Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

on our computers, on our televisions. There is a initial outrage and shock that comes with the kinds of footage that we're seeing. This week, a maternity hospital, a hospital for pregnant people and children in northern Ukraine was bombed. I watched on MSNBC a woman, a pregnant woman, visibly pregnant, being brought out on a structure, and you see old

people getting bandaged on their heads. You're seeing craters the size of I don't know, multiple car lengths now in front of apartment buildings where once there were trees and gardens.

And we're watching this. In my fear, as we're watching all of this unfold is a desensitization, right, that we're going to become desensitized because we can watch these things, these atrocities unfold from the comforts of our homes here in the United States, where we are watching war play out like some type of video game or the latest

action movie out of Hollywood. Realizing that the people that we are seeing crammed at train stations and bus stations, people that are walking for half of a day, twelve hours or more in order to make it to a

bordering country for safe haven. That now in week three, as we head into week three of Putin's aggression, Putin's war in the Ukraine, that two million people, two million people, three weeks, in three weeks time, have fled their homes, their lives, their country, their jobs, their family, and their friends, many leaving their husbands, their brothers, their colleagues, their uncles behind to hold down the country and fight right and

fight against this aggression. And folks, I am, just as all of you are, find myself some days, so incredibly overwhelmed by the images, so incredibly overwhelmed by the despair. Even as our Vice President Kamala Harris is in Poland trying to negotiate with the polls what they are going to do to help the Ukraine Zelenski. President Zelenski has asked, we need fighter jets. We need the same fighter jets that our pilots in the Ukraine can fly, and we

need them and we need them now. And the polls made a fucking I don't even know what kind of move you would call it. If you were playing spades, you would say that they were trying to run the table but didn't really have a good hand. The polls were like, so, we have the fighter jets that you need, but we don't want to let Putin know that we're the ones that are going to give it to you

and that we're authorizing. So instead, we're going to do some underhanded shit, which is we're going to give the polls. We're going to give our fighter jets to the United States for the United States to decide however they want to use. Right those fighter jets, the United States then will give us they're used fighter jets to replace the

ones that we are giving to them. Who then they will be the ones the United States will be the ones that putencies as responsible for giving the Ukraine the fighter jets that they need and then the United States turned around. It was just like, ah, so not it. We're not touching your ship, which is why the Vice President was deployed to Poland to come to some type of agreement as to how NATO allies continue to aid Zelenski in more than just upstanding ovation, right then, more

than just you know, aid at the border. But what are we going to do? Because now reports are coming out, folks, where based on United States intel, the intelligence community, reports are coming out that Vladimir Putin is seeking to put together some type of chemical attack. And we already know right that at some point in time Putin is going to be investigated for war crimes. But does that really

matter at this stage where we are? And one of the questions that I thought I wanted to post to all of you today that I heard was how long is NATO? Is the United States going to allow this war to continue? Knowing that if Putin releases chemical warfare, that this is escalation bigger than we have ever seen

since World War Two? And so are we going to sit around and wait for millions of people like we did in World War Two, where we waited for millions of Jewish people to be slaughtered or are we going to preempt what we know could be possibly genocide and take action now? Now folks will say, well, we can't take action now right. If we do anything, we are certainly headed into World War three. None of the choices

that are at hand right now are good ones. And I don't know if we all understand the gravity of the situation that is at hand. Like again, we are watching this safely from our living rooms, our cars, our homes, on a walk or what have you, safely removed by

an ocean right of what is happening. But the fact is is that if you are putin and you are somebody with nothing to lose, right and all the things to gain, that if I just go completely ham meaning I put on the most egregious attack right on civilians, and I continue to escalate that, and those people that are supposed to hold me accountable are only cutting off

my financial resources. But because I've already strategized ahead, knowing that yes, sanctions were going to come and they were going to be bad, and I will frame in my media, which only dispenses bullshit, how this is an attack on the Russian people, and this is an attack you know from the West on Russia and all of these things. Then I've already planned for these sanctions, right and I am playing a different three dimensional chess right like, I'm

in a different space. So if you know that the person that you're dealing with is ready to leave it all on the fucking table with nothing to lose, then you need to figure out what your response is going to be, because it's not going to be diplomatic. I personally believe it. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I am wrong, and that there is still an opportunity for a diplomatic resolution to where we are right now with Ukraine and Putin.

