More Saturday Male Beauty

 

Republicans' "Russian Intelligence Op” Flops on Capitol Hill

Large portions of congressional Republicans and, of course Donald Trump, who is seemingly a Russian asset, have become the party of Vladimir Putin and will do anything to further Putin's agenda as channeled through Trump.  Most notably, there is their refusal to pass bills providing more funding to Ukraine and their effort to impeach Joe Biden as desired by Trump - and one can assume Putin - to enhance Trump's electoral chances in November.  After this week's arrest of the House GOP's star witness in the fabricated Biden impeachment inquiry, it now is clear that for some of these Republicans they are willing to use Russian intelligence fabricated lies. Moreover, to save face, they refuse to admit they were played for utter fools by a liar of almost Trumpian proportions and his Russian puppeteers.  Clearly, the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan is dead and gone.  A piece in the New Yorker looks at the GOP fiasco that in a sane political party would immediately end the impeachment inquiry demanded by Der Trumpenfuhrer.  Here are article excerpts that look at the farce which were the consequences not so dangerous would almost be comical:

On Tuesday evening, federal prosecutors filed a court document that, in a couple dozen bizarre and ultimately explosive pages, effectively put an end to one of Donald Trump’s great election-year hopes—the impeachment of President Joe Biden. The filing revealed that Alexander Smirnov, a longtime F.B.I. informant who told investigators that Biden and his son Hunter had each received a five-million-dollar bribe from a Ukrainian energy company, had not only invented that claim but had also admitted to passing along bad information about the Bidens from “officials associated with Russian intelligence.”

Smirnov first relayed the sensational and very much unconfirmed bribery claim in a 2020 interview with the F.B.I. This past summer, Republicans pursuing the President released a redacted version of the F.B.I. report that included Smirnov’s allegation. It was their smoking gun, their white whale—the only concrete example they had managed to turn up with a specific person attesting to an actual criminal act on the part of the President. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and Trump confidant, mentioned the alleged Biden bribe in eighty-five segments in 2023, according to the watchdog Media Matters.

On the evening when Senator Chuck Grassley made Smirnov’s now debunked claim public, Hannity somberly told his viewers that Biden had been “very credibly accused of public corruption on a scale this country has never seen before.”

For months afterward, House investigators tried to find evidence of the alleged bribe in Biden’s finances. They couldn’t, of course. As we now know, it didn’t exist.

But the dream dies hard. In December, on a party-line vote, Republicans chose to go ahead with a formal impeachment investigation of Biden anyway. In the days since Smirnov’s arrest on charges of lying to the government, House G.O.P. leaders have deflected, filibustered, and otherwise obfuscated about the whole affair. It “doesn’t change the fundamental facts,” Representative Jim Jordan insisted to astonished reporters. But the embarrassing new reality is the opposite: the F.B.I.’s trusted informant appears instead to have been an inveterate liar who successfully injected Russian lies about the President of the United States into a partisan election-year impeachment inquiry.

As if that weren’t alarming enough, the government’s court filing also included the following warning: Smirnov, it said, “is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November.” Cue the flashbacks. It’s Russia, Russia, Russia all over again.

It was perhaps no surprise that the House Republicans’ fever dream of impeachment would evaporate. Their revenge play on behalf of the twice-impeached ex-President always seemed more about payback and partisan politics than anything else. Since taking back the House and launching their probe of Biden last year, they have publicly struggled to find any crime—never mind the requisite high crimes and misdemeanors—to fit the preordained punishment.

But even the probe’s deepest skeptics could not have imagined this latest twist: a fake Ukrainian bribe, seemingly ordered up to fit the Republicans’ darkest fantasies of Biden, and passed along by a source who would eventually admit to spreading lies given to him by Russian spies.

There is much still to unravel about how this came to be. In the government’s court papers this week, Smirnov emerges as an almost comically obvious liar, telling multiple versions of his Biden bribery story, while bragging about contacts with various foreign intelligence services. How is it possible that this guy was an F.B.I. informant for more than a decade?

Apparently, a full vetting of Smirnov and his claims was demanded by [David] Weiss [the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden] only after congressional Republicans made them public—and, when Smirnov did give a formal interview to the F.B.I. in September, the result was not damning proof about Biden but Smirnov’s own arrest.

