Dispatches from Vilnius

We tend to give persons a pass when they are terminally ill or dead out of respect, but do these two men deserve any respect? Mitch went out of his way to stack the Supreme Court, first by refusing to consider Pres. Obama’s nomination for Antonin Scalia’s vacant seat in 2016, despite his death coming in February with 11 months remaining in Obama’s second term. Then by stuffing the court with Amy Coney Barrett when Ruth Bader Ginsburg suddenly passed away in September of 2020. You can say this was just shrewd politics, but Mitch tried to justify his earlier position on Scalia by citing the “ Biden rule ,” and then turned right around and broke it when he saw a golden opportunity to have a 6–3 advantage on the Supreme Court. We all know what happened next . Lindsey is an equally smarmy character always sucking up to whoever is in power. For years, he was given a pass because of his close relationship to John McCain, whom many considered a man of great moral character. Lindsey hoped to ha...

It was bad enough Vanilla Ice got cancelled as a result of thunderstorms, but the whole party came down to a fireworks show that looked like a 6-second reel put on replay for 40 minutes. Trump, who promised to speak until 4 in the morning if he had to, lasted just shy of 40 minutes , turning the celebration into another one of his screeds as he railed against "communists" and other foul creatures raining on his parade. This celebration was doomed from the start but only got worse as it creeped closer to the big day. There was only a feeble attempt to rid the reflecting pool of algae. In the end, the park service put a big construction fence around the pool so that curious visitors wouldn't stick their hands into the toxic sludge that had already killed numerous ducks  thinking it might be a marsh. The massive quantity of hydrogen peroxide only served to further erode the special blue paint that flaked off in chunks, but authorities continue to claim someone went at it wi...

If you want to know the real reason this war ended with a whimper it is that the US ran out of long-range missiles. According to reports , the military depleted 30 - 45 percent of its Tomahawks, JASSM's and critical interceptors in the first month of conflict. It simply couldn't sustain this war without putting boots on the ground, which Trump was loathe to do. So, we heard a lot of bellicose words for three months before Trump finally gave in and is now trying to make the proverbial silk purse out of a sow's ear. This is why he had everyone laughing when he entered a G7 meeting, proclaiming " I'm the boss ." The purported " deal " has raised more questions than answers, especially this 300 billion USD private fund allegedly set up to spur Iran's economy. Seems most of it is coming from the Gulf States, which is surprising given how much they are at odds with Iran and its proxies in the Persian Gulf. That figure has now grown to a whopping 425 ...

Musk is now a trillionaire. Hip, hip hooray! The megalomaniac can call himself the richest man ever thanks to this AI boom that is leaving not just individuals, but stock exchanges scratching their heads as to how a company can be worth $1.77 trillion without generating any profit. S&P 500 says it will be at least a year before it lists Space X , as it has no means of assessing its viability on the market. No matter, SpaceX stocks jumped 20 percent on the big day, sending Elon over the top, as he owns 42% of the stock in this company. The S&P decision is a big deal as it means our retirement plans won't go toward funding SpaceX for at least a year. Americans have more money tied up in this index than any other index through retirement plans, and if Congress gets its way, Social Security will get tied into it as well. Republicans want to make the roughly $2.5 trillion in asset reserves available to the market, as the fund is being rapidly depleted under the Trump administrat...

Commemorating D-Day is typically a solemn occasion. Visiting dignitaries are asked to do one thing and one thing only - honor the dead. Approximately 70,000 allied soldiers died at the Battle of Normandy. Another 150,000 were wounded. This battle turned the tide in WWII, defeating Nazi Germany on a second front after the Soviet Union had pushed back the Nazis at Stalingrad. Yet, for whatever " grotesquely stupid " reason of his own, Petey Hegseth decided to turn this somber commemoration into an anti-immigration speech. The Trump administration has been busy stirring up trouble in Europe this year, hoping to turn elections across the continent. Immigration is their ideological weapon of choice. VP Vance had stumbled into the Henry Nowak murder case with little or no knowledge of what actually happened. Deputy PM David Lammy tried to set the Vice-President straight but to no avail because Vance had one aim and one aim only, to give his buddy Nigel Farage a chest bump in the e...

