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Weather: Sunny. Much cooler with highs in the lower 60s. North winds 5 to 10 mph. Tonight: Mostly clear in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. Lows in the mid 40s. North winds around 5 mph.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance: Today is Presidents’ Day. Schools and most government offices are closed.
Nar-Anon Family Groups offers hope and help for families and friends of addicts through a 12-step program, 6 p.m. at St. Mark by the Sea Lutheran Church, 303 Palm Coast Pkwy NE, Palm Coast, Fellowship Hall Entrance. See the website, www.nar-anon.org, or call (800) 477-6291. Find virtual meetings here.
Notably: Here’s an account that sounds familiar in our beleaguered democracy: “I arrived in Monterey and the fight began. My sisters are still Republicans. Civil war is supposed to be the bitterest of wars, and surely family politics are the most vehement and venomous. I can discuss politics coldly and analytically with strangers. That was not possible with my sisters. We ended each session panting and spent with rage. On no point was there any compromise. No quarter was asked or given. […] It was awful. A stranger hearing us would have called the police to prevent bloodshed. And I don’t think we were the only ones. I believe this was going on all over the country in private. It must have been only publicly that the nation was tongue-tied.” So. Where is this excerpt from? Last Sunday’s OpEd in the Times? A lament on NPR? By a guest on the Colbert show? Something I overheard and illegally recorded at Brown Dog? No. Travels with Charley, published in 1962, sixty-three years ago. Go back more than two hundred years: “It was an age of invectives, and few paid particular attention when a Federalist denounced opponents as ‘blind, positive, conceited sons of bitches.’” (From historian James MacGregor Burns). And wasn’t it Pat Robertson who, I’m not sure when but it was before 1996, sent a fund-raising letter saying feminists encouraged women “to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians”? (The quote is reported in Daniel Balz’s and Ronald Brownstein’s Storming the Gates, published in 1996). We have a false idea of courteous political discourse in this country. Maybe it’s become more vulgar, but I’m not even sure it has. The key is in Steinbeck’s last two lines: “I believe this was going on all over the country in private. It must have been only publicly that the nation was tongue-tied.” The private has vanished. Social media has not only over-democratized and leveled all opinions, but it has been the projectile to the vomiting. Our rage hasn’t changed, except in venue. We have lost the art of self-control. That’s no small loss. But the bile is as old as gallbladders.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
Flagler County Commission Workshop
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
Contractor Review Board Meeting
Flagler County’s Technical Review Committee Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board
For the full calendar, go here.
As Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and sickening. In all the public places of America, this filthy custom is recognised. In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his; while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly. In the hospitals, the students of medicine are requested, by notices upon the wall, to eject their tobacco juice into the boxes provided for that purpose, and not to discolour the stairs. In public buildings, visitors are implored, through the same agency, to squirt the essence of their quids, or ‘plugs,’ as I have heard them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and not about the bases of the marble columns. But in some parts, this custom is inseparably mixed up with every meal and morning call, and with all the transactions of social life. The stranger, who follows in the track I took myself, will find it in its full bloom and glory, luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness, at Washington. And let him not persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame) that previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, which cannot be outdone.
—From Charles Dickens’s American Notes (1842).
Skibum says
For anyone who chooses to listen, today’s Daily Cartoon makes a very powerful statement. Everyone in America should take heed to it’s message before it becomes too late to stop the madman-in-chief and the merciless mini-mees who are willing to do his bidding.
Whathehck? says
This is a very sad cartoon. I often think how Emma Lazarus would feel today. Would she have been shocked that a President of the USA said: “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”
“You cannot dismiss entire countries and continents as ‘shitholes,’ whose entire populations are not white and therefore not welcome.” Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. commissioner for human rights.
Ed P says
Another casualty of a sanctuary city?
Who dismantled border security and allowed the crisis?
Is Ice focusing on criminal immigrants?
Is Ice violating any laws?
Is safety and security a bad request?
Why is American first something to be embarrassed about?
Do you hear the majority of Americans clapping?
So many questions.
Laurel says
I lived in a “sanctuary city” and it was okay.
Boarder security has been an issue through every Presidential term.
