“I’m not happy with what [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot of people, and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” said President Donald Trump on Truth Social over the holiday weekend. “I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.” Trump is not the only president who has stressed the importance of personal relationships with other nations’ leaders. But even the most sympathetic relationships have been frayed by national interests rooted in history. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had rough patches over the Falklands and Grenada. It seems possible that Reagan and inconceivable that Trump read Harvard historian Richard Pipes’ volumes on Russian history, showing how the rulers of tiny Muscovy, starting with Ivan the Terrible, constantly expanded their domain over the featureless north European and Ukrainian plains, seeking ever more land and peoples as a buffer for those they already held. Reagan appointed Pipes to his National Security Council and, as a close but secret follower of geopolitics (the movie magazines wouldn’t have understood), observed Josef Stalin’s postwar expansion of Russian military suzerainty westward. When asked why he was bent on heading toward the Rhine, Stalin supposedly answered that Tsar Alexander I, after defeating Napoleon, took the Russian army all the way to Paris. So Putin’s assault on Ukraine, Russian territory from the time of Catherine the Great (Alexander’s grandmother) to the fall of Mikhail Gorbachev, was an expression of a historic national impulse likely popular among his nation’s ethnic Russian majority. Trump’s seeming astonishment that Putin “is needlessly killing a lot of people … for no reason whatsoever” shows a reassuring horror at mass slaughter but also an innocence of knowledge about Putin’s career. In his 2004 book “Darkness at Dawn” and in later writings as well, Russian expert David Satter has written that Putin, the former KGB agent and aide to St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, arranged the 1999 bombing of four apartment buildings, killing 300 people, and blamed them on Chechen rebels. To attack them, Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin prime minister and then resigned in return for pardons for him and his family. Putin promptly won the first of several elections from a wary electorate (which I observed briefly as a reporter in Moscow) that hoped he would be the “strong hand” that many have traditionally believed Russia needs. That such a man would lodge the war’s largest drone attack on Kyiv and Ukraine last weekend should not have come as a shock. Yet Trump is not the first American president who has seen Putin as just another politician whose not unreasonable concerns could be appeased. George W. Bush was impressed by the cross Putin wore and his profession of religious faith, and admitted this misjudgment in his short memoir. Barack Obama sent Hillary Clinton out with a (mistranslated) reset button to the multilingual Russian foreign minister. Candidate Trump in 2016 admired Putin as a strong leader, which provided ammunition for the propagators of the Russia collusion hoax. Joe Biden declined to oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which provided cheap natural gas (and dependence on Russia) to Germany and lots of euros to Putin. In each case, American solipsism—assuming that others are much like us—that in tourists can be dismissed as a childish and charming innocence, has been the basis of a flawed and unsuccessful foreign policy. An evidently unprepared Obama administration made no serious protest of Putin’s seizure of Crimea and occupation of part of the industrial Donetsk in February 2014. The Biden administration, expecting Russia’s tanks to quickly take Kyiv, ordered American diplomats evacuated in February 2022. Trump states, correctly, that Putin launched no similar attacks while he was president. Whether that was from fear he would not similarly acquiesce or for unrelated reasons is and may always be unknowable. But last weekend’s attacks may have opened Trump’s eyes to Putin’s true nature and undermined his disdain for Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. That disdain, and the dislike shown by JD Vance in the Feb. 28 Oval Office meeting, seems to have roots in the admiration of some cultural conservatives for Putin’s repudiations of “woke” attitudes, a sense that he is a Christian protector of traditional values dismissed as bigotry by Western European and American coastal elites. It may also be the case of some on the Right taking the same view of Ukraine’s leaders that some on the Left took of Chiang Kai-shek and of South Vietnamese leaders in the Cold War. In this view, foreign authoritarians steeped in corruption are demanding that young Americans die to preserve their hold on power. Such views are on vivid display in 1960s bestsellers like Barbara Tuchman’s “Stilwell and the American Experience in China” and David Halberstam’s “The Making of a Quagmire.” We await a similar depiction of the Ukrainian regime. For all the deficiencies of America’s allies in those earlier conflicts, it would clearly have been better for the people of China and Vietnam had the Communists not prevailed. And for all the deficiencies of those America and Europe have been backing in Ukraine, Putin’s cold-blooded prosecution of the war seems to have made it clear at last to Trump that the people of Ukraine and, arguably, Russia will be better off if he does not succeed. What, if anything, Trump will do to end the war he promised to end is unclear. On his Truth Social post attacking Putin’s actions, he also attacked Zelenskyy for “talking the way he does.” As Walter Russell Mead wrote in his Wall Street Journal column this week, “President Trump sometimes does the right thing.” Sometimes. Now? COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump’s Eyes Opened on Putin. Now What Will He Do? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Director Bong Joon Ho delivered a distinctly original film earlier this year amidst a crush of remakes, reboots and reimaginings. How did audiences thank the Oscar-winner? They avoided his sci-fi comedy “Mickey 17” at all costs. Fresh ideas are always welcome, but crowds sniffed out this stinker from a mile away. Now, “Mickey 17” is streaming on Max, giving those who skipped it in theaters the chance to give it a try.  Don’t bother.     A game Robert Pattinson stars as Mickey Barnes, a lost soul who signs up for a gig with a shady corporation. He agrees to be a human lab rat, submitting himself to deadly experiments while scientists dutifully note his body’s reactions. Remember, kids, always read the fine print. Mickey dies again, and again, while the corporation “prints” a new Mickey to replace the old one. His memories and life experiences have been captured on a digital brick, allowing scientists to insert his personality into each printed body. Mickey 1 sounds like Mickey 2, 3 and 4. You get the idea. What happens when a presumably doomed Mickey clone, call him Mickey 17, doesn’t die as planned? It’s a wonderful sci-fi premise, making us consider mortality, the limits of the human soul and more. If life is so easily taken away, what does that say about the human condition? What about the people who so casually snuff it out? A smart storyteller could run with this theme in many sly directions. “Mickey 17,” based on Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel “Mickey7,” chooses the very worst option.   He really should have read the “terms and conditions.” #Mickey17 – only in theaters January 31, 2025. pic.twitter.com/l65qYsO7zM — Mickey 17 (@Mickey17Movie) October 9, 2024   We’re introduced to a Trumpian villain played by an over-the-top Mark Ruffalo. Note to the erstwhile Hulk – leave the “over-the-top” gigs to Jim Carrey and Nicolas Cage. They don’t suit you. Ruffalo’s Kenneth Marshall is a failed politician who runs the corporation with his supportive partner (Toni Collette). They have a legion of red-hatted fans and dream of a genetically pure human colony. Subtle. Poor Mickey deserves our sympathy, but he inexplicably attracts a lover in Nasha (Naomi Ackie in pure GirlBossTM mode). Her character makes no sense, but she’s in fine company. The story stumbles after the first, mesmerizing half hour, and it never comes close to recovering. Bong’s sense of comic chaos doesn’t yield a single laugh from this point on, and his screenplay takes a weird, hard R-rated turn. Characters curse like vintage Andrew “Dice” Clay at Madison Square Garden. That not only suffocates the film’s satirical spirit but gives this futuristic yarn a decidedly 2025 feel. Terrible idea. At one point, Nasha screams obscenities at the one-dimensional Marshall. It’s the cinematic equivalent of that Hillary Clinton supporter raging over Donald Trump’s 2016 victory.     “Mickey 17” literally stalls mid-film, unsure what to do next. Enter a race of worm-like creatures on the planet Marshall hopes to populate. They’re CGI marvels, no doubt, but the film treats them like the indigenous population in “Avatar.”  They must be protected at all costs, and Marshall’s goons quickly label them as the “enemy.” Maybe “Mickey 17” isn’t as original as we thought. It helps that the Na’vi have human form in the “Avatar” franchise. These creepy critters aren’t even as cute as the main character in Bong’s other sci-fi dud, “Okja.” The film’s many attempts at social commentary fail, and the corporate swipes are similarly stale. The “Alien” franchise did it far better a generation ago. Set ideology aside. “Mickey 17” is desperate, dull and chaotic to the core. Pattinson’s performance deserves praise, but he’s adrift in a swirl of screeching characters and flop-sweat plot twists. We’ll take “Fast & Furious” Part XXI over this fresh drivel any day.

Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite that can infect any nucleated cell in any warm-blooded animal and can cause a wide range of health complications — some fatal, such as miscarriage or inflammation of the brain. Over 40 million Americans are infected with the parasite, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it infects an estimated 30%-50% of the total world population.This parasite is stereotypically associated with crazy "cat ladies" on account of the parasite's presence in cat feces — cats are its only known definitive hosts — and its association with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and suicidal behavior.Researchers from Chile, Germany, and Uruguay confirmed in a new peer-reviewed study published in the FEBS Journal that the rapidly dividing asexual form of Toxoplasma gondii, generally known as tachyzoites, "colonize and proliferate" within testes and in the coiled sperm-storing tube behind each testicle.RELATED: Lancet study: Fertility is plummeting globally, with over half of countries below replacement level Toxoplasmosis from AIDS-infected patient. Photo By BSIP/UIG Via Getty ImagesBesides its capacity to behead and deform sperm, the researchers indicated that the parasite's alterations to "mitochondrial activity can cause oxidative stress leading to male infertility."Bill Sullivan, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Indiana University, recently noted that "testicular function and sperm production are sharply diminished in Toxoplasma-infected mice, rats, and rams. Infected mice have significantly lower sperm counts and a higher proportion of abnormally shaped sperm."While the researchers indicated in the new study that the parasite's impact on sperm could be a factor contributing to the global declines in male fertility in recent decades, Sullivan suggested that "studies to date that show defects in the sperm of infected men are too small to draw firm conclusions at this time."The CDC indicated that infections can occur as the result of eating contaminated under-cooked meat or shellfish or unwashed contaminated produce; contact with cat excrement; mother-to-child transmission; and receipt of an infected organ transplant or blood transfusion.The agency recommended a number of precautions that might reduce the risk of infection, including wearing gloves when gardening or touching sand possibly contaminated with the parasite; ensuring food is cooked to a safe internal temperature; keeping meat frozen at sub-zero temperatures for several days before cooking; ensuring vegetables are properly rinsed before cooking and/or consumption; and, in the case of cat owners, changing litter boxes daily.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

When COVID hit in 2020, New York City was one of the last places you’d have wanted to be if you valued your medical freedom. Michael Kane, a public school special education teacher with over 13 years of experience, was employed in the city — before he was fired for refusing to take the experimental shot. “I was fired for declining the shot, I’ve been suing ever since. Thank God for Bobby Kennedy and Children’s Health Defense. They picked up my lawsuits who are still suing today in a case called Kane vs. De Blasio, as well as New Yorkers for Religious Liberty vs. the City of New York and many, many, other cases,” Kane tells Nicole Shanahan on “Back to the People.” Kane, who founded Teachers for Choice — which is a group of educators that opposes forced medical mandates — also very publicly left the teachers' union after seeing how weaponized it became during COVID. “We were certainly pushed out and punished for having anything that wasn’t, you know, Faucian or dogmatic. You really needed to walk that line, so there’s definitely a target on me,” Kane explains, noting that while he doesn’t believe teachers' unions shouldn’t exist, “national and now international unions are a plague.” And a plague that’s heavily infested with political corruption. “Randi Weingarten and the head of the American Federation of Teachers went to the Ukraine on a mission. Why is the head of the teachers' union going to Ukraine? I’ll tell you why, because she’s really good friends with Joe and Jill Biden,” Kane tells Shanahan. “That politicization is extremely, extremely dangerous,” he says. “I respect the institution of unions, but they’ve been horribly corrupted with politics that goes way beyond their membership, and when COVID came, it was clear they were not representing their members at all.” “It ended up being Randi Weingarten going on ‘Meet the Press’ in August of 2021 and saying, ‘It’s time to mandate our members.’ And that was it. From that moment, then-Mayor Bill De Blasio did the mandate, because the truth is, Randy Weingarten’s more powerful than him,” Kane explains. “So at the time, when things went down with COVID, I did leave the union, I saw no other option. I saw no one supporting us, and I led kind of a movement in New York City, at least at that time, that did that. And we got fired, and then we had to fight in the courts, and we lost our jobs, and we didn’t come back, and we’re still fighting in the courts,” he continues. A year and a half later, Kane and around 60 other fired workers, mostly teachers, went to the union Labor Day rally in New York City — where they protested Weingarten. “We chanted, ‘End all mandates, let us work,’ and we did that a couple of times, and all the rank and file cheered. All of them,” Kane recalls. “Randi ran away from me, she wouldn’t talk to me, but it forced her into a situation where she came on my show.” “‘Here’s this dude, Mike Kane, that’s fired, and my members are cheering for him right now. That’s an issue,’” he continues. “Even if we didn’t have all the national cameras on it, that’s an issue internally for her.” While Kane is proud of the major steps made toward a better system in New York City, he’s not convinced what goes on behind the scenes has been rectified quite yet. “We’ll see what happens in the internal New York City politics,” he says. Want more from Nicole Shanahan?To enjoy more of Nicole's compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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