News Vérité

Granted, the release of an American jailed in Russia from the start of the war in Ukraine is something to be celebrated, but when the person responsible for his imprisonment and ill treatment is hailed as a “humanitarian” for letting him go, that’s  a butt-kissing too far. That was such when Vladimir Putin yesterday released 74-year-old Stephen Hubbard, and American envoy Steve Witkoff, in Russia for negotiations or the semblance thereof, thanked Putin in this way: “You talk so much about my president — President Trump — being a humanitarian. You also are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you and I thank you.”  Okay, so Witkoff was secluded in a Kremlin cell, er, meeting room, and had to say something nice, but come on….

When I studied journalism in the Dark Ages, you had two choices: print or broadcast. I chose print and spent many years behind a typewriter and eventually a computer keyboard. I ran into my broadcast fellow travelers out in the field, and they always seemed an egotistical lot. In those days, I worked a lot, and continued to do so for decades to come, so my watching the news on TV never amounted to much more than 30 minutes a night — unless something like the OJ Simpson Bronco-escape-a-thon was being televised. When I retired, I had more time on my hands, so I found myself tuning in to the news even in the daytime hours, and at night too. I quickly realized something profound: “These people gotta go.” If today’s newscasters aren’t downright Nuevo Comunista (pardon my bad Spanish), then they are simply — for the most part — just one-dimensional. Seen ’em once, you know their schtick. That’s why I’m proposing something that has been proposed for members of Congress for ages: term limits. I see term limits for national newscasters as being three years, no more than five, at which point they can go do their own

The late Senator Lindsey Graham be damned, we need that oil! That must’ve been Donald Trump’s reasoning when the president yesterday signed a waiver to the sanctions bill against Russia that Graham spearheaded, and that Trump once praised. The executive order signed by Trump frees Russia of all sanctions imposed by the Graham bill set to take effect Sunday. Recall that just last week, Trump cut a deal with Putin for diesel fuel, the cost of which has skyrocketed here in the U.S. Trump said the order was “in the national interests of the United States,” without specifying why. The law that Trump signed after Graham’s passing allows for the sanctions to be waived if such action is in the country’s best interest and he submits an explanation to Congress.  If this action is to lower the price of diesel before next month’s midterm elections, that clearly isn’t going to happen. Russian diesel won’t arrive quickly enough to make a difference. This is Trump, once again, kowtowing to his dictator buddies. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy decried the action as giving Putin more funding to prolong and expand the war with his country. “A U.S. sanctions blackout, easing pressure on the