On the Hill, the sorry saga has not yet caused Republicans to formally abandon their inquiry. But, on Thursday morning, when I spoke with Jamie Raskin, who, as the lead Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has spent the past year trying to shut down the impeachment folly, he was feeling hopeful that it was now time to “fold up the circus tent” after the long-running “comedy of errors” had turned out to be “a big Russian intelligence op.”

“They seem to be acknowledging the political math is not there for them.” For vulnerable Republicans running for reëlection this fall in moderate districts, it could well be a “career-terminating event if they were to vote to impeach Biden on pure nonsense,” he pointed out.

Raskin readily admitted that some Republicans in Congress were likely to keep pressing the matter even after its source had been discredited—“like Confederate soldiers lost in the woods somewhere,” still fighting on long after the war was over. In the way of conspiracy theories, he fears that Smirnov’s takedown may soon end up being portrayed as just another deep-state plot to cover up Biden’s crimes. I suspect it will not be long before this prediction comes to pass. . . . The circus tent is not coming down; it has taken up permanent residence.

Saturday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Friday Male Beauty

 

The Family Foundation: A Continuing Blight on Virginia

During my over three decades of involvement in Virginia, one of the leading forces pushing anti-women, anti-LGBT, and racist policies has been and remains the so-called "family values" Christofascist organization, The Family Foundation ("TFF").  The goal of TFF - which has some of its antecedents in the "Massive Resistance" which closed Virginia public schools rather than desegregate - effort has been and remains to inflict its toxic, discriminatory, 12th century religious beliefs on all of Virginia (TFF President, Victoria Cobb is pictured at right). TFF was a major supporter of Glenn Youngkin who used "parents rights" to disingenuously cloak his far right social agenda during his gubernatorial campaign.  Thankfully, last year's Virginia  elections saw Republicans lose control of both houses of the General Assembly which has blocked TFF's and Youngkin's efforts to take Virginia back to the 1950's.  The reality is that both Youngkin and TFF support parental rights of only certain parents - namely right wing evangelicals/Christofascist parents - and care nothing about the views and desires of a majority of Virginians.   Besides being virulently anti-LGBT, supporting total bans on abortion, and opposing equal rights for women, TFF is an opponent of decriminalizing marijuana even though studies have shown that anti-marijuana laws have been used to disproportionately criminalize blacks.  A piece in RVA Magazine looks at TFF's ugly agenda.  Here are highlights:

The Family Foundation of Virginia is an evangelical Christian lobby group that finds itself perpetually taking a stand on unpopular issues. They continue their opposition to gay marriage despite a 2021 poll that shows that 71% of Virginians support gay marriage. The Family Foundation will never blink on their opposition to reproductive rights. 72% of Virginians say that they support either keeping Virginia abortion law as is or less restrictive according to a poll from 2023.

The Family Foundation has been around since 1985 and has 20 years of leadership from current president Victoria Cobb. Some Richmonders might remember they were denied service at Metzger’s in 2022. They are the most aggressive conservative lobbyists in Virginia’s General Assembly, even hosting the Virginia March For Life that has Glenn Youngkin and Winsome Sears as annual fixtures despite their main platforms polling in the 20s.

However, they found a way to combine two more unpopular platforms during their lobbying day for parental rights.

During their press conference, parental rights activist Ronda Williams of Newport News compared drug overdoses to exposure to “gender identity experimentation.” Victoria Cobb would clarify the position against the commercialization of marijuana, saying, “parents do not want to see pot shops on every corner.” While that may be true with the parents in the Family Foundation, polls offer a different perspective. A 2021 poll found that 68% of Virginians support legalizing marijuana in Virginia.

The Family Foundation thought that they could lean onto transphobia, but even that’s waning away. A 2023 poll found that only 30% approve of Youngkin’s handling of transgender issues, while 43% disapprove. It’s difficult to believe in the Family Foundation’s opposition to transgender athletes competing in women’s sports due to fairness for women when the organization still opposes the Equal Rights Amendment on their website.

