RUSSIA is so happy, Putin is personally sculpting a giant poodle in the image of Donald Trump to sit pride of place in the Kremlin.
There’ll be one for JD Vance too, made from the mould of a dead Shih Tzu.
Both will be placed either side of Putin’s throne to honour all they’ve done to advance the Russian cause since they became the President and Vice President of America just 46 days ago.
Putin couldn’t have asked for more from his new boot lickers.
Trump and Vance have abandoned reason and their long-time allies in Europe to cave in to every Russian demand.
Volodymyr Zelensky has been demonised as a dictator. Ukraine has been blamed for starting the war.
US military aid to Ukraine has been cut off. Vital US intelligence to Ukraine’s army has been stopped.
The lifting of Russian sanctions is being planned. Nato has been persistently belittled. Europe has been squeezed.
And neither Trump nor Vance give a damn.
They delight in destroying the world order that has maintained our freedoms since 1945.
Ever since the Bolshevik revolution, Russian propaganda has labelled the US a mortal enemy, leader of the “decadent” West, intent on destroying Russia and its values. Not any more.
A century of mistrust and acrimony has evaporated. Under Trump, America has become Moscow’s best friend.
Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, used to call America the “hegemon”, the “puppeteer”, the “master across the ocean,” intent on annihilating Russia.
He readily blamed America for using Europe and Ukraine to break the Russian state.
On Sunday, he did the unlikeliest of reverse ferrets when he declared on Russian state TV: “Colonisation, wars, Napoleon, World War One, Hitler . . . if we look at history in retrospect the Americans did not play any incendiary role.”
America good, Europe (meaning the European Union and Great Britain) bad.
NEW WORLD ORDER
For Russia, Trump’s new pro-Russian foreign policy offers an incredible opportunity to finally achieve its long-held goal since the days of Lenin to destroy the “liberal European order”.
The new world order to replace it will be run jointly by Russia, China and now America.
Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping; the three leaders of the world’s three biggest countries united.
If that doesn’t make your arse cheeks twitch then you’re living in the Alice In Wonderland ward, bottle of largactil in hand.
In Mel Brooks’ hilarious 1974 movie, Blazing Saddles, the reverend famously told the black sheriff: “Son, you’re on your own,” when he tried to persuade the baying crowd to NOT lynch their new lawman. The phrase has barrelled around my head all week.
TRUMP HAS ABANDONED EUROPE
Europe is now on its own. Trump has abandoned us.
Trump and Vance’s disgraceful ambush of Zelensky in the Oval Office last Saturday has forced the European Union and Britain to face up to the new, grim reality unfolding in the world.
Britain’s PM, Keir Starmer, and France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, have led the charge, vowing to create a European “coalition of the willing” to take the place of the US.
Billions have been promised in military aid to Ukraine.
Plans for an interim ceasefire in the air and the sea has been proposed.
REARMING PLOT
French and British peacekeeping troops have been mooted.
The EU has promised to spend €800billion rearming.
Britain has vowed to increase its defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027.
But is any of it enough, without American support?
Here in Ireland, our government has thankfully realised the need to beef up our defences too.
Tanaiste and Minister for Defence Simon Harris has promised to more than double defence spending.
PALTRY SPEND
It’s still paltry — a proposed rise from 0.25 per cent of GDP (€1.35bn a year) to 0.556 per cent (€3bn a year) — nonetheless it’s a step in the right direction.
Other European countries spend much more than us, and rightly so.
The government has also promised to unify our intelligence services, invest in quadruple our naval fleet and create a squadron of fighter jets to police our skies.
The nonsense from the opposition benches about our “historic neutrality” being eroded must be batted away like a pesky fly.
We’ve woken up at last to the reality of a world more dangerous than at any time since 1938, when the coward, Neville Chamberlain, went to Munich to bow down before Adolf Hitler.
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?
We all know what his appeasement of the Nazi leader led to.
Trump’s prostration before the dictator Putin is chillingly similar to Chamberlain’s cave-in to Hitler.
And Putin knows this more than most.
Unless Europe accelerates and heavily increases its spending on defence, Russian forces will be on the borders of Poland, Romania and the Baltics before long.
There will be nothing to hold them back. The US under Trump will look the other way.