I don’t know what ICE is doing.
Safety and security was a problem FOR the immigrants in my sanctuary city. They didn’t bother me.
America first is not something to be embarrassed about, until we screw our allies. Then, it’s incredibly embarrassing.
No, I don’t hear the majority of Americans clapping, I see thousands of Americans losing thousands of jobs, and health insurance, by a felon and a billionaire.
So many answers needed.
Ray W, says
Now that the Great Russian Appeasement of 2025 has begun, it seems apropos to share with FlaglerLive reader’s an excerpt of Winston Churchill’s address to the U.S. House of Representatives on May 19, 1943. I have waited months for the right time. It has been announced that American negotiators will meet with Russian negotiators to begin discussions to end the War in the Ukraine. Ukrainian negotiators have not been invited to participate in their future. History records what happened to the Czech people when British and French negotiators met with Nazis to partition Czechoslovakia. Czech negotiators were not invited to the negotiations. American appeasers may soon announce “Peace in our time” at the conclusion of the negotiations.
As context for Churchill’s House address, the Battle of Midway in June 1942 had destroyed the offensive naval power of the Empire of Japan; it’s Imperial Navy forever after had to shift to the defensive. Between the battles of Coral Sea and Midway, the Japanese lost four of their 12 main battle carriers and an escort carrier, with another main carrier heavily damaged, plus the loss of approximately 500 of their best naval aviators.
The Japanese shift to the defensive, noticed by the Soviets, allowed for the redeployment of millions of trained Soviet troops from the Far East, withdrawn from Manchuria where they faced an invading Japanese army. These winter-trained and equipped troops were pressed into an offensive strike at Stalingrad early in the winter of 1942-43. The ultimate surrender of nearly 400,000 German soldiers late in the winter of 1942-43 also cut off the German rail transportation network in the southern Caucasus.
Ultimately, it is estimated that the industrial losses from the defeat at Stalingrad cost an entire six months of all German industrial military production.
Later, when at Yalta, a resort in Crimea, Churchill toured the mountainous countryside. He wrote of observing a ravine into which hundreds of German locomotives had been intentionally driven after the rail bridge spanning the ravine had been dynamited. This happened all over the southern Russian front. Unable to return the rail rolling stock to German-controlled territory, and therefore unable to recover the tanks, trucks and cannon associated with the German drive past Crimea that had to be left behind, some 20,000 locomotives and rail cars were destroyed in this way so as to deprive to the Russians any possible future use.
In early spring 1943, the German and Italian armies that once had spanned almost the entire North African coastline from El Alamein to Morrocco, were forced to surrender from within a tiny salient on the coast of northeastern Tunisia to American armies from Morrocco to the west and British armies from Egypt to the east.
Triumphant, Churchill had then travelled to American for joint talks with FDR and the American Chiefs of Staff. Churchill brought with him the British Army’s Chiefs of Staff.
Congress invited Churchill to address the House once again.
Here is the excerpt from Churchill’s speech. Again, I have been waiting months to find the right moment. Now that appeasement efforts have been opened by President Trump, Churchill’s language chills for the future of the Ukraine:
“In North Africa we builded better than we knew. The unexpected came to the aid of the design and multiplied the results. For this we have to thank the military intuition of Corporal Hitler. We may notice, as I predicted in the House of Commons three months ago, the touch of the master hand. The same insensate obstinacy which condemned Field-Marshall von Paulus and his army to destruction at Stalingrad has brought this new catastrophe upon our enemies in Tunisia. …
“The African excursions of the two Dictators have cost their countries in killed and captured 950,000 soldiers. In addition, nearly 2,400,000 gross tons of shipping have been sunk and nearly 8,000 aircraft destroyed, both of the figures being exclusive of large numbers of ships and aircraft damaged. There have also been lost to the enemy 6200 guns, 2550 tanks, and 70,000 trucks. … Arrived at this milestone in the war, we can say, ‘One continent redeemed.’
