Remember Donald Trump, the guy who, roughly 300 weeks ago, promised that his tremendous Obamacare replacement was just weeks away, and who was reportedly determined to pull the U.S. out of NATO in his second term? Now he’s telling the world how easy it would be to end his buddy Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
In fact, Trump has convinced both himself and his brutally overworked Adderall fairies that there’d be no war in Ukraine if he were still president. Which might be true! Putin might already be finished with Ukraine and be fixing to blitzkrieg Poland by now. But in Trump’s world, Putin—who moved mountains to try to get Trump reelected—would have been too scared of him to invade. Or something like that. Which makes a certain amount of sense if you ignore everything you know about history, diplomacy, geopolitics, the authoritarian mindset, Donald Trump’s relationship with Putin, and […] In other words, if you’re a Fox News viewer.
On Monday, Trump appeared on the Sean Hannity […] show to unload a new tranche of alternative facts, but Trump appeared to have gone too far—even for Baghdad Boob.
Apparently, the same guy who claimed he’d eliminate the entire national debt in eight years before adding $7.8 trillion to it in just four would have prevented the war entirely—by simply letting Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine. And, who knows, maybe annex the Sudetenland just for shits and gigs.
The Daily Beast:
Saying that Russia was going for the “whole enchilada” with Joe Biden as president, Trump added that Russia “took over nothing” while he was in the White House because Russian President Vladimir Putin “understood” that “he would have never done it.”
The former president then added: “That’s without even negotiating a deal. I could have negotiated. At worst, I could’ve made a deal to take over something, there are certain areas that are Russian-speaking areas, frankly, but you could’ve worked a deal.”
[…] Of course, Hannity, who is well aware that interviewing Trump is like languidly suckling a hallucinogenic toad while watching Benito Mussolini blow bubbles in his milk for 40 minutes, knows he’s just a propagandist. So the last thing he was going to do was let his nightly Fox News audience hear the bad, and very foolish, thing Trump had said earlier in the day.
During his evening show, Hannity aired the segment featuring Trump’s boasts about easily ending the war, but then weirdly elided the bit about offering up a chunk of Ukraine.
Instead, shortly after Trump says, “I could have negotiated,” the audio quickly skips about 30 seconds of speaking time before picking back up where the former president pivots to his complaint that “China no longer respects the United States.”
Oh, God. I mean, it’s obvious from the many, many revealing documents from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox that the network is in the tank for Trump and his merry band of shitheels, but wow. Anyone—even the blinkered goofballs at Fox News—can see this guy is a menace. Tucker Carlson even said he passionately hates him. And yet they continue to conceal and downplay his most egregious actions and statements. Which is really disturbing. I mean, come on. Are ratings seriously more important to Fox than global democracy and the ultimate fate of the planet?
Apparently so.
Of course, Trump has been saying for some time now that ending his BFF’s elective war would be “so easy” and that he could broker a peace deal in “24 hours.”
Uh-huh.
[…] very reminiscent of that time he said repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a much better plan would be super-duper simple.
“My first day in office, I am going to ask Congress to put a bill on my desk getting rid of this disastrous law and replacing it with reforms that expand choice, freedom, affordability,” Trump said in October 2016, which was—let me just double-check my math—slightly more than two weeks ago. “You’re going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost. And it’s going to be so easy.”
No wonder Putin worked so hard to get Trump elected. He was concerned about our health! Not so much his own citizens’, of course—but man, does he ever want to make America great again. And chances are, he’ll never stop trying.
The governor of California said on Wednesday that he would not renew a multimillion-dollar contract with Walgreens, after the pharmacy chain announced that it would stop selling an abortion pill in 21 states that had threatened legal action.
The governor, Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said he had directed the California Department of General Services to notify Walgreens that it would withdraw a planned renewal of the contract that was supposed to take effect on May 1. He said the state had paid Walgreens $54 million over the life of the contract, which allowed it to get specialty prescription drugs that were mostly used by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“California will not stand by as corporations cave to extremists and cut off critical access to reproductive care and freedom,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement.
….. After Republican attorneys general in 21 states threatened legal action against pharmacy chains that sold the abortion pill mifepristone, Walgreens said it would no longer distribute the drug in those states.
….A spokesperson for Walgreens did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. A spokesman previously told The New York Times that Walgreens had decided before the legal threats that it would dispense mifepristone only where state laws allowed pharmacists to do so.
[“only where state laws allowed pharmacists to do so,” yet Kansas, Iowa, Montana and Alaska, where abortion remains legal, are included.]
If you didn’t catch it, Donald Trump revealed today the way he would have reached a deal with Vladimir Putin to keep him from invading Ukraine… by giving Putin parts of Ukraine.
[video at the link]
How does this differ from surrendering?
[Tweet and video: “The 93rd sends greetings from Bakhmut”] Honestly quieter in the background here than any video I’ve watched in two weeks.
[Tweet and images at the link: “Remember the Russian Cope Cages to stop Ukrainian 🇺🇦 Javelins.” The images show destroyed Cope Cages.]
I think my doctor’s office, the place where I get the oil changed on my truck, and my dentist’s office should also stop airing Fox News.
You’re lucky. My optometrist plays Newsmax. Luckily there are inner and outer waiting rooms, Unfortunately, all of the waiting rooms play Newsmax. But he requires Covid vaccinations (saw a note on the wall through an open door into a staff area) and required masking more than anyone except my Geisinger (which still requires masks (BRAVO!!!)) and has a note on the door saying that masks are perfectly acceptable if you are vulnerable or you are sick,
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said it had been “a difficult night” as Russian strikes hit targets across Ukraine early on Thursday, including Kyiv, the Black Sea port of Odesa and the second-largest city, Kharkiv, knocking out power to several areas. The attacks struck a wide arc of targets including cities stretching from Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia and Rivne in the west to Dnipro and Poltava in central Ukraine.
Reuters has reported more details on the Russian missile strikes across Ukraine while people slept on Thursday, killing at least six civilians, knocking out electricity and forcing a nuclear power plant off the grid.
Reuters reports:
The first big volley of missile strikes since mid-February shattered the longest period of comparative calm since Moscow began a campaign to attack Ukraine’s civil infrastructure five months ago. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said infrastructure and residential buildings in 10 regions had been hit.
