To be or not

 Covid, Ukraine, Inflation, Immigration, Roe v Wade -- If Joe had his choice he likely would have picked some other time to be President.

CNN

One choice he is facing now is whether to continue onto a second term.  In spite of the likelihood the same problems and more will be with us a couple years down the road, there is no shortage of candidates to step into Joe's shoes.

Bernie has already said he was interested in the job if Joe jumps ship.

Warren is keeping herself in the news with spirited statements on the the big issues going into the mid-terms.

Believe it or Not, Hillary is still around.  She did a PBS interview recently, supposedly to promote a women's leadership group, but her comments on foreign policy issues sounded like campaigning.

Was it fourteen others on the stage with Joe during the run-up to the election?  We'll likely hear more from most of them, and probably some others as well.

Then and Now

 I am reading a book about Franco's postwar Spain, Entre Visillos, by Carmen Martín Gaite.  The plot revolves around several families whose daughters face a future in which marriage and domestic subservience were seen as the only acceptable choices. Of course, there are always rebels and many of them came from the families of the rightist winners of Spain's civil war. Franco's dictatorship did last a very long time, but fascist rigidity and suppression of opposing ideas could not ultimately prevail given the liberal gains in much of the rest of  Europe, along with the encouragement supplied by courageous feminist writers like Martín Gaite and Carmen Laforet.  It seems worth bearing in mind now that such repressive, regressive regimes always do nurture the seeds of their own destruction.

Mother's Day

 In almost every presidential election I can recall the country would have been better off seating the wife rather than the guy elected.

Jill Biden greets Olena Zelenskiy, Ukrain’s first lady, outside of School 6, in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, on Sunday. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

Real World Consequences

 The U.S.A. with its infinite delusion of superiority has seldom been able to take advantage of the hard-won lessons learned by others outside its borders.  A good opportunity, also about to be overlooked, is provided by a recent article in The New York Review of Books about the experience of Ireland in dealing with the consequences of abortion restrictions.

Universal Soldier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYEsFQ_gt7c

The War Racket

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzG_4e8yGew

In case there is any doubt...

 I cited Varoufakis and Buffy Sainte-Marie in the previous post because I think they have realistic views on the conflict in Ukraine.  I don't believe there can be a winner in the war.  The Ukrainian forces may hold off the overland advance of the Russians for a time, but there is no way they can stop the rain of missiles from over the borders.  The massive barrage against the Russian forces enabled by the U.S. is landing on the territory of Ukraine.  The Russians will likely occupy large portions of the country, but they will earn the unending hate of the populace.