The loyal poodle Trump will be stroked by Putin’s side.
And Europe will be left to fight for its survival alone.
LIVE LIFE WITH NO REGRETS
ROUTINE makes you live longer. Spontaneity sends you to an early grave.
It should be the other way around. But it’s not.
Who wants to hang around for an extra few years if life is but a daily drudge?
All the great heroes went too soon. A few of them: Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Amy Winehouse were just 27.
They did it all, inspired so many, during their short time on earth.
Why not you too? Life isn’t so much about longevity, it’s about fulfilment.
The reason you’re here is NOT to do the same things every day, but to suck the marrow from the bone.
Every last spit of life should be soaked in drama, chaos, the moment.
The things that excite, make your heart race; they’re the things to embrace.
But instead of leaping head first into all life has to offer, we demure.
We seek drama in others, never ourselves.
The humdrum of existence, the “careful now” approach dulls us.
And before we know it, it’s too late and life and all its marvellous possibilities has passed us by.
You have only one life to live. It’s a miracle you’re here in the first place.
So wring life of everything it has to offer and leave nothing behind, especially regrets.
‘BRIDGE OF CRIES
THE town of Celbridge, in Co Kildare, is one of the most peaceful in Ireland.
Well, it used to be.
In recent weeks a gang of unsavoury characters, both male and female, have taken it upon themselves to terrorise the locals, on an almost daily basis.
They’re not from the town, but have turned it into their base.
Shop fronts have been smashed, people have been held up and robbed in broad daylight and business owners have been threatened with violence and arson.
The gardai have arrested the same individuals on multiple occasions, but despite that, they are back to their antics, sometimes within hours of being lifted.
Celbridge, which has the biggest population in Kildare county, doesn’t have a local TD.
Maybe if the town did have one, this kind of carry-on would get short shrift.
TOP TIP
If your partner snores, attach tennis balls to their back with duct tape to stop them lying flat.
Courtesy of Wendy Troxel, a behavioural scientist at the RAND Corporation in the good old US of A.
It works, too.
So does a baseball bat or a loaded revolver.
BOGGED DOWN IN RED TAPE
THE cabin-in-the-backgarden malarkey speaks to the paucity of imagination at the heart of our government when it comes to solutions to the housing crisis.
That’s a given.
Two weeks after they mooted the idea of abandoning the need for people to get planning permission to build a small “home” in the garden, fears for the sewage system have risen.
Those that build cabins will have to hook up to effluent pipes. Or they slop out like they used to do in prisons (I think that’s still a thing in Mountjoy, let me know).
But if all those extra cabins out the back do hook up to the already-under-strain sewage system, they risk overwhelming it. Bog blockers.
The government didn’t really think out their half-arsed proposal.
As I argued on these pages two weeks ago, building a cabin costs at least €90,000 – a pretty penny, rendering it a pipe dream for most.
For those that do build one, it will turn into a pipe nightmare when it comes to going for a number two.
RUGBY DRAMA ON THE WAY
WHICH genius scheduled a 2.15pm kick-off for tomorrow’s Six Nations’ winner-takes-all clash between Ireland and France?
The game between probably the two best rugby teams in the world should have got an evening billing, surely.
A night-time kick-off would have created a thrilling atmosphere, but in their wisdom the Six Nations chiefs chose the afternoon.
Ah well. Will still be a marvellous spectacle. Both teams are playing some of their best stuff.
Ireland have been clinical when they’ve needed to be in their matches so far. Especially against the old enemy, England.
France, despite their last-gasp loss to England, have been similarly robust in the way they’ve dispatched their opponents.
Expect fireworks at Lansdowne Road.
The high stool is booked in the boozer. Pints are on standby.
80 minutes of drama guaranteed.
MEG’S SHOW BURNED
HER new Netflix cookery show, With Love, Meghan, has been widely panned by critics as an exercise in beige.
“Gormless,” one wrote. “All the spark of a dead battery,” another scalded.
In episode one, Meghan Markle makes a cup of tea, boils a pot of pasta, arranges flowers and assembles a cheeseboard. It is enlightening stuff.
If you did actually decide to watch it, you probably sit all day on a couch, dribbling.
