P.M. Carpenter

China's Global Times: hilarity in print

The Global Times, the sister publication of the People's Daily, has been publishing a litany of outrage over the US's (admittedly overexcited) reaction to China's "weather balloon."

GT is known for its hypernationalistic editorials, most of them written in venomous ink. Yet their polemics often make for amused reading instead, since the strain of reaching for the utmost extremes in indignation is, quite often, easily readable as well.

A few quotes, just to give you a flavor of GT's servings of nearly speechless exasperation with the always wicked US. This latest editorial comes after the latter's downing of China's balloon.

"The Chinese side has verified the situation and communicated with the US side multiple times, saying the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace was due to force majeure [an unintended event] and the incident was totally an accident.... By turning an unintentional accident into an incident that has been hyped by the US officials and media, Washington is adding new uncertainties into the already-intense relations with China." 

This passage is particularly delicious. "It's also believed that the US is very interested in our related technology so that it needs to obtain it in such improper way, [says] Lü Xiang, research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 'In fact, such high-altitude balloon is equipped with cutting-edge technologies in terms of material, which the US side may have yet had,' Lü said." 

Another face-palming giggle is GT's contention that downing its balloons could financially impoverish America's air defenses. I kid you not. Nor does GT. To wit: "Compared with an unmanned balloon that flies with the wind, the US interception method that featured an advanced stealth fighter jet and fired a missile is too costly. If more balloons, not necessarily from China, fly across the US, the US Air Force would be exhausted and may even be bankrupted in intercepting them in this way."  

GT did accurately pinpoint one facet of the existentially threatening Balloon Crisis. "[It] went viral on the US social media. A number of US hawks on China-related matters have been hyping the use of balloon for spying purpose." GT singled out Sen. Tom Cotton and Gov. Greg Abbott as fanatically jingoistic paranoids of note, but only because limited print space debarred listing all 222 House Republicans, 49 Senate Republicans, and 26 Republican governors.

How does the Global Times leave matters? — at least for today? "Senior Colonel Tan Kefei [of China's ministry of national defense says] China will reserve the right to take necessary measures in dealing with similar situations. Tan's remarks mean that if a foreign airship accidentally enters the Chinese airspace, the Chinese forces could also shoot it down in a similar manner." 

That, in foreign affairs, is called "proportionality" — an eye for an eye, so to speak, which in the Old Testament was actually a call for restraint: not a life for an eye. For all of GT's ravings, in the end, it's rather reserved.   

The sorry, unyanked roots of Never Trumpers

I just now happened to stumble on something that I and Peter Wehner — "a Reagan and double-Bush appointee," as I described him — wrote separately in May 2015. That, you may recall, was only one month before Donald Trump breezed down an escalator on national TV and incoherently announced his presidential candidacy, for which pluralities of Republican primary voters soon had the hots.

"In the last two decades the Democratic Party has moved substantially further to the left than the Republican Party has shifted to the right," opined Wehner in those days before the infamous descent. "On most major issues the Republican Party hasn’t moved very much from where it was during the Gingrich era in the mid-1990s." That Republicans "have become more extreme over the years" is but a liberal myth, he argued.

To which I observed: "A most convenient timeframe Wehner has chosen. Had he compared the conservative-progressive policies of the Obama administration to those of FDR, he would have found the same sort of conservative-progressive incrementalism; and had he compared today's GOP to President Eisenhower's era, he would have found that the radical right's 'stupid' and 'negligible' numbers, of which Eisenhower warned, have assumed control of the asylum."

What were the blazing red capes right before Wehner's bullish eyes in 2015, which those who soon became Never Trumpers — as Wehner did — entirely overlooked?

For one, in an inchoate blow to Beltway civility, "the Gingrich era" of the 1990s entailed a wholly politically motivated impeachment of a U.S. president. And that abomination would have been tremendously unlikely had Gingrich not first softened up the party for its egregious behavior by normalizing the use of extremist language and unrelenting assaults against Democratic pols. In other words, "the Gingrich era" of the mid-1990s cannot be divorced from the preceding Gingrich era — which Wehner nevertheless dismissed.    

