Today is Tuesday, February 21, 2023. I was absent from yesterday’s blog because Elliot and I were having our friend “Mark” over for dinner. We ordered a large pie from Gloria Pizza and we had Elliot’s date nut bread that he baked yesterday. Then we watched one of the Oscar-nominated film from 2022, Everything Everywhere All at Once starring Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis. I had already seen this movie on my own some months ago, but at that time, I dismissed the film as being too frenetic and bizarre. This time I came away with a stronger appreciation of what the overall purpose of the film was, even with the distracting nonsense put in about multiverses and pitting a laundry owner named Evelyn against a malevolent spirit inhabiting her rebellious daughter. This exhausted Chinese-American entrepreneur is recruited by another version of her husband to literally save the world by tapping into her hidden strengths. At the core of this visually stunning film is a story about immigrant families, generational trauma, and truly valuing the life – and those in it – you’ve got. To me, this is the heart of the film. Yeoh has richly deserved an Oscar nomination for her role here as Evelyn Quan Wang. Elliot dismissed the film halfway through it and hurried himself off to bed, while Mark and I were left to watch the long film, which is 2 hours and twenty minutes long. Mark left around 11, with about an hour to go. So I watched the conclusion of the movie after I said good night to Mark who took an Uber back home.

On the international front, President Joe Biden met yesterday with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in war-torn Kyiv during a surprise visit to the beleaguered nation, his first since Russia invaded the country about a year ago. An article in today’s Daily News by Peter Sblendorio and Dave Goldiner details the developments of yesterday’s historic visit by this country’s commander in chief entitled “Joe: Kevin Stands: Walks streets of Ukraine capital with Zelenskyy on surprise visit.” The unannounced meeting lasted more than five hours, according to the article.

During his visit, Biden voiced support for the embattled country and announced an additional $500 million in military aid. After visiting Mariinsky Palace, the official residence of the Ukrainian president, Biden spoke forcefully about how Kyiv stands one year after Russia declared war against the smaller nation. He added, “And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

In a significant photo-opportunity, both Biden and Zelenskyy were seen strolling on chilly Kyiv streets with security people in tow. You could hear air raid sirens howling in the distance as both men wrapped up a visit to the gold-domed St. Michael’s Cathedral.

The two men’s garb couldn’t have been more dissimilar, as Biden wore a blue suit and tie, topped off with his signature aviator sunglasses, while Zelenskyy was dressed in his trademark dark sweatsuit and military-style padded jacket. Both stood ramrod tall outside the cathedral.

The trip to Ukraine marked Biden’s first to a war zone since he began his presidency more than two years ago. The country was informed of Biden’s impending visit at the last moment, it seems. Russian authorities were also notified of the imminent visit so as to forestall any errant bombs going off during the meeting between the two leaders.

The United States has already funneled $50 billion to defend Ukraine. The new aid included no new advanced weaponry, but Zelenskyy said he and Biden discussed “long-range weapons and the weapons that may still be supplied to Ukraine even though it wasn’t supplied before.”

The U.S. President stressed the importance of demonstrating his country’s unwavering support of Ukraine during the “brutal and unjust war” and said Russian President Vladimir Putin was counting on the nations not sticking together. At one point, Biden declared, “Putin’s war of conquest is failing.”

This Friday marks the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor and onetime Soviet republic. No one really knows when this conflict will eventually end. But I can say this: President Biden was a profile in courage for undertaking this arduous journey to a war-torn country. Could anyone see the former president doing this? He would have probably visited Putin instead, offering him encouragement to continue his war with Ukraine.

An article adjacent to this one taps the disgusting MAGA Republicans who actually slammed Biden’s visit to Ukraine, calling it an “insult” to Americans. I dare suggest that these MAGA nuts are more of an insult to American values. And if they take umbrage of Biden’s visit to Ukraine, why don’t they take permanent residence in Putin’s Russia, if they so laud this strongman’s approach to “governing” his country? The article is written by Dave Goldiner and it’s entitled “MTG and MAGA pols bash Biden trip, cry about cost & border.”

These far-right outliers of Congressional lawmakers decried the visit as wasting American taxpayers’ money. One of them, the obnoxious and stupid Marjorie Taylor Greene, tweeted this about Biden’s layover in Ukraine, “The President of the United States chose Ukraine over America, while forcing the American people to pay for Ukraine’s government and war.” She then added, “I cannot express how much Americans hate Joe Biden.” Maybe she is projecting here about how many Americans really hate her and hate hearing from her.

Another half-witted repugnican, Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), compared the situation in Ukraine with that of the situation at the U.S. border with Mexico. The dimwitted representative tweeted, “Breathtaking that President Biden can show up in Ukraine to ensure their border is secure, but can’t do the same for America.” No one wants to hear what the Grinch, Matt Gaetz, wrote about Biden’s tete-a-tete with the Ukrainian leader. Even the fascistic governor of Florida weighed in on the issue, saying, Biden was “neglecting” American problems to show support for Ukraine. What a fucking piece of shit from the most antiwoke, anticultural, anti-intelligent, anti-American, antitruth, anti-LGBTQ+ political leader in modern American history.

Despite this MAGA opposition to Biden’s journey to Ukraine, more moderate Republicans – and thank God for them – have come out to say that the party mostly backs the fight against Putin’s war. Even the “Turtle,” GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, visited Kyiv earlier to express support for Zelenskyy.

The Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), said he backs more aid for Ukraine despite some tactical differences with the Biden White House.

A story that should outrage most Americans is the one about the “Squeaker” Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, who reportedly handed over 40,000 hours of January 6 security footage to the far-right, abominable Fox News host “Fucker” Carlson, host of Tucker Carlson Tonight, according to both CNN and Axios. This is certainly a most “unusual move,” considering the work of the bipartisan House select committee that investigated the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021.

Instead of distributing the video footage to all news outlets, McCarthy wrongly decided it to peddle it to right-wing media, like Fox News, the same network that is currently being sued for billions of dollars by Dominion Voting Systems for ruining the company for its mendacious coverage of the 2020 presidential election. I reported earlier that various Fox News hosts were caught on tape mocking former president Dumpf’s allegations of election fraud, but deciding to spew the damaging hogwash to the American public anyway.

Denouncing the decision of McCarthy to do this, January 6 committee member Bennie Thompson (D-MS) had some choice words for the speaker regarding his decision to fork over the film, “It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly.” He continued his criticism of McCarthy’s dumb decision here, “If Speaker McCarthy has indeed granted Tucker Carlson – a Fox host who routinely spreads misinformation and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s poisonous propaganda – and his producers access to this sensitive footage, he owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake.” As for segmenting Carlson as a fabulist in terms of the January 6th insurrection, you just have to go to 2021 when Carlson produced Patriot Purge, a history-rewriting docuseries that claims to tell an alternate story of the riot, antithetical to the truth of what happened on that infamous day, and per The Hill, at least one source claiming the riot was a “false flag” operation, meaning the events of that day were the work of another organization, say, Antifa. Which has been refuted from Day 1!

I hope that McCarthy gets a lot of blowback for this reckless action on his part. I would love for McCarthy to be replaced already. He is the weakest Speaker ever!

Stay safe and be well.

Here is Elliot’s date nut bread that I helped him bake on Monday. It’s practically finished since we gave away a huge chunk of it to our friend Mark yesterday.