“The occupiers can only terrorise civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” Zelenskiy said in a statement.
At least five people were killed in a missile that destroyed a village house in the western Lviv region, according to emergency services. Drone footage from the area, some 700 km (440 miles) from any military battlefield, showed a flattened home surrounded by badly damaged buildings.
Another civilian was reported killed by the missiles in the central Dnipro region. Three civilians were separately reported killed by artillery in Kherson.
In the capital Kyiv, residents were awakened by explosions. A seven-hour air strike alert through the night was the longest of the Russian air campaign that began in October.
“I heard a very loud explosion, very loud. We quickly jumped out of bed and saw one car on fire. Then the other cars caught on fire as well. The glass shattered on the balconies and windows,” said Liudmyla, 58, holding a toddler in her arms.
“It’s very frightening. Very frightening. The child got scared and jumped out of bed,” she said. “How can they do this? How is this possible? They are not humans, I don’t know what to call them. They are frightening the children, their mental state will be disrupted.”
Moscow says its campaign of targeting Ukraine’s infrastructure far from the front is intended to reduce its ability to fight. Kyiv says the air strikes have no military purpose and aim to harm and intimidate civilians, a war crime.
Ukrainian officials said Moscow had fired six of its kinzhal hypersonic missiles, an unprecedented number, which Ukraine has no way of shooting down. Russia is believed to have only a few dozen of the missiles, which President Vladimir Putin regularly touts in speeches as a weapon for which NATO has no answer.
Ukraine said the missiles had knocked out the power supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, severing it from the Ukrainian grid.
The plant, which Russia has held since capturing it early in the war, is near the front line and both sides have warned in the past of a potential for disaster there caused by fighting. Moscow said the was being kept safe on diesel backup power.
“Everything is absolutely normal: the specialists at the plant are working quite professionally, the automation has started up,” Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the CEO of Russian state energy firm Rosenergoatom, said on state TV channel Rossiya 24.
“There is no threat or danger of a nuclear incident. There is more than enough fuel and, if necessary, it will be supplied to the plant.”
Intense fighting has continued in and around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.…
The UN gives urgent warning as Ukrainian power plant loses power
In a statement this morning about the situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, told his board of governors that urgent action was needed to protect the site’s safety and security.
He said: “This is the sixth time – let me say it again sixth time, that ZNPP has lost all off-site power and has had to operate in this emergency mode. Let me remind you – this is the largest nuclear power station in Europe.”
He added: “What are we doing? How can we sit here in this room this morning and allow this to happen? This cannot go on. I am astonished by the complacency. What are we doing to prevent this from happening? Each time we are rolling a dice, and if we allow this to continue then one day our luck will run out”.
KINBURN SPIT NEWS:
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, reports that the south command of the Ukrainian armed forces has claimed to have destroyed a Russian self-propelled artillery installation on the Kinburn spit.
The claim has not been independently verified.
The Kinburn spit is a stretch of land that stretches out from Kherson oblast to the west, and is opposite the southern coast of Ukraine that runs from Odesa to Mykolaiv. It is currently occupied by Russian forces. Kherson is one of the regions of Ukraine which Russia partially occupies and claims to have annexed.
StevoRsays
Aussie – & US o A – possible war with PRC news :
Former (Aussie) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warns of risk of ‘accidental war’ with China
..former prime minister Kevin Rudd has warned of the dangers of the tense relationship between the US and China. ..(snip)..”The overall state of the US-China relationship is in bad strategic repair,” Mr Rudd told 7.30.
He said it was Australia’s role as a friend and ally of the US to help build “guardrails” into the relationship to avert a dangerous deterioration, “…so that we do not end up with a crisis, escalation and war by accident.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping made unusually direct criticism of the US this week, quoted in state media as telling delegates of China’s key political advisory body, “Western countries, led by the US, are implementing all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us.”
“It was unusual, and it was blunt,” Mr Rudd said.
“In fact, I’ve been struggling for the last 24 hours to find a time when a Chinese paramount leader has attacked the United States by name.”
China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang — the former Chinese ambassador to the US — went further, announcing that the US and China were heading towards “inevitable conflict” if Washington does not change its approach.
Is it just me or does talking about a possible war between the PRC & USA seem like a self-fulfilling escalating “prophecy” to anyone else? Also whilst war with China sadly isn’t “unthinkable” – clearly – it would be World War III and utterly horrendously catastrophic for everyone on this planet.
Meanwhile another former PM’s* toxic abusive nasty cult seems to be getting exposed for what it is a bit more here :
Federal MP accuses Hillsong of money laundering and tax evasion under parliamentary privilege
.. Independent MP Andrew Wilkie has used parliamentary privilege to accuse Hillsong church of breaking financial laws in Australia and around the world relating to “fraud, money laundering and tax evasion”. Mr Wilkie claimed tens of thousands of leaked financial records and documents — including credit card statements, details of designer gifts and the use of private jets — show a misuse of church funds and lavish spending.
The Tasmanian MP said some of the documents show former leader Brian Houston — who stepped down from the role last year — was “treating private jets like Ubers” and used church money for various trips costing a total of $179,000 in one three-month period.
Standing next to two large stacks of folders of documents, Mr Wilkie claimed there were details of four members of the Houston family and their friends spending $150,000 of church money on a luxury retreat in Cancun, Mexico in 2021.
Mr Wilkie also alleged the new head of Hillsong, Phil Dooley, had spent tens of thousands of dollars on business-class flights for him and his daughter.
Paul K @ #456, I know! It’s terrible and has been getting progressively worse for the past few weeks. A while back, I saw someone responding to some troll/jerk with damning quotes from I think the Fox filings. I’d love to see simple graphic memes quoting these people and catching them out on their many lies.
Tucker Carlson on Trump: “I hate him passionately.”
Tucker Carlson, January 4, 2021: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”
Oggie @497 in the previous chapter of this thread. I definitely feel some empathy for you. Newsmax is even worse than Fox News. (Hard to imagine, but true.) Yes, we should not be subjected to that propaganda in public spaces.
For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of comments in this thread:
[…] In Trump’s vision, the solution to the crisis is to let Russia “take over” parts of Ukraine. The Republican apparently sees such an approach as credible, because there are “Russian-speaking areas” in Ukraine.
