18 November—Just yesterday Joe Biden—sorry, President Biden—finally approved Ukraine’s use of what are called long-range U.S. missiles to hit Putrid positions inside Russia. Putrid says he’s not happy, that the use of the missiles is a “red line.” Good color choice for him. So it’s about goddamn bloody time.

It took 10,000 North Korean troops (i.e., elite or green cannon fodder, depending on your source) being sent to help Russia’s apparently flagging war effort as well as the prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office—when he’s promised to end Putrid’s purely ego-driven imperialistic war—to get Joe to wake up and pull his finger out. The Democratic appeasement team had to save face some way. But it’s a step.

Mind you, Biden has authorized only limited use of the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS—the acronym is supposed to be pronounced Attack’ems) missiles. In service since the 1991 Gulf War, we’ve sold Attack’ems to Australia, Greece, Morocco, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. In addition to Ukraine, of course. And who knows who else has them, through whatever means? Like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

For Ukraine, it’s too little, too late, for sure. And the long range of the Attack’ems is really so-called battlefield range, only 200 miles at most. That’s about the distance from Litchfield to Philadelphia. (Not that Litchfield would ever think of . . .) The Attack’ems don’t even have the range to make it to most Russian airfields. But it’s a step.

Putrid’s war is a game of chicken pure and simple. And so far he’s winning. The good guys have been reluctant to escalate from the probably unfounded fear that Putrid would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to get his way—and save face. But he escalated first by begging the help of North Korea. So there.

So what’s next?

🏹 🏹 🏹 🏹 🏹 🏹 🏹

It was 717 years ago today (that’s the year 1307, to save you the arithmetic), according to 16th-century Swiss historian Aegidius Tschudi who relied on secondary and probably tertiary sources and his own imagination, that the Swiss folk hero known in English as William Tell shot the apple off his son’s head.

Long story very short, Will Tell was famed in his day as the Swiss populist Annie Oakley. And to save himself and son Walter from being executed by a tyrannical civil servant he split an apple on the kid’s head with a bolt from his trusty crossbow.

You wonder if Walter wet his breeches waiting for the bolt . . .