Putin the Cat

Putin the Cat.


Vlad, the cat, looked into the Ukrainian cookie jar and said to himself, “yum, yum. This is going to be a cakewalk, a delightful treat. Those NATO countries have been divided by the useful idiot and now I am going to eat all those delicious, buttery galettes. I’m going to eat them all while everyone is out to dinner, no need to take a bite at the edge. Lenin said, “thrust the bayonet, if you find steel, pull back. If you find soft flesh press forward.”


Hitler and Stalin divided Poland in two parts on the 23 of August 1939. This was known as the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact, which Hitler later trashed with his invasion of the Soviet Union, including a part of it--the Ukraine, in 1941, much to the surprise of Stalin, who had starved 3.9 million Ukrainians with his misbegotten plan to collectivize Ukrainian grain and agriculture in the 1930s. Children catching frogs and fish during the famine were dragged into a pit and suffocated. People hiding grain took a slow train to Siberia.


Ukraine, having been part of the USSR, was only subject to Stalin’s madness until the Germans arrived, in 1941, hoping to use it as a breadbasket, furnishing slave labor to fuel the German war effort. On the way, Hitler commenced his killing fields of Ukrainians, Poles, Jews and other untermenschen on his path tolebensraum in the east. Ukraine was the equivalent of a conqueror’s European Grand Central Station.


Now Ukraine is at the crossroads again of a power struggle between Putin’s Russian kleptocracy and Ukrainian nationalism, loosely supported by the West. The destruction has caused an economic nightmare for the Ukrainians and probably the west which will be yoked with the expenses of rebuilding it after Russia has destroyed its infrastructure. The idea of Russia paying reparations for their adventure is like having Jeffrey Epstein babysit your 16 year old granddaughter.


The Russian economy is in tatters, food is scarce in the Russian supermarkets, the oligarchs have lost most of their assets, the Russian people are facing a declining Ruble and nowhere to trade their oil and gas. But statistics say that sanctions only work 15-30% of the time to effect regime change, or a rogue state’s policies. 


The Russian experiment with democracy started in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It did not last long. Putin considers the dissolution of the USSR as disastrous as the fall of Rome.  Democracy in Russia never really took hold. The first years were like the Wild West. Oligarchs got insanely rich, while the rest of the people were left behind as vassals. 


 We thought we won the cold war, “the end of history,” scholars wrote. Authoritarianism has lasted in Russia in one form or another for over 1,000 years. It does not seem to be on the wane.  The Czars, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Bulganin, Kosygin, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsen, Putin? Who is next in line? Is Russian culture similar in a different shade than Islamic culture, needing generations to change? The contradiction in our minds is that Russian History is rich in cultural accomplishments. Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekov, Tchaikovsky, giants In literature, art, music.  So was Germany.


Americans should ask themselves how such leaders emerge from civilized societies? What are the causes of such aberrant historical turns? Economics?  Cultural differences? Tribalism? Inequality? 


The Ukraine war is a disaster for Putin; he thinks leveling a country of 40 million people who hate him will inure to his benefit. What is he going to do with Ukraine when he wins this war, if he does? Occupy? It is doomed to failure. Putin has neither the money nor the troops to oppress this population, a group of angry Slav brothers who will fight him to the death.  This is their homeland, their families have been dispossessed, and their cities ruined. They hate the Russians.  Estimates that it would necessitate 500,000 Russian troops to quell continuing insurgencies. The work Ukrainians have done to make their country a modern democracy in tatters, because of a kleptocratic manic. 


This begs the question that this may be the part of the incipient cultural revolution—a war among Slavic brothers and cultures.


NATO is burdened about the question of escalation to World War III.  Neville Chamberlain was obsessed with negotiating with Hitler to avoid a repeat of World War I where 42 million died. The fear of war as it resides in the minds of Western leaders may result in an even worse outcome than standing up to the likes of Vladimir Putin. If nuclear weapons have been a deterrent to war, now they seem to be a deterrent to stopping it.

