In the United States, one guy – ONE GUY – has hijacked our foreign policy. By holding up a simple vote for Ukraine, Mike Johnson is causing profound suffering and death in Ukraine, single-handily destabilizing Europe, and causing our allies to wonder where we have lost our way.
There are many theories why Johnson is doing this (and none of them reflect humanity’s interests). Our official corporate analysis indicates that as an annoying incel youth, Johnson received wedgies on an almost daily basis, causing a massive inferiority complex and desire to be a BMOC.
A Little Background: International Support for Ukraine
Charts / data from Statista.com; data collated by WLBOTT research assistant Wanda June Spiritmoon.
First, let’s look at the per-capita support for Ukraine, by country (link).
Military Spending
Let’s Look at Estonia
I don’t think we’re going out on a limb by saying that Estonia really, really hates Russia. And why would that be? Perhaps almost half a century of brutal occupation.
The Russian-dominated occupation authorities under the Soviet Union began Russification, with hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians and other “Soviet people” being induced to settle in occupied Estonia, in a process which eventually threatened to turn indigenous Estonians into a minority in their own native land. In 1945 Estonians formed 97% of the population, but by 1989 their share of the population had fallen to 62%.
By March 1949, 60,000 people were deported from Estonia and 50,000 from Latvia to the gulag system in Siberia, where death rates were 30%.
Estonia was quite closed until the second half of the 1960s, when gradually Estonians began to covertly watch Finnish television in the northern parts of the country, thus getting a better picture of the way of life behind the Iron Curtain.
Since regaining independence in 1991, Estonian foreign policy has been aligned with other Western democracies, and in 2004 Estonia joined both the European Union and NATO.On 9 December 2010, Estonia became a member of OECD. On 1 January 2011, Estonia joined the eurozone and adopted the euro, the single currency of EU. Estonia was a member of the UN Security Council from 2020 to 2021.
Estonia has pursued the development of the e-government, with 99 percent of the public services being available on the web 24 hours a day. In 2005, Estonia became the first country in the world to introduce nationwide binding Internet voting in local elections of 2005. In the 2023 parliamentary elections 51% of the total votes were cast over the internet, becoming the first time when more than half of votes were cast online.
Wikipedia
Some quick stats. Estonia sounds like a fascinating country, and WLBOTT hopes to virtually visit soon.
“Human settlement in Estonia became possible 13,000–11,000 years ago, when the ice from the last glacial era melted. The oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, on the banks of Pärnu river in southwest Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating, it was settled around 11,000 years ago.” – Wikipedia
By NuclearVacuum – This W3C-unspecified vector image was created with Inkscape ., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8105117
By Jaan Künnap – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81077192
By Ireen Trummer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18000554
Unfavorable View of Russia
Estonia, may we join your club?
Across 24 countries surveyed, views of Russia are overwhelmingly negative, with a median of 82% saying they have an unfavorable opinion of the country, compared with 15% who say they have a favorable view.
Pew Research Center
Semi-Sequitur: Wikipedia and Russian Trolls
There’s a Wikipedia page dedicated to “analyzing” anti-Russian sentiment. What a troll-fest. “Why’s everybody always picking on me?” “Not fair! Not fair!” “What have done to deserve this?”
A more meaningful Wikipedia discussion can be found here: Disinformation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Back to Twerps and Wedgies
Sometimes I have to wonder who’s running this country. Our country is in complete gridlock because of one deranged man. Foreign leaders are forced to meet with, essentially, a non-government official, a rapist, a thief, a foreign agent, a con man, a liar (all rolled into one lardish package), to try and convince him of the most obvious foreign policy decision. But tRump is not interested. He wants to burn it all down, thinking this will give him the best position for winning in the fall.
David Cameron’s attempt to persuade Donald Trump to permit the US Congress to push through $60bn in military aid for Ukraine appears to have failed, after the British foreign secretary was not even granted a meeting with the congressional speaker, Mike Johnson, who could in theory put the package to a vote.
He insisted the American aid package worth $60bn was great value for money since for about 5% of the US defence budget, almost half of Russians pre war military equipment has been destroyed without the loss for single American life.
The Guardian
Let’s let this sink in. The United States Speaker of the House refused to meet with the British Foreign Secretary. About a vital defense matter. This little twerp is destroying our relationship with our dearest allies. And for what? Does he want to be tRump’s VP pick? I just hope Twerp Johnson’s meet-n-greet with St. Peter at the Golden Gates is a pay-per-view event. Should be interesting.
