Dispatches from Vilnius

Catherine and Frederick carving up Eastern Europe You have the hard right and the hard left saying that Ukraine should give in and concede its occupied territories to Russia in the name of peace.  Oh, and give up its bid to be a NATO member so that Russia will no longer feel antagonized by our presence along its expanded borders and cease to take any more territory.  Fortunately, both political parties are calling out their radical fringes, pointing to the simple fact that Russia has always been an imperialist nation and will never be content with its boundaries until it has seized what it feels rightfully belongs to its once great empire.  Yet, guys like Vivek Ramaswamy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appear to be gaining some traction, mostly as a result of the weariness of another long war. We have spent virtually the entire 21st century engaged in one war or another, spending trillions of dollars on failed efforts in Afghanistan and Syria and marginally better results in Ir...

It's amazing how fast things move on social media.  One week, Jason Aldean is all the rage with his red-baiting homage to small towns .  Now, we have Oliver Anthony offering a slightly more nuanced  Rich Men North of Richmond that has gone viral and risen all the way to to the top of Billboard's Top 100.  Not bad for a thirty-something who was virtually unknown before this twangy country song became popular among conservatives and was featured at the Republican debate Wednesday night. Unlike Aldean, Oliver Anthony claims to be non-partisan.  He takes offense to the right claiming him and the left discrediting him.  Yet, this song plays to pretty much the same back country crowd as Jason does.  Oliver has a soft spot for miners, literally and figuratively a dying breed, but still mythological figures in the Piedmont area where he grew up in Virginia and North Carolina.  Conservatives were having a pretty good summer until Barbenheimer came along....

Have the Never Trumpers found their man in Vivek Ramaswamy?  Elon Musk seems to be considering the possibility after the young tech bro emerged from the debacle Wednesday night as the last man standing.  However, Vivek still finds himself far behind the OG in the polls and at best seems to be gunning for number two on the ticket with Trump next November.  Of course, he would have to get past Empty G for that spot as she considers herself the frontrunner. I didn't watch the debacle.  I cringed when I saw the video clip of all but one of the eight candidates raise their hand  when asked if they would support Trump if nominated.  Christie later claimed he didn't raise his hand but I consider that wagging finger a strike.   The biggest surprise was Nikki Haley, who seemed none too happy to be sharing the stage with the others, much less Vivek impersonating Nixon's 1972 victory pose.  She gainsaid Trump and fellow Republicans on raising the nat...

It looks like Ukraine will finally get its jet fighters.  Zelenskiy reached agreements with Denmark and the Netherlands for a small fleet of F-16s, pending approval from the US.  Ukraine could get up to 61 of these combat aircraft over the next two years.  Of course they won't all come at once but it should help ease the situation along the vast border that has been created at the Dnipro river. Ukraine has been unable to move deep into Russian-held territory due to mine fields.  For a country that was supposedly liberating Ukraine, Russia sure has an odd way of showing it.  They've planted hundreds of thousands of these mines throughout the country.  They seem to be the most advanced weapons Russia has, as Kinzhals continue to be shot down regularly , the great "hypersonic missiles" Russian leaders said would drive a dagger through Ukraine's heart.  This has become a war of attrition and Russia plans to use everything at its disposal to hang onto its...

The time is nigh for Trump and his 18 co-defendants to turn themselves over to authorities in Georgia for booking at the Fulton County Jail.  We are told there will be no special concessions. Trump will be fingerprinted and photographed, unless his lawyers are able to reach some last minute compromise with the state.  One senses a bit of panic in his voice as he called off a presser when his lawyers advised him any such deal could be jeopardized by further promoting his " Big Lie ,"  I guess when you have cultivated a lie this long and spread it cynically among your devoted base, you can't pull back now.  It is the only "defense" you have. While public support is  crumbling , he is still the front runner among Republican candidates and is able to cast the charges against him as a conspiracy by the Biden administration to eliminate political opponents.  Trump says " I am being indicted for you ," a clever pitch to get his supporters to give to his lega...