“I was driving the other day not far from the field of Gettysburg, which I knew well, like most of your battlefields. It was the decisive battle of the American Civil War. No one after Gettysburg doubted which way the dread balance of the war would incline, yet far more blood was shed after the Union victory at Gettysburg than in all the fighting which went before. It behoves us therefore to search our hearts and brace our sinews and take the most earnest counsel one with another, in order that the favourable position which has already been reached both against Japan and against Hitler and Mussolini in Europe shall not be let slip.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Russian has already lost the war against the Ukraine. Only the killing remains before the Russians realize their loss. The Ukraine should not cede one square meter of Ukrainian soil to the invaders. Any other approach is appeasement. NATO leaders know this. EU leaders know this.
At the onset of invasion, the Ukrainian government was not expected to last more than a few days. The main highway to Kiev was jammed with Russian armored columns. When asked if he needed evacuation, Zelensky famously said he didn’t need evacuation; he needed ammunition.
A hidden Ukrainian tank brigade, plus lightly armed forces dispersed throughout northwestern Ukraine focused on fuel bowsers and brought the Russian armored columns to a standstill. Stalled, Russian forces were soon picked apart.
In the first months of the invasion, Russian forces occupied as much 26% of the internationally recognized borders of the Ukraine, including that which they stole in 2014. Spread thin over a wide front, the tiny Ukrainian army forced the Russians to withdraw from the vicinity of Kiev. The Russians regrouped in the east and southeast, eventually establishing a land corridor through to Crimea, but they failed to capture all of the Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. These ports are of great importance because Ukraine possesses the world’s most fertile farmland. At the time of the outbreak of the 2022 war, the Ukraine produced 13% of the worlds wheat. Russian produced 12% of the world’s wheat. Tiny Ukraine, with its 44 million people and a vast industrial base, was a juicy plum to Putin. We know now that the Ukraine possesses vast quantities of rare earths. No wonder Putin wants to steal the Ukraine. It was simple greed. It wasn’t joining NATO. It wasn’t joining the EU. Puting wanted the Ukraine’s population, its fertile soil, its industrial base and its mineral and metal deposits. When Putin said he was invading to crush Hitlerites, he was only borrowing from Stalin, who described to Churchill and Roosevelt the Polish government-in-exile in London as terrorists and criminals and Hitlerites.
After counterattacks, the Russians fled from much of the seized land, eventually holding as little as 17% of the Ukraine land mass. Two years of fighting later, and Russia holds roughly 18% of the Ukraine’s internationally recognized land. Throughout all of 2024 and nearly two months of 2025, the Russians have attempted to seized Pokrovsk. They are still trying. Meanwhile, in August 2024, Ukrainian forces entered Russia in the Kursk region. Putin promised the Russian people that the Ukrainians would be expelled by October 1st. They are still there. Yes, Russian forces have retaken about half of the original intrusion, but the Ukrainians invaded elsewhere, seizing more Russian land.
The only real battlefield successes the Russians gained occurred late in the fall of 2024, when the Republican-controlled House refused to vote to provide more military support to the Ukraine, even though we have a treaty that requires us to do so. Running short of small-arms ammunition and artillery shells, Ukraine had to cede small portions of their land, but that was because of the stupidity of the Republican House.
It is estimated on some sites that the Russian army has lost over 800,000 personnel, killed, wounded, or captured. Open site sources, such as Oryx, for example, that visually confirm equipment losses, report that October 2024 saw the greatest losses of Russian equipment month by month since the first few months of the war: 695 total pieces of equipment, with 103 tanks lost, 253 infantry fighting vehicles, 41 armored personnel carriers, four aircraft and one helicopter, plus trucks and other military equipment. For the entirety of the war through January 18, 2025, Oryx and its members report visually verifying over 20,000 pieces of military equipment either destroyed, abandoned, or captured. It is estimated that some 50% of all Russian tank reserves have been lost, including the vast majority of its most recent and most sophisticated tanks. One video available shows a tank transport trailer loaded with a T-34 tank of the type that fought at Kursk in 1943. I question the veracity of this video, but there can be no doubt that the Russians are scraping the bottom of their tank reserves to simply come up with tanks that can still shoot. Recent blogs by Russian military commenters reveal that mules are being issued to Russian units to transport food and ammunition to the front lines. A Russian general supposedly commented that it was better to lose mules than to lose transport equipment and the men who drive them.
