"Exit, pursued by a (Russian) bear"
Top of the Morning
When you leave the door open, the wolves come in. What a mess.
Since the end of the Cold War Russia has always wanted the Ukraine back for many reasons, especially security reasons. Control of the Great European plain for buffer reasons, control of regions that are full of ethnic Russians, to re-establish Russia’s historic control, naval base and port that is in Ukraine, and buffer) and since the end of the Cold war, when Russia lost Ukraine, the trick has always been for the USA to keep it from Russia while not turning it into too much of a security risk from the Russian point of view
Today we have such a weak US administration, the wokeness cancer, energy virtue signalling suicide that just makes Russia richer, and politicians who only care about using the US government to stay in power and persecute their political opponents.
However, I sort of doubt Russia will bother holding non- Russian majority regions anyhow.
Overheard
“I was told if I vote for Trump’s re-election, we will come to the brink of war with a nuclear armed nation, more people will die of Covid than died in his first term, inflation will go through the roof, and people across the globe will have less and less freedom.
Well I voted for Trump and we are coming closer to war with a nuclear armed nation, more people have died of Covid than died in his first term, inflation has gone through the roof, and people across the globe have less and less freedom.”
Readings
I must recommend The Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters. I am about 2/3 of the way through and they are some of the best literary writing I have ever had the privlage of reading. Not to mention they reveal where plenty of writers got certain ideas and quotes.
From Wikipedia.
“The Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters are a correspondence between two literary Englishmen, George Lyttelton (1883–1962) and Rupert Hart-Davis (1907–99), written between 1955 and Lyttelton's death, and published by Hart-Davis in six volumes between 1978 and 1984….Hart-Davis was a civilised and well-connected man, whose quotidian avocations brought him into contact with almost all the great literary, theatrical and musical names of the 1950s and 1960s. His letters are casually star-studded, and give absorbing glimpses of the affairs of the Literary Society, the London Library, publishing, and a long cast-list of celebrities from Siegfried Sassoon to T. S. Eliot, from Winston Churchill to the Fleming brothers Ian and Peter (the latter a brilliant prose-stylist). Throughout the period of the correspondence (1955–1962), he was editing the letters of Oscar Wilde, a mammoth undertaking whose difficulties and challenges are documented in great detail in the letters, giving a satisfying portrayal of what dedication in literary scholarship looks like from the inside...But the indisputable star of the show is George Lyttelton. What a wonderfully well-stocked, amusing, perceptive, agreeable mind! And what a genius as a letter-writer, touching exactly the right notes with every stroke of his pen, which is a fountain of allusion and delicious wit.[1]”