There are a lot of actors I'm turned off by these days.  Some because they are insufferable to watch, others because of their public personalities and in many cases both.  Yet, there is no way to avoid them, like Johnny Depp who keeps popping up on my facebook timeline and Yahoo! news feed. The latest story has Alice Cooper remarking on how good a guitar player Depp is. I had to check with various guitar enthusiast sites like Consequence first and the general consensus is that he surrounds himself with talented musicians like Jeff Beck and Joe Perry so that he creates the illusion of being much better than he actually is.  But who knows he may pop up on the Rolling Stone Top 100 Guitarists at some point? What really irks me about Depp is the way he managed to skate clean from the sordid trial last year over Amber Heard's allegations.  Relatively clean anyway as there are a lot of persons who became turned off by him and he is no longer such a big draw at the box of...

I failed repeatedly to log in and cancel my twitter account a month ago before finally noting the messages popping up on my gmail account that someone was trying to log into my twitter account.  This was how I discovered my user name and was able to ask for a new password.   Viola! I accessed my account and canceled it.  Not completely, however, as twitter would hold my account open for 30 days in case I wanted to come back.  No thanks! It wasn't like I much used twitter.  I could only find one image that I posted in the last three years.  A picture of Loki when we first got him, looking like a little Arctic fox in the snow.  I deleted the image before cancelling my account. Twitter always seemed odd to me.  The idea that you couldn't select your audience bothered me.  Anyone could chime in on your posts, which made it ripe for verbal abuse, identity theft, you name it.  Already bad enough on facebook where I did have some control o...

I found myself reading Dune again last week and enjoying it even more the second time around.  The first time was as a teenager.  I was helping out the pastor of our community church with yardwork.  He wanted to plant some pine trees about the perimeter of his property, hoping they would provide some shade in the near future.  He invited me into the house for something to drink. The interior had a rustic quality, more like you would expect to find in the Adirondacks than in Northwest Florida.  He had been a pastor in New York City before moving down to Santa Rosa Beach.   The cold soda went down smoothly.  I noticed a paperback copy of the book on his table and asked about it.  He said I could take it home with me if I wanted.  He had just finished reading it.   Dune was how I imagined Mars.  I had a 1973 National Geographic map of the planet pinned up in my room.  Ever since Mariner 4 sent back pictures from...

No sooner had Dr. J revised his Top Ten list than Shaq comes out with one of his own .  Maybe he was peeved that Julius Erving hadn't included him in the list, so Shaq made sure he was in the Top Five.  The two players are from different generations and the lists reflect that.  Dr. J considers his Top Five unalterable as those are the guys he grew up idolizing.  Interestingly, Shaq offered no such equivalent except maybe Kareem, whom he had at the bottom of his list. I never much liked Shaq, although I admit he was a dominant force in the NBA. Dropping the three-second rule helped as he essentially camped out in the lane, especially in his latter years when he was no longer very mobile.  In his prime, he claimed to have a 32-inch vertical which is highly doubtful, although he did smash a few backboards in his day.  There was no other center at the time who could match up with him physically.  Hakeem and the Admiral had retired.  You had big guys ...

It was funny to read Jim Jarmusch coming out against Star Wars movies .   He resents the way these movies get into your head and there is no way to escape them.  Can't say that I really blame him.  I quit watching them after the first three installments and would never watch them again.  I feel that way about franchises in general which is why I have no intention of watching Mission Impossible .    Instead we went to see Oppenheimer yesterday and I have to say that is one of the best movie experiences I have had in a long time.  We purposely went to an early showing so that we could see the film on the largest screen in the multiplex.  I didn't take a cola as I didn't want to have to go to the bathroom halfway through this epic story.  How Christopher Nolan was able to pack so much information into three hours and make it entertaining to watch is beyond me?  I had read American Prometheus  some years ago so could follow along ...

It reached the point where Daina and I simply couldn't take it anymore.  There were actually pictures of Trump's plane in the air, then landing at National Airport (I refuse to call it Reagan), and then his motorcade taking him to the federal courthouse across from the Capitol, where his minions attempted insurrection two-and-a-half years ago.  You couldn't ask for better advertising as the whole world was focused on this moment in history when a former president was being arraigned for plotting to subvert the government.  We went out and scraped some more weeds from the driveway to get our minds off Trump. However, there is no escaping him.  He is everywhere and as one of his supporters said to a DW reporter on the courthouse steps, he will probably get another 5-point jump in the polls.  They see this as an attempt by the Biden administration to stifle opposition, much like Putin does in Russia, by arresting his political opponents. For whatever reason, Trump...