Today is Tuesday, February 22, 2022. On the calendar, we write the date this way: 2/22/22; isn’t that a coincidental juxtaposition of even numbers? Was today representative of some mystical amalgam of celestial forces coming together? All I know about today is that Russia has begun its invasion of Ukraine, according to our president. This almost inevitable moment has arrived, unfortunately, as predicted by everyone involved in this new conflict. Once a madman, always a madman, as Putin has demonstrated. Thus today President Joe Biden has unveiled tough new sanctions to punish Moscow, as examined in an article on my CNN smartphone app by Kevin Lipton entitled “Biden says Russia is beginning an ‘invasion of Ukraine’ as he unveils sanctions on Moscow.”

One of those sanctions is directed toward two large financial institutions, Russian sovereign debt and Russian elites and their family members. Biden said these moves would effectively “cut off Russia’s government from Western finance.”

The President also announced that he was moving additional troops and equipment to “strengthen” U.S. allies in the Baltic nations on NATO’s eastern flank, but made clear they would not be there to “fight Russia.”

Still holding out the possibility that diplomacy could still defuse the crisis, Biden said the United States would remain open to talking with the aggressor and its partners to avert all-out war. The President said, “The United States and our allies and partners remain open to diplomacy, if it is serious.” He added that Russia will be judged by its actions, not its words.

In his announcement, the President made plain that Putin was launching a bid to fundamentally redraw borders in Europe, violating international laws, and putting pressure on the West to respond.

While a real president has recognized Russia’s aggression against an independent country, there is the absurd declaration made by a faux-president, Donald Dumpf, that Russia’s recognition of two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine a “genius” move ahead of its military invasion.

The Putin puppet made these cringeworthy comments on The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, in which he praised the Russian president’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics in eastern Ukraine on Monday as being “smart” and “pretty savvy.” It’s almost as if Dumpf has sparkles in his eyes when commenting on his strong man’s actions in a territory he shouldn’t be in at all. He fatuously declared that Putin was going to be a “peacekeeper” in the region, in sync with his seeking close ties with the murderous president during his time in office. He actually compared the force that Putin has arrayed against Ukraine as “the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep peace, all right.” Is this man delusional or what?

As he recognized the two Donbas regions, which are controlled by Russian-backed separatists, Putin moved in massive troops, which led to international condemnation, while the faux-president continued to shower praise on the dictator’s head. President Biden called the troop movement “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” and slammed Moscow with multiple sanctions on Tuesday.

In the jaw-dropping interview, Dumpf continued to assert his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him and said if he had remained president – God forbid! – Putin would never have attempted something like this. Probably not! He would have attacked an American city if Dumpf were still president and would have gotten away with it. Dumpf is just in awe of the bald-headed autocrat; he wishes he could be a Vladimir Putin, virile and supreme ruler of his people. Has anyone gagged yet over hearing this putrid nonsense from a sham president?

The sham president’s glowing comments about an avowed foe of America were shredded by press secretary Jen Psaki during a press conference today. Her comments appear in an online article for Media ITE by Michael Luciano entitled “Psaki throws shade at Trump for calling Putin ‘savvy’: ‘We try not to take advice from anyone who praises President Putin.'”

Today Psaki hit back at the former president’s stupid remarks by saying this when asked if the White House has any reaction to former President Dumpf calling Putin’s move yesterday “genius” and “smart.” She said: “Well, as a matter of policy we try not to take advice from anyone who praises President Putin and his military strategy, which I believe is what happened here.” She threw shade at the sham president’s affirmation of the dictator’s actions by saying that President Biden – and not his predecessor – “was able to rally the world and global community in taking steps against Russia’s aggression.”

The reporter who asked the initial question of Psaki then followed up his query by asking, “Is there any fears that statement like that could turn support for Ukraine into a more partisan issue among the U.S. public?” Psaki replied that it’s up to members of the Republican Party to make the decision and to make the determination. Unfortunately, as of this writing, some of those members seem to be already siding with the Russian strong man and not with Ukraine. Some feckless repugnicans like Texas Senator Ted “Oooze” has made comments beneficial to Russia. Another of these anti-American repugnicans is Florida Senator Marco Rubio who portrayed Biden as weak and inviting aggression from people like Putin.

