W. Niederhut

I have never paid much attention to the tabloid gossip about the Royal Family, so I was surprised to learn this weekend that Prince Harry is, apparently, the biological son of a British officer named James Hewitt. No wonder Harry has had a falling out with King Charles and Prince William. This is beginning to sound like a Shakespearean tragedy, or comedy.

Ron, Nobody's perfect, but Kevin McCarthy is, basically, a slimy, spineless sleazeball who sold his soul to Trump and the Sedition Caucus to become Speaker of the dysfunctional 118th MAGA House. He's a guy who once joked with Paul Ryan about the fact that Trump and some Republican members of Congress had received illegal campaign funding from Russia! Later, he complained bitterly to Trump and the public about the violent January 6th attack on Congress, before flip-flopping 180 degrees and working to block a proper investigation of the insurrection-- even refusing to comply with a Congressional subpoena. IMO, his election as Speaker is a low point in the history of the U.S. Congress.

McCarthy's alleged concessions to the lunatic MAGA fringe are bad news for the country. Kevin McCarthy’s speaker deal, explained - Vox January 6, 2023

Would anyone here feel safe in the U.S. Capitol in 2023, without the metal detectors? I, certainly, wouldn't.

Incidentally, I read somewhere that Trump hoarded most of his private donor PAC millions in 2022, giving almost nothing to any of his loyal MAGA candidates in the U.S. In effect, he isn't just siphoning money from his MAGA donors-- he's also siphoning money from the GOP. It's tragic... 🤥

The MAGA whack jobs orchestrating Kevin McCarthy's humiliation this week seem to be the worst of Trump's coup co-conspirators, including Scott Perry. I need to find a tiny violin.

IMO, one of the most powerful chapters in the JFK-Destiny Betrayed documentary was the sequence about LBJ's horrific foreign policy reversals in the Congo, Indonesia, Vietnam, and throughout the world after 11/22/63. It's something that everyone in America needs to see.

He and Dulles used and abused powers that they never should have acquired in our Constitutional democracy-- even actively thwarting and subverting the foreign policies and directives of our elected President, then conspiring to murder him and those who might have exposed their murder plot. What colossal arrogance! And, what is worse, JFK's thwarted policy concepts were right all along, as the JFK-- Destiny Betrayed documentary illustrates so clearly.

What strikes me about the video clip is Angleton's odd, inappropriate affect-- as if his life of spying on the citizenry, orchestrating murders, and finally getting sh*t-canned was amusing to him. He acts like a sociopathic child who just got busted for torturing the cat. I had the same reaction to Angleton when I read about his encounter with Ben Bradlee in Mary Pinchot Meyer's apartment shortly after she was murdered. (Cord and Mary Pinchot Meyer had, apparently, been close friends of James and Cicely Angleton in happier times.) No doubt, Angleton was a very odd duck. So was Allen Dulles.

Talbot was outstanding in your film. And I liked the way you and Oliver Stone used the lights and dramatic black backgrounds in those interviews.

Wow. Magnificent, Chris. Thanks for posting this.

John, I love Miss McLeod's reel. Kevin Burke plays it well. Incidentally, I think everyone from the Isles of Skye and Lewis is either a McDonald or a McLeod (like Donald Trump's mother, Mary McLeod.)

Yes, Putin seems to be trying to terrorize and freeze the Ukrainians into surrendering to his totalitarian police state-- destroying their will and means of resistance. And he's sending his poorly trained Russian conscripts to the front, like sheep to the slaughter. The man is a bloody psychopath, absolutely corrupted by absolute power. I think he may, ultimately, resort to using nukes. Here's hoping that he's not long for this world in 2023.

Yes, John, I've heard the old Scotsman, Andy Stewart, sing a song which is, possibly, about porn star Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump, the laddie whose mother came from the Isle of Lewis, west of Skye. (He even does a hilarious Elvis impersonation in this version.) It's called, "Donald, Where's Your Trousers?" 🤪

Well, this is terrific, John! Thanks for posting. (I recognized a lot of scenery from a trek my wife and I made through the Scottish Highlands many years ago.) I also enjoyed Rod Stewart's performance of Auld Lang Syne (above.) There's another Stewart who sings Robert Burns songs well-- Andy M. Stewart. It doesn't include Auld Lang Syne, but I have enjoyed listening to this Andy M. Stewart CD for years-- especially on Robbie Burns Day (January 25th.)

