April 5

 It looks like we will see the first female black justice on the Supreme Court. It is about time and it is a damned shame she had to be subjected to the idiotic questioning from those wing nut alleged Republicans. They complain about how "woke" the Dems are but their "anti-woke" is actually worse. I don't know whether the actually believe the crap they are spewing or if they are cynically throwing it out to sooth the wing nut base. Either way it is pathetic.

The pictures and the accounts of what has been left behind in the areas of Ukraine the Russians have vacated are horrendous but not unexpected or or surprising. We have been trying to civilize war for, probably, as long as we have had war. We haven't succeeded. Back around 1618 a Holy Roman Emperor supposedly said he would rather rule a desert than a kingdom of Protestants. The city fathers of Prague resented the demands his representatives made that they enforce Catholicism and pitched them and their secretary out of a castle window onto a dung heap. They survived but the war that started lasted until 1648 and killed about 50% of the population. Looking at the results of Putin's war I wonder if he thought the modern counterpart to that Emperor so long ago.

This William Astore piece in tomdispatch says a lot I totally agree with. We are spending, and have spent for too long, too much money on the military. We have used the military instead of diplomacy. There has been a lot of talk over the last three weeks about how badly Putin (along with Europe and the U.S.) misjudged the Ukrainians. Given Astore's account of the discussions between four generals in the West Point history class he was teaching, we have badly misjudged Putin. It looks like the "circus tiger" can bite. 

Michael Klare also has a good piece from yesterday's tomdispatch. Reading this piece I thought of two scenes in The 13th Warrior.  In the first, ibn Fadlan and his Norse companions consider the sneaky opposition of a local prince and decide they need to provide an "example" and send out one of the smaller and older of their company to engineer a duel with a much larger and younger ally of their enemy. The younger man loses to the disgust of his patron leaving ibn Fadlan to question what the whole show was for, why the deception when his companion could have dispatched the fellow at will. The lesson: anyone can calculate strength and numbers. The prince had been doing so from the moment they had arrived. However, said prince would thereafter have to wonder about 'what he couldn't see and fear what he didn't know.' Both the U.S. and Putin have been in exactly that position. The second was when the companions consult and old, "mad" woman who tells their leader that "wars are won in the will. Perhaps you are fighting in the wrong field." Russia and the U.S. both have repeatedly failed to accurately gaged their opponents will to fight.