Big Bird may be innocent but who can vouch for Elmo?

[lionheart]

thehill.com/homenews/senate/580426-ted-cruz-labels-big-birds-tweet-about-vaccination-propaganda

www.salon.com/2021/11/07/sesame-streets-big-bird-for-promoting-vaccine-brainwashing-children_partner/

Old thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4305074-To-filibuster-or-not-to-filibuster-Biden-needs-to-get-a-move-on-before-Doofus-Duck-waddles-back-into-the-swamp-Biden-Trump-Thread-128

Most translators now seem to render Родина as "Homeland (apart from Google which says "family") which sort-of fits with my memory that it always used to be Motherland.

My Russian-speaking mate comments "There is no short translation that's worth a damn. A Russian poet, ie. a Russian who was a poet in English, could sum it up in a paragraph, maybe." Sounds about right to me, if it is as integral to the Russian psyche as all that.

But what I was thinking was yes, they're making it into a Hitler-word, like "das Vaterland", rather than the Holy Mother Russia of pre-Stalin.

I looked up my 40 year old Russian dictionary to confirm my memory of what Родина translated as and it was "motherland" back then

I do recall it as being similar to la patrie (French was the other language I was studying at Uni) but even more complicated. A combination of landscape, culture, people, pride and pain (memories of my Russian history and language gradually being resurrected for me )

Watching CNN. Looks like a pretty large scale operation from the map of air strikes they're showing. Certainly a lot more aggressive than just those two little 'independent' regions.

CNN shows Biden & G7 allies have spokenken. Biden to address the Nation soon.

It is both savvy and genius to invade a much smaller county on no provocation whatever and cause the deaths of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people and the crippling of at least as many more, according to the loathsome Trump and his lickspittles.

I didn't realise it was possible to despise him more than I already did, but he's managed to make me do it.

At least he is not in charge anymore.

@DuncinToffee

At least he is not in charge anymore.

That's one of the first things DH and I said to each other. Hell, if he were still POTUS we'd already be sending troops to help Putin! At the very least, Doofus would have pulled us out of NATO if they wanted to order troops in.

I don't want to see troops go in, but what other choice does NATO have? We're already past diplomatic solutions and Putin thumbs his nose at sanctions because he knows China will aid Russia.

Is it very wrong of me to wish a serious stroke on Putin, one which leaves him unable to speak or think straight at all? His death would just feed his minions' paranoia and lead them to think he'd been assassinated, but a mumbling drooling idiot might slow everything down a bit.

His latest weirdness is saying that he is invading Ukraine "to stop the genocide". What genocide?

No it is not but I am pretty sure he has made contingency plans for when that happens.

That would mean caring about someone other than Putin, and I don;t think that he does. At the moment he feels to me like "If I can't have the world then nobody is going to have it" -- and his troops have apparently destroyed a nuclear waste containment facility at Chernobyl.

www.rawstory.com/russian-forces-reportedly-destroy-nuclear-waste-facility-in-chernobyl/

That doesn't destroy the waste, does it: just spreads it around a bit.

www.newsweek.com/us-expects-kyiv-fall-days-ukraine-source-warns-encirclement-1682326

Just in case Doofus supporters are still lurking

The US right are still claiming that this wouldn’t have happened during under Trump because he was so tough on Russia that they were forced to behave. In case anyone needs it, here’s a thread about just how tough Trump was on Russia and how well-behaved Russia was as a result.
twitter.com/ruth_deyermond/status/1496929142872412169?t=inxrR77RPr6KBGGNg1N7Pg&s=19

That's a very timely reminder, Duncin.

Quite the list of how Putin has behaved over the last few years, and of Former Guy's support for Putin.

More on right-wingers playing "my enemy's enemy is my friend" and making Putin's excuses for him – from 16 Feb, so may not have aged well.

People just not wanting US troops sent abroad I can understand, but some of these folks do seem unduly fond of Putin.

US Kremlin backers seek to undermine Joe Biden
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60297302

I suspect a lot of the same people are now accusing Biden of having been too soft on Putin.

I'm not getting a clear sense of where the Trumpinistas stand on the invasion. I suppose because he hasn't told them what to think yet. I'm not about to go to the 'dark side' on SM to try and figure it out.

I did notice a small group pinning a HUGE Ukraine flag to one of the overpasses on the freeway as we were driving to an appointment this morning. They were dressed in 'biker type' clothes (no motorcycles in sight) and there were a few 'normal size' Ukraine flags in hands and an American flag as well. No idea who they were for sure, the dress + American flag screamed 'Trump supporter' but there is a large Ukrainian population next town over. Too many 'mixed signals' for us to know whether to honk in support or not. 🤷🏼‍♀️

President Joe Biden has nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, calling her "one of the nation's brightest legal minds".
She will be the first black woman to serve in the court's 233-year history if confirmed.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60528132

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jimmy-kimmel-special-trump_n_62186e7ce4b0f800ce1f0ccd

It will be interesting to see how the nomination goes, Duncin.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-60499385

'Why has he drawn this red line in the most consequential foreign policy crisis of his presidency?'

@lionheart

It will be interesting to see how the nomination goes, Duncin.

Rachel Maddow says that this woman's credentials, experience, and reputation are so impeccable that it would take an asteroid to derail her appointment. Even Lindsay Graham voted to put her on the federal appeals bench.

I'm sure the GOP is madly digging looking for dirt. A few of them have already tried to shit stir about her having a family member in prison and about her having worked as a public defender. If that's that's the best they can do........

After the shambles of the last two it will be good to see the process play out as it should.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: “The hard truth is that if Republicans won’t stand up to Trump, they can’t stand up to Putin or Xi”.

@lionheart

Hillary Rodham Clinton: “The hard truth is that if Republicans won’t stand up to Trump, they can’t stand up to Putin or Xi”.

Nailed it!

Hello all, long time no see. I’ve kept meaning to catch up on these threads…
One thing that puzzles me. How do neo-Nazi Trump supporters square his support of Putin going into Ukraine to “de-Nazify” it with their own, uh, Nazism? Or is that a stupid question? (I suspect it is.)

It's not a stupid question at all, it's baffling when using common sense but we are talking about idiots here