From JC

The New York Post ran a story yesterday headlined, “MTG lashes out after Ukraine aid bill passes, demands Speaker Mike Johnson’s resignation: ‘Complete betrayal’.”

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This weekend, Speaker Mike Johnson delivered a Masterclass on how to burn a budding political career to the ground in only 72 hours. The word “rage” barely describes how the Republican base feels about Johnson’s U-turn on Ukraine aid, which was approved on Saturday in the House with 100% democrat support, and will be approved tomorrow in the democrat-controlled Senate. Then it will be signed into law ten seconds later by a very lifelike, rubber-coated, Joe Biden animatronic robot with the extra mumbling package.

Yesterday, irate Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), vowed on Fox News Sunday that “Mike Johnson’s speakership is over.” She is correct. Absent a miracle, sooner or later, Johnson is finished. Democrats might help Johnson cling on to the Speakership for a while pursuant to some hideous backroom political scheme, which will only make Johnson look even more corrupt. But the Johnson clock is ticking.

Inexplicably, President Trump has failed to mention Speaker Johnson at all in his most recent Truth Social posts, even ones about Ukraine aid. Instead, he’s complained only about the U.S. having to shoulder the whole burden — and oddly recently remarked that “everyone agrees … Ukrainian survival is … important to us”:

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Prior to this post, Trump has consistently and opposed Ukraine aid, and usually in capital letters. It’s a mystery what turned Trump around. Could it have had something to do with Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron’s personal visit to Mar-a-Lago last week? After all, Trump’s most popular book is titled “The Art of the Deal.” Now, I’m sure it didn’t probably happen this way, but the timing is highly suggestive, and it’s still a fun thought experiment: what could Cameron have possibly offered Trump to get him (and Speaker Johnson by proxy) on board for more Ukraine support?

Like wretched fentanyl junkies swaying incoherently on the streets of Philadelphia, America sways in the grip of a Ukraine addiction. Or more accurately, America’s security state sways incoherently under its Ukraine addiction. Over the weekend, watching the unfolding drama in the House of Representatives, foreign commenters observed that Ukraine appears to be the Biden Administration’s most important political issue.

Ukraine, which first burst onto the national scene after Trump requested an investigation and got impeached for his trouble, does seem to be driving everything else right now.

?? Unlike the rest of us, Russia appeared utterly unfazed by the news of the approved Ukraine aid package. Business Insider ran a narrative-crafting story yesterday headlined, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signals Putin’s plan to seize Kharkiv and create a ‘sanitary zone’. The way you know corporate media journalists are lying is because their digital lips are moving.

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Kharkiv oil refinery goes up in fiery smoke
As the headline stated, with 1.5 million residents, Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second-largest city, after its capital Kiev. Unlike Kiev, Kharkiv is home to mostly Russian-speaking citizens. Business Insider’s article was partially consistent with the warbloggers, who all reported Russia accelerated attacks in multiple areas along the eastern front, including the invasion-preparing infrastructure attacks on Kharkiv, which is Ukraine’s version of Chicago or Detroit:

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Until just recently, most of the discussion around a potential attack on Kharkiv focused on the question of whether Ukraine could possibly survive as an independent country without the city — a city you probably never heard of. If Kiev is the country’s head, Kharkiv is the arms and legs of Ukraine’s manufacturing industry. Ukraine can survive the loss of Kharkiv, but only as a quadriplegic.

Here’s Business Insider’s big lie, using another one of the media’s favorite narrative tricks:

Putin has wanted to take Kharkiv since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The lie they want us to believe is that the Kharkiv siege is nothing new, and therefore insignificant. In fact, Ukraine has courageously stopped Russia from collecting the city for years! But read skeptically. First, if Kharkiv is in fact the plum of Putin’s eye, and always has been, why are we only hearing about it now? Second, Business Insider’s claim that Putin always wanted Kharkiv was an unsourced assertion. The source for that outsized claim was only BI’s reporter.

Russia has surely followed the U.S. debate over Ukraine aid more closely than anyone. I’m no military strategist, but it isn’t hard to imagine that Russia will now push even harder to quickly maximize its gains before new weapons arrive. The doomed Ukrainians will be the collateral damage of America’s Ukraine addiction.