And the ever classy MTG had this to say to Mr. Cameron:
The Japanese Prime Minister Addresses Congress
The full video of Prime Minster Kishida’s speech to the joint session of congress can be found here. He was visiting to tell the US to step up.
Japanese PM Fumio Kishida addresses U.S. ‘self-doubt’ about world role in remarks to Congress
Republicans, especially those in the House, have resisted providing foreign aid to places under threat, including Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
NBC News
Back to Mr. Mike
As part of his ongoing desensitization treatment, Speaker Johnson’s therapist has encouraged him to address his colleagues with his underwear on his head.
The Wedgie: A Scholarly Analysis
A wedgie is the act of forcibly pulling a person’s underpants upwards from the back. The act is often performed as a school prank or a form of bullying.
Wedgies are commonly featured in popular works, either as a form of low comedy or as a behaviour representative of bullying. In such works, briefs are usually the type of underpants that are worn by the victim.
Variations
As a prank or form of bullying, there are a number of variants to the normal, or traditional wedgie. It is impractical to list every variant, as the names and processes can be rather subjective; however, there are a few better-known variants of the wedgie.
Wikipedia
- The melvin is a variant where the victim’s underpants are pulled up from the front, to cause injury, or, at least, severe pain to the victim’s genitals.
- The atomic wedgie entails hoisting the waistband of the receiver’s underwear up and over their head. [ed. note: also known as the “covered wagon”]
- The hanging wedgie is a variant in which the victim is hung by their underpants, elevated above the ground.
- The ripping wedgie involves the tearing of the victim’s underpants, sometimes ripping off a portion (such as the waistband) of them, or forcibly removing the garment entirely.
Introducing Research Assistant Wanda June Spiritmoon
Our newest member of WLBOTT, Wanda June Spiritmoon is our research assistant. Her hobbies include wiccan pot-lucks, scolding girl scouts, high pressure plumbing, open mic night at the local comedy club, and collecting non-functional (decorative) clarinets.
Reference: HCR’s Reflection on Prime Minster Kishida’s Visit
In yesterday’s column, Heather Cox Richardson reflects on Prime Minster Kishida‘s visit, and the near-despair other countries are experiencing due to America’s in-fighting and pettiness. We’ve archived HRC’s post below.
Heather Cox Richardson
When Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida addressed a joint meeting of Congress today, he tried to remind lawmakers of who Americans are. “The U.S. shaped the international order in the postwar world through economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power,” he reminded them. “It championed freedom and democracy. It encouraged the stability and prosperity of nations, including Japan. And, when necessary, it made noble sacrifices to fulfill its commitment to a better world.”
He explained the bigger picture. “The United States policy was based on the premise that humanity does not want to live oppressed by an authoritarian state, where you are tracked and surveilled and denied from expressing what is in your heart and on your mind,” he said. “You believed that freedom is the oxygen of humanity.”
Keenly aware that MAGA Republicans have rejected the nation’s role in protecting freedom and democracy and are standing between Ukraine and U.S. aid, Kishida said: “The world needs the United States to continue playing this pivotal role in the affairs of nations.”
“Freedom and democracy are currently under threat around the globe,” he said. “Climate change has caused natural disasters, poverty, and displacement on a global scale. In the COVID-19 pandemic, all humanity suffered. Rapid advances in AI technology have resulted in a battle over the soul of AI that is raging between its promise and its perils. The balance of economic power is shifting. The Global South plays a greater role in responding to challenges and opportunities and calls for a larger voice…. China’s current external stance and military actions present an unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge, not only to the peace and security of Japan but to the peace and stability of the international community at large.”
In the midst of all this dramatic change, Kishida said, “the leadership of the United States is indispensable. Without U.S. support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow?” he asked. “Without the presence of the United States, how long before the Indo-Pacific would face even harsher realities?”
He noted that Japan has pledged $12 billion to Ukraine and “will continue to stand with” the vulnerable country. In this fraught hour, he said, “[t]he democratic nations of the world must have all hands on deck. I am here to say that Japan is already standing shoulder to shoulder with the United States. You are not alone. We are with you.”
