NATIONAL ORANGES AND LEMONS DAY
Please Be Upstanding for The Mayor of Simpleton!
-Ex-President Trump continues to ALL CAP post on his Truth Social platform as more and more investigations close in on any number of misdeeds he has performed. As the suddenly-active NY grand jury investigating the Stormy Daniels payout (which Trump derided with a seventh-grade insult towards Daniels and insistence he never had "an affair") (the encounter could best be described as "a three-minute stand"), the Atlanta Journal-Constitution released a report featuring interviews with a number of members of the grand jury investigating Trump's attempts to overturn that state's 2020 Presidential election results, won by President Biden. (These are legal interviews in the state, by the way.)
-The major revelations: the jury heard a recording of a third call allegedly made by Trump to a state official regarding Trump's hunt for 11,780 votes, emotional testimony from Ruby Freeman, the GA poll worker exposed by Trump and Rudy Giuliani for allegedly "misplacing" votes that led to Freeman closing her business and exposing her and her daughter to death threats, and a 'prediction' from one of the jurors that the case Fulton County DA Fani Wills was building was "massive." The world waits ...
-Video was released by the U.S. Air Force of the Russian fighter jet's encounter with an American intelligence-gathering drone over the Black Sea earlier this week. The 42-second footage first shows the fighter flying over the drone releasing fuel over the drone, then making a second approach that led to the drone's propellor being damaged and the drone being taken down into the water. Russian officials continue to be silent about the incident while the US Air Force continuing to describe the episode as "amateur hour."
-Meanwhile, also in the area, Politico reports U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stated that "there is no time to waste" as American supplies and materials are being "rushed" to Ukraine in anticipation of a spring offensive around the Russian occupied territory of Crimea. Austin and other American officials expressed concern that supplies are needed due to the continued World War I-flavored battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut - a city that has seen enormous loss of Russian life and material, but also one where Ukrainian forces are being drained, despite general agreement that Bakhmut has little strategic value for either Russia or Ukraine (other than the aforementioned Russian losses).
-These reports come amid other reports that infighting may be emerging between the regular Russian Army and the Wagner Group, a mercenary Army that acts for all intents and purposes a Vladimir Putin's private force - but one in which leadership may be increasingly aggravated with the Kremlin's perceived lack of support.
-Slava Ukraini!
-"This is going to be one of those moments that go viral" - and it sure did for Bethany Mandel, a conservative commentator who, like so many other on the right these days, has been making hay by calling certain cultural, social, and political trends she and the right don't like as "woke." But, in an interview with The Hill promoting a book that touches on the subject, co-host Brihana Joy Greg asked Mandel, very casually, to define the term "woke," adding "It's come up a couple times and I want to be sure we're on the same page." For over 20 seconds, when she wasn't awkwardly sitting silently, Mandel hemmed and hawed and "um"-d and "er"-d and finally tried to respond with a word salad that really did not clearly answer a request that one would think would have a clear response. Progressive responders quickly pounced on Mandel, pointing out that the vagueness of what the right means by "woke" is likely quite deliberate, as the term continues to be used to attack almost anything and everything the Right dislikes about the Left.
-Nobody uses "woke" more than Ron DeSantis, of course - his entire not-yet-official Presidential candidacy is based on attacking "woke" institutions. Looking at what that means in FL, among other things "woke" means "firing reporters asking questions DeSantis doesn't like," which happened earlier this week when Axios fired reporter Ben Montgomery after Montgomery characterized a press release from the DeSantis office as "propaganda." The press release in question announced the formation of a commission it and DeSantis described as "exposing the diversity and equity scam in higher education." Schools are a frequent target of DeSantis' policies - and of what DeSantis sees as the dangers of "wokeness" - and the policies have ranged from lists of books being banned by K-12 schools to the state takeover of a liberal/progressive college and its curricula that included womens' studies and African-American studies. You know, "woke."
-We end with a note from the world of dogs: there is a NEW NUMBER ONE DOG in America! After 31 years of being America's most popular dog breed, the American Kennel Club reported that Labrador Retriever has lost its position at the top. The new #1? The French Bulldog! (But really, all dogs are #1 dogs, as we dog people know the world over!)
-On this date in 1792, the U.S. Military Academy was established. On this date in 1926, Robert H. Goddard successfully launched the first liquid-fueled rocket. On this date in 1945, the U.S. Marines captured the island of Iwo Jima. On this date in 1968, American forces on a search-and-destroy mission killed approximately 500 people in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. And on this date in 2008, the investment house Bear, Stearns collapsed - and while it was purchased by J.P. Morgan Chase, it signaled what would become the worst financial crisis in the U.S. since 1929.
-Happy Birthday to James Madison, Henny Youngman, Pat Nixon, Mercedes McCambridge, Jerry Lewis, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Howard Schnellenberger, Chuck Woolery, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jerry Jeff Walker, Erik Estrada, Victor Garber, Nancy Wilson, Jorge Ramos, Flavor Flav, Lauren Graham, Alan Tudyk, Curtis Granderson, Blake Griffin, Wolfgang Van Halen, and Joel Embiid.
-Rest in Peace/Rest in Power to Joseph Medill, Judge Roy Bean, Tammi Terrell, Thomas E. Dewey, Pie Traynor, T-Bone Walker, Arthur Godfrey, Rachel Corrie, Ivan Dixon, Frank Sinatra Jr., and Dick Dale.