He also ignored the GOP's fundamental shift in fiscal policy, which began under President Reagan but outdid itself under George W. Bush. Annual budget deficits, once the bane of fiscal conservatives, became matters of no matter. The one GOP president who attempted to tame federal deficits, George H.W. Bush, Republicans angrily rewarded with forced retirement.  

Also gone from the Grand Old Party were any real qualms about big government — again, a George W. legacy— as well as Burkean graciousness in the face of inexorable change.

Hence on "major issues," Wehner chose to dismiss Republican reality. His even greater deliberate oversight was that relating to the party's increasingly nasty temperament. Trump of 2015 had already made a popular splash with his racist birtherism, which congressional Republicans either went along with, or were cravenly mum. This was a dark harbinger of Trumpism, although it sprang from Goldwater and Nixon's Southern strategies and Ronald Reagan's Philadelphia, Miss., speech. 

Merely a few months later, in 2015, conservative Peter Wehner became riotously apoplectic over Donald Trump and Trumpism, which, according to Wehner's older school of thought, represented an undesirable, radical break from GOP fundamentals. And so the Never Trump blinkers came off, as did the gloves, yet old schoolers had by then entered a knife fight with only their padded fists.  

To Wehner & Friends in May 2015, the perception that Republicans "have become more extreme over the years" was but a liberal myth. Yet in the fast-ensuing months of 2015 and then like a thunderbolt in 2016, Mr. Wehner et al. realized that Republicans were indeed the very essence of extremism. Such metamorphoses occur only in durations of some considerable length. But Never Trumpers denied this, the bloody obvious, and most still do.

Unlike some folks on the left, I welcome a political alliance with Wehner's ilk. But they remain conservatives and would soon disparage any liberal turns in U.S. governance, bemoan these folks. Well, duh. Of course they are, and so of course they would. For that matter, they should, since every reigning political philosophy requires a counterbalancing act, just to keep things honest.

I do lament, however, that the Peter Wehners of Republicanism never saw what was coming. Worse, many among their ranks still believe Trumpism was but a sudden and terrible departure from what came before.           

The almost inconceivable "business" fraud committed during the Trump administration

The Paycheck Protection Program was a nearly $1 trillion business loan effort "designed" to help employers continue paying employees throughout the covid pandemic. PPP was established during the Trump administration and ended under the Trump administration.  

Here's a reminder, from NBC News in May 2022, of its efficiency.  

"Many who participated in what prosecutors are calling the largest fraud in U.S. history — the theft of billions of dollars in taxpayer money intended to help those harmed by the coronavirus pandemic — couldn’t resist purchasing luxury automobiles. Also mansions, private jet flights and swanky vacations.

"They came into their riches by participating in what experts say is the theft of as much as $80 billion — or about 10 percent — of the $800 billion handed out in a Covid relief plan."

Imagine if a similar program had been established during the Obama or Biden administration. At least a half-dozen Republican House investigative committees would now be in operation, each of them wailing about government fraud and Democratic abuse.

It should be observed that many economists noted at the time that social programs, such as unemployment insurance and food assistance, as well as federal finaincial assistance to other governments, state and local, would have been more efficacious in recovering the economy.

But through the Trump administration, Republicans insisted on aid to businesses instead of direct assistance to human beings in need — resulting in tens of billions of stolen taxpayer dollars.

And there's not one Republican House committee looking into the vast fraud of the Trump years, 2020-21.

Where's Kevin?   

The ballooning of America's madness

Not since Mr. Potato Head was castrated have Americans been so terrorized, traumatized and downright trivially fatuous — this time, as you know, over a ... balloon.

Not all Americans, mind you. Just the fatuity-inclined, who for reasons still largely unbeknownst to the very finest psychiatrists insist on publicizing their cerebral infantilism.

