Teddy Roosevelt was a bad-ass’s badass. On October 14, 1912, he was shot in the chest and still managed to deliver a campaign speech to a waiting audience.

Before he began his speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium, he asked the audience to please be quiet; then, he dropped a bombshell on them.

“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”

He unbuttoned his vest to reveal a blood-soaked shirt and said:

“It takes more than that to k**l a bull moose.” (Bull Moose was the name he gave to his newly formed political party)

Not surprisingly, some in the audience gasped.

He continued to pull out the fifty-page speech he had stuffed in his breast pocket. The speech absorbed much of the bullet's energy; had it not been there, Roosevelt would have likely been k**led.

Roosevelt’s eyeglass case took a good bit of the impact as well.

Explaining to his audience what happened, Roosevelt continued:

“Fortunately, I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”

Roosevelt then spoke for 90 full minutes, and only when he was done with his speech did he allowed himself to be taken to the hospital for treatment.

The shooting occurred earlier as Roosevelt entered his car in front of his hotel. He stood up in the convertible and waved his hat to the crowd. As he did this, a would-be assassin fired a shot from a Colt revolver at a distance of five feet.

Roosevelt’s stenographer grabbed the shooter by the arm and preventing him from getting off a second shot. The angered crowd began punching and kicking the man, and many shouted, “K**l him!”.

TR emplored the crowd: “Don’t hurt him. Bring him here; I want to see him.”

The crowd complied.

President Roosevelt asked the shooter directly, “What did you do it for?”. The man said nothing. Having no time for this, Roosevelt next said, “Oh, what’s the use? Turn him over to the police”.

The former President patted down his large overcoat and found a dime-sized hole where the bullet had entered. He then coughed forcefully into his hand to see if there was any blood present.

There was not.

Understandably, Roosevelt’s doctor told the driver to immediately take the president to the hospital, but TR gave him different orders.

He said, “You’ve got to get me to that speech.”

The rest is history.

Vladimir Putin is a bad guy. He is an enemy of democracy — not just in Russia but also abroad. He despises a free press and has journalists k**led. He has used his position of power to enrich himself and, under his authoritarian rule, Russia has been a destabilizing force in the world. Finally, he seems to be pursuing a vision of reassembling the pieces of the former Soviet Union and restoring it to its place among global superpowers.

In short, he doesn’t sound like the kind of guy you would want around… and certainly not leading a country with a massive nuclear arsenal, right? Right???

Well, actually, that does not seem to be entirely true. For many elites, from politicians in Washington to film studio executives in Hollywood — as well as every defense contractor in between — Putin’s Russia, just like the Soviet Union before it, has been a virtual gold mine.

For 75 years, Russia has been a convenient villain, always available for justifying bloated defense budgets, smearing political opponents as “c*******ts,” and making movies featuring bad guys with bad accents who would not offend any any paying audiences (or those financing these films, such as China or Saudi Arabia).

As a result, it’s hardly surprising that little effort has been made to turn Russia into a more productive member of the global community in the three decades since the Soviet Union was dissolved… and we have all been paying the price since then.

Don’t take it from us. Testifying before Congress in 2003, Michael McFaul, who would later go on to become US ambassador to Russia, said:

If Russia consolidates a liberal democracy at home, then I have no doubt that Russia will develop into a reliable and lasting ally of the United States in world affairs. If Russia fails to consolidate liberal democracy at home, then Russia may still be a cooperative partner of the United States occasionally and sporadically, but always with conflicts. If Russia lapses back into dictatorship, U.S.-Russian relations will become strained, competitive, and possibly even confrontational again as they were for most of the twentieth century.

And here we are… in part because Russia has been more valuable as an enemy than an ally.

Victory Day military parade, Moscow, 2021
Victory Day military parade marking the 76th anniversary of the victory over N**i Germany in World War II, in Moscow’s Red Square on May 9, 2021. Photo credit: © Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS via ZUMA Press

Granted, there is no guarantee that a campaign to integrate Russia into a Western-liberal world order would have been successful. In fact, there are reasons to believe that it would not have been a full success. For example, other former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact nations continue to struggle with democracy — even those like Poland and Hungary that became part of the European Union.

In addition, it was probably a traumatizing experience for Russia, a country with a long tradition of fervent patriotism, to go from superpower to a “has-been” (albeit one with lots of nuclear weapons and substantial f****l f**l reserves). It is very possible that this shared sentiment would have stood in the way of a “westernization.”

