Smart folks inside Russia understand Putin’s a narcissistic liar

• “Vlad Silenced …”

If only …

But in this case…

• “Historic Speech Suffers

Mystery BLACKOUT Across Russia as State TV Channels Go

Down ‘After Huge Hack.’”

Poor putrid Putin, embarrassed and humiliated over and over again.

In his place, state-run TV put up “Mistake” title cards.

They got THAT right. Russian President Vladimir Putin is not only a mistake but singlehandedly makes a good case for abortion.

• “Putin Warns of ‘GLOBAL WAR’ & Makes Veiled Nuclear Threat in Deranged Speech as He Doubles Down on Ukraine.”

Mad Vlad delivered what is best described as a one hour 45-minute diatribe of hatemongering, during which he not only blamed the West for his war on Ukraine (more aptly, the “War of Putin’s Ego”) but also claimed (for internal consumption) that Russia’s very existence is threatened by the West. What he really means is, this wicked war of his own making is an existential threat to himself.

The good news: Smart folks inside Russia — his top spies, apparently — have come to understand that he is a “bullying narcissistic liar.”

Not only that but Mr. Putin’s supposed “supporters” have become bored with the same old rhetorical rant, indicated by …

• “Putin’s Elite Caught Yawning and Even Sleeping During His Marathon Anti-West Address.”

The focus of this piece is former Russian President — uh, stooge — Dmitry Medvedev, who was probably recovering from yet another alcoholic binge.

And the oligarchs couldn’t be too happy either as …

• “Russia’s Richest Oligarchs

Lose $67B Since Putin Invaded Ukraine.”

They once had the run of the globe, circling it in super-yachts, Gulfstream jets when not resting their bones in palatial homes in London, New York City, Miami and elsewhere. Now they are in hide-and-seek mode and their world has shrunk.

You’d think the oligarchs would join up with Russia’s discomforted political elite and strategize a final exit ramp for the man who has wrought misery upon them and exported hell to the Ukrainian people, many of whom have blood ties to Russia.

• “Russia Braces For Civil War Chaos as Kremlin Opposition

Votes for ‘Revolutionary Act.’”

Again, if only …

But in reality, this is President Putin’s worst nightmare: Being dragged through the streets like Libya’s Qaddafi Duck, then sodomized with a bayonet before getting shot to death or executed by firing squad like Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu.

The Congress of People’s Deputies is composed of antiPutin Russian politicians desirous of overthrowing Mr. Putin the same way as the Bolsheviks overthrew Czar Nicholas II.

“Only through the use of force can anything be changed,” said Andrey Sidelnikov, a long-time Russian politico and anti-Putin activist.

• “Belarus’ Foreign Minister

Reportedly Died by Suicide After Meeting Putin Officials.”

Add to serial killer Putin’s execution list Vladimir Makei, 64, who wished to strengthen relations with the West and died unexpectedly four days after returning home to Minsk from meeting Russian officials in Armenia, either by “suicide” or “heart attack.” Nobody can get their story straight, though exiled Russian businessman Leonid Nevzlin claims it was from poison developed in a Russian intelligence (FSB) lab that makes a death appear as failure or stroke.

WASHINGTON WHISPER

According to one of our intel sources in D.C., President Putin’s mood turned sour upon learning of President Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv, apparently spoiling his day and needing one of his doctors to provide mood enhancing meds.

Mr. Putin’s much desired alliance with China has met two stumbling blocks: 1) He will not agree to a Chinese Peace Plan that calls for withdrawal of Russian troops seized since February last year. 2) He will not provide the Chinese with a leadership succession plan. And because China’s Communist Party plans proactively far into the future (unlike the U.S.), this is unacceptable to them.

With regard to point two, China is not the only unhappy camper over Mr. Putin’s determination to remain in power until the end, whatever the end may be. Russia’s power elite, starting with the desperate despot’s most likely successor, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, is now in uproar over what they call Mr. Putin’s “snot smearing.” According to a Kremlin insider, Mad Vlad’s speech was “a neutral and gray set of words and, for the most part, about nothing.”

Mr. Putin has not yet decided, we are told, whether to pursue a massive offensive in Ukraine by March 5 or withdraw to a defensive posture in territories already held.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi showed up in Moscow after soiling the Munich Security Conference and literally took the upper hand, making Mr. Putin reach for his own.