Reuters recently obtained Russian central bank documents that lay bare the state of the Russian economy. Before considering the content of these documents, it should be remembered that at the outset of the February 2022 invasion, many sources had reported that since 2014, when Russia’s first invasion of the Ukraine failed, Russia began steadily adding money to a number of different financial reserves, mainly from excess oil revenue. The funds had reached approximately $350 billion in reserves by the time of the invasion. Today, Russian financial documents hold that the reserves are down to $130 billion and falling rapidly. It is estimated that Russia will exhaust its financial reserves in the fourth quarter of 2025. Official inflation figures, perhaps suspect on the low side, have inflation at just under 10% and rising. Food prices in some regions have doubled. From these actions, it is perhaps correct to surmise that Russia expected the 2014 invasion to work. When it failed, Russia began a 10-year plan to prepare for invasion. It, too, has failed.
According to the Russian central bank records obtained by Reuters, three significant hazards threaten the Russian economy.
First, concern that OPEC will increase production as it promised some six months ago, coupled with possible U.S. crude oil production increases, threaten worldwide price stability. Falling international crude oil prices could undermine the profitability of Russian crude oil exports, the crutch on which Russia’s entire national economy relies.
Second, corporate indebtedness is spiking. The Russian central bank lending rate has been set at 21% since last October, as the Russian Fed fights inflation. Due to high borrowing costs, Russian businesses are expected to face a cumulative cost increase to their operations of 130 billion pounds Sterling in 2025, a 45% increase in costs over the previous year. The Russian central Fed has been keeping credit tight, so loans are hard to come by anyway. Many Russian companies face rising costs amid dwindling revenues because of weak consumer spending. Corporate bankruptcies are on the rise and are expected to continue to rise. The main economic driver of the Russian economy has become increased defense spending, not consumer consumption. In the U.S., 70% of our gross domestic product comes from consumer spending.
Third, tight federal budget limits due to the aforementioned dwindling federal financial reserves means medium term problems. The Russian government can continue to overspend on war production, but if it runs out of financial reserves by the end of 2025, that will ripple through the overall economy.
Perhaps all of the above explains the sheer joy expressed by Russian leaders when Trump stooped to calling Putin the other day, as if Russia is anywhere near the status of the United States. A great nation would wait for the Russian call.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that the “position of the current (US) administration is much more appealing.”
“Dmitry Medvedev (former Prime Minister), Deputy Chair of Russia’s National Security Council, noted in an online statement: ‘The presidents of Russia and the US have talked at last. This is very important in and of itself.'”
“Politician Alexei Pushkov stated that the call ‘will go down in the history of world politics and diplomacy.'”
“The pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda (you know, the Pravda of Soviet fame), referring to Ukraine’s president, gloated: “Trump signed Volodymyr Zelensky’s death sentence.'”
Laurel says
Trump may get his Moscow hotel yet as Russia cannot win the war without us. Trump is giving democratic Ukraine to Putin, and by keeping Ukraine out of NATO, he is green lighting Putin to attack Ukraine again. This also green lights China taking over Taiwan.
So much to be proud of.
B Williams says
Send that statue to a place that cares about humans. It certainly isn’t amerikkka .
Ray W, says
Yesterday, Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement that after a call between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, initiated by the U.S., it was agreed to resolve problems “in the interests of removing the unilateral barriers to mutually beneficial trade, economic and investment cooperation inherited from the previous administration.”
Reuters reports that European allies were “shocked” by Trump initiating a call to Putin.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Great nations do not stoop to making the first call to a losing country. Simple as that. Agreeing to start negotiations without inviting Ukrainian negotiators is an equally low stoop.
Ray W, says
Saturday, Newsweek reported on a Friday forecast made by Russia’s central bank chair that the bank was leaving unchanged the 21% lending rate first set by the Russian Fed last October. Per the reporter, the 21% lending rate is designed to “cool an overheating economy.”
Here are some bullet points from the article:
– “Western-led sanctions imposed because of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have partially isolated Russia from the global economy but the country has managed to enjoy higher GDP growth than expected (4.1% in 2024).