Great Britain, for example, still has not come to terms with t***sitioning from “The Empire” to a European regional power, which partially explains its recent Brexit. The country never fully learned to be part of the team that it was used to dominating for centuries.

Still, in the case of Russia, even some integration would have been better than none. There are a few recent examples proving this can work.

Although it was an expensive and massive undertaking, Germany went from supervillain to democracy in four years. It took slightly longer (seven years) for Japan to hold its first post-occupation e******ns.

Since then, even though they had committed some of the worst atrocities in history during World War II, these two countries have become stable democracies and engines of global economic growth.

Of course, both unconditionally surrendered to triumphant adversaries and underwent years-long occupations, while the Soviet Union just fell apart. Yet, it’s conceivable that offering economic incentives in exchange for Russia’s surrendering its nuclear arsenal and initiating pro-democracy reforms could have worked.

Germany, by the way, is not only the poster child of how to reintegrate a country into the global community but also, in an earlier era, offered a cautionary example of what not to do.

After World War I, an extremely nationalistic Germany was forced to give up territory and pay crippling restitutions. Fifteen years later, after briefly dabbling in democracy, Germany fell under the spell of Adolf Hitler, who seized power by playing the victim and promising to return Germany to its previous greatness. Shortly thereafter, the Third Reich began reclaiming the territories it had lost and, ultimately, plunged the world into an even worse war.

Hitler, Prague Castle, 1939
Hitler on his visit to Prague Castle after the establishment of the German protectorate on March 16, 1939. Photo credit: Mirmircze / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

If you compare Russia’s situation to the two German experiments, it’s pretty clear that it is a lot more like the one that failed and produced another world war: Financially crippled by the Cold War, Russia ceded territory, and its national p***e took a severe beating.

In addition, NATO quickly expanded to its doorstep by accepting several former Warsaw Pact nations in what many viewed as a rush to action that alienated Moscow.

Out of the resulting chaos and a brief flirt with something resembling democracy, a strongman emerged who has played the victim, promised to make things better, and tried to claw back some of the territory that was lost.

Again, this is not meant to be a defense of what Putin’s Russia has done or is doing. But maybe it didn’t have to be this way. It is at least possible that, in part, he is playing the role that the US wanted him to play because the hawks in Washington needed a villain after the Cold War had come to an end.

And that brings us to the present day and Russia’s looming attack on Ukraine. It is quite clear that Europe and the US can’t really do anything to stop the invasion. Militarily, this would be too costly because, while it has fallen behind in other areas, Russia still possesses the armed forces of a superpower.

Sanctions also won’t work… at least not well enough. On the one hand, Europe is too dependent on Russian energy, and on the other, Putin has been “sanction-proofing” his economy for years.

The only thing that gives authoritarian rulers like him pause is an uprising from within — for example, if the Russian population were to turn on his regime for expending the blood of Russian soldiers on an unpopular military adventure. Keep in mind that the bar for getting (and sustaining) public support for a war is quite high.

Just look at recent examples from US history: It took the attack on Pearl Harbor to draw the US into an ongoing global conflict. In Vietnam, things gradually escalated until public sentiment turned sharply against the war and forced the US to withdraw. 9/11 was enough to trigger the attack on Afghanistan, but it took a campaign of lies to get the public on board with the invasion of Iraq.

At the same time, the West is making things much easier for Putin in this regard. It’s not just the bellicose rhetoric from leaders like Boris Johnson (which stands in stark contrast to that of Ukrainian officials), but also how Russia is always portrayed as the villain in American popular culture. For somebody who controls the media, as Putin does, it is very easy to spin all of this to make it look as though Russia is simply responding to Western aggression.

This strategy clearly works: In a recent poll, only 4 percent of Russians said their country is to blame for the escalating tensions in Ukraine.

However, in spite of that reality-defying figure, most Russians do not believe that there will be a war. To stop one from breaking out, the West’s strategy should be to win the hearts and minds of these Russians instead of vilifying them.