In case this isn’t obvious, let’s go ahead and note that this appeasement plan would reward Russia for attacking its neighbor, signaling to Putin that he can gain greater territory by force with the United States’ blessing. As other countries received the same message, it would likely encourage more wars and additional invasions elsewhere.
In other words, Trump has a vision, and it involves Ukrainian officials giving up parts of their territory to the country that invaded them, in the hopes that might temporarily satisfy Trump’s friends in Moscow. What could possibly go wrong?
The problem with Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 coverage isn’t just that he misused the security camera footage he had exclusive access to, it’s also the conclusions that he drew. After years of the Fox News host peddling ridiculous rhetoric about the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, he cherry-picked video excerpts to confirm his pre-determined counter-narrative.
The result was a message that’s been condemned by Democrats, Republicans, and law enforcement: Most of the rioters were harmless.
“They were peaceful. They were orderly and meek,” the controversial television personality told his viewers on Monday night. “These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers.” He added that most of those who attacked the Capitol “obviously revere the Capitol.”
The reason this has drawn so many sharp rebukes is that Carlson wasn’t telling the truth. In fact, the Fox host’s story is sharply at odds with the story a prominent congressional leader told about the Jan. 6 violence the week after the attack:
“These men and women in the uniform, they got overrun. One officer got killed. … They got broken arms. You don’t understand what was transpiring at that moment and that time. People hanging, people brought ropes. When I got back into my building, I found the straps that they had. I don’t know if they’d come to try to kidnap somebody or whatever. But they, they were well planned for it.”
That, of course, was the assessment from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, during an interview he did with KERN, a radio station in his California congressional district, on Jan. 13, 2021.
So what we’re left with is two competing visions: one fraudulent and one true. There’s the television personality who wants the public to believe Jan. 6 rioters were peaceful sightseers, and there’s the congressional leader who described the rioters as violent and dangerous.
Does McCarthy agree with Carlson’s vision or his own?
The GOP leader — who gave the Fox host exclusive access to the security footage for reasons he’s still struggling to explain — has claimed he hasn’t seen Carlson’s coverage, even as the House Republican conference he leads promotes the segments.
Eventually, however, McCarthy should take a little time and see the results of his handiwork. At that point, the House speaker will have a choice: He can tell us whether Carlson is right about what transpired on Jan. 6 or whether McCarthy is. He can’t pick both.
As recently as 2016, Jenna Ellis was not a Donald Trump admirer. She repeatedly described the then-candidate as an “idiot,” adding that she considered him an “unethical, corrupt, lying, criminal, dirtbag.” Ellis even took aim at Trump’s supporters, saying they didn’t care about “facts or logic.”
Ellis nevertheless joined Trump’s legal team a few years ago, becoming a rather enthusiastic proponent, not only of her client’s lies about his 2020 defeat, but also of radical tactics that would allow the then-president to remain in office despite the election results. We later learned that Ellis also exchanged hundreds of text messages with then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the runup to Jan. 6, and ultimately took the Fifth in response to questions about those communications. Ellis was also ordered to testify before the special grand jury in Georgia that investigated alleged election interference efforts.
But while much of the public has come to expect few consequences for Republican lawyers who engage in such tactics, as NBC News reported, Ellis has had to pay a price for trying to deceive the public.
Jenna Ellis, an attorney who advised then-President Donald Trump as he tried to overturn the 2020 election results, was censured for misconduct Wednesday by a Colorado Supreme Court judge. The Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel said that Ellis violated a Colorado rule for professional conduct that prohibits “misrepresentation” by attorneys.
[…] Rudy Giuliani’s law license was suspended, while Jeffrey Clark and John Eastman are awaiting disciplinary proceedings. She also isn’t the first election denier to face court sanctions.
What makes this story especially notable, however, is the fact that Ellis, as part of the legal proceedings, acknowledged that she didn’t tell the public the truth. From the NBC News report:
Last month, Ellis’ lawyer had filed a stipulation agreeing to a public censure of his client and acknowledging 10 misrepresentations in the aftermath of the 2020 election, including repeatedly claiming that the election was stolen from Trump. Ellis also acknowledged misleading comments stemming from claims she made on Fox Business about affidavits from witnesses, voter intimidation and statistics that proved a “coordinated effort” to transfer votes from Trump to Biden. According to the signed stipulation, she made similar claims on Twitter.
[Fox News! Of course.]
[…] In this case, Ellis repeatedly peddled false claims about the former president’s defeat — assertions she knew at the time weren’t true — in a variety of settings. But when push came to shove, the attorney seemed to realize that while she expected to get away with lying on the air, she approached the Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel in a more serious way.
For another, to this day, the former president continues to lie about the 2020 election results as if his claims had merit. One of his former lawyers has now been forced to concede that while she peddled related rhetoric, the claims had no merit.
Georgia’s ruling party has said it will drop its bill on “foreign agents” after fierce opposition culminated in two nights of violent protests and criticism that the draft law would limit press freedom and undercut the country’s efforts to become a candidate for EU membership.
The Georgian Dream party said in a statement it would “unconditionally withdraw the bill we supported without any reservations”. It cited the need to reduce “confrontation” in society.
Thousands of protesters rallied against the legislation, which was regarded as an authoritarian shift and could have undercut Tbilisi’s efforts to join the EU.
On Wednesday, hundreds of police, many carrying riot shields, used water cannon and teargas in clashes with protesters in Georgia’s capital. More than 60 protesters were arrested outside parliament in Tbilisi.
Earlier, thousands had marched in the streets to rally against the proposed law that would require any organisations receiving more than 20% of their funding from overseas to register as “foreign agents” or face substantial fines.
Protesters carrying Georgian, EU and Ukrainian flags gathered outside the parliament building and shouted: “No to the Russian law.” Demonstrators also blocked the city’s central Rustaveli Avenue, after a call from the main opposition party, the United National Movement, to gather there.
The EU delegation to Georgia welcomed the announcement, saying it wanted to “encourage all political leaders in Georgia to resume pro-EU reforms, in an inclusive and constructive way”.