And I want to be clear that I say Ukraine and Putin because the Russian people have no idea what the fuck he's doing. Right. Russia, in the way that their television is set up and their government is set up and social media is set up, is that you are force fed alternative facts and lies, so much so that even people Russian people who are in the Ukraine calling home to their Russian families and are telling them, do you hear that sound that is behind me? We

are under attack are being told no, you're not. Russia's only going Our military would never do that. We're only going after military places and barracks and all of these things this way, would never attack civilians, And there's no factual evidence to say. So they are saying that to their family members who are on the phone in a fucking burning building, and they're saying, you're lying to me, because that's how brainwashed they have been by Russian television propaganda.

So much so, folks, that Tucker Carl's sin and Fox News and Republican members of Congress are doing the fucking heavy lifting for Vladimir Putin even as he is in the midst of being investigated for war crimes. This week, Tucker Carlson said the most egregious things about the United States working in cahoots with the Ukrainians and like force feeding them with weapons and just lying providing Russian talking

points to Americans. And I keep saying, and I've said it on social media, and I'm saying it again here, like where the fuck is the FCC? When is enough enough? We have, of course, certainly right freedom of speech, but I can tell you in point too many moments in our time and in our history where that has been curtailed because it has been deemed as a national threat, right.

But this administration doesn't want to do that because we don't want to seem quote unquote political, even as you have an entire network that is feeding the American people Russian propaganda. So we can't even be united as we were in the past, united as a country against the common enemy, because according to Fox News and Tucker Carlson, Putin is their friend and it is Biden who is the enemy. Tucker Carlson has one of the highest rated

shows in his fucking time slot and he's going unopposed. Also, let me tell you something else that is and again, we are paying so much attention to what is happening abroad, whether it is with empathy or with sympathy, and we are saying saying, oh my god, these poor people, and again negating, ignoring, and I don't even know if now I can just say that what we are ignoring the fascism, the authoritarianism that right wing Republicans are spitting every single

place inside the halls of Congress, on Fox News and in other places. And if we are not going to actively curtail this and actively call it out and actively frankly call it fucking treason, then what are we doing we as I said two weeks ago, the Ukraine and what Putin is doing there should be foreshadowing to what Republicans and white evangelical Christians want to do in the

United States. They want to create this closed loop circuit where the only information that you are given is what it is that they want you to know, and that all other avenues to actual facts right are going to be negated. Republicans take control. It isn't just this boogeyman of CRT that's going to come out of your kid's curriculum. It's literally everything. Right. How are we teaching science these days?

If we're not talking about climate change? Right? How are we talking about history and not putting not contextualizing it with what is unfolding right now? What Republicans want is what Russia has and what Putin has been able to do. And our own members of Congress and our own media are aiding him in his messaging war that he is doing with his own people, and they are doing it with our citizens here. So listen to this. This is

some wild fucking shit. So this is according to The Daily Beast, Representative Madison Cawthorne, Republican from North Carolina has diverged from his party's stance on Ukraine in ugly fashion take a list in calling President Zelenski quote a thug and the country quote incredibly evil in a bizarre rant

caught on camera. It's not clear when the clip obtained by w r a L was filmed, but former Bush Chief of staff Carl Rove, who first mentioned the comments in a Wall Street Journal piece, said it was filmed at a town hall in Asheville last Saturday. At the start of the clip, Cawthorne mentioned sending Stinger missiles to the Ukraine for self defense, providing further evidence that the clip was filmed after Russia's invasion began. Quote Remember that