Yes it's a Chinese balloon. Yes it's a spying dingus. Yes it had no business floating above U.S. ground. (Technically stupid is that Mr. Xi's satellites could record far more "sensitive" information on U.S. defenses than an early 19th-century Faraday invention.)

But lordy lord the breathless outrage from Republican pols and their carnival-media barkers; one would think Communist China had unleashed a really slow-flying, intercontinental ballistic missile at us.

Yet the outsized silliness didn't stop there. This is President Joe Biden's doing, say these methed-up yahoos of America's subterranean lurkings; it's classic weak-on-defense Democracy.

Why did our commander in chief not immediately order the balloon's fiery downing? they have demanded to know. Which itself is a stupid question on their part, since for several years they have characterized Mr. Biden as hopelessly brain-addled. Thus how could he possibly have comprehended this unprecedented, existential threat to the Plains states' godfearing mothers and their adorable youngins?

The answer, of course, to histrionic Republicans' imbecile question is that the president's military advisers strongly recommended against shooting down China's Valentine balloon, for fear of its falling debris on people and property.

Nevertheless: "'Shoot. It. Down. The Chinese spy balloon is clear provocation. In Montana we do not bow. We shoot it down. Take the shot,' Representative Ryan Zinke, a Republican of Montana, tweeted on Thursday. Within 24 hours, former President Donald J. Trump had posted online and sent an email to his followers. His message was concise: 'SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON.'"

This human breed of reptilian buffoonery, instant kineticism and WW III's lack of impulse control, I must remind you, wishes to be in complete charge, in 2025, of America's national security. 

Sure, these high-officeholding and network-broadcasting hayseeds and hacks of the Right often provide us with much-needed amusement. In short, they're good for a laugh — until you stop to recall there are also millions of voting bumpkins out there, soaking up seriously the looney burlesque of the Trumps and Zinkes.

Like you, I have witnessed Republicanism's ratcheting descent into madness for some years now. And it seems that, in addition to its intellectual inadequacies, what was once its rather ordinary personality disorders have lapsed into paranoid schizophrenia. The unfortunate subjects of this woeful malady see children's toys and Floridian college freshmen as perilous to the nation's welfare as a clinically demented United States president.

For them there are no thin, nor bold, red lines between, say, the merely philosophically disagreeable and an actual Yellow Horde swarming violently across the Canadian border.

All is a crisis. And every crisis is rooted in President Biden. 

A literary moment with Sibum

From Ephemeris, Montrealer poet, writer and critic Norm Sibum's final (but not last) assessment of Jane and "Dusty." 

"I have no criticism to bring to bear on Austen, certainly no critique as would broaden anyone’s understanding of her work, having only read the three books: Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, and Persuasion, and no biographical or pedagogical material, just that I sometimes find her drawing rooms a little close. No wonder her characters go on so many excursions out of doors. With Dusty’s [Dostoevsky's] drawing rooms, sometimes the fug cited above colours it all, both the grand passions and the pettiness of the human lot. The vicious civilities. Snow melt and wool mittens and close quarters – stuffy room, is a childhood smell that stays with me, and, as we speak, Montreal is all about snow, the silent church bells, the murder rate thus far, and will the crows survive the coming week of artic freeze."

The last work of Dusty's I read, years ago, was Crime and Punishment, which for me went swimmingly well until the protagonist undergoes — in the course of paying for his crime — shall we say a spiritual awakening. I have nothing against such awakenings; on the other hand I weary of novelists who preach, even the Grand Russian ones. Tolstoy agreeably surpassed Dostoevsky in subduing this tendency.   

Of Austen, well, she's a near-Shakespeare counterpart — there is no equal to Shakespeare — in exploring the turbid depths of the human heart. I would, however, also put Virginia Woolf up there — way up there; fewer words do not perforce mean lesser thought.  

