What a jerk. How short-sighted!

To stay free, Ukraine needs the US behind it.

In 1991, 91% of Ukrainians voted to be free of Russia and fully independent. Even the majority of Crimeans voted for this.
Then, and again in 1995 and 1997, Russians ratified recognition of borders between the two countries (sbornik-zakonov.ru).

One would expect that to be enough to ensure Ukraine's sovereignty, but in 2013, Ukraine's then-President Victor Yanukovich reneged on his campaign promise to Ukraine's voters to increase trade relations with the EU. This led to popular pro-democracy demonstrations in Maidan Sq. and pressure from Moscow for Yanukovich to use force to quell the demonstrations.

Yanukovich honored Putin's wishes and ordered guns turned on the demonstrators. Dozens of unarmed Ukrainian civiliand were killed. Ukrainians and Ukraine's legislators were enraged and Yanukovich fled to Russia. Shortly after, in 2014 Russia intervened by forcefully overrunning Crimea and beginning a war in Donbas and Luhansk.

For MTG & her silly caucus pals, respect history & international protocols. Since 1945 the recognized protocol was that there would be no "land grabs" allowed in Europe. While the Soviets "essentially" compiled after WW2. But Moscow had little compunction to enforce allegiance of lron Curtain partners as it did in Hungary in the 1950s and Czechoslovakia in the 1960s.

Moscow's 2014 land grab of Ukraine's Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk provinces set a new precedent and underscored Putin's government's Soviet-style heavy handedness.

With the world preoccupied with Moscow's war against Ukrainians, Putin is securing control over the Abkhazia part of Georgia (former lGeorgian SSR) by building a new Black Sea Fleet base there close to Georgia's capital, and he's striving to encourage Moldova's Russian speaking residents of the Transnistria region along Ukraine's border to undermine Moldova's democracy. And Putin's minions and trolls are also working to undermine NATO country democracies in Hungary, Slovakia & elsewhere.

This is a perilous situation. If the West were to abandon Ukraine, it wouldn't be long for Putin to push to overthrow Ukraine's democracy and to install a Soviet-style pro-Moscow puppet leader there. And then to focus on Moldova and Georgia to bring their governments in "line", too,

Who knows what would follow after. (Probably some subversive manipulations to the democracies of Romania and Bulgaria to strengthen Putin's desire to "own" the Black Sea, and in the Baltics and Poland to open up the Baltic Sea to Russia's maneuverability there.)

In any event, Republican games in Congress to make legislators do what Trump wants, means screwing freedom seeking Europeans living in Putin's targeted former Iron Curtain "territories". If Republicans love Putin's model of klepto-fascism, then ditch Speaker Johnson and support Putin. Trump and Putin would love that.

What a jerk. How short-sighted!

To stay free, Ukraine needs the US behind it.

In 1991, 91% of Ukrainians voted to be free of Russia and fully independent. Even the majority of Crimeans also voted for this.

Too bad I gave up coffee.

Would any moderate Republican be able to vote on aid to Ukraine or for immigration reform against Trump's wishes?

What would Trump owe Putin if the State Bank of Russia paid Trump's bond? Or if Hungary's Victor Orban, or Saudi's MBS, or Elon Musk? Trump is a known national security risk. Anyone like Trump would never be given a pass to. Disneyland mockup of a Pentagon office, never mind real access to a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility). That Trump needs so much money amplifies his risk to nationally sensitive information. If anyone helps Trump meet this obligation, what makes Trump immune to their undue influence?

US anti-terror policy is to warn any nation of any seemingly imminent threat, and this would even mean warning Putin, or any nation at odds with US values.

That Putin dismissed the warning is hard to believe unless he is truly obsessed with Ukraine's independence and inclinations to the West.

At a minimum, internal security protocols should have been started. Putin's accusations vs Ukraine are either opportunistic or a cover for his own incompetence.

Would good Ukrainians express condolences to the families of the victims and revulsion at the attack? Probably. But Putin's antipathy for Ukrainians and Ukraine's sovereignty makes it hard to separate the people of Moscow from Putin's criminal pursuit of genocide.

The judge who presided must have realized that causing a person to lapse into coma is potentially causing a death.

All things in Putin's kleptocracy are trial tested by his extreme jingoists. Putin, of course is nuts. But it's not "war" until Putin calls it that.

It seems like Putin's been awfully wounded by Ukraine's thumping of his Navy, Air Force, Army & Wagner Mercenary Co. Moscow's Black Sea Fleet is 50% out of commission. The Air Force neutralized by US Patriot missiles The Muscovite army has sacrificed fatalistically as good soldiers from Muscovy are taught to do. And Putin's petro-economy is on the verge of collapse as 15-20% of its refining capacity's been destroyed since New Year. Now, Putin, who rejected US intelligence's emergency alert to Moscow about an immediate ISIS-K threat to Russia, as "blackmail", conflates the travesty as a cause-de-guerre vs Ukraine.

This is all a prelude to declaring a 400,000 recruit mobilization, perhaps in the next month or so. Will it work?