While on the subject of parental rights, the Family Foundation may not believe that all parents have equal rights. Doug Bottoms spoke during the press conference about a transgender parent that read to the class during a Veteran’s Day event in a Fairfax school. Bottoms referred to the parent as “the transgender,” while disgusted that his child found out that transgender people exist in society. The hypocritical Family Foundation would not be opposed if a student learns about a man and his wife but is furious about proud parents that exist outside of conventional heterosexual marriages. This is much in line with Michael Knowles’ statement that “Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,” even if it destroys the parental rights of parents who are transgender.

The important thing to remember about the Family Foundation is that their organization is centered around the rejection of reality. Clamping down on their beliefs while most people are ready to leave behind the failed social restrictions that had been previously enforced by the government. The criminalization of marijuana has been responsible for the separation of many families, not due to the effects of the drug but because of law enforcement.

A study from 2021 shows that states that have decriminalized or legalized marijuana have seen a sharp decline in arrests that have disproportionately targeted Black Americans. The Family Foundation’s attempt to block marijuana legalization puts more families at risk of separation due to arrests.

Marijuana use has been decriminalized in Virginia, and studies show that it’s more commonly used among members of the LGBTQ community, especially bisexuals. Since being gay can’t be a crime, then perhaps they can lobby against activities of the LGBTQ community.

Meanwhile, the Democrat controlled General Assembly has passed bills that protect abortion rights and same sex marriage.  Hopefully, Youngkin does not veto them following orders from TFF.

Friday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Thursday Male Beauty

 

America Is Sleepwalking Toward A Theocracy

With things shaping up to be an existential choice between Joe Biden and the continuation of democracy and Donald Trump and the end of democracy and the rise of a dictatorship heavily infused with right wing theocracy, far too many Americans seemingly remain blind to the stark choice that will likely be before them and instead whine about Biden's age or various single issues and cannot see the forest for the trees.  If they are unhappy about aspects of Biden's presidency, they ought to be outright terrified at the prospect of what a second Trump regime would usher in, including the imposition of a white "Christian" nationalism that will pander to the racism and hatred of others that are the defining elements of today's Republican Party base.  Personally, I am at a loss as to how any one black, Hispanic, non-Christian, or LGBT can be flirting with either supporting Republicans - who frankly would like to see them exterminated or at best made into second or third class citizens - or sitting out the election like some petulant child. This blindness to reality threatens all who support democracy and freedom of religion for all, not solely for right wing Christians.  A column in the New York Times looks at the ongoing slide towards theocracy even as the more and more Americans have walked away from religion.  Here are highlights:

If you don’t think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you’re not paying attention.

The drumbeat of incidents moving us ever closer to the seemingly inescapable future is so steady and frequent that we’ve developed outrage fatigue — we’ve grown numb.

For instance, on Tuesday, the Alabama Supreme Court [pictured above] ruled that frozen embryos are children, and that destruction of those embryos, even by accident, is subject to the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. In his concurring opinion, the chief justice of the court, Tom Parker, wrote, “Even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

The ruling could mean less access to reproductive care in Alabama if specialists in the field of in vitro fertilization simply choose to practice in states that don’t threaten their efforts.

The idea is absurd and unscientific. It is instead tied to a religious crusade to downgrade the personhood of women by conferring personhood on frozen embryos.

I called Sean Tipton, the chief advocacy and policy officer at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, who told me: “One of the points in the abortion debate is, ‘Is it really about abortion or is it about controlling women and controlling sex?’ And this clearly exposes the idea that it’s not just about abortion.”

Control of women’s bodies is the endgame. And some religious conservatives won’t stop until that goal is achieved. For that reason, intervening victories — like the overturning of Roe v. Wade — will never be seen as enough; they will only intensify a blinding sense of righteousness.

There is an array of reproductive rights cases percolating around the country that could make their way to the Supreme Court — the same court that Donald Trump brags about transforming, having appointed a third of its justices. The legal and political battles over these issues are far from over, and the preservation of women’s remaining rights is far from certain.

The only thing that seems to be temporarily stopping congressional Republicans from pushing for a national abortion ban — after years of arguing that their goal was merely to allow individual states to make their own laws — is that the issue of reproductive choice is an electoral loser for their party.