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Why the West is allowing Ukrainians to Bleed and Die

November 21, 2025
During his “wilderness years,” Churchill understood Adolf Hitler’s ambitions, presciently shouting to a deaf world the dangers ahead. The Rhineland. Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia gobbled up while appeasers twiddled. England and France could have sent Hitler packing. Instead, they gave him three more years to arm. It was too late. Fifty million died. Stalin, double-crossed by his former Poland-dividing German friend, decided too late that he had to fight. Millions of Soviets soldiers and civilians died because of his dithering. FDR had to contend with America Firsters and could have entered the war sooner; he had third term political considerations in in 1940; but he knew he had to fight, too. Eventually. WE RELIVE THE MISTAKES OF HISTORY AT OUR OWN PERIL, LIKE WILEY CAYOTE CHASING THE ROAD RUNNER. PUTIN INVADED A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY. STOP HIM, GERMANS. STOP HIM, FRENCHMEN. STOP HIM, NATO. STOP HIM, AMERICA. UKRAINIAN CHILDREN ARE FREEZING AND STARVING. PEOPLE ARE LOSING THEIR LIVES TO A RUSSIAN BLOODTHIRSTY PYROMANIAC, A HANNIBAL LECTER. Here’s the rub: using time as his weapon, like Hitler, Putin is conscripting, propagandizing, and gradually conscripting massive manpower—constructing his war machine, gaslighting his people, building support, slowly, craftily, cunningly, odiously. Russians believe his lies about Ukraine as a Nazi haven, a virtual pizza parlor filled with basement dwelling pedophiles, or in this case, jackbooted storm troopers. Despite President Zelensky’s Churchillian appearance before congress, we must move swiftly, because time is on Putin’s side. A war of attrition is not on Ukraine’s side. Even with US Ordinance, rockets, drones, artillery. Western fear is Putin’s ally. Time is Putin’s ally. Wars start slowly but inevitably spiral out of control; aid the west provides the Ukrainians resembles aid the US gave to England in 1940, followed by exponential materiel increase from the great American “arsenal of democracy.” It was not enough. Not in 1940 and not enough in 2022; it will not be enough in 2023, 2024, 2025 as this war drags on. Too many Russians, too much manpower. Too much time. Victory requires a credible threat of NATO mobilization—an army ready to do battle. And an ultimatum. But that will not happen, I fear. Billions of dollars for weapons in a proxy war with Ukrainians fighting Russians has been impactful. Americans can watch Netflix war movies while Ukrainians bleed. They can watch Tom Hanks storm the beach at Normandy. Much less dangerous. Let’s just ship some more rockets to Ukraine instead. Yellowstone is on. Even so, it was heartening to see the bipartisan support for Ukraine in the Congress. Military planners in the Pentagon and in Western European capitals should be preparing for a wider war. It would be malfeasant for them not to do. We just don’t realize it yet. NATO is obliged to tell Putin to get out of Ukraine or face an allied army to evict him. Putin must be given an ultimatum to get out or face military force. Germans and French, British and American, Canadian and Australian. Putin understands naked power. The west must mobilize. He does not understand anything else. Lenin said, “push forward the bayonet. If you find soft flesh, push. If you find steel, retreat.” Putin learned Lenin in school; Lenin is in his DNA. He learned it in the KGB. He learned it in Mother Russia. He wants it all. He is Czar Nicholas, Comrade Stalin, Comrade Lenin all rolled into a painting in the Hermitage, his hometown museum, where he went as a schoolboy, where his parents took him, where he learned of the greatness of Russia. Where the Czar had palaces. Russians never had democratic traditions. Ask Nicholas II and his family, brutally executed by Bolsheviks. Ask the millions starved by Stalin in the Ukraine during his communized agriculture plan. Ask the people sent to the Gulag, or the Hungarians who dared to revolt against the Soviet hammer and sickle. Ask the subjugated Poles carved up by Stalin and Hitler. Ask all of the subjugated and terrorized people who suffered behind the iron curtain. Ask Alexi Navalny, a political prisoner, poisoned once, and now jailed in a Russian gulag. A delusional revanchist KGB agent in the Kremlin tries to raise the Soviet corpse by terrorizing a sovereign nation. A nation which had its own history before Lenin and his desciples created a dark Bolshevik empire. NATO, led by Germany and France and then the United States, face the eventual inevitability of mobilizing an army to kick Putin out of Ukraine and Crimea. The alternative is too grim to contemplate. Trench warfare. Stalemate. Ukrainians under siege. Massive Russian armies. Possibly being defeated. World economic disruption. Continued war crimes. A war of attrition, cold and misery. I hope I am wrong about this.  Western ambitions about this outrageous war ending through negotiation are delusional. If Putin sees that we are serious about the sovereignty of nations, he must face a serious military threat-- mobilization of NATO forces. Only then he will likely back down. Until then brave Ukrainians will bleed, freeze and die bearing the brunt of our fear.