R********ns | Full Measure

Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson
51.4K subscribers

Today we begin with an examination of the movement to provide r********ns to b***k A******ns over their ancestor’s s***e status. Demands are growing. It’s raising difficult questions about a dark side of America’s past and whether— going on two centuries later— people who never met a s***e should be paid by people who never owned any. And if so— how much is enough to atone for the unthinkable?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVAoctIcVVY

B***k A******ns whose ancestors were brought here as s***es should thank their lucky stars that they live in this country........... they are welcome to leave and go back to Africa at any time they want!!!

Palm Beach Daily News
Paul Krugman
Sun, January 30, 2022, 5:01 AM

Americans like to think of their nation as a beacon of freedom. And despite all the ways in which we have failed to live up to our self-image, above all the vast injustices that sprang from the original sin of s***ery, freedom — not just free e******ns, but also freedom of speech and thought — has long been a key element of the American idea.

Now, however, freedom is under attack, on more fronts than many people realize. Everyone knows about the Big Lie, the refusal by a large majority of Republicans to accept the legitimacy of a lost e******n. But there are many other areas in which freedom is not just under assault but in retreat.

Let’s talk, in particular, about the attack on education, especially but not only in Florida, which has become one of America’s leading laboratories of democratic erosion.

Republicans have made considerable political hay by denouncing the teaching of critical race theory; this strategy has succeeded even though most v**ers have no idea what that theory is and it isn’t actually being taught in public schools. But the facts in this case don’t matter, because denunciations of CRT are basically a cover for a much bigger agenda: an attempt to stop schools from teaching anything that makes right-wingers uncomfortable.

I use that last word advisedly: There’s a bill advancing in the Florida Senate declaring that an individual “should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.” That is, the criterion for what can be taught isn’t “Is it true? Is it supported by the scholarly consensus?” but rather “Does it make certain constituencies uncomfortable?”

Anyone tempted to place an innocuous interpretation on this provision — maybe it’s just about not assigning collective guilt? — should read the text of the bill. Among other things, it cites as its two prime examples of things that must not happen in schools “denial or minimization of the Holocaust, and the teaching of critical race theory” — because suggesting that “r****m is embedded in American society” (the bill’s definition of the theory) is just the same as denying that Hitler k**led 6 million Jews.

What’s really striking, however, is the idea that schools should be prohibited from teaching anything that causes “discomfort” among students and their parents. If you imagine that the effects of applying this principle would be limited to teaching about race relations, you’re being utterly naïve.

For one thing, r****m is far from being the only disturbing topic in American history. I’m sure that some students will find that the story of how we came to invade Iraq — or for that matter how we got involved in Vietnam — makes them uncomfortable. Ban those topics from the curriculum!

Then there’s the teaching of science. Most high schools do teach the theory of evolution, but leading Republican politicians are either evasive or actively deny the scientific consensus, presumably reflecting the GOP base’s discomfort with the concept. Once the Florida standard takes hold, how long will teaching of evolution survive?

Geology, by the way, has the same problem. I have been on nature tours where the guides refuse to talk about the origins of rock formations, saying that they have had problems with some religious guests.

Oh, and given the growing importance of anti-v******tion posturing as a badge of conservative allegiance, how long before basic epidemiology — maybe even the germ theory of disease — gets the critical race theory treatment?

And then there’s economics, which these days is widely taught at the high school level. (Full disclosure: Many high schools use an adapted version of the principles text I co-author.) Given the long history of politically driven attempts to prevent the teaching of Keynesian economics, what do you think the Florida standard would do to teaching in my home field?

The point is that the smear campaign against critical race theory is almost certainly the start of an attempt to subject education in general to rule by the right-wing thought police, which will have dire effects far beyond the specific topic of r****m.

And who will enforce the rules? State-sponsored vigilantes! Last month Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, proposed a “Stop Woke Act” that would empower parents to sue school districts they claim teach critical race theory — and collect lawyer fees, a setup modeled on the bounties under Texas’ new anti-a******n law. Even the prospect of such lawsuits would have a chilling effect on teaching.

Did I mention that DeSantis also wants to create a special police force to investigate e******n f***d? Like the attacks on critical race theory, this is obviously an attempt to use a made-up issue — v***r f***d is largely nonexistent — as an excuse for intimidation.

OK, I’m sure that some people will say that I’m making too much of these issues. But ask yourself: Has there been any point over, say, the past five years when warnings about right-wing extremism have proved overblown and those dismissing those warnings as “alarmist” have been right?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/attack-wing-thought-police-120108975.html