Postscript: My friend Mr. Sibum also writes that he "beg[s] to differ" with the literary appraisal of "The Odyssey [being] nowhere near the equal of The Iliad." Friendship aside, Mr. Sibum and I could well come to blows over my difference with his difference. Indeed, I can foresee the emergence of a Canadian-American war, the collective national passions, perhaps, being that great.

I shan't tire you with arguments as to why I'm right and Sibum is wrong— that, if you haven't already, you can discover for yourself, and far more pleasurably than reading me. (There are many, but I would recommend the Robert Fagles translations. You can't go wrong with Prof. Bob.)    

Assuming you've already overlooked the link to Mr. Sibum's jaunty Jane-Dusty assessment (and his most unfortunate, Homerian wrongheadedness), again, this is it.

A Second Amendment aberration of nature

Speaking of some of the living natural wonders that populate Earth, here's a live-action, 23-second clip of a once-endangered species in its favored habitat — in front of a camera — which, regrettably, has made a roaring comeback. This particular variety of Northern American pestilence is a peculiar strain of quackgrass that breeds like jackasses, crowds out its potentially enlightened neighbors and dims the radiant sunlight of the continent's collective intelligence. Efforts to stamp out this incestuous vulgarity seem only to encourage its endemic growth and influence.     

Apparently I’ve been triggering some of my Democrat colleagues… pic.twitter.com/3qJB1bRuBP

— Rep. Andrew Clyde (@Rep_Clyde) February 2, 2023

And now for something completely different

For a pleasant Saturday morning, rather than Chinese balloons right off, a few pics from the winners of The Wiki Loves Earth international photography competition. This year more than 400 photographers entered more 50,000 "contestants." These are some of the winners — stunning shots of what populates Earth.

A preying chameleon, dining on (what should have been) a praying fly: 

Two horny stallions:

And two horny rams:

My favorite, a "Santa Claus pygmy seahorse":

An aesthetic frog:

And a human beholding one of Earth's natural wonders:

Ukrainian children and Vladimir's bombs

A charitable group in Lviv, Ukraine, is raising money to buy bulletproof vests for children. 

Children. Bulletproof vests. Which they must wear with every outing. 

This is what Ukrainian kids are growing up with — dodging Russian shrapnel from missiles and drones and hoping their outer garment stops exploding, flesh-piercing fragments they can't avoid.

Meanwhile, in Valdimir Putin's speech yesterday celebrating the Soviet Union's 1943 Stalingrad victory, he charged Ukrainian "Nazis" with carrying out "crimes against civilians."

"It is essential to record everything they"— the Ukrainians — "are doing now, especially to civilians."

Orwell's imagination in his 1948 1984 was nothing compared to what Putin would invent three-quarters of a century later. 

The Russian dictator is a true pioneer, a real visionary, in the fetid annals of propagandistic bullshit.

The GOP's newest hobbyhorse, America's latest embarrassment

Communist China:

-Steals our intellectual property
-Hurts American manufacturing
-Supplies our enemies
-Distracts Americans on TikTok
-Flies a spy balloon over our country

And what’s Joe Biden doing about it?

Nothing.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 3, 2023

The Chinese surveillance floater over Montana is a literal trial balloon. And China is laughing at us.

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) February 3, 2023

Now #China is OPENLY spying on us and the Biden Admin does nothing. China is trolling us. They know Biden is weak https://t.co/FCfdOBHNZb

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) February 3, 2023

Secretary Blinken should cancel his trip to China.

And President Biden must answer why he has not secured U.S. airspace.https://t.co/PqwFLCpVhN

— Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) February 2, 2023

You heard the man from Montana.

Shoot it down!

The official response saying shooting it down could harm people on the ground doesn’t sell.

In rural America, there aren’t people everywhere.

There’s land. https://t.co/QPBfGuf6bf

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) February 3, 2023

I could go on all day with these GOP cheap shots. But I repeat myself.

Thank heaven these clowns aren't in charge of national security.

DeSantis, biding his time

Smart.