Abortion is just one front on which this religious fight is being waged. As of last week, the A.C.L.U. was tracking 437 anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills being considered by state legislatures.

Then there’s the alarming effort by conservative groups to transform and reshape the federal government in ways that curtail American freedoms, but also, according to Politico, to bring Christian nationalist ideas into a second Trump administration.

To those advancing these ideas, the will of God counts more than the will of the American people, even when Americans object or disagree.

Reportedly, one idea among the various proposals is invoking the Insurrection Act on Trump’s first day back in office to facilitate deployment of the military against protesters.

We are perilously close to all this becoming a reality, potentially aided and abetted by disaffected Democratic voters.

I’m talking about many Democrats with single-issue objections to President Biden — whether it’s opposition to his position on the Israel-Hamas war, disappointments about the overall state of the economy or concerns about the president’s age — who haven’t committed to supporting his re-election, who don’t seem to see that in November the country faces one of the most existential electoral decisions it ever has faced.

If these Democrats decide to punish Biden by sitting it out, they could wind up performing one of the greatest acts of self-immolation in recent political history: abandoning an administration committed to the protection of democracy and possibly allowing the ascension of a theocracy intent on destroying the very freedoms that progressives cherish.

Thursday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Wednesday Male Beauty

 

Republicans' False "Pro-Life" Claims

I have long said that Republican office holders and the evangelical Christians whose bidding they do care nothing about children once they are born and that the at best their "pro-life" agenda in the last analysis is a form of fetus worship.   In fact, as a column in the Washington Post lays out, even that description of the "pro-life" movements agenda is too generous.   The reality is that other than seeking to ban abortion - and likely access to contraception as well - this movement supports all kinds of policies that harm unborn children and do nothing to provide for their long term health and well being.  In short, all of the bloviating about being "pro-life", including Trump's move towards supporting a national ban, is in many ways simply a lie - like so much of the agenda of today's Republican Party and its racist and grievance oriented base.  Being "pro-life" should mean much more than simply opposing abortion, yet in the GOP and among evangelicals and Christofascists  a look behind their actions tells the true story of their contempt for the unborn poor and poor children and their families in general.  Here are column excerpts: 

Conservative politicians are sometimes accused of being pro-life up until the point the baby is born. But perhaps even that assessment is too generous.

Unborn children are getting short shrift thanks to recent state and federal policy choices that have worsened access to prenatal care.

Take, for instance, a new Florida law championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) that forces hospitals that receive any Medicaid dollars to ask patients about their immigration status — even though undocumented women in the state are not on, and do not qualify for, Medicaid.

Predictably, the law has discouraged immigrants from accessing available care, including when pregnant. Providers and maternity-focused nonprofits in the state report that fewer immigrant women have shown up for medical checkups and prenatal care since the law went into effect last year. Some pregnant women have been reluctant to seek emergency care when in severe pain or facing complications for fear that their immigration status will be used against them, advocates report.

Many states are also purging their Medicaid rolls, leaving new moms and infants without access to care, often because of paperwork mix-ups. Last year, Texas erroneously disenrolled thousands of pregnant women, state whistleblowers claim.

Meanwhile, gridlock and obstructionism on Capitol Hill have taken a toll on the availability of critical maternal and fetal care.

Syphilis cases have soared in recent years, reaching their highest level since the 1950s. This has put both adults and their in-utero children at risk, as the disease can transfer from mother to baby through the placenta (known as congenital syphilis). The consequences for babies are severe: About 40 percent of babies born to women with untreated syphilis are stillborn or die as a newborn, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Others suffer from bone damage, anemia and nerve problems causing blindness or deafness, among other complications.

But the disease is easily treatable, assuming patients know they have it and receive care. So doctors have asked for more funding to support testing, tracking and treatment.

Alas, as part of last year’s debt limit showdown, Republicans pushed for, and Democrats ultimately capitulated to, large cuts to government spending, including to public health programs for sexually transmitted diseases. The actual funding levels have been in limbo, as Congress has been unable to pass a budget for the current fiscal year.