Zelensky is a thug, Cawthorne said in his rant. Quote Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt, and it is incredibly evil, and it has been pushing woke ideologies. Meanwhile, Cawthorne is battling right on his own three court cases for driving offenses and is in the process of divorcing a woman he says he met at a fake CrossFit competition staged by a man he met in a casino

in Russia, where casinos are banned. Let me tell you something like, you may want to laugh off this news story and say, oh my god, look at this crackpot, because this is the same way that we wanted to laugh off Donald Trump and not pay attention to how he had stuck his talents right into the foundation of our democracy, and we wanted to laugh it off and said, oh no, he could never become president. And oh no, these Marjorie Taylor Greens, these Laura Beaubert's, this Madison Cawthorne,

They're just crazy. No, they are are not. They are the mainstream of the Republican Party, which is no longer aligned with democracy, not in this country and certainly not

around the fucking world. So when you're getting up on television, when you're getting up at a donor event, right, and you're saying Russian talking points that Vladimir Zelinski, who is parted from his children and his family, is staying in his country that is literally on fire to fight, is being applauded by other democratic world leaders and their governments

around the world. But a member of our Congress is referring to him as a thug and celebrating Vladimir Putin on network television in the United States, and we don't do anything about that because we want to say, oh, freedom of speech. It is not freedom of speech when it threatens their national security. It is not freedom of speech when it is talking points straight out of a dictator that is committing war crimes across the pond. That

is not freedom of speech. That is dangerous. And the fact that we as a party do not call this out everywhere in anywhere that a mic is put in front of your face, the fact that we cannot tie how fragile the Ukraine is right now, how fragile democracy is around the world, with the fragility that we are experiencing here at home, goes to tell me and you that folks are not making the connections, and if they are,

they're too afraid to say so out loud. And if we're too afraid to tell the truth in the face of alternative facts, lies and aggression, then when are we going to tell the truth? If it's not going to be now, then when is the right time? If we are not going to say that not only is Fox News evil, but that they are a threat and a significant threat to our country, to our democracy At a time when the world is on the brink of World

War three? When is the right time if you don't have the backbone in the fortitude as a democrat that is in power to say the buck is going to fucking stop here. We as a country need to unite because democracy around the world and in this country is under threat, and we are not willing to do that, then what are we willing to stand for? Because frankly, it is not going to be enough to continue to talk tough and not follow it up with any action here at home. The same way that Merrick Garland would

find himself. Merrick Garland found himself this week on MPR, and on MPR he wanted to offer up the fact that you know, once again, nobody is above the law and that those that were criminally responsible for the outcomes of January sixth will be held accountable and get this in due time. We are eight fucking months away from midterm elections, and I'm going to continue to say that as we count down on woke af daily, we are

eight months away from midterm elections. What the fuck does due time look like for a Department of Justice that has been in control and in power for over a year in a matter of a couple of days, the Department of Justice put together a task force to attack Russian oligarchs and to seize finances of those that they believe are financing Vladimir Putin. They did that in a matter of days of war breaking out in the Ukraine.

Where is the energy for the American oligarchs? Where is the task force that was put together on day one of the Biden administration and on day one of the Garland Apartment of Justice to ensure that every single person that was involved, whether they were the foot soldiers that entered the Capitol Building on January sixth, or the ones at the top that funded the insurrection or wrote the memos for said insurrection, or then rally the troops on

the Ellipses and sent them to the Capitol Building on January sixth. If you are not going after and creating a task force to go after everyone from the foot soldiers to the architects, and you haven't done so in well over a year at this point, why should I

believe you? When you are going on NPR and other channels and again wanting to talk tough, but then not offering the American people any insight into your investigation into the corrupt previous administration, all of their allies and I don't know the fucking documents over five hundred and fifty interviews that came out of the commission, all of the documents that they have gathered, and then also the recommendation that they've provided. What the fuck is Merrick Garland doing?

What is he doing? Because it is the same bullshit that Joe Biden is doing, which is We're going to pound our chest and puff it out right and direct all of that hot energy towards putin But you don't have the same fire in your belly to hold the people in this country accountable for trying to undermine democracy.