"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may be months away from publicly declaring his presidential intentions.... [He] is plowing forward with a fiery 'anti-woke' agenda in the legislature before a presidential announcement in late spring or early summer. His team is beginning to hold informal conversations with a handful of prospective campaign staff in key states, according to those involved in the discussions. But compared with would-be rivals, the Florida governor, famous for crafting his own political strategy, appears to be stepping into the 2024 presidential primary season much more deliberately." (Associated Press)

He's also trying to avoid the often perilous status of an early frontrunner, which provides more time for press scrutiny. For pols like DeSantis, that's never a good thing.  

Putin's doubling down on homespun delusions: Russia is battling "Nazism" and "the aggression of the collective West"

Always unachievable is ascertaining whether demagogues and warmongers believe what they say, or believe only that the commoners will believe what they say. Scholars of rhetoric say the difference is irrelevant; what matters is that the demagoguery and warmongering are real, and it is this which must be countered by people of conscience.

The downside to this rhetorical theory is that authoritarians — those of the above ways of governing — deny their people outside sources of legitimate news and information. They cultivate a kind of mass social psychosis via disinformation; "psychosis" being defined as the deracination of actual reality from the popular mind.

Such is the political lifeblood of authoritarian leaders, and yesterday, the Russian personification of this ilk gave it to the populace good and hard. Using the Battle of Stalingrad's 80th anniversary as his rhetorical prop, Vladimir Putin evoked the Russian people's vast suffering at the hands of ill Western winds. "Unfortunately," he said, "we see that the ideology of Nazism in its modern form and manifestation again directly threatens the security of our country." 

He spoke in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, which features the massive Motherland Calls monument to the Soviet Union's fallen during the historic, 1943 battle. In Putin's telling, nothing has changed: "We are again and again being forced to resist the aggression of the collective West," he said. Indeed, "it's incredible," he added, "but it's a fact: We are again being threatened with German Leopard tanks with crosses on them."

Nevertheless, because of Mother Russia's "righteousness" — as well as its "legacy of ... values and traditions" — "We aren’t sending our tanks to [Germany's] borders." On the other hand, the motherland's patience can be tried. "We have the means to respond, and it won’t end with the use of armor," said Putin in an unconcealed reference to the alternate use of nuclear means. "Everyone must understand this." 

His Stalingrad speech was a corollary to his remarks last month to a group of WW II veterans, a talk in which he identified the proximate cause of Russia's dire, international predicament today. "The neo-Nazis who have gained ground and are running the show in Ukraine" are carrying out "crimes against civilians." Russia is keeping tabs: "It is essential to record everything they"— those Ukrainian Nazis — "are doing now, especially to civilians." 

To the rational mind it is nearly inconceivable that Mr. Putin could genuinely believe this rot. Yet the former KGB counterintelligence agent has lived under a mushrooming cloud of clinical paranoia for decades — the old Soviet Union was virtuously meant for the ages; the West, forever aggressive toward it. Believe this he might. Or, his tale is merely one of knowing bombast and emotional demagoguery.        

Russia's populace, meanwhile, is largely ignorant of the actual "crimes against civilians" in Ukraine — most recently, Putin's missiles raining down on a four-story apartment complex in the city of Kramatorsk. Like all good terrorists, Russian forces waited until rescuers sifted through the rubble for survivors before sending two more missiles screaming into the flaming chaos. 

In his Thursday speech, Putin remained mum about the bubbling rumors that he's about to conscript thousands more Russian men to fight Ukraine's phantom Nazis and the West's imaginary aggression. Because what's not imaginary are Russia's nearly 200,000 casualties to date. And the deadly toll is swiftly mounting as the Russian army — in its revised strategic approach — sends swarms of undertrained youth and recently imprisoned troops into battle.

Says Colin Kahl, the U.S. defense undersecretary for policy, "They’re running low on artillery. They’re running low on standoff munitions, and they are substituting by sending convicts in human waves into places like Bakhmut and Soledar.The Russian military has been following the Wagner playbook and deliberately using the poorly trained troops to draw, and deplete, Ukrainian fire." 

