  

Then there was the "Childhood Recovered Memory of Abuse" fad.  Here, a rare phenomenon -- where a child is molested and represses all memory of the horrible event -- was said to be quite widespread. So adults all over the place began blaming their lousy character traits (but not the good ones) on their discovery -- often with the help of a therapist -- that they were abused as a child. This worked until the children of these adults began accusing these adults of abuse.  At that point even PBS turned against the movement.

In a political sense, the left suffers from "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy."  They are so fond of getting credit for being on the right side of history and wanting to solve society's problems that they are blind to the fact that they cause many of the problems they claim to want to solve (i.e. San Francisco's Homelessness).

Know any Gnostics?

TIK History: The cult many are in but don’t realize. He delves into Dialectical Materialism and Gnosticism; Marx and Hegel.

A half-century ago my philosophy professor said that Hegel described History as "God's Mind Marching Through Time." This means God could make a mistake and say, "Let's try that again, but with different people in charge." The class read Hegel with an English Translation on one page and an attempt to make sense of it (in English) on the facing page -- in this (at least to my 18-year-old brain), they failed.

Back in the 1960s I talked to Marxists in the Milltown I grew up in, and much of what they said didn't make sense. I assumed it resulted from a certain lack of theoretical sophistication in the provinces. Later, when I traveled some, I'd talked to Marxists who went to the Ivy League, Oxford/Cambridge and even the Sorbonne, and realized I'd done my hometown Marxists dirty -- they were totally up to speed.

If You Can't Fool Him Twice, Lock Him Up.

Candidate Donald Trump now talks of Firing the "Deep State"-- that network of self-serving, unelected officials and their cronies. That might explain why they want him slapped into a Supermax cell.

The President can appoint about 4,000 positions and in 2017 President Trump should have replaced all of them on Day One. He didn't and was still getting stabbed in the back by people who worked for him two years later. Republican Presidents have a bad habit of leaving Democrat appointments in place.

President Obama, his predecessor, was an ideological leftist who appointed ideological leftists who would, themselves, appoint ideological leftists. They, in turn, network with their fellows in and out of government (Wallstreet, Foundations, Universities, Contractors, Lawyer-Lobbyists, Journalists, and on and on). This maze of special-interest groups forms what I call "The Crony Class" -- those who want to control their fellow citizens (and benefit from that control) through their control of Washington DC. They possess a "Crony Class Consciousness."

Like Lois Lerner (who "slow-walked" tax-exempt status for right-leaning groups in 2012) and the DOJ lawyers currently targeting Trump and his supporters, those with Crony Class Consciousness don't need to be instructed in what to do and their actions come with prepackaged rationalizations. They are building a better future free of racism and such. True patriotism is loyalty to that better future. They are responsible for that better future, not the horrible past or the messy present. Current deficiencies are on the normies who are in need of re-education.

Meanwhile, the Crony Class takes care of its own. Lori Lightfoot, the failed Chicago Mayor, landed a teaching gig at Harvard upon leaving office.