Legislative gridlock has also shortchanged the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known as WIC. Research has found that prenatal participation in WIC has led to better birth outcomes and fewer infant deaths. But with no budget agreement several months into the current fiscal year, WIC funding has stayed flat at last year’s level. This is inadequate to cover all eligible applicants this year given higher-than-expected participation rates and food costs.

While it is tempting to blame “Congress” for this outcome, the greater obstacle is House Republicans, who have explicitly tried to reduce WIC funding.

Finally, there’s the elephant in the room: the Dobbs decision, championed by conservatives, which has enabled abortion bans around the country. While these bans have forced more unintended pregnancies to be carried to term, they have also jeopardized wanted pregnancies — even those that might be considered less complicated.

That’s because experienced obstetricians are fleeing red states because of fears of legal liability and restrictions on their ability to provide needed care. States with abortion bans likewise saw the number of applicants for OB/GYN residencies drop more than 10 percent in 2023, the Association of American Medical Colleges reports.

“Fewer providers will mean less access to prenatal care, to say nothing of the restrictions those providers face when it comes to providing certain kinds of care,” said Dana Suskind, co-director of the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health.

[P]oliticians who call themselves pro-life should be passing more policies to support lives at all ages, including those in utero. Doing so would not only abide by their moralizing rhetoric; it would also support their stated concerns about budget deficits. Each dollar spent on prenatal nutrition and other maternal care offers a great return on investment by reducing spending on government services further down the line.

Something you’d never guess from any of their actual policy choices.

Sadly, all that matters to these people is harming those their political base deems as "other" and spending cuts to fund tax cuts for the very wealthy.  None of this is "pro-life."

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Monday Male Beauty

 

Super Bowl Ads Can't Hide the Hatred of the "Christian Right"

Having followed the so-called "Christian Right" for decades I learned long ago that the self-anointed leadership and their followers are "Christian" in name only and on rarely right on moral issues since their driving motivations are (i) hatred of others, and (ii) to achieve the latter, not lie or falsehood or cruelty towards others is too reprehensible.  All that matters is whether it furthers their agenda to inflict their beliefs and toxic views on sexuality and gender roles on all of society.  Under this mindset, the "end justifies justifies the means" and nothing is off the table regardless of its immorality.   In terms of blatancy of "Christian Right" lies, we saw this on display during the recent Super Bowl when two ads - costing $7 million each - sought to depict right wing Christians as loving and accepting when, of course  the exact opposite is the real world reality.  While all of the sources of the funding for the ads remains murky - likely by design - it is known that the Green family behind "Hobby Lobby" - a store that I have never darkened the door of - funded at part of the cost.  Hobby Lobby has a history of funding anti-gay hate groups and other religious extremist efforts, so these ads depicting Christians as "loving" could not be further from the actual behavior of the Greens and those like them who sanctimoniously wear religion on their sleeves while abusing and denigrating others.  A piece in Salon looks at this disingenuous hypocrisy.  Here are highlights:

Of the many weird, cringeworthy, or confusing ads to run in the Super Bowl on Sunday, one stood out as especially eyeroll-inducing: a footwashing ad from the "He Gets Us" campaign. The commercial flashed a series of images of people washing another person's feet, with most offering an attention-grabbing role reversal of oppressor and oppressed . . . . "Jesus didn't teach hate," reads the tagline as an INXS cover plays. "He washed feet." 

The funders of the ad were obscure to the audience, leaving open the question: Are the people behind this simply naive? Are they the last remaining liberal Christians, trying to convince Donald Trump-obsessed evangelicals to stop the tidal wave of hate? Or is this ad a bait-and-switch, trying to lure unchurched people in with a phony message of love and acceptance, only to push them into joining up with the MAGA movement?

There's no point in phony suspense here: It's option number three. Jesus may have been against lying, but his wealthiest self-appointed champions in American society do not hesitate to use deceit to build up their army of MAGA Christianity. 

