Today is Saturday, March 26, 2022. Today U.S. President Joe Biden delivered a fiery speech condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin in Poland. He uncategorically declared that Putin “cannot remain in power” after his unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine on February 24. Biden made this declaration in the cold outside the Royal Castle in Warsaw. He said at one point, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Could you see the former dictator-in-chief ever deliver these fiery words in any speech? He would have been praising his Russian pal to no end. He wouldn’t have been able to put two sentences together anyway; big words are not in his lexicon. Americans should be very grateful that we don’t have this criminal in the driver’s seat anymore! Despite the clear meaning of Biden’s message, the White House downplayed his remark by saying that Biden “was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia or regime change.” So what was he actually referring to here? one wonders. I think he’s clearly saying Putin needs to be replaced by a better incarnation. Biden’s speech is covered in an online CNN article on my smartphone by Kevin Liptak and Maegan Vazquez entitled “Biden says Putin ‘cannot remain in power.'”

The President’s remark is already reverberating throughout the stratosphere as he left Poland to return home to Washington after his last-minute trip to attend snap summits in Brussels and to reassure allies along NATO’s eastern edge.

In responding to Biden’s comments, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “This is not to be decided by Mr. Biden. It should only be a choice of the people of the Russian Federation.”

Just before Biden was set to speak in Poland, an airstrike struck a fuel depot just outside Lviv, Ukraine – about 200 miles away from where the President would speak. The strike resulted in billowing smoke and flames to rise above the western Ukrainian city, which had largely been seen as a safe haven during the war, given its distance from the Russia-Ukraine border.

Issuing a stern warning to the Russian leader, Biden said, “Don’t even think about moving on one single inch of NATO territory.” He said this country was committed to the collective protection obligations laid out in NATO’s charter “with the full force of our collective power.” But Biden made clear that the current conflict in Ukraine doesn’t require America to become directly involved since the embattled country is not a member of NATO. He concluded his address by saying, “My message to the people of Ukraine is . . . we stand with you. Period.”

If there is still any doubt that the “Government of Putin” (GOP) has shifted away from its Trumpian influence, the recent disgusting, disgraceful, racist behavior by some on the right during the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson should serve as a wake-up call to those who think the Republican Party has cast aside the stain of Trump on its proverbial collar. They have not! An opinion piece by Julian Zelizer writing for CNN paints a broad portrayal of the GOP as bearing the fingerprints of extremists all over it and how dangerous this is right now in this country for the sake of democracy. His opinion is entitled “Extremists have their fingerprints all over the GOP.”

Zelizer writes that a number of conservative Republican senators only had an eye on the presidential 2024 race as thy raised the specter of conspiracy theories in an attempt to smear a well-qualified and highly respected Supreme Court appointee. Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marsha Blackburn of Texas should earn Americans’ disapprobation with their attempt to portray Jackson as particularly lenient toward sex offenders.

Throughout the confirmation hearings, repugnicans tried to score cheap political points by plunging into bizarre lines of argument – all of which revealed how fringe talking points had become mainstream. On his program last night, political commentator and comedy host Bill Mayer contrasted the unintelligent tenor of the senators’ questioning of Jackson with the atmosphere associated with the hearings for conservative Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in the 80s during the Reagan years. Even though there was huge backlash against the appointment of this conservative jurist for the high court, the arguments for and against him did not attain the low level of those on view during last week’s hearings. Zelizer writes that today “Top elected officials were espousing claims that in earlier eras would have been considered too far off base to focus on during a televised proceeding.” I attribute this debasing of the GOP to Dumpf alone, where he has not only been a danger to preserving democracy in this land, he has also succeeded in cheapening true political dialogue to the point of ludicrousness. Norms of restraint, civility, and even governance have taken a back seat to raw partisanship ushered in by the selection of Donald Dumpf as president in 2016. Zelizer writes that “Lawmakers are increasingly performative and eager to throw red meat to their followers without any concern for the consequences.” He claims that January 6 “was a product of this mentality, as Republicans repeated Trump’s dangerous lies and those of his allies about a ‘stolen election.'”

Zelizer believes that repugnicans can still redeem themselves if they pull back from the lies of Dumpf and move in a more moderate direction as proposed by former Texas Congressman Will Hurd. In his book, American Reboot: An Idealist’s Guide to Getting Big Things Done, he urges his fellow party members to shed the conspiracy thinking and attempt to broaden their electoral coalition. Hurd writes, “The GOP must stop peddling conspiracy theories like those that led to the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021.”

Unfortunately, Zelizer does not see an abandonment of these extremist views being espoused by the GOP in order to concentrate on internal reform happening anytime soon, so that is why it’s crucial that voters not give repugnicans any ground during the 2022 midterms.

It’s getting late here. I can write briefly that Elliot and I had a pleasant day driving to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with our friend, “Mark,” and having brunch at Juliette, on Bedford Avenue. From there, I was driven to 31st Street, where I got out of the car to walk to the New Yorker Hotel to attend the Big Apple Comic Convention. Elliot then spent the entire day with Mark doing something exciting. I brought 17 Silver Age comic books with me in an attempt to sell them and to purchase new comics from the myriad dealers on the exhibition floor.

I must have spent close to three and a half hours there, leaving around 5. I attended one discussion moderated by Roy Schwartz who spoke about whether Superman is circumcised or not. He was accompanied by the grandson of one of Captain America’s creators, Joe Simon. Schwartz spoke eloquently about the Jewish roots of the entire comic book industry, especially the creators of the iconic superhero Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Siegel developed the storylines and Shuster drew the comic. These two young men were living in Cleveland, Ohio, when the brainstorm came to them to create such a superhero as Superman. Originally conceived, the comic was a response to the rise of Nazism in Germany. I even got to ask a question of Schwartz concerning the Michael Chabon novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which I believed was a disguised biography of the two Superman inventors. Schwartz did admit that the novel is a fictitious exploration of the two collaborators who created the most iconic comic book hero of all time. I now must look for the book on the shelf and start it.

After the show, I walked to Ninth Avenue and had dinner at Mama Mia 44sw, on 44th Street. This restaurant is opposite the Westway Diner where I dined on Thursday before my trip to River City, Iowa. I was happy to be able to sit finally.

I now walked to 42nd Street and 8th Avenue to take the E train home. The ride home was uneventful, save for a stretch of time where the train stopped in between various stations owing to some disturbance up ahead, whatever that meant. Also, the train went local in Queens. As a result, I got more time to read the five comics I bought at the show.

Have a nice Sunday.

Stay safe and be well.