My own analysis is that China is in no hurry to come to President Putin’s aid militarily but instead has a two-prong strategy: 1) Keep Mr. Putin hopeful so that he does not resort to tactical nuclear weapons (which no one wants except Mr. Putin) and b) Remain on the sidelines until a clear victor emerges (a tactic known as hedging one’s bet).

This is precisely what the Stanleys did at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Their army stood on a hill watching as King Richard III went at it against Henry VII. When it was clear Richard would be defeated, they charged down the hill to help Henry finish the job. It was my ancestor, Sir William Stanley, who reputedly picked up dead Richard’s battered helmet from beneath a bush, plucked out the crown within and placed it upon Henry’s head thus commencing the Tudor reign.

• “Al Gore’s Inconvenient

Truth: Ex Veep’s $30 Billion

‘Eco-friendly’ Investment Fund Includes Holdings in Gas-guzzling Companies Like Amazon and Microsoft.”

This is called “putting your money where his mouth isn’t.”

Onstage, Al is a climate control freak.

But behind the curtain, more than one-third of his Generation Investment Management investments are reportedly with companies that have steadily increased their carbon emissions.

Perhaps Al needs another listen to the song “I Need to Wake Up” from “An Inconvenient Truth,” his 2006 documentary on climate change. • “Lab

And…

• “Three Years Late, The Lancet Recognizes Natural Immunity.”

Sixty-five studies reveal that natural immunity against COVID is equal to two doses of mRNA vaccines.

• “ ‘SNL’ Goes Anti-Vaxx: Host Woody Harrelson Likens Pfizer & Moderna to DRUG CARTELS.”

Again, the truth is finally going mainstream.

One day we will look at the COVID vaccine with the same optics we now view lobotomy.

Which brings us to…

• “The Miracle Cure: A Brief History of Lobotomies.”

This piece tackles the very sad case of Rosemary Kennedy — daughter of Joseph and Rose Kennedy and sister to President John F. Kennedy and U.S. Sens. Robert and Edward Kennedy — who in November 1941, the tender age of 23, underwent a lobotomy at the insistence of her father.

The late Bertram Brown, a psychiatrist and head of the National Institute of Mental Health through the 1970s, called it, “The biggest mental health cover-up in history.”

Let’s uncover it.

Rosemary did not suffer from being mentally challenged, as Kennedy lore suggests. But even if she were, Joe’s solution for dealing with the situation was unforgivable.

The procedure took place at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington D.C. where America’s pioneering lobotomist, Dr. Walter Freeman, practiced his favorite psychosurgery technique, usually with a bespoke goldplated icepick. (Dr. Freeman had adopted — some say stole — this technique of severing the frontal lobes of the brain from a Portuguese neurologist named Antonio Egas Moniz, who called his invention a leucotomy.)

Lobotomy was never supposed to be imposed on the mentally challenged. It was designed for the mentally insane, as a means of relieving chronic aggression and is known as a medical procedure that “turned lunatics into idiots.”

Rosemary was not insane. She was temperamental, possibly depressed, with a lower-than average IQ. As such, Rosemary became an embarrassment to her father, who held high political ambitions for his four sons. Her tantrums and promiscuity deeply troubled Joe, who fretted she might become pregnant and shame the family.

So while Rosemary’s mother, Rose, was away (and without her knowledge), Joe the Bootlegger consulted Walt Freeman, who agreed that a prefrontal lobotomy was a fine fix for a young woman in the prime of her life who was having perhaps too much fun. It would, Walt promised, put an end to her “mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home.” (Part of the reason Rosemary was difficult to handle at home was because her siblings — all of higher intelligence — treated her like a moron.) While the patient gaily sang “America the Beautiful,” neurosurgeon James Watts — supervised by Walt — cut at Rosemary’s frontal lobes with an instrument not unlike a butter knife … until the lyric she sang became incoherent.

The procedure worked!

No more mood swings, no more tantrums, no more promiscuity. And most important, no more embarrassment for Joe.

Also this: No more personality (she’d had lots of it). No more ability to think or speak. A young vibrant life taken, sacrificed to pathological ambition.

Walt Freeman liked to say, “Lobotomy gets them home” as he traversed the country in his loboto-mobile goading the keepers of asylums in 23 states to present to him their unruly for treatment.

But Rosemary did not go home.

Incapacitated, with a developmental age of 2, Rosemary was cast out to a special care facility in Wisconsin — and Joe all but erased her existence from the family.