Trey Parker hit the nail on the head when he said, "we have a president who thinks his job is to be the joker." For the past year, he and Matt Stone have been skewering Trump on South Park but Trump does a better job on his own, especially with all the AI-generated images he has posted recently. This has made some speculate if Donnie might be a closet homosexual. You be the judge, He recently lavished a lot of attention on Jaxson Dart, the quarterback of the New York Giants who came out as a MAGA guy and highly supportive of the president. Donnie needs all the support he can get with his plummeting poll numbers.  For the record Jaxson is 6 feet 2 inches, and yet somehow manages to tower over the president. How can that be? After a third physical and a fourth cognitive test, Trump was described as healthy as ever, although he needed to drop 14 pounds to get back to a svelte 224. He looked rather chunky in his meeting with Xi last month. No explanation for the darkened hands ...

For weeks there have been war drones flying into Lithuanian air space. This is one of the drones we found in our back yard, figuratively speaking. None have exploded, but just their sheer presence is enough to bring the war home. Some are Ukrainian drones thrown off course by Russian radio signals. Others are unarmed Russian drones testing military response time. They all enter via Belarus, our malcontent neighbor forever anxious to stir something up. This despite all the overtures the US has shown Belarus in recent months in an effort to get Lukashenko to release political prisoners. Most of these " deals " require Lithuanian compliance in allowing the beleaguered republic to bring its potash to market. Surprisingly, Belarus controls over 20 percent of the global supply. However, on Wednesday it was different. A " red alert " flashed on both Daina's and my cellphone urging us to seek shelter immediately. There was an incoming drone from Belarus which the defen...

To hear Donald tell it, this was a trip of historic proportions. What other American president got to see where President Xi lived . Certainly not Joe Biden, who skipped on visiting China during his term of office. Trump was more than glad to tell everyone about it on Air Force One. Dotardly Don supposedly came back with all sorts of deals, or rather verbal agreements, for China to buy everything from Texas soybeans to Boeing planes  to light up the friendly skies between us. You may recall Donnie was none too happy with China last year, engaging in a trade war that left both sides fuming. All's good now. Trump thinks the world of Xi. He was particularly impressed with all the pageantry the Chinese authoritarian leader put on display especially for him, like those "happy and beautiful" children cheering Trump. It was " an honor like few have ever seen before. " See how easy it is to manipulate this manchild. Shortly afterward he was scolding Taiwan for overste...

"Victory" doesn't smell so sweet this time around as Vlad has not been able to deliver victory in Ukraine. You would think the autocrat would cut his losses, accept the fact that the Dnipro is his limit and amalgamate the "breakaway" provinces into the Russian federation, but no. Vlad wants all or nothing. He continues to demand Ukraine pull its forces from these embattled oblasts so that he can claim all of the Donbas and other disputed regions that straddle the Dnipro river. Well folks that ain't going to happen and why should it? This was never Vlad's land to begin with. He might have been able to make some claim to Crimea as Russia fought for and won it back in the 19th century (read Siege of Sevastopol by Tolstoy) only to include it as part of the Ukraine SSR during the Soviet Era. At the time the Soviet Union had no other means of providing state-run utilities except through Ukraine and so Stalin "gifted" this oblast to the Socialist Repu...

Cruise ships have zero appeal and this latest outbreak of hantavirus aboard the MV Hondius confirms my negative view. These ships have grown to gargantuan proportions since the days of The Love Boat , although the Hondius is relatively small for a cruise liner these days. I guess sailing across the Atlantic requires a more nimble ship than the typical floating casino hotel. What pleasure can you have on a ship this size of the Bellagio? The Royal Caribbean Icon of the Seas can house up to 7600 guests with a crew of over 2000. By comparison an aircraft carrier hosts between 4500 to 6000 military personnel. You put that many persons in such close quarters you have a contagion waiting to happen. The passengers were quarantined on Cape Verde as three deathly ill persons were evacuated from the ship, along with three bodies. All others were tested for the virus before the ship sailed onto Gran Canaria. Normally a hantavirus can only be passed from rodent to human but there is a special ...