It is mind boggling to me. And again, and I'm like, we are eight months away right by the time that folks cast their ballot, right for those that still actually have early voting, For those folks that are able to cast their ballot either a couple of weeks before or on the day of midterm elections, what are they going

into that booth thinking? Are they going to go into that booth thinking that, Oh my god, thank god Democrats have been in charge for all of this time because we got voting rights, we have a handle and have some legislation moving around climate change, that we are holding those responsible for undermining our democracy and we're going after them. What are you going into the voting booth and thinking

in November, Because I'll tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that Democrats don't have anything to fucking run on. I'm thinking that running on the fact that you are not Donald Trump is not going to be enough. I'm thinking about the fact that when Republicans do seize power that Merritt Garland's whole fucking oh, I don't know backwards momentum in terms of going after those responsible for our insurrection. Well,

his time is going to be up. But then he's going to be able to get in front of the cameras and give a bunch of lip service as to how Republicans are coming up the works. And what I'm going to remind everybody of when that happens, because it will, is that you had well over a year of unobstructed influence from Republicans because you had control over the Senate and the House and the executive branch. So what were

you doing during that time? It is every day is just another day that I'm like, this is not great. We are not headed in the rest the best direction. We are not doing the things that are necessary in order to preserve what little democracy that we have here.

And as we are watching the Ukraine play out, and we're watching two million people fleet, We're watching hospitals and homes and fucking office buildings and everything be bombed, what would happen you think if it was Donald Trump and Republicans that were in charge of the presidency right now. One of the questions that was asked to on cable news this week was, you know, you have Putin. Many believe he's a sociopath. I mean, they call the man

a whole host of things. What we do know to be true is that he's not dumb, right, He's evil, and there's nothing worse than evil but smart evil. Right. So the question was asked, well, why do you think that Putin didn't invade Ukraine when Donald Trump was president of the United States, And the response of one of the former diplomats from the Ukraine said this, Well, if you're getting everything that you want from the current sitting American president, then why would you want to upset the

apple cart? But Vladimir Putin was betting on the fact that Donald Trump was going to win a second term, and so he was going to get what it was that he wanted from Donald Trump. Then once he saw that Trump was no longer going to be in power, Democrats were going to take over, and people who actually understand foreign affairs who were going to be in charge, he was like, well, then I don't have any other

fucking choice. And while I think it's absolutely crazy that apparently we have laws around war and justifiable murder and not right, what weapons can be used and what can't, the fact remains that you have Republicans in this country that are on the side of Putin, and folks, we have never seen that before. We have never seen a divided America in the face of a global war. And I say global because everybody, whether they want to or not, is slowly but surely going to be pulled into this

fucking invasion of Ukraine. We have power off at Chernobyl, right, the quote unquote defunct nuclear power plant. We got another one, the largest in Europe, which was seized by Putin. Right, I'm sitting here and I'm thinking to myself and I'm just like everyone is trying to avoid escalation in the face of Putin actually escalating daily if he stages a fucking chemical attack against civilians, what options does the United States and NATO have left if not to get involved.

Because if every single person who is getting on cable news, who has intimate knowledge of Russia, of Putin and of the Ukraine, and they are telling you that this man is not going to back down, that this is an all in type of situation, you have diplomats in both the Ukraine and Russia that we're meeting in turn, and guess what they came to. No fucking agreement, Because I'm telling you, Putin is leaving it all on the fucking

field right now. He is not going This is a man, right this, This is a man that embodies think about this, that embodies toxic masculinity. Right. Everything that he does, from riding bare chested on the back of a horse from it is his machismo, right, it is his bravado. This is what Trump and Republicans are attracted to because they are so frail, right, so spineless, so feeble as men, that they are attracted right to the presence, just the

sheer presence of toxic masculinity gets them going. Right, So, if you are a man former KGB like Putin, who believes that all of your power as a man comes from force, do you think that given that psychology, right, given this armchair psychology that I just get that I

just gave all of those things being true? Do you think that this is the type of man that, when met with all of the eyes of the world on him, that he's going to back down and show any sign of weakness, that like he couldn't handle it, even if, even if things start to go in the wrong direction for Russia. I believe that Vladimir Putin, at the stage that he is in right now, will double and triple the fuck down, and that should scare everyone. This is not a man that is wanting to or able to flinch.