The EU is considering Georgia’s application for candidate status. Previously, the European Council president, Charles Michel, warned that the adoption of the so-called foreign agent bill “was not compatible with the EU path”.
Despite the bill withdrawal announcement, members of the Georgian opposition said on Thursday morning that they would stage a new rally in the evening. “There will be a rally today … We need to get clarity on how the governments intend to recall the ball because their statements are vague,” said Tsotne Koberidze, a member of the opposition during a press conference.
Koberidze urged the authorities to release all the protesters that were detained during this week’s protests.
“I will go the rally tonight again, we cannot stop now,” one protester said, speaking on conditions of anonymity. “This is our big chance to end all ties with Russia. We want to be with the EU.”
…
Speaking on Wednesday evening, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, called for “democratic success” in Georgia.
“There is no Ukrainian who would not wish success to our friendly Georgia. Democratic success. European success,” he said. “We want to be in the European Union and we will be there. We want Georgia to be in the European Union, and I am sure it will be there. We want Moldova to be in the European Union, and I am sure it will be there. All free nations of Europe deserve this.”
In his Wednesday address, Zelenskiy also voiced gratitude for Georgian support for Ukraine. “I want to thank everyone who has been holding Ukrainian flags in the squares and streets of Georgia these days. I want to express gratitude for our national anthem that was played in Tbilisi. This is respect for Ukraine and I want to express my sincere respect for Georgia.”
The Georgian Dream party has been the ruling party in Georgia since 2012. The party’s founder, the eccentric Russian-connected billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, is widely believed to exert control over it.
While the party had won elections on a pro-western platform, critics argue Ivanishvili is pushing Georgia towards Moscow’s orbit, and despite overwhelming support for Ukraine in the country the government has not joined the west in imposing sanctions on Russia.
“The foreign agent law is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Otar Berov, a Georgian football commentator who attended the protests this week. “It has ignited longstanding anger about the government’s absurd pro-Russian stance … I am not sure protests will stop.”
Far-right hoaxsters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman violated federal and state civil rights law with a plot using robocalls to suppress the Black vote during the 2020 election, a New York judge ruled Wednesday.
Wohl and Burkman targeted about 85,000 voters across Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio with robocalls that summer falsely claiming that voting by mail would risk handing their private information to the police, debt collectors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Hi, this is Tamika Taylor from Project 1599,” the message said. “Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man, stay safe and beware of vote by mail.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against the duo in May 2021 after her office found that they may have violated state and federal law. Wohl and Burkman also faced criminal charges in Michigan and Ohio. They pleaded guilty to telecommunications fraud in Ohio in October.
In his 111-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero lambasted the operatives for attempting to “deter Black voters by exploiting fears and stereotypes.”
[…] Marrero wrote that Wohl and Burkman violated a bevy of federal statutes with their scheme: the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Ku Klux Klan Act, and several New York civil rights laws. The next phase of the case will allow the plaintiffs, including the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, to propose damages and other penalties.
The New York AG applauded the ruling through a statement on Wednesday. “Your vote is your voice, and I am proud that today the court ruled in our favor to uphold the most important cornerstone of our democracy,” she wrote.
Wohl and Burkman have already been sentenced in Ohio: Back in December, they were each sentenced to two years of probation, six months of monitoring with a GPS ankle bracelet, $2,500 a piece in fines, and 500 hours of registering voters in Washington, D.C. The pair are challenging charges in Michigan and the Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $5 million fine.
Well, the courts are punishing the bad guys, so at least parts of the USA justice system still work. Certainly seems like it take a looong time for the wheels of justice to turn.
Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, has praised Rishi Sunak’s anti-immigration measures as “harsh but fair”.
In a post on Instagram, Salvini, leader of the far-right League, quoted a tweet by Sunak, translated into Italian, in which Sunak said: “If you arrive illegally in the UK, you can’t claim asylum; you can’t benefit from our modern slavery protections; you can’t make spurious human rights claims; you can’t stay”.
Beneath the post, Salvini wrote:
Words from the UK prime minister. Harsh but fair.
Funny, I was just reading quotes from top British officials a century ago praising Mussolini’s economic policy…
Éric Zemmour, the French far-right commentator, supporter of the “great replacement” theory that Muslim immigrants are replacing native Europeans and candidate for president in last year’s election (he came fourth), has also praised Rishi Sunak’s new asylum policy.
In a tweet yesterday, Zemmour said:
The message is clear. In the UK, illegal immigrants are not welcome and will receive no preferential treatment.
Congratulations to the British prime minister who, unlike Macron’s government, has chosen to protect his people against submersion by migrants.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was hospitalized after tripping at a local hotel, a spokesman for the senator said.
The Kentucky senator, who’s 81, was attending a private dinner in Washington on Wednesday when he tripped. He was admitted to a hospital for treatment, spokesman Doug Andres said.
McConnell’s office did not provide additional detail on his condition or how long he may be absent from the Senate. […]
The “foreign agents” law that mimicked a similar Russian law has been pulled “unconditionally” by the parliament after two days of relentless mass protests.
This is a huge victory for the protesters and a defeat for forces trying to drag Georgia into Russia’s orbit, including the postironically named party “Georgian dream” that holds the parliamentary majority. It is backed by its founder, the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, who proclaimed European integration of Georgia as his goal while maintaining curiously strong ties with Russia.
Were the law passed, it would have made European integration of Georgia (including EU membership) nearly impossible, because it would sanction NGOs and media for receiving “foreign funding,” thereby suppressing freedom of speech. It would also be a particularly vicious blow against anti-Putin Russian- and Belarusian-language journalists who fled to Georgia.
In Russia, a similar (2017 with draconian 2022 amendments) law had been used to effectively destroy the remaining free press in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine.
The Michigan legislature yesterday gave final approval to Senate Bill 4 (full text) which adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” to the anti-discrimination provisions of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act. The bill now goes to Governor Gretchen Whitmer for her signature. Detroit News reports that she has promised to sign the bill into law. During its consideration of the bill, the Michigan Senate rejected a number of proposed religious liberty amendments.
The government’s illegal migration bill [heh] has been criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. In a statement it said:
Today’s British Jewish community is descended from refugees and/or migrants. We have significant concerns at the potential for newly proposed migration legislation to breach both the refugee convention and the Human Rights Act.
