The LuLac Edition #5, 807, October 28th, 2026

 

 

WRITE ON

WEDNESDAY

Our “Write on Wednesday” logo

There are may reasons to mourn the fact that the Biden administration tried to restore the dignity and honor of our word as the defender of freedom in a world of despots.  Ukraine is the perfect example of what happens when you put a power hungry, narcissist in charge of foreign affairs. Plus, when we as a nation have never backed away from protecting freedoms in a war and then change course, that is not morally correct.

The current President has essentially sided with a killer, Putin instead of a leader fighting to save his country.  Imagine Franklin Roosevelt buddying up to Mussolini in WWII. Here’s an analysis about how we continue to break our word as long as we have a President who admires dictators.

 

TRUMP’S OPEN ALLIANCE

WITH PUTIN BETRAYS THE US AND HELPS RUSSIA KILL UKRAINIANS

 

 

While voters are rightly aggrieved over Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran, they need to recognize that the president is ready to inflict an even greater foreign policy disaster on our country.

This week, the president openly aligned the American government with Russia against the democracies of Europe, including Ukraine.

Having dropped his threadbare pretense of U.S. neutrality on ending the Ukraine war, Trump is now effectively helping Moscow pummel defenseless Ukrainian civilians with drones and bombs. He is trying to force Kyiv to surrender its independence and submit to Vladimir Putin’s draconian terms.

Meantime, the president is denying Russia’s extensive help to Iran and ignoring its increasing drone attacks on NATO allies. The Kremlin is positively gleeful. Moscow’s chief negotiator on Ukraine, businessman Kirill Dmitriev, reposted on X a picture of a Russian bear and a U.S. eagle geared up for battle against a British lion and a European Union flag.

But take a deep breath, because Trump is leading the country toward even greater foreign policy degradation.

This week he acquiesced to Putin’s proposal to hold a three-way summit with Xi Jinping in China to resolve the war on Moscow’s terms. European allies — and Ukraine itself — would be excluded.

In other words, a Republican president who decries Democrats as “communists” seeks to ally with communist China and the ex-Communist, still Soviet-minded KGB killer Putin. Trump wants to join them in undermining European democracies and dividing the world into three spheres of influence. (In reality, the two dictators believe the U.S. president is weak and are playing America’s wannabe despot like a fiddle.)

Here is the question that Americans face when they make their choices at the polls in two weeks: Do they want to support a GOP that has so far capitulated to a leader who is eager to partner with Putin and Xi as they help Iran and seek to undermine America around the world?

Aid for Putin

Trump’s claims that his waving of Russia sanctions — lifting restrictions on Russian export of diesel to the world — are necessary to keep Russia at the bargaining table are false. The diesel amounts are too small to matter, and Russia has never been willing to bargain, still insisting on the complete capitulation of Ukraine.

Yet in his eagerness for a “deal,” any deal, Trump insisted that “Russia has been fine on Ukraine” even as Moscow continued to bombard urban apartment blocks, children in playgrounds, and an infant in a stroller. He consistently excuses Russia’s massive attacks on Ukrainian civilians.

Most heinous, Trump is refusing to let Europeans send Patriot missiles they have paid for to Ukraine, leaving Kyiv totally unable to stop Putin’s ballistic missiles. Moreover, the administration degraded U.S. Starlink and Starshield connections to Ukraine over the weekend, which still haven’t been restored fully. They are vital to intercepting Moscow’s turbojet drones and giving Ukraine advance warning of missile attacks.

Even as Ukraine proposes a mutual ceasefire on striking energy production sites — which Putin refuses — Trump is aiding Russian efforts to bombard Ukraine into submission.

Most despicable, the U.S. president and his team are lying when they deny they had anything to do with the intelligence and Starlink-Starshield cuts. Elon Musk (who undoubtedly knows the truth, and bears culpability) said Trump would have had the last word on any such cuts.

Helping Iran

On Sunday Trump insisted “Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran,” saying, “I want to keep it that way” as an excuse for his series of concessions to Moscow. He ignores or denies well-documented Russian intelligence and technology support to Tehran, which has helped the Iranians kill U.S. troops in the Middle East.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed Russia’s full support for Tehran. “I am confident that Iran’s cause, like Russia’s, is a just cause,” said Lavrov, standing next to the Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi at a news conference in Tehran. Yet Trump has aligned himself with Putin’s “just cause.”