Meant to edit that last sentence before posting:

"While Putin remains distracted by reelection politics and his errant Special Operation war plan, EU pressure on Kalingrad could lead to that isolated Russian city's 1/2 million residents getting angry enough at Moscow to seriously rattle them into thinking about joining the rest of Europe and to sever their subjugation under Putin's corrupt fascism."

The more widespread concurrent the distractions, the better. Maybe a lack of sleep will be Putin's undoing?

Putin is going insane with frustration that his "Special Military Operation" is not unfolding to plan.

He knows no one is planning to use nuclear weapons against Russia. But to make his constantly lied to public believe his lies, he's stoking his jingoist war bloggers fo keep up their extreme rhetoric.

KGB Putin knows using any nulcear weapon would mean assured destruction of the Mafia-like fascist system he's designed and thrives under.

Putin-connected businessman loaned $8M to Trump entity involved in alleged insider trading:

Like George Santos, Vlad Putin cannot tell the truth. And through his whole life he's learned that not anyone deserves to be told the truth. In fact, he's such a sociopath that his only truth is that others must acquiesce to his commands and adulate only him.

MAGA GOPs adulate Putin because Trump does. Never has Trump said a cross word to Putin. Why? Well Trump was promised a great desl to build Tchump Towers in Moscow and Leningrad (St.Petersburg now, but in Putin's mind his hometown has been named for one of Putin's lifelong idols, and always will be). Plus Putin's probably got "the goods" on something about Trump that makes Trump 100% a Putin patsy. How many Russian oligarchs have invested in Trump Towers or Trump country clubs over the years? More than a few, and these "friends" of Trump's & his family are vectors for indirect communication between Moscow and Trump and Trump's craven media suck-ups.

As a once aspiring-to-become future KGB director, Putin has become a master in deception and manipulation and making others his tools. He'd be a terrifying boss, and he's become a terrifying sociopathic dictator of a nuclear weapon yielding KGB Mafia state. But with admirers like Trump and willing media idiots in Trump-world, and here and there in the West, Putin's international manipulation of anti-status quo organizations and media has worked well for his aims.

Putin is this age's Adolf Hitler.

By the time of the Munich Olympics, nearly every freedom-loving government understood that Nazi Germany had to be destroyed if a balance and peace were to be restored. A bellicose and jingoistic Russia with dreams of an expanded klepto-Fascist empire is no different.

In order for Russia to become a member of the civilized modern world, Putin's Mafia-modeled dictatorship must be upended in one way or another. Otherwise Russia's fascist kleptocracy will use all means it has to destabilize NATO and pluralistic governments wherever it can and strive to absorb Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan into its "empire" and to make vassal states of Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. Poland, the Baltic States, Slovakia and Hungary are all in Putin's sights as well.

A number of European historians now feel the threat of Putin's emboldened fascist dictatorship to what has been a stable free world. They believe Putin and his jingoist war bloggers must not be appeased.

Putin's FSB is trying to catch up with Lenin's Cheka and Stalin's NKVD. Those horrible institutions made Soviet Russia a more horrible place than Tsarist Russia. Welcome to Putin World. Trying to set a standard of social immorality as never seen before. Thank G*d his former-KGB sidekick Kirill is Patiarch of the ROC (Russian Orthodox Church). Kirill will give Vlad dispensation for his sins, and Putin will let Kirill skim from Russia's faithful Kirill sells indulgences to Russia's duped believers.

This 43 yo woman Margarita Simonyan is part of Moscow's kleptocracy's vast propaganda machine, a machine that's paid this apparatchik of Putin's Sochi Mafia very, very well.

This issue has never resulted in a viable solution from the anti-immigration legislators.

There are plenty of places where life is hell. Sometimes because the governments are corrupt and deadly to opposition. A lot of countries like that are even members of the UN. Like most Western nations, the US has protocols for asylum for oppressed escapees from those countries (like N. Korea & Cuba). But what about places like Venezuela or Nicaraugua? Should folks against that kind of government have a blanket cause for asylum claims?

If a corrupt country wants its opponents to leave, all it needs to do is put pressure on opponents and show them the door to the USA.

What's the solution Oklahoma?

Yes, America's borders are overwhelmed. Same as Europe's. Often it's mostly by poor and endangered moms & dads trying to find a better life somewhere.

This problem's only going to get worse as long as there are horrible, crime-ridden, desperately poor countries. A humane solution is needed.

It's nice to know that so many people see the West as a place worth risking everything to come to for refuge. At least Oklahoma should have a workable option before it censures anyone agreeing to help Congress try to fix the conundrum.

Whose problem is it if the canal is the same size it's always been but the ships are larger?

It's the shipping companies if they can't ship their goods through a Canal that worked for over a century.

Let them go the long way or pay for another bigger canal.

The Canal was widened in the last decade to handle ships with an incredible beam of 49 meters (160 feet) and it can handle ships up to 1,200 ft in length and with a draft (in normal conditions) up to 15 meters (50 feet). Any ship larger than that is probably overbuilt for today's realities or at least for the Canal.

It is interesting that every ship passage requires 52 million gallons of fresh water per transit. I didn't catch how that volume impacts the fresh water needs of Panama's population and economy, but if impact on Panama's potable water needs is the major issue, perhaps desalination plants could mitigate those impacts more cost-effectively?