While we understand that small boat crossings to the UK have increased notably in recent years, we believe that strengthening and enhancing safe, legal and viable routes to gaining asylum in this country will be a far more effective way to significantly reduce such numbers.
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, was asked about this in an interview with Robert Peston on ITV on Wednesday. In reply, she said that she had not seen the statement from the Board of Deputies, but that she was confident the bill complied with the refugee convention and other international obligations.
Military: Importance of holding Bakhmut ‘only increasing.’
According to Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Ground Forces of Ukraine, holding Bakhmut allows Ukraine to prepare its reserves for future counteroffensives and exhausts the resources of the Russian army, namely the “most prepared and combat-capable” soldiers from the Wagner private military contractor group.
Kremlin proxies in Moldova claim Ukraine’s SBU tried to kill their leader.
The Kremlin’s proxies in the Russian-occupied part of Moldova claimed on March 9 that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had allegedly tried to assassinate Vadim Krasnoselsky, the so-called president of Transnistria.
Intelligence: Russia preparing ‘large-scale provocation’ on Ukrainian-Belarusian border.
Russia is planning a “large-scale provocation” on Belarus’ border with Ukraine “in the near future,” potentially involving destruction of infrastructure facilities and victims among civilians, Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate reported on March 9.
Mayor: Power supply in Kyiv fully restored.
However, work on restoring heat supply in the Ukrainian capital is ongoing as 30% of homes are currently left without heating after Russia’s mass attack on March 9, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
On Wednesday night, Russia launched one of the largest missile barrages since the war began. The general staff of the Ukrainian military reported that there were a total of 73 missiles and eight Iranian suicide drones launched at 15 targets across Ukraine. Of those, 34 missiles and four drones were shot down. [map at the link]
That shoot-down percentage is lower than what Ukraine has achieved recently; however, there are reasons the batting average went down.
Breaking down the missiles reportedly launched: [chart at the link] Of these, the Kh-101 missiles are a stealthy upgrade to the Kh-555, meaning that they were likely not picked up by Ukrainian defenses until much closer to their targets. The Kalibr accelerates to speeds approaching Mach 3 as it nears the target, but is still vulnerable to many of the defensive systems now in Ukraine. The Kh-22 reaches a maximum speed over over Mach 4.5 and is much less likely to be taken down. Then there is the Kh-47M2 “Kinzhal,” which is Russia’s hypersonic missile, capable of reaching Mach 12. It is essentially indefensible by anything Ukraine has or is likely to receive. [Six of the Kh-22 missiles were launched from Russia’s Black Sea fleet. And six of the Kh-472 hypersonic missiles were launched from Tu-22M3 bombers over Russia.]
It’s likely that most of the other missiles were shot down at near 100% accuracy, but the Kalibr, Kh-22, and Kh-47M2 likely reached their targets with few taken out along the way. Some lucky Kh-101 might have also made it to target. Four of the Iranian drones also caused damage, likely because the large-scale missile attack distracted defenses that had lately been much more accurate in taking out these slow-flying drones.
The primary target of these attacks was reported to, once again, be the power infrastructure of Ukraine. Following the attack, Ukraine’s energy minister reported that the electrical system was “still intact,” though there may be outages in some areas.
In the last two weeks, there had been numerous reports that the power grid was coming back online after previous rounds of Russian attacks. Areas were seeing fewer outages, and some cities such as Kharkiv, which had suffered widespread blackouts for months, finally saw the lights back on. With improving power and warming weather, conditions in Ukraine were definitely improving. It was likely exactly these reports that spurred Russia into another round of attacks.
As with any of these attacks, one question immediately comes up: How many missiles does Russia have left? These are devices that were never quick builds, and the more advanced missiles require electronics and other components that Russia may have trouble finding with international sanctions (though someone will surely slip them a few microchips … for the right price).
Even if Russia’s missile factories are running at full speed, there’s no doubt that they have already burned through numbers that took not just years but decades to create. So how many are left?
The short answer is simply that we don’t know. Estimates of Russian military equipment are just that, and even analysis of what has been launched and what has been shot down is far from perfect. Back in November, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense put out this chart showing their best guess at what remained in Russia’s missile stockpile. [chart at the link]
Russia has continued to eat into these number since then. The good news is that the missiles Russia has in abundance, like those thousands of S-300 missiles, are also the ones that Ukraine is most capable of shooting down. If Russia wants to land these, they’d need to send a massive barrage that overwhelmed Ukrainian defenses, otherwise the swat down numbers are going to be very high.
The bad news is that the number of Kh-22 and Kh-47M2 “Kinzhal” are still very likely to be on the high side of 100, and every single one of those is a near guaranteed hit on whatever Russia sends them against. The Kh-22 might be intercepted during the slower portion of its flight once Ukraine has a more extensive network of air defense systems. Even the Kinzhal can likely be hit by a Patriot system thanks to the missile’s difficulty in maneuvering at high speed. But it’s going to take some time to roll out all the new air defenses still flowing into Ukraine, and Patriot is unlikely to cover more than a small percentage of the nation.
Still, one of the things that was remarkable about the strike on Wednesday night is that it was remarkable. For much of the summer and fall of 2022, Russia was conducting attacks nearly as large on a weekly basis, sometimes even more frequently, but this was the first large, multicity attack since Feb. 16. This one attack likely took 15% of Russia’s remaining stock of Kinzhal, a quarter of what it had left of Kh-22. The Mach 6 Iskander ballistic missile that was a major part of many past waves was totally missing on Wednesday, probably because Russia is nursing a shrinking supply they have largely depleted.
This isn’t to minimize the destructive power of what Russia might do with those remaining missiles. Directed against civilian population centers or government offices, the results could be gruesome. Putin could still press a button, direct 7,000 missiles at Kyiv, and deliver an ungodly strike without ever touching his reserve of medium- to long-range strategic missiles carrying nuclear warheads.
Ukraine’s own estimates also have Russia continuing to build over 600 new missiles a year, with nearly 200 being of the newest, hardest-to-stop designs. That’s a high level of ongoing misery, and no matter how many charts show that Russia has drastically reduced its stockpile, Russia continues to show it is willing to use what remains.
