Reasonable men – and women – can differ.

To all who commented on my comment:

I have no problem with criticism but I reserve the right to be wrong, to have contrary opinions, and to have my mind changed with verifiable facts.

Very respectable, and I cannot grudge you that because I reserve the same rights myself. Which is why I try to offer my comments in good faith as I would hope others would do to me.

But given as I have no say in this matter – nor real interest – I don’t care to dig deeper.

I have a lot bad to say about Carlson, but he would not be exerting the same effort he does if people like you and I did not have a say in the matter. We have our vote and our voice, and that matters. It is also why you have pro-Kremlin mobilization by advocates on both right and left – with the likes of both Tucker and the DSA’s “Squad” – trying to press the issue.

As for digging further, that is your choice. I understand not everyone – and indeed not most people – have my same interests and fixations. But I think it is important to not speak beyond it.

I really don’t care if Russia is right or wrong

Unfortunately the Budapest Memorandum we signed for the denuclearization of Ukraine (in which Britain, the US, and Russia vowed to respect Ukrainian independence and afford support to it if it were attacked) means we as a country and government are forced to.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/32106-1-budapest-memorandum

In addition to the obvious issues of it.

but I think Zelensky is a twit and deserves no US support. Playing piano with his penis was the height of his career.

You are free to think that, but it is a mistake to talk about “Zelensky” or support for him. Whether or not he personally deserves support is frankly irrelevant on the grand scale of things. This is about Ukraine and its people. The opening moves of this war started under Zelensky’s predecessors (“Yats” of Nuland’s phone call fame, Yatsenyuk, who headed up a caretaker government pending new elections after the Yanukovych cabinet got removed from office after its eponymous leader and much of his cabinet fled the country rather than facing legal questions from the Ukrainian Parliament – dominated by their own party – over “questionably legal” conduct). The underlying issues have very little to do with Zelensky personally. If not dealt with they will continue well past him.

Whether or not he is a “twit” has as much to do with the issue in my opinion as what one thinks of a given Indian Prime Minister when it comes to the issue of Jihadist terrorism in Kashmir. The fundamental problem predates him and will post date him if not solved because it ultimately isn’t his responsibility.

Moreover, I believe that even besides our oath to the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainians that *DID* fight and sometimes died with us in places like Afghanistan and Iraq deserve our support.

https://www.army.mil/article-amp/15056/ukrainians_complete_mission_in_iraq

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/6942

As do the civilians caught in the vice. Because fundamentally the Kremlin was never interested in some kind of legalistic divide of “we believe this and that oblast of Ukraine is rightfully Russian in spite of pointedly refusing to make these claims at all – let alone actually stop – for decades before.” They seek to dismember Ukraine as a whole and in doing so humiliate the US while we are low, while selling much of the resources they draw to sworn enemies of us like the Iranian Mullahcracy.

And I’m sorry but I do not see how Zelensky’s comedy shtick or being a twit does anything to outweigh why those things should be stopped.

Like it or not, Zelensky may or may not be a twit, and definitely did play the piano in that unseemly way, but he is the democratically elected leader of Ukraine, and thus represents a lot more than himself.

I do think we’d be better off being “friends” with Russia as opposed to our other “friends” such as Saudi Arabia.

So do I. But trying to be friends with Russia or even “friends” is impossible so long as the current Russian government is dominated by habitually anti-Western, anti-American authoritarian fossils from the Soviet deep state and their younger protégés.

The dream of being friends with Russia has been a bipartisan madness that has persisted for decades on both major parties. Every single US administration has made overtures to Putin to try and be friends with Russia, and every single one has failed because the Kremlin refuses. What brief interest Putin and his ilk had in joining NATO (another thing the “NATO pledges not to expend” narrative ignores) fell apart when he was told Russia would have to comply with the terms that every single other NATO member had to because it was an alliance of equals. And then we had stuff like them peddling blood libel blaming the Kursk submarine disaster on a collision with a NATO sub.

https://www.navytimes.com/flashpoints/2021/11/22/russian-admiral-kursk-disaster-caused-by-nato-sub/

Mark Steyn is no leftist or uncritical shill for Zelensky or Ukraine, indeed his opinion of Zelensky seems to be similar to yours. However he is also one of the most brutally brilliant and far sighted of analysts who predicted things like creeping Islamicization throughout the West. And he pointedly stated that the Russian government and its military and security organs would instinctively oppose the US. We have seen that play out handily, with Putin and co partnering up with regimes even worse than the Saudis like the PRC and Iran.