Misbegotten alliance

Putin reportedly views his proposal for a three-way summit on Ukraine’s future as a way to elevate Russia’s global standing and divide the world into spheres of influence dominated by the United States, Russia, and China.

This plays into Trump’s long expressed eagerness for such a status quo, harking back to centuries ago when nondemocratic emperors, kings, and dictators gathered to divide the global spoils.

It would also be reminiscent of the post-World War II Yalta Conference held in November 1945 in the Soviet Union, when the “Big Three” leaders of the victorious allies — President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill — gathered to reshape the postwar world.

The two democratic leaders at Yalta prevented Stalin from totally dominating Europe, although they acquiesced in his takeover of Eastern Europe, which condemned those countries to remain behind the Iron Curtain until 1989.

Starry-eyed Trump, who envisions himself as smarter than Putin or Xi, ignores Putin’s expressed desire to reestablish domination of the former subject countries of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine. He ignores Putin’s current military and financial efforts to fragment the European Union, which amount to a shadow war.

Trump seems oblivious to the fact that Russia and China believe he is weak and that the United States is on the way down, and both want to hasten that decline. He clearly never reads the speeches of Putin and Xi that make that intent clear and never listens to intelligence briefings. Trump’s megalomania convinces him he will be top dog of the troika when in reality he is too willfully blind to recognize how he is being played.

So, dear voters, you are confronted with a leader unlike any in U.S. history, who, to promote his own personal interests, is ready to partner with adversaries who wish our nation ill.

This president is too blind to see that America needs its democratic allies in Europe and Asia to stand up against the dictators with whom he seeks to bond. He is ready to cut those alliances and leave the Europeans to stand alone against Putin, and our Asian allies, including Taiwan, to deal alone with Xi. He is ready to sacrifice Ukraine and its people to Russian domination so he can declare a “win.”

True, Trump is not on the ballot in November, but his Republican Party has not challenged his traitorous sacrifice of U.S. security and alliances in service of his whims. The only hope of stopping him from this madness is electing a Congress that will confront and resist his delusions.

In two weeks, we will see if Americans recognize the dire historical foreign policy turning point at which this country has arrived.

(Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the The Philadelphia Inquirer. Readers may write to her at: Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101, or by email at trubin@phillynews.com.)

©2026 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

 

The LuLac Edition #5, 806, October 27th, 2026

 

 

WHEN THEY SHOW YOU WHO THEY ARE……..

BELIEVE THEM

 

 

I always thought that Vivek Ramaswamy was like a bad used car salesman od the 60s era. Fast talker, always had an answer for everything, smiled all the time he was lying to your face. In politics, you always feel that there is a low bar for morality. But when Trump came down that escalator and opened his mouth, all bets were off. With him there was no bottom and that was transferred to the minions he spawned. One of them was Vivek. Here’s a comment on what he did to an opponent proving this man is a thug.

An October surprise is traditionally a last-minute revelation intended to expose an opponent’s weaknesses, damage their credibility, and potentially change the outcome of an election.

But in all my years, I have never witnessed an October surprise in which a candidate so effectively exposed his own moral bankruptcy, his own lack of judgment, and his own unfitness for public office.

What Vivek Ramaswamy and his campaign have done is far more revealing about his character than anything they could possibly have revealed about Amy Acton.

To take the horrific childhood trauma of a 12 year old girl, a child who endured sexual abuse and unimaginable betrayal, and exploit that suffering decades later for political advantage is, in my opinion, an extraordinary display of cruelty, opportunism, and moral failure.

And what makes it even more disturbing is that his campaign has acknowledged responsibility for the advertisement and continues to stand behind it.

Let me be perfectly clear: I cannot promise anyone that Amy Acton will be a great governor. No one can make such a promise about any candidate.

But I can say this with absolute conviction: A man who demonstrates such a profound lack of compassion, decency, and moral judgment in his pursuit of power has given me every reason to believe he is unfit to exercise that power.

Elections are not simply about economic policies, political parties, or campaign promises. They are also about the moral character of the people we entrust with the future of our communities, our children, and our state.

When someone is willing to exploit the sexual abuse of a child to advance his political ambitions, I have to ask: What moral boundary would he refuse to cross once he actually holds power?

That question should frighten every Ohioan, regardless of political affiliation.

The consequences of electing someone who places political ambition above basic human decency can extend far beyond a single election or a four years term. Such leadership can gradually erode the moral standards we expect from public officials and normalize behavior that should never be acceptable.