——————————
On Thursday, it appears that Ukraine has shelved any plans it may have had for withdrawing forces from Bakhmut. Not only have Ukrainian forces regained control over the “road of life,” they’ve repaired the bridge at Khromove, making it much easier to move in and out of the city. There are also reports that Ukraine has regained the use of the T0504 highway, which runs southwest from Bakhmut to the city of Kostyantynivka. A previously downed bridge along that highway may also have been repaired. [Tweet and image at the link]
On Thursday morning, commander of Ukrainian ground forces Oleksandr Syrskyi insisted that Ukraine intends to hold Bakhmut as preparation for future counteroffensives and to exhaust the resources of the Russian army. According to Syrskyi, holding Bakhmut is now “more important than ever.”
Syrskyi was in the city again on Wednesday, working with local commanders. Bakhmut may not have held any strategic importance outside of being the place where logistics drove the fight to be hottest … but it’s hard to say it doesn’t hold strategic significance when the Ukrainian leadership is placing it at the center of their strategy.
The Ukrainian general wasn’t the only commander in the city on Wednesday. The owner of the Wagner Group mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, stepped into eastern Bakhmut long enough to have his picture taken by a monument to the old T-34 tank. Notably, while Prigozhin was flying the flag of Wagner Group, the Russian flag was completely missing from any of the pictures.
As far as the fighting goes, Russia appears to have advanced a couple of blocks in the south. At this point, Russia occupies roughly 50% of the city. Most of that is the area east of the river from which Ukrainian forces withdrew last week. [map at the link]
Russian forces also reportedly attacked the village of Orikhovo-Vasylivka northwest of Bakhmut, but Ukrainian forces report that these attacks were repulsed. Another set of attacks west of Berkhivka were also reportedly repulsed, keeping that Khromove road still open, though subject to not just shelling but rifle fire in its most northern section.
To the south, there are reports of renewed fighting near Ivanivske, but no sign that the lines have moved far.
In May 2018, the nation’s top Republicans needed help. So they called on the founder of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch.
President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell were trying to stop West Virginia Republicans from nominating Don Blankenship, who had been convicted of violating mine safety standards during a lethal accident in one of his coal mines, to challenge the state’s incumbent senator, Democrat Joe Manchin.
“Both Trump and McConnell are appealing for help to beat unelectable former mine owner who served time,” Murdoch wrote to executives at Fox News, according to court records released this week. “Anything during day helpful, but Sean (Hannity) and Laura (Ingraham) dumping on him hard might save the day.”
[…] Fox became actively involved in politics instead of simply reporting or offering opinions about it. The revelations pose a challenge to the credibility of the most watched cable news network in the U.S. […]
Blankenship, who ended up losing the primary, said in an interview Wednesday that he felt the change right away, with the network’s coverage taking a harsher turn in the final hours before the primary.
[…] On Wednesday, the network characterized Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit as a flagrant attack on the First Amendment and said the company had taken statements out of context. […]
Fox has long been seen as a power in GOP politics with its large conservative fan base. But thousands of pages of documents released this week in the libel suit filed by Dominion show how the network blurred the line between journalism and party politics [That’s putting it mildly!]
[…] Murdoch also told executives at Fox News to promote the benefits of Trump’s 2017 tax cut legislation and give extra attention to Republican Senate hopefuls, the documents show. […]
revelations in the lawsuit puncture Fox’s long argument that there is a dividing line between its news and opinion sides. […] text messages disclosed in the court documents from early November 2020 sent by Fox’s chief political correspondent, Bret Baier, urged the network’s leaders to retract its correct election night call that President Joe Biden won Arizona. […]
Some of Fox’s politicking — like star host Sean Hannity’s frequent conversations with Trump during his presidency — is well known. But court papers show how Rupert Murdoch, the boss, inserted himself in the action, too.
[…] After the first presidential debate in 2020, a “horrified” Murdoch told Kushner that Trump should be more restrained in the next debate. (Trump canceled that event.)
[…] Court records show that on Sept. 25, 2020, Murdoch emailed Kushner that “my people tell me” that Biden’s ads “are a lot better creatively than yours. Just passing it on.” [LOL]
[…] Another prominent politician Murdoch describes as a “friend” is McConnell, whose wife, Elaine Chao, then Trump’s transportation secretary, had served on the Fox board. Murdoch said he would speak to the Republican Senate leader “three or four times a year.”
[…] Days before the 2020 election, after Fox business anchor Lou Dobbs was critical of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Murdoch asked Scott to have Hannity pump up Graham, who was facing an extremely well-funded challenge from Democrat Jamie Harrison.
“You probably know about the Lou Dobbs outburst against Lindsay Graham,” Murdoch wrote on Oct. 27, misspelling the senator’s first name in the copy of the message in the court documents. “Could Sean say something supportive? We can’t lose the Senate if at all possible.”
Scott replied that Graham was on Hannity’s show the previous night “and he got a lot of time.” She added, “I addressed the Dobbs outburst.”
Wonkette: “Repro Rights Roundup: Things At Least Going Well In California, Michigan, And France!”
This week’s abortion news is somewhat less terrible than usual.
Texas Is Getting Sued Because Its Bad Law Endangered These Women’s Lives
Five women and two doctors of unknown-to-us gender filed a lawsuit in Texas on Monday alleging that the state’s ban on abortion put their lives in danger by forcing their doctors to wait until they were at death’s door to give them medical care — or forcing them to go to other states to get that medical care regardless. They allege that the law creates confusion and makes doctors less willing to give pregnant patients the care they need for fear of reprisal.
Via AP:
According to the Texas suit brought by the five women and two doctors, one woman, Amanda Zurawski, was forced to wait until she developed blood poisoning before being provided an abortion. The four others had to travel out of state to receive medical care for pregnancy-related complications after doctors recommended an abortion because of the deteriorating condition of the woman, the baby or a twin — care that could not be legally provided in Texas.
“My doctor could not intervene as long as her heart was beating or until I was sick enough for the ethics board of the hospital to consider my life at risk and permit the standard health care I needed at that point,” Zurawski said Tuesday at a news conference, recalling her pregnancy after 18 months of fertility treatment with a baby she named Willow.
