Hey everybody. Well, we got a great one for a change, and this time I really mean it.

Frank Flaar is with us today. Frank is a staff writer for the Atlantic Monthly and one of the great journalists and thinkers of our time, in my humble opinion.

I believe this is Frank's fifth time on the podcast.

Record keeping is not our strong suit on the Al Franka podcast.

Frank's been on about Russia before and has written extensively about Ukraine, including

a definitive Atlantic cover story profile of Paul Manafort that went into a great detail about

all the ill-gotten money Manafort made propping up President Victor Yanukovych,

Putin's corrupt stooge in Ukraine.

So I know this is uncharacteristic of my intros, but this one is a great one. What can I say? Frank wrote a piece very recently in the Atlantic about just how well President Biden and his team handled the lead up to this crisis, including doing some almost unprecedented moves, making some unprecedented moves like the early

release of our intelligence, conclusions that Putin was going to invade.

And that gave us time to work with our allies to create a sanctions regime far enough

in advance that we could trigger them almost from day one.

Now, part of that team is Tony Blinken.

Tony is a friend.

He plays in a band that a number of my friends play in,

and Tony's a really good guitarist, especially for a secretary of state.

And when Joe Biden announced he was nominating Tony for that job, I texted Tony.

I said, I wrote, congratulations.

I hope nothing bad happens during the next four years.

The situation in Ukraine is bad and is becoming more and more tragic every day.

Putin has said that he's put his nuclear arsenal on high alert,

which is kind of checkmate in terms of the U.S. and NATO establishing and enforcing a no-fly zone.

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