This is what happens when you allow a bunch of Scott Walkers to make decisions:

Oklahoma legislative committee overwhelmingly voted to ban Advanced Placement U.S. History class, persuaded by the argument that it only teaches students “what is bad about America.” Other lawmakers are seeking a court ruling that would effectively prohibit the teaching of all AP courses in public schools.

What an absolute disgrace that this should be happening, people. This is a story straight out of Putin ‘ s Russia. Is that the example we want to emulate.

From an article by a Russian scholar:

Russia is a poor country.” However much people focus on the limousines of its wealth,

the future pensions of its citizens are so small that they would elicit only pity “in the poorest of the EU countries” and the state of its villages and other rural areas is comparable to “the poorest countries of Africa

It’s all true what he’s saying.

A very easy and delicious vegan recipe. A cup of red lentils is brought to the boil and then allowed to simmer until the lentils achieve the desired firmness  (some people like them firmer while others let them fall apart completely).

While the lentils simmer, add your favorite spices and herbs. I do some Madras curry, a cinnamon stick (a cinnamon stick is really crucial, in my opinion), a bit of nutmeg, a few allspice, and some cumin seed.

Then throw in a handful of fresh spinach leaves. Remove seeds from a tomato,  cube it, and throw it in.

And that’s all you need to do!

So Scott Walker never even graduated from college?

How very unsurprising that this clown was too stupid even to get a Bachelor’s degree.

Let’s now stop embarrassing ourselves with suggestions that somebody who is this useless can actually lead the country. Low-achieving losers are not what we need in the world where education is everything.

A fierce battle is under way around the Ukrainian city of Debaltseve in spite of the “ceasefire” brokered by Obama and Merkel. Even as the agreement was being signed, Russian troops and weaponry kept flowing across the border.

The US State Department keeps expressing “grave concern”, which Russians find extremely funny. They welcome these impotent statements as a sign of the West’s weakness. And it’s hard to disagree with them here.

Obama still has almost 2 years in office. And there’s no way Ukraine can resist for as long as that. It’s an absolute miracle that the country has managed to beat the invaders back for an entire year.

If somebody told me back in the USSR that one day folding would be the most onerous part of doing laundry, I’d just laugh.

If you never washed bedclothes by hand and then ironed them, you wouldn’t understand. I still have nightmares about ironing blanket cases sometimes.

The town of Popasne has been liberated by the Ukrainian Army. This Ukrainian soldier is trying to make two kids in the liberated town smile:

And it’s working.

A soldier in Russia refused to go fight in Ukraine. He was found in a noose the next day. The official story is suicide but he has a broken arm and heavy bruising in the genital area.

Today 8 more soldiers in Murmansk (a city in Russia) refused to go fight in Ukraine. The commanding officers locked them in the barracks. Let’s hope they survive.

The new thing on Russian TV is that the soldiers fighting on the Ukrainian side in Debaltseve are black. Meaning, African black. Or, rather, African-American black. Hordes of these black Ukrainian soldiers are supposedly running around Debaltseve*, scaring Russian-speaking old ladies and their little granddaughters. The black soldiers are obviously all drunk and they are breaking into the apartments of peaceful white folks to rob them. 

No footage has been offered in support of the “witness statements” by the scared Russian-speaking old ladies but I’m eagerly awaiting the creation of that footage. I thought that nothing could equal the Russian story about Ukrainian children supposedly killing all of the birds that have red and blue plumage because of how much they hate the colors of the Russian flag**. But I was wrong.

* Debaltseve is a small town in Ukraine where Russian terrorists are on the offensive in spite of the cease-fire. 

** In case you just fell off a tree and feel disoriented, the birds are fine. Nobody touched them.

I left Ukraine in 1998 because I hated it.

I hated the passivity, the fatalism, the triumphant gloominess inherited from the Soviet times, the cynicism that was a way of life, the corruption that everybody saw as the only possible response to reality.

I hated the indifference to politics, the self-hatred, the contempt for one’s own culture and the fawning adoration of the uncivilized and uncultured neighbor.

I hated the endless wait for a good tsar, the stagnation, and the adamant refusal of absolutely everybody to accept responsibility for absolutely anything in their lives.

I saw no hope that this would ever change, so I left. I wasn’t one of those fortunate immigrants who stay in touch, travel back to their country every year, and proudly answer the question of where they are from. But of course, I always wanted to be one. 

And in December of 2013, I realized that I’d been wrong. Something had been happening, brewing, changing, and the Ukraine I was sure would never be reborn suddenly came into existence. I’ve never been more eager to recognize that I made a huge mistake in my analysis. Finally, my country of origin was shedding the Soviet legacy and recovering the greatest traditions of its pre-Soviet existence.

This hopeful, enthusiastic, joyful, bustling and active Ukraine had come together in 1918 to work on a shared project of independence, social justice, and civilizational advances and was crushed by its enraged and confused neighbor. Now that drive towards change and civilization re-emerged, but the irate and jealous neighbor was bent on destroying it once again. Ukrainians had finally shaken off their inner Russian – a lazy, fatalistic, cynical and useless creature – and the actual Russians couldn’t forgive that.

It is absolutely devastating to see history repeat itself this way. But Ukraine’s is also a very inspiring story. Because if you can come back from the kind of history Ukraine has been cursed with, then anything is possible and anything can be overcome.