And so if we don't understand the psychology that is at play here and how toxic masculinity is a part of the play and is a part of what has taken over the Republican Party and has spread like a cancer, then how are we to get to the bottom with how we're actually going to deal with this. Because here's what I'm saying, I don't think that the world comes

out of this unscathed. So what does that mean when you're talking about people, right, whether it's Russia, the United States, it's China, you're talking about like over a thousand and in the case of the United States, over five thousand activated nuclear weapons. World War three has been said on movies, in politics everywhere will be the end because everyone will

set off their fucking nukes. So right now we are literally playing chicken as the world with a crazy man that doesn't give a fuck about driving right off the cliff. He's just not going to blink. And so given this situation out hand, how are you moving? What is the next move here? You're not going to give Ukraine a no fly zone, right, which would be certain escalation. The polls are not gonna do their fucking bait and switch, which is, oh, we're gonna give these planes, but then

we're not going to really give these planes. We're gonna give them to the United States, and the United States is gonna give us our planes, and then the United States is gonna do what they will with the Ukraine, which is then going to signal a putin. Oh so you chose a side side? Okay? Bet? Right? Like Oh, when you think about all of the machination, the things that are fucking play here, your head begins to spin. And again, have no idea, have no idea where this heads.

But I'm going to tell you it's not great. It's not great for Ukraine. It's not great for Russia. Right for the Russian people who have now literally been blacked out and cut off of everything from their money to their fucking entertainment. Right thousands have been arrested. God knows what will happen to those people. To say that, I'm

worried to say that. I sometimes just lay in bed, like just staring up at the ceiling, waiting for a blinking alarm to come on my phone to tell me some other hotshit like this isn't great, and I don't know how else to deliver it to you. Where we are is not great. Right now, the Vice President is in Poland trying to figure out how do we give fighter planes to Ukraine to give these people, to give their military a fighting chance without that signaling that we're

ready for World War three. No idea, but I do know there is only so much sitting on the sidelines that can be done when the entire world is watching Vladimir Putin kill Ukrainian citizens. There is only so much that folks are going to be able to stomach before they get on the phone. So they're elected officials before marches are taking place, before people are like what the fuck right, what are are you doing? Because we need

to do something switching gears now, folks. To round out where we are with Russia is that, as I have been reporting, w NBA player Britney Griner is in Russian custody and has been for over a month. News of that broke over the weekend last weekend, after she had already been detained for weeks for possible marijuana cartridges for vape in her luggage. Now, I saw a really interesting story that I thought was worth diving into, and I want to dive more into it next week. So you

guys all hold me to account. Interesting article about why Britney Griner was in Russia to begin with, and so let me describe it like this. The w NBA players don't even make a quarter of what NBA players make. Now we know, right because we reported here on woke af that the women's soccer team won a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the Soccer Association for failure to pay them

equally in comparison to the men's teams. And this has been something that we have seen play out in tennis, play out in soccer, play out in the w NBA,

in the NBA, and play out in the workforce. We don't have an Equal Pay Act, right because we have Republicans and some Democrats that refuse to vote that vote for it, that believe that, you know, women should not be paid as much as men are, which is crazy given the fact that we just came out a fucking not just came out of because it's still existing, but that we just in twenty twenty watched over two million women leave the workforce because they needed to be tending

to their small children at home and turn themselves into homeschool teachers. Right, so we got to see in real lifetime the balance that working parents, working mothers in particular, the burden that is on them, and they still are

not paid equally to men. So one story that I saw about the case with Britney Griner is that Britney Griner is in Russia playing in the WNBA's offseason because the WNBA doesn't fucking play pay right, they're paying these players like the top players in the leagues are making like six figures and I mean like low six figures,

right that. I remember reading reports when the WNBA was started where these players were making as much as teachers, like fifty thousand dollars a year, sixty thousand dollars a year in comparison, just think about the worst and again I'm not a huge sports person, but the worst player on the NBA, the one that is just riding the bench, is making five times more than the best player on