As many journalists have carefully detailed, the "He Gets Us" campaign is funded in large part by the Green family, who owns Hobby Lobby. Their life mission, besides getting rich by selling cheap tchotchkes, is to push their brand of far-right Christianity on the country. The Green-funded group that ran the "He Gets Us" ads last year has funneled money into anti-LGBTQ hate groups and organizations opposing women's rights. The family has funded initiatives to put religious propaganda into public school classrooms, demanded the right to fire people for being gay, passed off forgeries as the "Dead Sea Scrolls," stole antiquities from Iraq, and, of course, refused to comply with COVID-19 pandemic restrictions for fear of losing profits.

Despite their opposition to birth control, however, Hobby Lobby isn't too keen on women who have babies, either. When a Hobby Lobby employee fell pregnant in 2010, she alleges she was fired for asking for time off to have the baby. Losing your job is the Christian "compassion" the people behind the Super Bowl ads have on offer. 

The Greens have been upfront about their donations to the "He Gets Us" campaign, but other donors remain anonymous. That's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the layers of deceit the campaign is using in order to lure unsuspecting people with the appealing but false promise of love and acceptance offered in the ads.

The sleaziness gets even worse if one goes to the "He Gets Us" website. On the FAQ sheet, they claim "Jesus loves gay people and Jesus loves trans people." . . . . In reality, as the anti-LGBTQ donation record suggests, this is that game right-wing Christians play where they say "loving" queer people means telling them they are sinners who need to give up their "lifestyle."

The site also offers a chance to be "connected with someone near you who can help you learn more about Jesus and his life or get plugged into a group where you can bring your questions about life and faith." But when I clicked the link . . . . the user is asked to fill out a form and told someone will reach out to them. That is a giant red flag. There's no way for a user to know who this information is going to. Instead, they're going to be contacted by a person whose affiliations and agenda are hidden and who is likely to use high-pressure sales techniques to manipulate a person who was lonely enough to click these links in the first place. 

This has all the hallmarks of what psychology experts call "spiritual abuse," which is where a person's longing for faith or higher meaning is used as a weapon to control them. I've been interviewing experts on this topic for an upcoming investigative report, and repeatedly, they emphasize that high-control religions often use bait-and-switch techniques to bamboozle vulnerable people.

Once they've become emotionally dependent on the church or group, however, they are bullied and degraded. If they're queer, they're told they're going to hell unless they try (and invariably fail) to change who they fundamentally are. If they're female, they're told that their duty is to give up on their ambitions and even self-esteem, in order to be a "helpmeet" for a man. 

There can be little doubt that is exactly the switcheroo that is going on here, which is why there are so many layers of obfuscation around who is behind the "He Gets Us" campaign. For someone who sees the ads and isn't aware of the malicious politics of the people behind it, the packaging is quite appealing.

Evangelicals claim to believe in the "truth and the light," and yet here they are, using duplicitous techniques borrowed from the world of con artists. But this is sadly not surprising, in an era where white evangelicals have convinced themselves they're at war with the larger culture. The framework of "holy war" creates permission to violate all sorts of moral codes. . . . . White evangelicals feel entitled to use lies and violence in order to gain political power. So of course they are fine with using deception to trick more people into becoming warriors for MAGA Christ. 

Rather than changing themselves and being what Christ preached for his followers to be, these vipers are engaging ine big charade.

Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Sunday Male Beauty

 

What Feckless Republicans Can Learn From Navalny

Today's Republican Party has become the party of treason as Republican office holders up and down the ballot embrace and prostitute themselves to an individual, Donald Trump, who has flat out stated he would suspend the U.S. Constitution and longs to be a dictator.   Meanwhile, the Republican Party continues to push anti-democracy policies that seek to disenfranchise voters not supportive of the party's racist and extreme agenda driven by evangelicals and white supremacist among the party base.  Worse yet, Trump and these Republican officeholders are increasingly are doing the bidding of  Russian dictator and war criminal Vladimir Putin.  The image above shows Trump's servility to Putin, but is also emblematic of how Republican officeholders prostitute themselves to Trump and the party base which has no use for true morality and decency. To the extent evangelicals pay any heed to the Bible, it is only to cherry pick Old Testament passages to justify their hatred and mistreatment of others much as slaveholders prior to the Civil War cherry picked Bible passages to justify slavery and later Jim Crow laws.  Other than hijacking the "Christian" moniker, there is nothing Christian about these people.  A column in the New York Times calls out these politicians and their base of support in the wake of Putin's murder of Alexei Navalny, Russia's leading dissident who wanted a democratic Russia.   Here are excepts:

Vladimir Putin’s Russia has just become even more bleak and soulless with the reported death in an Arctic prison of Aleksei Navalny, the 47-year-old dissident who showed immense bravery and humor as he tried to bring democracy to his homeland.