Ironically the best hope we would have to befriend Russia would be unironic regime change, or at least something enough to shock the fossils loose.

Nor will I ever trust any comments spewed by Pelosi, Biden, Obama, Schumer, et al … if they happen to be correct, I can verify by other sources if need be.

Which is a very wise approach and I commend you for it.

I can understand why you disagree with my comment. You usually do.

The difference between the Bork hearings and the Clarence Thomas hearings versus the Clinton impeachment regarding polarization is that the Democrats initiated the earlier ones. It’s not only in recent history the Democrats have been self-righteous and lacking in self-awareness. Also, those earlier instances involved the Supreme Court, and 40 years ago there was less of a “we’ve got to get our guys in there” attitude about the Supreme Court, at least on the Republican side. It shows in that only the Democrats could count on their nominees to vote in lockstep.

But the Clinton impeachment was initiated by the Republicans and it involved the President, which means everybody was involved, not just SCOTUS-watchers. And despite decades of rhetoric against Republicans by Democrats (since Watergate), Democrats’ self-righteousness and lack of awareness kicked in when they felt attacked by Republicans. They didn’t just shrug and say, “Gingrich doesn’t have the votes,” they acted like it was the end of the world, and they’ve never stopped.

In my mind, Democrats cravenly blocking Supreme Court nominations only confirmed to Republicans that Democrats couldn’t be trusted and were generally distasteful. The Clinton Impeachment confirmed to Democrats that politics was now open warfare. I was there. That was the quantum leap.

Feel free to insist I’m wrong again. This is my last comment on your blog.

Whether Zelensky is a “twit” or not is not the issue. Carlson’s lying about him and about Ukraine policy is the issue. Carlson didn’t say “Zelensky played the piano with his penis back when he was a raunchy comedian.” He said Zelensky unfairly persecuted an entire Christian denomination, among other things

Say no more, facts don’t matter to you.

Not from that quote he isn’t. Ben Shapiro’s position as quoted in that text is the libertarian one. If you hadn’t told me that quote was from Carlson, I’d have pegged it as coming from AOC or Liz Warren.

”It’s a salvo to move the MAGA movement to complete isolationism.”

I agree with you there.

I have no problem with criticism but I reserve the right to be wrong, to have contrary opinions, and to have my mind changed with verifiable facts. But given as I have no say in this matter – nor real interest – I don’t care to dig deeper. I really don’t care if Russia is right or wrong but I think Zelensky is a twit and deserves no US support. Playing piano with his penis was the height of his career.

I do think we’d be better off being “friends” with Russia as opposed to our other “friends” such as Saudi Arabia. Nor will I ever trust any comments spewed by Pelosi, Biden, Obama, Schumer, et al … if they happen to be correct, I can verify by other sources if need be.

🙂

Your outline of the changes in news programs was interesting; I never followed them enough to have a say one way of the other, but it “rings true” as the saying goes. 😉

On the Headline News: we have that at our fingertips with on-line feeds (although many still manage to include “journalist commentary” a lot of the headline stories and videos are pretty straight reporting. However, there is always a filtering of WHAT news to put in the headlines, and the feeder selections for Right and Left are probably highly different.

We don’t even agree on WHAT happened, or when or to whom, much less what it means. Some people protesting for Hamas and Palestine admitted having never even heard of the events of 10/7/2023, much less what actually happened.

Building on what Scott Adams said: we are not just evaluating the same movie differently (like critics always do), we are not watching the same films anymore. And a lot of us are not even in the same theater with the other side.