Which is working. Norway's defense chief, Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, estimates that Ukrainian forces have sustained casualties of about 100,000 troops. He also estimates that Russia has killed — murdered — roughly 30,000 of the nation's civilians.  

Kusti Salm, Estonia’s deputy defense minister, observes that "the exchange rate is ... not one to one because for Russia, inmates are expendable. From an operational perspective," this is "a clever tactical move from the Russian side." As historians of the Second World War's European theatre of operations have also observed, Joe Stalin, too, sent prisoners to the front — about one million of them.

Vladimir harbors the same level of remorse as Uncle Joe did. He's feeling better these days, what with Russia's new strategy of hurling thousands of men into the slaughter, thus putting Ukrainian forces at a severe disadvantage in retaliatory manpower.

What's more, Putin has no domestic opposition, for in addition to demagoguing the war in Ukraine as a replay of Russia's battle against German Nazis, he has effectively shut down outside sources of news and information. Of those 30,000 Ukrainian civilian deaths? Virtually no Russians are aware.

Given his fresh, wartime edges, Putin, or so U.S. officials believe, can now politically withstand hundreds of thousands more casualties in Ukraine. And President Zelensky believes his country is not yet at the end of any beginning; he is seeing huge accumulations of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine, also pronounced increases in artillery strikes — which, he's convinced, are but the preliminary maneuvers of a new Russian offensive.

House Republicans and Rep, Omar, a curious development

Well thank goodness House Republicans have bounced Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee. They've now had their ethnic and ideological cleansing, as well as their revenge against Democrats for having bounced Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees for "her history of trafficking in racism, anti-Semitism and baseless conspiracy theories" and her online support for whacking Democratic politicians. Also Paul Gosar, for posting "humorous" videos about assassinating a fellow House member. 

The dumbest thing Rep. Omar ever said about Israel came in 2019, when she implied that "money" underlay support for it. That claptrap fed into American antisemitism that stretches back to the late 19th century — especially within the South and West's agrarian Populist movement — often through coded words about "Wall Street financiers." The hayseeds were more graphically bigoted in their language, which later fed into the 20th-century's Ku Klux Klannery. 

In Jun 2021, Omar tweeted what critics saw as her most egregiously offensive remark: "We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the US, Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity," she wrote.

That's when things really blew up. But ... why? — other than that such a charge, aimed at the Israeli government's — not Jews' — apartheid policy is too often conflated with antisemitism. The aforementioned government has committed atrocities against the Palestinian people.   

Omar clarified: "To be clear: the conversation was about accountability for specific incidents regarding those [International Criminal Court] cases, not a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the US and Israel. I was in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems."

In a CNN interview, Omar added, "I've welcomed, you know, anytime my colleagues have asked to have a conversation, to learn from them, for them to learn from me. I think it's really important for these members to realize that they haven't been partners in justice. They haven't been, you know, equally engaging in seeking justice around the world."

Even the US State Department would agree with that assessment. But AIPAC has a firm hold on the tongues of many a Democratic congressperson. That's just a fact.

In a rare AOC tweet with which I can agree, she wrote: "Pretty sick & tired of the constant vilification, intentional mischaracterization, and public targeting of @IlhanMN coming from our caucus." 

Nancy Pelosi — House Democrats' den mother who always had to settle internal the children's disputes — wrote in a joint leadership statement: "We welcome the clarification by Congresswoman Omar that there is no moral equivalency between the US and Israel and Hamas and the Taliban."

There once was, however, a Republican president who believed there's a moral equivalency between the US and the murderous, fascistic Vladimir Putin's Russian Federation. Said Donald Trump in 2017, when asked on Fox News about his "respect" for the bloodthirsty autocrat — whom the network host called a "killer" — Trump replied: "There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?"