“But Russia’s GDP has been fueled by military spending, albeit amid concerns over inflation and worker shortages. A slowdown in its growth will raise questions about the sustainability of Putin’s military spending plans.”
– Inflation, currently at 9.9%, is more than twice the Russian Fed’s goal of 4% inflation.
– The Russian Fed forecasts GDP growth to drop to between 1 and 2 percent; it could fall to as low as 0.5% in 2026, before rising slightly to 1.5 and 2.5% in 2027.
– Russia is currently incapable of expanding the supply of goods and services sufficient to meet demand growth, as Russia is experiencing a worker shortage caused by a growing demographic crisis, by the “exodus” of those fleeing the draft, and by the casualties from the war.
– Predictions have inflation slowing to between 7 and 8 percent in 2025.
– Russian Fed Chair Elvira Nabiullina predicted that monetary tightening (limited credit availability) will cool the economy.
– An independent Russian news source, The Bell, reported that inflation, coupled with declining rates of lending “increase the likelihood Russia could face a ‘dangerous combination of low growth and high inflation.'”
– Russian Fed Chair Niabullina said: “Price pressures remain significant. The underlying inflation indicators exceeded 10 percent by the end of 2024, which is certainly an intolerably high level in our view.”
Ray W, says
Verstka is a Russian news site formed in 2022 to comment on the war in the Ukraine.
A couple of weeks ago, Verstka reported that sources in Moscow reveal a drop in the city’s military recruitment efforts, down from 200-250 per day in mid-2024, when Moscow’s mayor introduced a 1.9 million rouble ($19,000) signing bonus, to approximately 40 per day now.
In response to the declining numbers, President Putin approved a law allowing criminal defendants to avoid prosecution if they enlist during wartime or periods of mobilization. The law may bring as many as 25,000 new recruits from those facing ongoing criminal or administrative cases such as alimony debt or unpaid loans.
In addition, Moscow authorities are enlisting foreigners, often in groups of 10. A Chinese recruit told a Verstka reporter that he needed money to help his ailing parents. “[F]oreign nationals from China, Ghana and South Africa have begun enlisting in noticeable numbers.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W, says
After Ukrainska Pravda reported on data released by Russia’s Central Bank, bne Intellinews investigated the data. Here are some bullet points from the data release:
– Foreign direct investment in Russia in 2024 fell to the lowest level in 15 years, with only $235 billion directly injected into the Russian economy.
– Much of the direct foreign investment comes from the U.S., but because American companies funnel the money through foreign entities before it reaches Russia, the money is not identified as American investments.
– Prior to the 2022 war, nearly $500 billion per year in foreign money was directly invested into the Russian economy.
– In the first three quarters of 2024, foreign investors withdrew $44 billion from the Russian economy, which offsets the already low investment of foreign money for the year. In 2023, $80 billion was withdrawn. In 2022, $138 billion in foreign investments was withdrawn.
– “Much of the fall is related to the exit or winding down of operations of the Western firms, especially in automotive and retail, following the imposition of extreme sanctions in 2022.”
– Russia, in a method not used by other countries, counts profits earned by foreign countries as direct foreign investment money, which artificially inflates the overall investment numbers.
– In 2023, Chinese companies invested $19.7 billion into the Russian economy, but the figure dropped in 2024. The Chinese government now prohibits companies from investing in Russia’s gas and oil industry, and it has decided to avoid participating in Russia’s Power of Siberia-2 natural gas pipeline project. The Chinese government advises against Chinese car companies building factories in Russia.
– According to bne Intellinews, “[t]he lack of FDI (foreign direct investment) and directing all Russia’s internal investment into the military industrial complex and not civilian production will cause long-term problems for Russia as it struggles to find new sources of investment capital.
– Russia’s Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin said that Russia’s regulatory central bank had taken steps to limit corporate and retail lending, causing overall lending levels in Russia to drop near the end of 2024. The non-monetary lending policies, i.e., reducing the amount of available credit to lending institutions, were part of an effort to cool the economy in the face of 9.5% inflation. It is expected that the restrictive lending policy will “temporarily slow growth” in 2025.