Perhaps the greatest irony of this entire episode is that the intended victim of this October surprise may ultimately emerge stronger, while the man responsible has revealed something deeply troubling about himself.

Vivek Ramaswamy intended to make Amy Acton the issue. Instead, he has made his own character the issue.

And for me, that may be the most revealing October surprise I have ever witnessed.

Rachel Wallace, the Democratic nominee in Pennsylvania’s 9th Congressional District, outraised four-term incumbent Dan Meuser tenfold in the weeks leading up to the election. 

 

 

WALLACE RAISES TEN

TIMES MORE THAN

MEUSER IN WEEKS

AHEAD OF ELECTION

Rachel Wallace raised more than $69,000 in the pre-general filing period. In the same period, Meuser raised $6,900, with $6,000 of that coming from PACs. One of his two PAC donations came from a defense contractor as Meuser continues to defend the Iran war.

The latest Federal Election Commission filings show Wallace’s momentum continues to build in the final days of the campaign. Almost 90% of Wallace’s contributions came from individuals, while 87% of Meuser’s contributions came from two out-of-state PACs.

Wallace also enters the final weeks of the campaign with more cash on hand than Meuser. Wallace has $250,000 to get her across the finish line, while Meuser only has $29,000.

To be fair, Meuser has never had a tough challenger. The absence of PAC most likely is because the powers that be in the GOP didn’t think he needed the boost. 

Wallace will campaign in 6 counties before Election Day. 

 

 

 

The LuLac Edition #5, 805,, October 26th, 2026

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The LuLac Edition #5, 804, October 25th, 2026

 

WHAT THE 4 HIGHEST-SCORING

PROTEINS HAVE IN COMMON

 

Steak, salmon, and chicken are main drivers of protein. But there are other options for people looking for something mor. 

Tofu, chia seeds, beans, and quinoa made up the highest-scoring group in a University of Cambridge researcher’s analysis of 20 protein sources. The scoring system considered sodium, saturated fat, cholesterol, and whether a food contains all nine essential amino acids, alongside environmental impact, affordability, and availability. Here’s how the four foods performed on measures highlighted in the research.

Tofu: This soy product earned the highest People Score, with 20 out of 24 points, and was classified as a complete protein, meaning it contains all nine essential amino acids. It also earned a perfect 16 out of 16 for environmental impact, giving it the highest overall score of 36 out of 40.

Chia seeds: These seeds were among the four highest-scoring foods for environmental impact. Producing 100 grams of chia protein was associated with 3.07 grams of water pollution, measured in phosphate equivalents, compared with 46.23 grams for pork. Chia seeds also placed among the four highest-scoring foods overall.

Beans: Beans performed particularly well on sodium and saturated fat, containing just 11.11 milligrams of sodium and 1.11 grams of saturated fat per 100 grams of protein. They also had exceptionally low freshwater use, measured as consumptive blue water, at 0.07 liters per 100 grams of protein. Beans were also among the four highest-scoring foods on the People Score, which combines nutritional characteristics, affordability, and availability.

Quinoa: This grain finished among the four highest-scoring protein sources overall, despite being the most expensive food per 100 grams of protein in the analysis. Prices were based on listings from Aldi stores in the United Kingdom. The paper does not identify which individual nutritional or environmental measures contributed most to quinoa’s overall placement.

 

MY BEST FRIEND……JACK

If you like to get a premium buzz on, does Jack Daniels have a drink for you. Jack Daniel’s Special Release Coy Hill Rye is the distillery’s first limited-edition single-barrel rye aged on Coy Hill, its highest elevation point, and one of its oldest rye releases to date.

Aged for at least 10 years, the limited-edition whiskey is bottled at cask strength, with proofs ranging from 128.7 to 148.5 depending on the barrel.

Approximately 31,800 bottles will be available nationwide this month , with a suggested retail price of $90 per 700-milliliter bottle.

Jack Daniel’s began producing rye whiskey in February 2011, and the process has remained largely unchanged since. Like the distillery’s other rye whiskeys, Single Barrel Special Release Coy Hill Rye was distilled from a mash of 70% rye, 18% corn, and 12% malted barley.

Before barreling, the fresh distillate was filtered through sugar maple charcoal, a step known as the Lincoln County Process. While Jack Daniel’s high-corn Tennessee whiskey passes through 10 feet of charcoal, its rye passes through about three feet, a difference the distillery attributes to the recipe’s lower oil content.