No Republican congressperson, in my memory, publicly objected to Trump's remark. Trump had put the United States on the same moral level as that not only of Russia's Putin, but of Saudi Arabia's Prince Mohammed bin Salman, killer of American journalists. 

At least for now, the republic is safe from the Donald's antiAmerican ravings. Yet House Republicans have again shown their heroic support for Trumplike free speech; they have liberated Rep. Greene to spout conspiracy theories about Jewish space lasers from committee seats, and Rep. Gosar can return to his really funny bits about killing Democratic congresswomen. Only a truly vicious voice has been silenced.

Vhat a country! What a House.

***

I get why people focus on the racism, sexism + Islamophobia underlying Omar's removal. But if she were a Black Muslim woman who turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the US + its allies, she'd stay on the committee. She's being punished for supporting human rights https://t.co/oxZLxOXjxL

— Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) February 2, 2023

I should say right off, I really tried to postpone asking for your financial support at least until February. But I can't make it. I'm now having to substitute teach whenever I'm free of unwanted medical appointments for the day, and this work has the unfortunate effect of cutting into a lot of writing I'd prefer to be doing rather than babysitting rowdy middle schoolers. That hurts worse; the time away from sharing thoughts on current affairs with you. (You might have noticed I posted today's two pieces simultaneously, at about 7 a.m., a real time-squeeze. I awoke at 4 a.m. to read the papers, research and write the posts, and then get off to work. I try my best to get something written each day.) So here I am, asking for your support — again, and sooner than I had planned. Forgive me, but numbers are intractable things, and the financial numbers propping up this site are woefully limping along. Please contribute today simply by visiting the Make A Donation button in the sidebar. Contributing is a fast, easy process. And, as always, you will have my sincerest thanks. —PM 

Feast your brain on this: How the new House majority gets to work on behalf of the American people

Rep. GAETZ proposed an amendment to the committee rules requiring the pledge. Nadler replied that they already pledge every day on the House floor. Rep. Mike Johnson responded that most members don't attend the pledge on the floor.

Then Hank Johnson took his turn...

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 1, 2023

Then CICILLINE got involved, offering a furhter amendment to say "the pledge shall not be led by an individual who supported an insurrection against the government of the United States in any way."

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 1, 2023

JORDAN now says the rule won't force anyone to say the Pledge. It'll just have someone lead the pledge at each committee meeting.

Now Chip ROY and Deb ROSS getting into it. Ross takes exception to Roy suggesting she was opposed to the House saying the Pledge altogether.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) February 1, 2023

(Kyle Cheney is a legal affairs reporter for Politico.) 

The Russian onslaught has begun; the month of February could decide this war

"They are simply throwing bodies at our positions and numbers and gradually moving forward," says Serhiy Haidai, who heads Ukraine's Luhansk regional military administration. 

Russia's fresh concentrations of manpower — numbered in the hundreds of thousands — have come with President Putin's appointment of Gen. Valery Gerasimov as his top commander in Ukraine. Although Gerasimov has also increased artillery barrages along eastern Ukraine's 140-mile front, his primary strategic and tactical shift is one of sacrificial, Red Army-like human waves against Ukraine's dug-in defenses. (Photo: Agence France-Presse.)

"I think it" — a new Russian offensive — "has started," says President Zelensky. Adds Denys Yaroslavskyi, a unit commander in Bakhmut, "They are just coming forward; they do not take cover, they are coming all-out." On Tuesday Yaroslavskyi told Britain's Sky News that "any scenario in the next two or three weeks" is possible; "the main fights are yet to come." On Tuesday alone, Russia also shelled the population-hollowed-out city with nearly 200 artillery strikes. 

Ukrainian intelligence estimates that Putin has now stationed well more than 300,000 soldiers in-country, approximately twice the number of February 2022's original invasion force. Western analysts further estimate there are from 150,000 to 250,000 soldiers in Russia's reserves; some still in training, others waiting for orders to enter Ukraine.

NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, warns that Russia is "actively acquiring new weapons, more ammunition, ramping up their own production, but also acquiring more weapons from other authoritarian states like Iran and North Korea." 

Meanwhile, the United States is still wringing its hands over sending its longest-range rockets to Ukraine, for this the Kremlin might interpret — God forbid — as an "escalatory" act by the West. Reuters reports that the U.S. is about to supply Ukraine with longer-range rockets, Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs with a range of 94 miles, but is refusing Ukraine's request for 185-mile ATACMS missiles. 

Gen. Gerasimov's — which is to say, Vladimir Putin's — ultimate intentions are yet unknown by Ukrainian intelligence and Western analysts. The NY Times sketches three, strategic possibilities:

"Moscow could be preparing to open a new front, pushing across the Russian border to recapture territory in Sumy or Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine after being driven out months ago.... It might be escalating fighting along the eastern front to divert Ukrainian resources and hurt Kyiv’s ability to launch its own offensive. It could be planning a drive from occupied territory in eastern Ukraine to push deeper into the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which make up Donbas."

The fourth, uncited possibility is that of all three. With a fighting force of double the number of initial invaders, Russia could overwhelm Ukraine's defenders in the east and northeast, perforce ruling out any otherwise-anticipated Ukrainian offensive this spring.

Had the West supplied Zelensky with tanks, armored vehicles and precision-guided munitions — as well as F-16 fighter jets — months ago, Ukraine would now be positioned to cut through Russia's revamped Powell Doctrine of overwhelming assault capabilities via the commitment of mass ground forces — that of "simply throwing bodies at [Ukraine's] positions."

Instead, the West opted for what Dick Cheney once labeled as U.S. "dithering" — in Iraq. The then-vice president's urging of overwhelming force bordered on the unhinged in America's foolhardy invasion of that Middle East nation. But Ukraine is not Iraq, Putin is not Saddam Hussein, and in Eastern Europe — unlike the Middle East — the West's national security interests align with President Zelensky's.

Yet out of unreasonable, veritably incomprehensible fears of Putinesque escalations — which have nonetheless rained down on Ukraine throughout this war — clockwork dithering has been the West's strategic approach. No armored personnel carriers; yes, armored personnel carriers. No Patriot missiles to save Ukrainian civilians; yes, Patriot missiles to save lives. No tanks; yes, tanks. No longer-range rockets; yes, longer-range rockets, but still not the longest. That particular dithering soon to be canceled, no doubt. Then more dithering over jets.

Of the 1930s and 40s' encroaching European fascism and Soviet totalitarianism, the poet W.H. Auden, decades later, powerfully reflected:

the sack of Silence, the churches empty, the cavalry
  go, the Cosmic Model 
become German, and any faith, if we had it, in immanent
  virtue died. More than ever
life-out-there is goodly, miraculous, loveable,
  but we shan’t, not since Stalin and Hitler,
trust ourselves ever again: we know that, subjectively,
  all is possible.

But we have trusted ourselves again. We have trusted that Putin's ambitions have an end; that his Cosmic Model, become Russian, is realism chained; that since Stalin and Hitler, much less is possible.

We have carelessly fooled ourselves. And Ukraine is paying the price of our insouciance. In Iraq, in an unprovoked war, the U.S. destroyed thousands of American lives and squandered trillions of dollars. A Russian tyrant is now pouring hundreds of thousands of men and trillions of rubles into crushing a free, neighboring democracy — and if victorious there, he'll move further into Europe's East and further threaten the West's security. Yet the U.S. has invested not one man and less than $30 billion in Ukraine's defense.

In the "next two or three weeks," says a Ukrainian commander, the bloodletting possibilities of Russia's bold new strategy shall unfold — possibly, a decisive strategy. The U.S. never saw Nazi Germany's 1944 Western offensive coming; the oversight nearly turned the war. Russia's similarly unpredicted, preemptive offensive could be more successful — but at any rate, it's too late for the U.S. to turn the war now.