by the trade deadline.
Dipped into the PBS News Hour hosted by Judy Woodruff to find the commentary from conservative-in-name-only David Brooks paired with a more honest liberal who began every sentence by saying he agreed with Brooks. Instead of point/counterpoint it was point/point and punt.
On Friday’s suitable for the workplace episode, Washington Post sub editor Jonathan Capehart expressed his “relief” that the family of Paul Whelan, four years a Russian hostage, was O.K. with trading the Merchant of Death for the return of gawky female basketball player Brittney Griner, thereby leaving Whelan swallowed by the Russian whale. (The journalist in us asks, why is Capehart “relieved”?) The same day 12-07-22 the President campaigned for denying weaponry to law-abiding American citizens. Just as ISIS and the Taliban get their most reliable supplier. Next to Joe Biden himself, if you count the pullout from Afghanistan. (I can get it for you wholesale.)
Reminds us of the Brewers trading All-Star relief pitcher Josh Hader for a bunch of no names. The Packers under dismal Dan Devine trading a bushel basket of top draft picks for washed-up QB John Hadl. Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio. Manhattan for beads.
We remember when Ronald Reagan walked out of Reykjavik, shoulder to shoulder with Mikhail Gorbachev, empty handed, to the catcalls of Sam Donaldson. Reagan preferred no deal to a bad deal. Being tough in the negotiations, as Fredo might say, helped bring down the Iron Curtain. Good on Germany for refusing to give up their imprisoned Russian spy, the murderous Col. Vadim Krasikov.
A modest proposal
Why are Americans are still playing basketball in Russia? (Is Latvia booked up?) Are we not parading hostages before Vladimir Putin like a Miss Universe contest? (Why does Earth always win?) Hostages with built-in “communities” like the LBGTQ+ black female. Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow will ululate Do Something! Trade any asset to bring the Blame America Firster back home to the unjust USA.
→ “The president faced opposition from the Justice Department, which viewed the one-for-one swap as a mistake.”
If Vladimir Putin’s price for our cannabis oil-snorting basketball player is a notorious arms trafficker, what might he charge for a former Marine?
Collusion for a good cause!
Only way to beat Vladimir Putin is to think like Vladimir Putin. Have we been under-estimating Uncle Joe? Is Joe Biden craftier than a Crypto currency hustler? Is the President setting up his 2024 opponent for Rooskie trade bait? That would explain the Mar-a-Lago raid, the January 6 Committee, the New York tax fraud conviction, and the Atlanta district attorney’s grand jury.
Offering Donald Tr•mp to Vladimir Putin should yield an entire WNBA team — maybe still-standing sections of Donetsk thrown in — to bipartisan acclaim. Mitch McConnell and Ron DeSantis approve!
Blaska’s Bottom Line: After a couple years of Donald Tr•mp, Putin will send more draft picks our way just to get rid of him. Like O. Henry’s “Ransom of Red Chief.” Don’t feel too bad for Tr•mp; his Secret Service protection would accompany him to the prison colony. Call it Mar-a-Gulago.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
Why is anyone surprised that the Biden administration traded a world-class criminal for a basketball player (there is no such thing as a “star” in the WNBA) who just happens to be a black lesbian? This is the same gang that claims a guy in a dress qualifies as an admiral, another guy in a dress who steals luggage at airports qualifies as an expert in nuclear waste disposal, a weasely little queer who couldn’t run a small town in Indiana is qualified to run the Department of Transportation, and a black lesbian who can’t even read a printed script correctly is qualified to be the White House press secretary. All of which is the logical outcome of twenty years of Democrats’ spewing the toxic garbage of identity politics.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have no idea why Griner and not Whelan was traded, nor, I confess, amidst the wider palette of life, does the issue keep me awake at night.
But there is one thing I do know from your blog which is of far greater import to all of us who have children and grandchildren, right or left. If at the time we had let rational discussion intrude, that could have been a path on which we might have actually attenuated today’s insane tribal arms race. Together, we have a common urgency in eliminating the specter of nuclear annihilation in a world with, now, nine nuclear armed countries … and counting!
Specifically, you say: “We remember when Ronald Reagan walked out of Reykjavik, shoulder to shoulder with Mikhail Gorbachev, empty handed, to the catcalls of Sam Donaldson. Reagan preferred no deal to a bad deal. Being tough in the negotiations, as Fredo might say, helped bring down the Iron Curtain.”