Mathew, Investigative journalist Russ Baker did some groundbreaking work back in the spring of 2017 on Trump's multi-decade involvement with Felix Sater and the Russian mafia in NYC. Baker's writing on the subject was picked up by a few M$M sources at the time-- without attribution. Why FBI Can’t Tell All on Trump, Russia - WhoWhatWhy Catherine Belton's later history of Trump's involvement with Putin's oligarchs, Putin's People, is referenced above.

Mathew, What is missing from Tucker Carlson's commentary here about Trump questioning the value and funding of NATO in 2015, and later, is the context of Trump being a multi-decade Russian money launderer and erstwhile Kremlin asset. The Trump Organization was largely bankrolled after 1990 by the Russian mafia and Putin's oligarchs, as described in detail by Catherine Belton and other historians. Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West: Belton, Catherine: 9780374238711: Amazon.com: Books Trump's well known hostility to NATO, and to our closest allies in the EU, is rooted in his subservience to Putin and the Russian oligarchs who have kept Trump's business "empire" afloat for decades. It looks especially bad in retrospect, given what we now fully realize about Putin's agenda in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, doesn't it? Eastern European nations today have no illusions about the value of NATO-- unlike Tucker Carlson and some people in the Trump cult.

Thanks, Denny. You're a gentleman and a scholar. Happy New Year! My wife and I are both just happy to be alive this New Year's Eve. We both caught COVID (Omicron) one year ago this week. My main wish for 2023 is peace in Ukraine.

The Ukrainians are talking about closing the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum in Kiev. Some of you may be familiar with Bulgakov's novels, The Master and Magarita, and White Guard. He was a physician and native of Kiev who supported the Tsarist White Russians during the Civil War, but was not executed by the Bolsheviks because his play, The Days of the Turbins, was Stalin's favorite play. (He also survived the Stalinist purges of the 1930s.) Blugakov's novel, White Guard, was derived from his popular play, The Days of the Turbins. I recently watched the excellent Russian television film production of White Guard, set in Kiev in the winter of 1918, on Amazon Prime.* (There is also an outstanding film of The Master and Magarita, produced for Russian television some years ago.) White Guard is unpopular in Ukraine, because it depicts Petlyura and the Ukrainian nationalists of 1918 unfavorably. ‘Propaganda literature’: calls to close Mikhail Bulgakov museum in Kyiv | Mikhail Bulgakov | The Guardian * Watch The White Guard | Prime Video (amazon.com)

O.K., folks, here's a traditional English folk song for New Year's that was, allegedly, sung by George Washington, himself, back in the 18th century. The song, from Derbyshire, is based on Anglo-Saxon pagan, mid-winter celebrations, and was sung in "hoodening" processions for beer money. This is my own arrangement, using my Martin acoustic guitar in a Celtic DADGAD tuning. Derby Ram by Guillermo Ambrose | SoundClick Wikipedia has a good article about the Derby Ram and related British folk traditions. The Derby Ram - Wikipedia

Probably not, although he and Goering were, apparently, surprised when Britain and France subsequently declared war. By August of 1939, Hitler was used to getting away with his expansionist gambits in central Europe. In Putin's case, perhaps war could have been prevented if the U.S., NATO, and the Zelensky administration had agreed to forego the possibility of NATO expansion into Ukraine. (I don't know the answer to that hypothetical.)

Matt, I have had no illusions about Putin since 2007, when he and the FSB seized the ROCOR in Western Europe and the U.S., including my own ROCOR parish here in Denver. My point is about the colossal waste of human life and resources in the Ukraine War, and whether more could have been done to prevent this tragedy. The only people who benefit from this debacle are the war profiteers in the armaments industries-- Lockheed-Martin, Northrup-Grumman, et.al. It makes me sick.

Matt, Whatever else people may say about Putin's Ukraine invasion, it has certainly been a colossal waste of human life and resources. Think of the good things that Russia, the U.S., and the EU could have accomplished with all of the billions of dollars and rubles that have been wasted on bombs, missiles, and war machinery. For what?!! I felt just as nauseous about all of the billions Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld wasted murdering Iraqis and blowing up Iraq's infrastructure after February of 2003. For what?!! Of course, I mainly blame Putin for the Ukraine invasion, but the U.S. and NATO should have worked harder to prevent this debacle in the first place -- knowing that they were crossing a red line with the Kremlin on the issue of potential NATO expansion into Ukraine.