Navalny’s strength, resilience and courage contrast with the fecklessness of so many Americans dealing with Putin. From Donald Trump to Tucker Carlson, a remarkable number of American leaders and their mouthpieces roll over before the Russian president.

“Why do Trump and his congressional enablers want to further appease this Russian tyrant?” Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, asked after the news broke of Navalny’s death.

The most fundamental test of our fortitude is simple: Will the United States continue to support Ukraine as it tries to fight off Russian invaders? I hope Navalny’s sacrifice helps us find the will to stand up to Putin.

Navalny was Russia’s foremost dissident and opposition leader but also emerged as something of a Mandela of our age. Despite being poisoned and repeatedly punished with long bouts of isolation in remote prisons, Navalny stood unbroken. He continued to mock Putin and denounce the invasion of Ukraine.

His wit and refusal to bow to authority made him a Kremlin nightmare. Sent to the gulag, he mischievously attempted to unionize prisoners and guards alike.

No wonder Navalny is reported dead. So many brave Russians — journalists, lawyers, political figures — have died after challenging the authorities. It’s baffling how many Americans have responded in the opposite way, by acting as Putin’s poodles.

Tucker Carlson managed a 127-minute interview with Putin this month without even asking a single question about Navalny. It was such a softball interview that Putin professed exasperation at the deference and said he wished he’d been asked sharper questions.

Carlson even embarked on what seemed a promotional tour of Putin’s Russia, praising Moscow. . . . He doesn’t seem to understand that Russians spend four times as much of their income on food as Americans, and that prices are cheap because Russia is a poor country with a weak currency.

It is of course true that Moscow has a beautiful subway, and I’ve no objection to commentators pointing that out — or wondering aloud why American cities can’t have mass transit as nice. But it is profoundly troubling when American sycophants seem eager to whitewash Putin’s brutality, largely ignore his victims and score political points at home in ways that burnish Russian dictatorship and diminish American democracy.

Today’s right-wing affection for Putin is an echo of the traditional myopia that ideologues have had for overseas dictators, including the left’s onetime fondness for Mao. Today’s version, led by Trump himself, is dangerous — witness Trump’s recent suggestion that he might invite Russia to attack NATO allies that did not pay enough for arms — and it’s also oblivious to Putin’s long history of brutality at home and abroad.

Putin solidified his grip on power in 1999, in the aftermath of several mysterious apartment bombings that killed more than 300 people. Putin blamed Chechen terrorists and began a war in Chechnya that presented him as a decisive, tough patriot defending his nation’s interests. However, there have long been suspicions that the bombings were orchestrated by Russian security authorities themselves, to give Moscow an excuse to crack down. We still don’t know for sure, but my view and that of many others is that on balance the evidence suggests that the authorities were more likely to have planned the bombings than Chechen terrorists.

In other words, from the very dawn of his rule, Putin has been associated with repression, deceit and brutality toward his own people. Russia has also destabilized or attacked its neighbors, from Georgia to Moldova, Estonia and Ukraine, and according to the F.B.I. interfered in the U.S. presidential election in 2016.

That is the Russia that Navalny stood against. And that is the Russia that too many Americans have buttressed by opposing aid to Ukraine.

It’s natural to see the loss of Russia’s most important opposition figure as a sign of Putin’s commanding power, but I wonder if it isn’t also a sign of his insecurity.

A Russian dissident, Vladimir Kara-Murza, wrote a few days ago in The Washington Post, “Even from a Russian prison, I can see Putin’s weakness.” And Navalny himself once said: “If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power.”

Those are words that Russians and Ukrainians alike should take to heart, but it’s also a message to American members of Congress and right-wing partisans who have become Moscow’s fellow travelers. May Navalny’s heroic sacrifice wake them up.

Sunday Morning Male Beauty