As Kishida gently warned lawmakers that the United States is abdicating its role in world affairs by its apparent abandonment of Ukraine, Russian forces last night destroyed the largest power plant in the Kyiv region. U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget A. Brink reported that “Russia last night launched more than 40 drones and 40 missiles into Ukraine…. The situation in Ukraine is dire; there is not a moment to lose,” she wrote.
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) surely knows the situation in Ukraine is dire; he has held up U.S. aid for six months. The Senate passed a national security supplemental bill that would provide aid to Ukraine back in February, but while Johnson has said he would bring the supplemental bill to the House floor, where it will certainly pass, somehow it has never been the right time.
American refusal to support Ukraine is causing global concern. When British foreign secretary David Cameron came to the U.S. this week, he not only met with lawmakers and State Department officials, but also traveled to Florida to meet with former president Trump at Mar-a-Lago in hopes of persuading him to support additional U.S. military aid to Ukraine. That Johnson refused to meet with Cameron when he returned to Washington, D.C., the next day suggests that Cameron’s effort achieved little.
Johnson is facing pressure from extremists in his conference like Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene who oppose aid to Ukraine and who are threatening to challenge his speakership if he brings the bill to the floor of the House. Those extremists fired another shot across his bow today when they blocked a law to extend a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after Trump urged them to kill it.
When the measure failed, security expert and former Trump administration official Miles Taylor wrote: “The House’s failure to renew FISA is *BAD.* If these powers lapse, it would be like blind-folding U.S. spies and tying their hands behind their backs as they try to protect Americans from China, Russia, terror groups & beyond. Get it together, Congress.”
To enable Johnson to ignore the extremists if it means getting aid to Ukraine, Democrats have thrown Johnson a lifeline, if only he will use it. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) suggested today that Democrats would vote against a challenge to Johnson’s speakership, keeping him in place. Jeffries said: “If the speaker were to do the right thing and allow the House to work its will with an up or down vote on the national security bill, then I believe there are a reasonable number of Democrats [who] would not want to see the speaker fall as a result of doing the right thing.”
But instead of actually doing the people’s business and passing a measure the White House, Pentagon, and a majority of Congress think is vital to our national security, MAGA Republicans appear to be consumed by the effort to get Trump back into the presidency.
Today the House Rules Committee got a new chair as Michael Burgess (R-TX) took the reins from Tom Cole (R-OK). Burgess will oversee his first hearing on Monday as the committee meets to examine six bills that appear to be designed to feed the Republicans’ culture wars by denying the secretary of energy’s power to establish new energy conservation standards. Those bills are the “Hands Off Our Home Appliances Act,” the “Liberty in Laundry Act,” the “Clothes Dryers Reliability Act,” the “Refrigerator Freedom Act,” the “Affordable Air Conditioning Act,” and the “Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act.”
Johnson is also in on the act. He is scheduled to visit Mar-a-Lago tomorrow to promote a bill to prevent noncitizens from voting. This is purely political theater: it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. Trump seems eager to push the idea of “election integrity” to bolster his lie that the 2020 election was stolen and the 2024 election will be too, evidently trying to chum up distrust of American elections.
Under its new co-chairs, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Trump loyalist Michael Whatley, the Republican National Committee last week sent out a robocall to voters’ phones saying that Democrats committed “massive fraud” in the 2020 presidential election and that “If Democrats have their way, your vote could be canceled out by someone who isn’t even an American citizen.” This is a straight-up lie, of course—Trump and his loyalists have never produced any evidence for their accusations and lost more than 60 court cases over it—but Trump clearly intends to make it a centerpiece of his campaign.
While Republicans are pushing the Big Lie, in The Bulwark today, conservative commentator Mona Charen noted that Ukraine president Volodomyr Zelensky this week warned the U.S. that Ukraine will lose the war against Russia’s aggression if it does not get U.S. aid.
“Putin seems to have pulled off the most successful foreign influence operation in American history,” Charen wrote. “If Trump were being blackmailed by Putin it’s hard to imagine how he would behave any differently. And though it started with Trump, it has not ended there. Putin now wields more power over the [Republicans] than anyone other than Trump…. [T]hey mouth Russian disinformation without shame. Putin,” she said, “must be pinching himself.”
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One reply on “Twerps and the Future of the World”
It really is a shame that the American version of democracy has been such a failure. I guess it is time to admit that it is not a nation where all men are created equal and corporate interests far outweigh concerns for the actual citizens.
The world will be a much uglier place when he-who-must-not-be-named wins the next election. I predict another (un)civil war.