And that is where Rosemary “lived” until she died 17 years ago at the age of 86.

• “Arkansas Cops Rule Suicide in Death of Clinton Aide Linked to Jeffrey Epstein.”

Who: Mark Middleton.

When: May 7 2022.

Where: The Heifer Ranch, Perryville, Arkansas, on land owned by the Clinton Presidential Center.

How: Middleton, then 59, was found hanging from a tree with a shotgun blast hole through his chest. (No one’s sure if he hung himself first then shot himself with a shotgun or blasted his chest before hanging himself, though at least they’re certain he’d been hanged with a cheap Dollar Store extension cord and shot with a Stoeger 12 gauge coach gun found 30 feet away).

Why: Middleton was Bill Clinton’s link to Jeffrey Epstein, who met Bubba at the White House 17 times between 1993 and 1995.

A source told Radar Online: “Mark knows nothing about guns. He hated guns. And he couldn’t tie a noose to save his life. He was the least physically skilled person I ever met. His death scenario is completely implausible to everyone that knew him.”

So very many people associated with Bill and Hillary Clinton have met untimely, strange and mysterious deaths, including the “suicide” of White House counsel Vince Foster and “random murder” of Seth Rich, a staffer on the Democratic National Committee. It has become a sport on the internet to keep track of these deaths under the banner Clinton Body Count Conspiracy Theory.

But the death of Middleton, one of the strangest, is now officially ruled a suicide by Arkansas. (When I was in Washington D.C. through the 1990s I heard intel gossip to the effect that a Department of Justice team investigating Whitewater returned after several weeks of digging in Little Rock and was asked by superiors what they found. Their reply: “Our case is the United States v. The Whole State of Arkansas.”) Mark Middleton first piqued my interest in the late 1990s when intelligence circles buzzed with his name in connection with Bubba Bill’s open door policies with China as the great sellout of American manufacturing began.

Then it turned out Mr. Middleton also opened the door for disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein (also a “suicide ”— or that’s what sheeple believe) to enter the White House and meet Slick Willie on multiple occasions. Mr. Middleton also flew on Epstein’s “Lolita Express,” the jet President Clinton boarded an astonishing 26 times for flights to what is now dubbed “Pedophile Island.”

CHUCKLE OF THE WEEK

Don’t bother walking a mile in my shoes. That would be boring. Spend 30 seconds in my head. That’ll freak you right out.

Robert Eringer is a longtime Montecito author with vast experience in investigative journalism. He welcomes questions or comments at reringer@gmail.com.

WENDY McCAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . Co-Publisher

ARTHUR VON WIESENBERGER . . . . .Co-Publisher

YOLANDA APODACA . . . . . . . . . . . Director of Operations

DAVE MASON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Managing Editor

HOW TO REACH US . . .

MAIN OFFICE 715 Anacapa St. Santa Barbara, 93101..805-564-5200

MAILING ADDRESS

P.O. Box 1359, Santa Barbara 93102

NEWSROOM ADVERTISING

News Hotline 805-564-5277

Email...dmason@newspress.com

Life 805-564-5277

Sports 805-564-5�77

News Fax 805-966-6258

Corrections 805-564-5277

Classified 805-963-4391

Classified Fax 805-966-1421

Retail 805-564-5���

Retail Fax 805-564-51�9

Toll Free 1-800-423-8304

Voices/editorial pages ..805-564-5277

COPYRIGHT ©202 SANTA BARBARA NEWS-PRESS

All rights are reserved on material produced by the News-Press,

HOW TO GET US . . .

CIRCULATION ISSUES 805-966-7171 refunds@newspress.com newsubscriptions@newspress.com vacationholds@newspress.com cancellations@newspress.com

Mail delivery of the News-Press is available in most of Santa Barbara County. If you do not receive your paper Monday through Saturday, please call our Circulation Department. The Circulation Department is open Monday - Saturday 8 a.m. to noon.

SUBSCRIPTION RATES www.newspress.com Newspress.com is a local virtual community network providing information about Santa Barbara, in addition to the online edition of the News-Press.

Mail delivery in Santa Barbara County: $5.08 per week includes sales tax, daily, and the Weekend edition. Holidays only, $3.85 per week includes sales tax. Single-copy price of 75 cents daily and $2 Weekend edition includes sales tax at vending racks. Tax may be added to copies puchased elsewhere.

VOL. 167 NO.