My question to you is what made the elimination of nuclear weapons “a bad deal?” With the leaders of both super-powers in support of that goal, which could also have involved the dismantlement in the self-destructive military-industrial complexes, was no longer utopian pablum.
I could speculate that you would reply, as Reagan had, because his dream for a Star Wars ballistic shield against a super-power nuclear exchange, which Gorbachev demanded Reagan drop in trade, was more important the far simpler approach of eliminating all nuclear weapons.
However, we can see that after the passage of 36 years and hundreds of billions of dollars spent that we still have nothing to show with even the remotest possibility in any realistic sense of ever attaining the capability to shoot down thousands of missiles amidst tens of thousands of decoys (separate and distinct from the far more limited objective, which had nothing to do with Reagan’s walking away from Gorbachev’s offer, of possible protection against a handful of nuclear missiles by a rogue state). The thing that led Reagan to walk away from a dream-deal was actually never more than madman Edward Teller’s complete and total fabrication.
So on the one hand, we had the potential to eliminate all nuclear weapons, and on the other hand we had, what, the urgency of maintaining the illusions of a a very genial but intellectually-limited leader.
(As a side note, nor is there any valid claim that you reference as your goal, of alternatively arguing, sure, SDI was smoke and mirrors, but it’s real goal was to bankrupt and thereby destroy the Soviet Union. For one thing, it’s a hell of a lot more vital for human existence to destroy nuclear weapons than to bankrupt one odious empire … only to be replaced by another. For, more on that vein, what did we really gain by the collapse of the Soviet Union when it was replaced by Vladimir Putin. Is the USSR’s suppression of, e.g., the Hungarian revolution really any different than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But, to the base of the claim, it was not the need for the USSR to build more missiles to overwhelm their fear of SDI that bankrupted them –missiles are relatively cheap — but instead the perspicacity of, Bill Casey, Reagan’s CIA director, who in 1982 took a secret trip to Saudi Arabia where he induced them to pump more oil, which through the 1980’s drove down the price of oil that the Soviet Union depended upon to finance its economy.)
Hopefully, on retrospect, with the passage of time proving that SDI was never more than the military industrial complex’s red cape to Reagan’s bull, we could use this discussion to explore ways to began to talk reasonably with each other about things in which we obviously have a common interest, like the survival of the human race.
To even things out, during those same years, incidentally, I have learned that Reagan’s “evil empire,” much derided on the left, had far more to recommend it than I understood, or was then willing to concede, at the time. After the Soviet Union collapsed, I was part of a UW effort of lefties to meet with fellow economists from behind the former Iron Curtain, to find that so-called Third Way, between capitalism and communism, which gave greater weight to human values over profit motivations.
When we met with them, however, they had no interest in any Third Way; they just wanted to move as far from the USSR’s communism as they possibly could. They explained how oppressive that system was. If you did anything possibly interpreted as disloyal, not only would you be punished, but your family would lose its apartment and jobs, and not just your immediate family, but your uncles, aunts and cousins, twice removed. Everyone. Their lives destroyed to insure that everyone was enlisted involuntarily to rat out each other, even if under false pretenses. After listening to them, I could see finally that Reagan’s “evil” was too mild to describe the reality of what it was.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ukraine wants what Israel has, Star Wars.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Gotch’ll save his observations of the latest DementiaJoKe debacle for when his fluids have been…um…properly replenished.
Anywho, Hader’s star was plummeting, and if anything, going to the Padres hastened that TRAJECTORY ; the Brewers (IMO) pulled the trigger when they should have.
While Jimmy Johnson, Jerry Jones & the Evil Empire would adamantly disagree, you (IMO 2.0) omitted THE worst trade of all time:
Herschel Walker To The ‘Queens .
The Gotch
LikeLiked by 1 person
Gus Hall. He’s dead and can do more harm.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Russkies Are LAUGHING THEIR @$$e$ OFF At DementiaJoKe For Leaving Behind “A Hero, A Decorated Marine” For “A bLack Lesbian Hooked On Drugs.”
It gets worse.
Conservative talk-show host Jesse Kelly:
“Is Brittney Griner ready to give up the fame of being a Russian prisoner to return to the obscurity of the WNBA?”