The women are asking that the law at least be clarified so that doctors can give patients proper medical care without having to worry about losing their license or being sent to prison.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office reaffirmed his dedication to the state’s terrible law, telling the Associated Press he is “committed to doing everything in his power to protect mothers, families, and unborn children, and he will continue to defend and enforce the laws duly enacted by the Texas Legislature.”
To be clear, he is not protecting mothers or families and is, in fact, doing the exact opposite of that. Forcing people to have children against their will is not protecting them. Forcing families that cannot afford another child to have one anyway is not protecting them. Barring a woman from aborting one twin to save the life of the other, as was the case for one of the plaintiffs, is also not protecting “unborn children.”
California Cancels $54 Million Contract With Walgreens Over Abortion Nonsense
This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state would no longer be doing business with Walgreens after the company promised 21 state attorneys general that they would not sell Mifepristone in their states or mail Mifepristone to their states — including in several states where abortion remains legal. On Wednesday, Newsom made clear what that meant: California will not be renewing its $54 million contract with the company to provide certain pharmaceutical drugs to California prisons.
“Ironically, we’re the size of 21 states’ populations combined,” Newsom told Politico. […]
abortion is not (yet) entirely illegal in several of the states in which Walgreens said it would not sell Mifepristone — and in the case of, for instance, Kansas, the people just overwhelmingly reaffirmed protection for abortion via referendum.
[…] as of right now, Mifepristone is not technically illegal anywhere. Last year, the Justice Department determined that states would not be allowed to ban the drug and earlier this year determined that the pills can legally be sent in the mail via the US Postal Service regardless of state bans. This is the law right now, meaning that Walgreens would be going above and beyond what they are required to do by law to appease these creeps.
Mifepristone is also used for miscarriage care, Cushing’s syndrome, uterine fibroids and endometriosis. It is not the business of the pharmacist to know why someone is taking a particular drug, only if it is going to interact poorly with other drugs they are taking.
Michigan Won’t Be Partying Like It’s 1931
The Michigan state Senate voted mostly along party lines on Wednesday (two Republicans in the Detroit suburbs joined the Democrats) to repeal the state’s 1931 ban on abortion, which is now being sent to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office for her signature. […]
Republican Senator Joe Bellino, who will never himself be pregnant, whined in a statement that overturning the bill would eliminate what he considers “commonsense protections for women.”
[…] It is unclear how anyone’s health would be endangered by someone saying “Fuck Joe Bellino, use birth control or have an abortion if you want” or taking safe, FDA-approved medication for its intended purpose as prescribed by a doctor with far more medical expertise than Republican state Senator Joe Bellino, whose background includes being employed by Bellino’s Quality Beverage and Joe Lake Tire and Auto. Should we be thirsty or in particular need of a new set of hubcaps, however, we will be sure to check in with him.
Droit à L’avortement, S’il Vous Plaît
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Wednesday, that the nation would be moving towards enshrining abortion as a constitutional right and that a bill will be sent to Parliament in the coming months.
Abortion rights are not under attack in France the way they are in the United States, though legislators were spooked enough by what happened in our country to want to ensure it never happens in their own. Abortions are also currently free and covered entirely by the national insurance. […]
It is only fair to note, however, that France only permits abortions up until 14 weeks, which is not good and means women frequently have to travel to the Netherlands or other less restrictive countries. […]
Amanda Zurawski, who was denied an abortion despite serious complications, is one of five women suing Texas in the first lawsuit of its kind. She joins Chris Hayes to tell her story.
Tunisian President Kais Saied said late on Wednesday he will dissolve municipal councils months before they were due to be elected, further dismantling the systems of government developed after the 2011 revolution that brought democracy.
“We will discuss a decree to dissolve municipalities and replace them by special councils,” he said in a video of a cabinet meeting that was posted online.
The new councils will also be elected, but under new rules that he will write, he said. He has previously called the existing councils “states within a state” and said they were “not neutral”.
In the 2018 local elections, a third of municipal councils came under the control of Ennahda, an Islamist party that has been the most vocal critic of Saied.
Elected municipal councils were introduced after the 2014 constitution called for decentralisation – a constitution that Saied has replaced with one he wrote himself and passed last year in a referendum with low turnout.
“Unfortunately the head of state is not convinced by decentralisation,” said Adnen Bouassida, the head of the National Federation of Municipalities, on Mosaique FM radio.
Saied has concentrated nearly all powers in the presidency since he suddenly shut down the elected parliament in July 2021 and moved to rule by decree…
…
Last month authorities detained leading critics and opposition figures, including prominent Ennahda members, whom Saied labelled criminals, traitors and terrorists in the first significant crackdown on dissent against his rule.
The elected municipal councils had struggled to make much impact in many areas of Tunisia, functioning with small budgets.
Most political parties boycotted elections in December and January for a new, mostly powerless, parliament, meaning the local councils were the last effective branch of government where they retained a presence.
The White House’s budget plan is now available in writing, subject to scrutiny. Do House Republicans have the courage to follow suit?
President Joe Biden will delivered remarks in Philadelphia, touting his new White House budget plan. As The Washington Post reported, it is, by any measure, an ambitious governing document.
The White House revived calls for an aggressive transformation of the economy paid for by massive new taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans in its 2024 budget proposal on Thursday, likely previewing President Biden’s reelection campaign — and directly challenging Republicans as the government draws closer to what could be a catastrophic default on the national debt. The president’s budget calls for paring back the deficit over the next decade while also spending more than $2 trillion on dozens of new domestic policy initiatives, paid for by raising more than $4.5 trillion in new revenue primarily through hefty tax hikes on high earners and large corporations.
It’s no secret that the budget plan, in the wake of the 2022 midterm elections, will not be widely embraced on Capitol Hill. In fact, House Republicans will very likely ignore it.
But that doesn’t make the document irrelevant.
Biden and his team set out to put together a credible package that sharply reduces the deficit — ostensibly a GOP goal — while investing in the economy, protecting social insurance programs, and leaving tax rates untouched for Americans making less than $400,000 a year. As the newly unveiled budget blueprint shows, the White House succeeded with a plan most Democrats are going to like.
The president makes sure his vision is paid for by rolling back ineffective Trump-era tax breaks for the wealthy, along with a new minimum tax on billionaires, an increased tax on stock buybacks, and the restoration of a 28% corporate tax rate.