– Putin’s two-decade long policy of hoarding cash and paying down external debt reversed in 2024, with the government now “pouring” money into industry, which effort led to unexpected growth. “But it’s the ‘wrong kind of growth’ analysts at Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) argued in a recent paper. ‘Russia’s wartime economic growth, however, is financed by mortgaging the country’s future,’ said Alexander Kolyander, a non-resident senior fellow with the Democratic Resilience Programme at CEPA. ‘The main destinations for the country’s hitherto-unseen investment are import substitution, eastward infrastructure and military production. Mechanical engineering, which includes manufacturing finished metal products (weapons), computers, optics and electronics and electrical equipment, was one of the fastest-growing areas for investment in 2022 and 2023-24. None of that investment would support Russia’s long-term productivity growth.”
– Banks issued more than $150 billion in “preferential loans” to the military industrial complex, to the agricultural sector, and to the retail sector. Some economists suggest that such loans will lead to a credit crisis. Overall corporate credit grew by almost 20% in 2024.
– Should a cease-fire deal be reached in the next few months, economists still argue the “the Kremlin will have to continue heavy military spending for at least eight years to rebuild Russia’s military capabilities after the war, both to restock and prepare for a potential conflict with Nato, but also to provide jobs to demobilised soldiers and avoid the economic post-war hangover that normally accompanies the end of wars.”
– Post-war spending will “trap” Russia’s government into a “long-term commitment to non-productive investment that will contribute to stagflation that is widely anticipated by economists. …”
– Putin’s “Global South Century” initiative could help offset the long-term damage expected by economists. So, too, could investment in the civil side of the economy.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I have to correct myself. For a long time, I have argued to FlaglerLive readers that some 10 years ago, Putin began setting aside money as a cushion for invasion of other countries. For years, the literature I was reading held to that time frame. Now, there seems to be evidence that Putin began paying down foreign debt and settling aside a portion of Russia’s oil revenues into various wealth funds for not 10 years, but for as many as 20 years. This would put Russia planning for war with its neighbors some 20 years ago, even before Russia invaded Georgia in 2008.
It is no secret that the dissolution of the Soviet Union caused a vacuum of power in both central Asia and eastern Europe. The former Soviet armies cratered, and their equipment fell into disrepair. Into this vacuum emerged the Ukraine in 1991, complete with its own small army and a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. Russia signed a treaty, swearing to never invade the Ukraine if it would surrender its nuclear weapons. Great Britain and the United States were the two other treaty signatories. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty and former President Clinton signed into law legislation passed by Congress obliging us to fund the country’s defense.
Russia broke its treaty obligations in 2014 and again in 2022. And it now seems reasonable to argue that Russia began planning invasion in 2004.
Great Britain has not broken its treaty obligations.
America had not broken its treaty obligations, at least not prior to late 2023, the year that our stupid Republican-controlled House of Representative held off aid for many months at a critical time when Russia was attacking Ukrainian positions prior to the Spring thaw.
Now that the Great Russian Appeasement of 2025 is underway, we will soon see how America honors its promises.
Pogo says
@Genocde joe is gone
What else matters?
Skibum says
Ray, you make many excellent points. Nobody here in America, or Europe for that matter, should be foolish enough to ignore or make excuses for Trump’s appeasement of Putin’s history of aggression, and his desire to continue to invade other adjacent Eastern European countries in an effort to somehow rebuild the Soviet empire to its former “glory”. Trump has harbored a not-so-secret wish to be just as powerful and authoritative dictator as Putin or Kim Jong Un, and buddies up to the most corrupt and despicable dictators while trying to push all of our countries’ allies to the sidelines in a vain attempt to make it look like Trump has more power and authority than the U.S. Constitution gives him. I don’t have any faith that Congress will be willing or able to stop him, so are entire system of democracy seems to rest solely with the courts as well as everyday Americans’ willingness to stand up and protest en masse against the very severe damage Trump is causing not only to our country but to international relations with our long-standing allies as well. If we fail in this monumental task, I fear there will be untold catastrophic damage done to many countries and entire populations of people around the world.