“We traded a WNBA player for someone who can actually shoot.”
“She’s a black lesbian who hates America. Biden is just bringing another voter back home.“
The Gotch
LikeLiked by 1 person
Paul Whelan has citizenship in four countries. He received a Bad Conduct Discharge on multiple counts of larceny. When caught in Russia he had a USB drive containing a list of Russian government workers and $80,000 in cash. To get him out they wanted a guy that is held by the Germans, and they won’t let him go (Kazakov). That being said, every effort should be taken to bring back all Americans held overseas. Trump did nothing about him and now it’s an issue? I look at her coming home as a roadmap on how to everyone back. Applaud the work our diplomates did and leave your prejudices at the door.
LikeLike
richard lesiak wrote, “…every effort should be taken to bring back all Americans held overseas.”, “I look at her coming home as a roadmap on how to [get] everyone back. Applaud the work our diplomates did…”
So Richard, it appears to me that you’re applauding the releasing of a known war mongering supporter of world terrorism back into the world. It’s good to know when you’re willing to completely flush your morals.
This was a public morality test for President Biden and he failed miserably when he chose virtue signaling to the woke crowd over actual morality. Griner is a black lesbian who hates America, so in the end, Biden is just bringing another hive-minded Democratic Party voter back home.
I wrote the following a few days ago…
The Democratic Party appears to be on the verge of, or already past the threshold of, complete morally bankruptcy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t say anything about Griner. I wrote about Whelan. Pay attention stevie.
LikeLike
richard lesiak wrote, “I didn’t say anything about Griner. I wrote about Whelan. Pay attention stevie.”
Again, you’re a verified liar and a really f’ing stupid one at that.
You also wrote in the comment I replied to and I quoted you, “I look at her coming home as a roadmap on how to [get] everyone back.”
The only <"her" you could possibly be referring to in this context is Griner because Whelan is not a her.
richard lesiak wrote, “Pay attention stevie.”
How about YOU pay attention you blithering fool.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“How about YOU pay attention you blithering fool.”
Your (sic) expecting FAR too much from the Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot…
The Gotch
LikeLike
I used “her” as an attributive adjective.
LikeLike
Richard lesiak wrote, ”I used ‘her’ as an attributive adjective.”
Uh, no you didn’t you Dunning-Kruger effect imbecile. You should look these things up before you prove to everyone just how ignorant you are.
LikeLiked by 1 person
(bolds/caps/italics mine throughout)
“(The pituitary freak) KNOWINGLY DEFIED A STATE DEPARTMENT WARNING not to travel to Russia, and DID SO FOR MONEY, although she is hardly destitute. She carried with her SUBSTANCES SHE KNEW WERE ILLEGAL in Russia, and that she knew carried SERIOUS CRIMINAL PENALTIES.
“(She caused) an international incident, and it may take the release of convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to persuade Russia to return Griner to our shores.”
Bout?
“Longtime State Department official Witney Schneidman (called him) ‘THE PERSONIFICATION OF EVIL.’ From the end of the Cold War until his arrest in 2008, IF THERE WAS AN ARMS EMBARGO, BOUT FLOUTED IT — Liberia, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Congo, Libya. Whenever there was a dictator or warlord who needed weapons to mow down his enemies or suppress a suffering population, Bout was there to make a profit off of bloodshed. He earned his NICKNAME, “THE MERCHANT OF DEATH.”
Bout biographer Douglas Farah, “(who) covered the wars and victims of Bout’s weapons trade in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo as a correspondent for the Washington Post:
“Bout provided tons of guns and ammunition to some of the most vicious warlords in the world and empowered them to carry out unspeakable atrocities. HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ENABLING MURDEROUS GROUPS TO KIDNAP AND TRAIN THOUSANDS OF CHILD SOLDIERS; use RAPE as a systematic method of terror and control; TORTURE through the MASS AMPUTATIONS of arms, legs, ears and lips; SLAUGHTER civilians, and HELP THE TALIBAN take power in Afghanistan.
“THERE ARE NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE THE HUMAN TOLL OF BOUT’S ACTIVITIES on thousands of people, from the ARMLESS CHILD AMPUTEES in refugee camps to the SCORCHED RURAL HAMLETS burned to the ground by MARAUDING CHILDREN TRAUMATIZED INTO KILLING THEIR OWN FAMILIES.”