the WNBA. So why was Britney Griner in Russia? Because she has to make a living for herself and her family, and in order to do that, she plays on European teams in the fucking off season. Because if the w NBA played like the NBA, she wouldn't need it. So the argument that the article was making was the fact that this is a not There are so many different things that are at play right now, which is a Britney Grinder is one of the most talented and well

known w NBA players. Right if this were Tom Brady again, somebody had said there would be collective outrage, right, picket signs and all of these things. But it is a black woman in a skill and underrepresented and underpaid professional athletic field, and nobody's really blinking an eye. We're not concerned about the fact that not only is she black in Russia, but she's also queer in a country right that is still trying to beat the gay out of

people and or jail them for it. So there is so this story about Britney Grinder is so layered and so dense and so troublesome at the sheer fact that if she were a man, if she were a white man at that on any other type of professional team, she wouldn't have had to be in fucking Russia to

begin with. And even still if she had been there, the outrage that has taking place, that isn't taking place only but Sheila Jackson Lee so far the sole member of Congress, not even members from her own fucking state of Arizona have come out for her release. So I remained worried and concerned about Brittany Griner and if she's ever going to see her family or the United States.

Again and again folks will say, oh, well, we have bigger fish to fry, and I'm like, you know, with all of these compounded crises, we need to be able to fry walk and shoot gum at the same time. Which leads me to the last story that once again, America's racism just out in the Open. Award winning director Ryan Coogler is in Atlanta, Georgia. Ryan Coogler is a

director of Black Panther, Fruitvale Station, among others. He went into a bank in Atlanta to take out his own money with his own pen at his own bank and had the police called on him believing that he was a bank robber. Now reports have come out that the teller at the bank was also black, and so people wanted to say, well, it can't be racism because the bank teller was black, so it must be something else.

And so let me provide this lesson white supremacy and the matrix that it lives in is breathed in and beaten into every single person that is a part of the white supremacy matrix, which is all of us. Black people are not absolved from anti blackness because they have melanin in their skin. They have been educated and indoctrinated into the same system of anti blackness and white supremacy

as everyone else. Which is to see even themselves and people who look like them as a threat and as criminals first and people second once they have been able to prove their humanity. So it does not shock me that this took place, and sadly took place at the hands of a black employee. It just goes to show you once again that having money, having fame does not make you immune from racism and white supremacy. There is

no way to buy your way out of it. We are living, folks, lord In, as Nicole Wallace always says an MSNBC when she closes out, we are living in extraordinary times, extraordinary times. Every day that we make it to a Friday, I just thank God and the universe that we made it through the end of another week, because by the time that we make it to Friday's I feel like my body has been a battering ram.

And this is why, you know, as I transition into the woke moment of wellness, that my mother says that we take on fear, anger, anxiety, depression on a cellular level, that if we do not find the right ways to deal with our stress, our anxiety, our the toxins that are building up in our own bodies, they will metastasize and show up in other ways, and they will show up as dis ease right, because we are not at ease. So when you are in dis ease, your body becomes

more vulnerable because your immune system is down. And so, folks, I continue to say that health is actual wealth, that it is not just as saying right, because you know, if we are not taking care of this one vessel, this one body that we get, if we're not doing and I have, and I will say this out loud to all of you, I haven't been to the doctors since before the pandemic, since twenty twenty. I need to

go to the doctors. I need to make time for my regular check ins right, because it's not just enough that I walk and I eat right, like I also need to make time. We all need to make the time because our health is our wealth. I don't want to age in a way that has me unable to move, that lacks immobility or cognition. So the things that we can control, because so much is out of control, we need to take responsibility over, and that is our health

and well being. So please, dear friends, let's make a pack together right to get our checkups as spring is approaching, to do our internal spring cleaning so that we are rested and able to continue the fight because it is unrelenting and so our vigilance must be over ourselves and our well being. That is it for me today. Friends on this woke af as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power. Get woke and stay woke as fuck until next week. Be well and stay woke.