Putin ain't no Cornpop

Yesterday, after reading the update on The Great Salvation of 1976,  a member of this blog's Confederate readership pointed out that Chatanooga's Look Out Mountain has extensive caverns. Just perfect. This detail has been added in a couple of places. Thank you, sir.

We read over 76's military themed chapter yesterday. Cheney and Rumsfeld discuss the state of the US military at the Western DoD in Gillette, WY. The remnants of the Pacific fleet are at Subic Bay. In Belgium, troops embark for home. An SR-71 overflies North Korea. We need another military scene. Doesn't have to be American. Post ideas in comments.

Yesterday we spent a lot of time looking over and unraveling The Final Storm. Our understanding of the MS is much clearer for doing so. This week we are writing The Final Storm's A-6 strike chapters. Squadrons from Task Force 60 off Nord Kapp will fly south, refuel over southern Finland and hit the Kastroma nuclear base northeast of Moscow. 

Putin Watch: We watched Putin's Ukraine speech yesterday afternoon. Putin rambled and went no place. It was a long lecture on the history of Russia, the USSR and Ukraine. We can't vouch for anything we heard. Our man in the Kremlin agrees with our assessment. Putin should have said, 'After consultation with my military and foreign policy team, I have recognized the independences of Donbass and Luhanks...'

So there it is. Putin has recognized the independence of Donbass and Lugansk, two years to the day after Joe tweeted this:

Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be President. He doesn’t want me to be our nominee. If you’re wondering why — it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 21, 2020

Was Putin's timing on purpose, a signal that he's eschewing the delicate kabuki of diplomacy for a deliberate slap in the face? Were this China, we would assume so, no?

That tweet is classic Joe. All tough guy and braggadocio. As Billy Joel once sang, 'You had to be a big shot did yuh?' Real tough guys don't say much because they don't feel they need to. 

Biden's advisors (Samantha Power, John Kerry, Jen Psaki) are the people that couldn't stop Putin from seizing Crimea in 2014 or intervening in Syria in 2015. Their response was to get mad and stomp their feet at the UN and lecture Soviet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about how he and Putin will go down in history. We'd hate to break it to the professional foreign policy failures in the Biden Regime, but Putin doesn't care what they think of him. 

In any event Soviet Russian troops, including amphibious and airborne forces, are on the move. Biden has failed to stop war in Ukraine. That's two nations you lost, Junior.

The War Shofar Blows

Zerohedge reposts Pat Buchanan's thoughts on the Ukraine. Lots of background and analyses follows. 'For any concessions we make on not expanding NATO into Ukraine and Georgia, we can demand reciprocal Russian concessions. New arms agreements to limit U.S. and Russian missiles in Europe and to restrict the number of U.S. and Russia air and naval operations near the borders of our respective countries seem negotiable. A Russian-Ukrainian war, which Kyiv would almost surely lose, would prove a disaster for both nations. The winner would be China. For such a war would leave Russia no place else to turn for an economic, political and strategic partner. And U.S. interests are not served by the cementing alliance between Beijing and Moscow.' 

A staffer and speech writer for Nixon and Reagan, and two-time presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan is indeed wise. We shouldn't have been so tough on the man in World War 1990: Operation Arctic Storm, eh?. We doubt there will be war in Ukraine. But there will be war...

...in the Middle East! Behold, The Jerusalem Post: 'Israel could successfully strike Iran's nuclear program tomorrow if necessary, incoming commander of the Israel Air Force (IAF) Maj.-Gen. Tomer Bar said in an interview published on Wednesday...On the northern front with Lebanon, Bar said he believes that the next war with Hezbollah will break out as soon as Israel strikes Iran.' General Bar goes on to talk about the existential war in Lebanon. This one will be a catastrophe. Because of Lebanon's complicity toward Iranian influence, the nation's infrastructure will be shattered and thousands will die. You're goddamn right the Israelis have read Israel Strikes.

What Will's Watching, The Simpsons Season-1. Our youngest daughter found The Simpsons on Disney +. Oh my, the flood of nostalgia...the T-shirts. We were 17, a junior in high school. In this season of The Simpsons, Bart is truly a little boy and the scripts are ironic but not snarky. The show is quite sweet, actually. 4/4