Only a breathtakingly clueless moron would claim that we ought “(a)pplaud the work our diplomates (sic) did.”
Looks like one did……
The Gotch
LikeLiked by 1 person
So now you two bozo’s want to claim the moral high ground? Trump didn’t even mention Whelan’s name till last week. Now you’re all clutching your pearls and wailing. Maybe Greene and Bannon can use Bout to get the weapons she wanted on 1/6 to finish the job and help trump tear up the Constitution. Now you and crotch are crying over what this guy helped bring about. Where the F#$K were you before? You were living in your own version of D. Abbey and calling progressives snowflakes. I stand by what I said about our diplomats and if don’t like it you can kiss my a@#.
LikeLike
Too bad the breathtaking stupidity that you embrace with such fervor doesn’t physically hurt!
Anyone who doesn’t realize that Trump was offered Whelan for Bout in 2018, and turned it down because releasing The Merchant Of Death back into the world (and setting a bad precedent for future similar negotiations) would be a HORRIBLE DEAL, is mind-numbingly imbecilic.
The Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot doesn’t realize that Trump was offered Whelan for Bout and turned it down.
Solve for X…
The Gotch
LikeLike
Trump was never offered Whelan for Bout, prove your statement. You’re homophobic liar and a closest drunk. Plus, a coward who won’t use his real name. Maybe the pumpkin had the papers hidden in a storage lockeralong with his Nazi uniform.
LikeLike
richard lesiak wrote, “Trump was never offered Whelan for Bout, prove your statement.”
This is an easy one, I highlighted the relevant part…
Here’s an interesting turn of events; usually the left leaning fact checkers and media are all over Trumps statements trying to twist them or prove them wrong to smear Trump, but they don’t seem to be able to do that with this one.
richard lesiak wrote, “You’re homophobic liar and a closest drunk.”
You just made three claims, “homophobic”, “liar” & “closet drunk” and now it’s up to you to support your claims.
richard lesiak wrote, “Plus, a coward who won’t use his real name.”
Regardless of your other constant trolling, that single statement alone would get you permanently banned from my blog.
richard lesiak wrote, “Maybe the pumpkin had the papers hidden in a storage locker along with his Nazi uniform.”
So now you’re thinking that there’s a pumpkin with a Nazi uniform hiding some kind of papers in a storage locker? Seriously Richard, you shouldn’t ever wonder why people like me think your drunk as a skunk and posting this kind of nonsense after you crawl in from your nightly watering hole and hit the submit button just before you pass out on your floor. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt when I say you’re posting while drunk because the alternative isn’t nearly as excusable.
What a foolish, foolish man you are.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The above, kiddies, is why there ought be government-mandated/factory installed breathalyzers on all keyboards!
Pity; nothing can be done about the illiteracy and abject refusal to acknowledge the fact-based Reality…
The Gotch
LikeLike
“Who would you ransom for Brittney Griner?”
I would gladly exchange the old, angry, straight, white George Soros for the woke LGBTQ black darling Brittney Griner?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, I forgot to mention rich.
LikeLike
And Nazi-Sympathizing…?
The Gotch
LikeLiked by 1 person
Like the guys that trump has dinners with?
LikeLike
Like the guys trump has dinner with?
LikeLike
Off topic, Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot; run along…the ADULTS are talking.
The Gotch
LikeLike
You and crotch seem to have one thing in common. Black lesbians don’t deserve freedom. Don’t look now but your white robes are showing.
LikeLike
richard lesiak wrote, “You and crotch seem to have one thing in common. Black lesbians don’t deserve freedom. Don’t look now but your white robes are showing.”
I see that you’ve run out of anything intelligent to write so you’re resorting to fabricating unsupportable lies, again. Your trolling is intellectual and rhetorical cowardice.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“I see that the Lazy @$$ Blogge Idiot NEVER has anything intelligent to write so it resorts to fabricating unsupportable lies, again.”
fify
The Gotch
LikeLiked by 1 person
this coming from a guy(?) who believes what trump puts in his tweets. pffht
LikeLike
richard lesiak wrote, “this coming from a guy(?) who believes what trump puts in his tweets. pffht”
It’s not a Tweet on Twitter you imbecile. It also appears that you didn’t bother to read the follow up paragraph.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Like the guys trump has dinner with?
LikeLike