This Blogger met Ronald Reagan once; in an anteroom of the Bel Air Presbyterian Church. This Blogger was surprised at how big he was, thick; not fat, not muscle bound like gym freaks but working man thick, stoker thick. They chatted, about a man they mutually admired, Eric Hoffer, the Stevedore Intellectual. Reagan's political enemy, Michael Dukakis, once said he had never met nor seen a man more comfortable in his own skin that Ronald Reagan. And why not? As a life guard, he had pulled 77 people from the water, many of them lovely young ladies. And while at Warner Brothers Movie Studios, as a contract player; he had received more fan letters than Errol Flynn. As the chat wound down, he asked this Blogger one question:  "What did the Soviets make of him?   This Blogger told him the truth; they thought he was an idiot savant, sent by God to destroy them.   This Blogger    was alive when the Soviet Union collapsed, without the need of a cataclysmic World War III. ...

  This Blogger respects Russians; as Frederick the Great stated :” It takes two bullets to take a Russian soldier out; one to kill him and one to  stop him.” This Blogger   likes Russians; even though once, in Moscow, during the Soviet era, his incredibly attractive tour guide, aka KGB agent, told him and his brother   that they were in danger of being hit, fatally, by a Soviet car crossing a Moscow street. T his Blogger’s brother told her that he had ridden in a Soviet Car, the LADA; and that he could damn well survive any hit by that piece of junk. She laughed. That night, this Blogger’s brother slept in his room, under his bed, drunk. This Blogger admires the way Russians do business; when Soviet diplomats were kidnapped in Lebanon, the KGB paid the ransoms immediately, without complaint. Shortly thereafter, Beirut was flooded with Soviet agents and Soviet bribes; the kidnappers were identified. They were abducted, tortured and  castrated; their d...

As this Blog is being written, the Taliban is engaged in a victorious blitzkrieg across Afghanistan, seizing territory, cities and people. It has out-generaled the American backed corrupt government in Kabul. During the first Taliban government, northern Afghanistan remained an anti-Taliban stronghold, through its entire tenure. Taliban prowess was confined to the south, Pashtun areas.   This time, the Taliban, in a series of brilliant strategic moves  attacked and over ran northern  Afghanistan first, eliminating the possibility of  an anti-Taliban bastion to further advances.   Afghan soldiers are being slaughtered after they surrender, Afghan men are being hung from lamp poles before trial, Afghan girls are being forced into marriages with Taliban soldiers; Afghan girls are being denied access to schools, or places of employment. Women have been shot on the street for wearing short skirts; and women have been whipped for talking to men on the street( see...