Thank Goodness the Election is Over

November 21, 2025
This is my first blog entry, and a fine time it is for it, if I must say so myself. Florida has now elected an ethically challenged Republican governor, who essentially flooded the airwaves with negative ads about Alex Sink, the democratic candidate. People who have voted for him will not be surprised if he disappoints by trying to shut the door to the courthouse to "protect" businesses which despoil the environment, drill for oil in pristine seas off the coast, or manufacture harmful products. On the national scene, people are amazed that tea partiers have gained so many seats in the House of Representatives, by mouthing standard platitudes of how they are going to slash spending. But where? They do not say. Elected to the United States Senate is Marco Rubio, a 39 year old tea party conservative, who has railed against a woman's right to choose, waffled on global warming, and thinks that America is moving in the wrong direction. He expects to cure this problem by slashing the budget and making "hard choices," but has failed to specify which choices. Not social security because his 80 something mother is a beneficiary, but more likely because he fears the wrath of Florida's seniors. He is supposedly a rising star in the Republican party and since the other tea partiers are pretty crazy, he probably won't be around for his full term, unless he keeps his seat while running for higher office a la Joe Lieberman. The selling of candidates like bars of soap continues, and the insulting, demeaning ads are over, but the consequences of the electorate not having to think too much about the candidates or listen seriously to debates about complex issues should be troublesome to any thoughtful person. People in Florida should not be discouraged, however. Now that the GOP has some power, they will be held responsible by the punditry, including yours truly in the next election.

George Bush has His New Book Out.....

November 21, 2025
George Bush has his new book out. I have not yet read it, but I have heard him interviewed on TV and have read reviews of the book. This frat boy, this pious peddler of religious virtue, this hypocrite now wants to sell his writing (if he wrote it at all) as though he would be regarded kindly by history. He will not. He lacks no chutzpah. Ignorance surely is bliss. His absence of remorse for sending our young service men and women to fight and die or have a leg or an arm blown off, is an exemplar of hubris and rationalization with which history will be able to evaluate his Presidency for its true worthlessness. Claiming to "protect Americans," he invaded a country that did not present an existential threat to our national security, violating his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the constitution. Arguably he is a war criminal, having authorized torture and assuming responsibility for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of American youths, as well as around 100,000 innocent civilian Iraqis. Speaking of audacity, the current occupant of the White House could use some. His potential compromise of the Bush tax cuts, favoring the richest of Americans threatens to perpetuate a growing disparity between the super rich and the rest of us. Imposing taxes to implement social policy, despite Republican protestations, is not a new phenomenon. Seems that the American people have been fed and are voraciously consuming the malarkey of the conservatives who, despite evidence to the contrary, still believe that these rich folk are benefactors who create more jobs when they fail to pay their fair share of taxes. These are the same people who spent two trillion dollars on two wars and insist that we need a fleet of warplanes and billion dollar aircraft carriers to fight an amorphous band of illiterate religious fundamentalist terrorist thugs who have to smuggle explosive-laden printer cartridges onto airplanes or fill a truck with explosives to attack us. Now we need to get spending under control, they say. No present day politician, Republican, Democrat or Tea Partier seems to have the courage to tell us exactly what they will cut. Social Security? The defense budget? Veterans Benefits? Medicare? The truth be told, no one dares. It must be the fault of the lawyers