After all of this approbation directed toward Putin by Russia-loving repugnicans, you wonder why they don’t just emigrate to the country. This alarming trend among repugnicans disloyal to America is written about in an online Vanity Fair article by Bess Levin entitled “Republicans Claim Putin Wouldn’t Have Invaded Ukraine Under a Beefy Piece of Man Meat Like Trump.”

The thesis of the article is that conservatives here in this country are all insisting that the reason Russia is invading Ukraine is because Joe Biden is weak and that it would never have happened “under their big, strong piece of man meat, Donald Trump.” This is exactly what that man meat claimed in his revolting radio interview.

Declaring yet another reason why he should be hated, Texas Senator Ted Cruz said on Fox News – where else? – that “Biden becoming president is the best thing that ever happened . . . for Vladimir Putin.” He further added, “Europe is on the verge of war because of the weakness, the fecklessness {he could use this word in a sentence, even?] of Joe Biden.” Here Levin says the senator is happy to spread Russian propaganda that benefits a man meat in the shape of Donald Trump who once claimed Cruz’s own father helped kill John F. Kennedy and then declared on Monday in a press release, “Biden-Harris officials are to an enormous extent directly responsible for this crisis.”

These traitorous comments were echoed by Senator Rubio who has been happily accepting political donations from Len Blavatnik, a billionaire with “longstanding ties to oligarchs close to” Putin, according to the article. Another disloyal repugnican, Senator Tom Cotton, in January, blamed Putin’s aggression on “a year of Joe Biden’s impotence and incompetence towards Russia in particular and in foreign policy more generally,” somehow forgetting that Dumpf spent four years “passionately kissing Putin’s ass.” He couldn’t go up any further in his ass kissing.

The rest of the article describes how the former president courted the Russian dictator since well before he took office. “In 2013, he mused about them becoming ‘best friends’ via the Miss Universe Pageant.” In 2014, Dumpf actually had the gall to suggest that Putin would have been a better president than Barack Obama. In 2015, he said he thought he’d “get along well” with Putin. Later that year, the “business tycoon” defended Putin over accusations the strong man had had numerous journalists killed. Dumpf lavished praise on Putin, saying “He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.” In 2016, he said he’d be “crazy” to reject Putin’s praise of him. And we all know what Dumpf’s stance was toward Putin when he was in office; Levin characterizes the relationship by using the phrase “Putin’s bitch.”

If all of this doesn’t sicken you as to the character of the sham president and his repugnican allies, I don’t know what will. They should all be banished to Siberia, in my humble opinion. Let’s see how they manage to live under the brutal autocrat who’s there right now.

Most of today was spent with our contractor, “Cameron,” who called to say he would be a little late. When he arrived, Elliot and I drove him to Home Depot on Metropolitan Avenue to look at sinks and faucets. We also picked out a new shower head to install since the old one is spraying water from its coils. I was amazed over all of the home decorating items found in all of the aisles. Then we had one more stop to make, N.B. Stone Setters Inc., the tile place located under the El on Liberty Avenue. There we looked at more stainless steel sinks and selected one that was quite deep.

After we dropped Cameron off at the building, we drove to the Blue Bay Diner for lunch. We both ordered something off the luncheon menu, which provided us with soup, sandwich, and coffee or tea.

By the time we arrived home, it started to rain. The wind picked up in strength and that would have been the best time to stay in, but I went out one more time to go to the gym. I almost regretted it because of the strong winds battering my umbrella. I did take shelter in the library momentarily; I took out a selection of Shirley Jackson stories called Dark Tales, a collection of 17 gothic tales by the author of The Haunting of Hill House that was adapted into one of the best ghost story movies in the 60s starring Julie Harris and Claire Bloom called The Haunting. This perennial tale was also adapted into a Netflix series recently, which I also watched. This is a good book to probably curl up with on Halloween.

When I returned from the gym, I now stayed in for the rest of the day. I called my Highland friend, “Ted,” and spoke about a half hour or so and discussed our coming out to him and “Peter” sometime in March before trying to collect my thoughts for tonight’s blog.

If you can believe the weatherman, tomorrow could be a scorcher: temperatures in the 60s. I can’t wait.

Stay safe and be well.