[…] In case anyone needs a reminder, the new House Republican majority is threatening to cause a deliberate economic catastrophe unless Democrats agree to a series of demands — none of which GOP leaders have identified.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters yesterday that Biden hasn’t yet called him to set up a meeting for budget negotiations. “I think it looks very bad on his part that he’s not talking,” the Republican leader argued.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre added soon after, by way of a statement published to Twitter, “Speaker McCarthy should release the budget they want to discuss.”
This morning, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries echoed the sentiment during a Capitol Hill press conference. “Show us your plan,” […]
Jeffries added, “We’re still waiting for extreme MAGA Republicans in the House to show us [their] plan. How do you want to invest in building an economy for everyday Americans? How do you propose dealing with the challenges that you often talk about with respect to the deficit? Are you committed to undermining Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?”
Yes, the rhetoric sounded like a taunt, but it gets at the heart of the current challenge: McCarthy wants to have budget talks, but he doesn’t want to produce a budget plan. The House speaker expects to have negotiations in which he never has to put his cards on the table.
This won’t work because it can’t work. The White House’s plan is now available in writing, subject to scrutiny. Until Republicans have the courage to follow suit, there will be no progress.
RF is trying to attack Moldova. Methods are obvious. Stage 1: announcing Ukraine’s “invasion” of Transnistria. Stage 2: attempt to organize a coup in Chișinău. Now stage 3: falsely accusing Ukraine of preparing a “terrorist attack” in Transnistria.
Predictable lies in everything.
Subtitled video at the (Twitter) link. Several hours after it was tweeted, the comments are normal and overwhelmingly supportive. We’ll have to see what it looks like in 12 hours or a day.
Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy responded to President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget on Thursday, calling it “completely unserious” because it would raise taxes on the wealthy. Not that McCarthy explains that part. He says Biden “proposes trillions in new taxes that you and your family will pay directly or through higher costs.” Maybe he just knows his audience really well—people who make more than $400,000 a year and corporations.
Meanwhile, there is still no budget proposal from McCarthy and team. Instead of working on a budget proposal that wouldn’t be laughed out of the Senate chamber, the House GOP is trying to do a thing that the Department of Treasury says can’t be done, and something that will strike terror in the hearts of economists and the markets: They are plotting to allow the nation to default on its debt and prioritize payments once the debt ceiling is breached.
This has been discussed before, back in 2011 and 2013 when Republicans were threatening to default under the last Democratic president, Barack Obama. Jack Lew, the Treasury Secretary at the time, tried to explain to Republicans that it couldn’t just juggle the bills that way. He called prioritization “default by another name … I don’t believe there is a way to pick and choose on a broad basis,” he said of the Treasury’s automated payment systems. “This system was not designed to be turned off selectively.”
They don’t have to trust a former Democratic official. They could ask a fellow Republican. Brian Riedl, an economist at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, was a staffer for GOP Sen. Rob Portman during those fights, and studied the idea in depth. He told Semafor that the Treasury simply doesn’t have the physical capacity to do this.
“They receive millions of invoices every week to produce millions of payments and they’re generally paid sequentially and they can’t be categorized very easily into Social Security gets paid, [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] doesn’t get paid,” Riedl said. “They’re just not programmed to do that.”
The revenue coming into the Treasury is also sporadic, so setting a schedule for paying prioritized debts isn’t feasible. That would lead, Reid believes, to Treasury hanging onto cash reserves to make sure that it paid bondholders on schedule, potentially ignoring other obligations. Like Social Security checks. Or paying the troops. That sets up a political vulnerability for the GOP, he says.
“Chinese bondholders get paid before school lunches. Chinese bondholders get paid before border security,” Riedl said. “The attack ads write themselves.”
Which is exactly what the White House said in response to the House GOP moving forward with this hare-brained scheme. Spokesman Michael Kikukawa said in a statement that it puts “wealthy, foreign bondholders—including billionaires and banks in China—over working Americans.”
“The only way to avoid this kind of economic disaster is for Congress to do its job and prevent default. Not to put forward half-baked schemes that hurt the American people,” he said.
So how’s unserious now, Kev? And where’s your budget?
The delivery of the 14 Leopard 2A4 MBTs has been completed. Poland is thereby the first country to deliver any Leopard 2s to Ukraine, and also the first to complete its delivery.
The exposure of text messages from Fox “News” host and pro-sedition hoax promoter Tucker Carlson revealing that, in private, he hates Donald Trump “passionately” has been met with glee not just among liberals who hate Tucker Carlson, but among conservatives who hate Tucker Carlson.
Oh, they’ve been enjoying this. They’ve been enjoying this a lot. [video at the link]
America, I understand how you feel. Tucker Carlson is quite literally one of the worst people in the nation, and is certainly one of the biggest liars, and he spends most of his available airtime making a face that is one part constipated and three parts confused dog, and has spent his entire professional life trying to be unpleasant in whatever specific way unpleasantness can best be monetized at each moment, and he inspired a generation of young white male conservative CPAC attendees to wear bowties and make smug faces at each other despite having no skills or values or anything at all to brag about, and he is just the worst. So stipulated.
But I almost have to defend him here, because the news that Tucker Carlson hates Donald Trump should not really be news. Everybody hates Donald Trump. Every last person on this planet hates Donald Trump, and they hate him in direct proportion to how much contact they’ve had with him. You will not find a single person around Donald Trump who does not hate him. You will, through Donald Trump’s entire adulthood, not find such a person.
Donald Trump may be the world’s most prominent exception to the supposed rule that everyone, no matter how far they have fallen, has something good about them. Nobody has ever accused Donald Trump of having a good side; the best anyone has ever offered is examples of him momentarily being just a bit less awful than his usual norm, and even those are rare and cherished by his allie—like sips of fine, slightly less-poisoned whine. Nobody likes Donald Trump.
You have never seen Donald Trump playing with his grandchildren. Donald Trump has no endearing stories about what Ivanka or Tiffany or Donald Jr. or Whatshisface or Barron were like as young children, of hijinks being jinked, of nursing them when they were sick or laughing with them when they were well. During his time in the White House, Donald’s adult daughter and son-in-law were not there to boost their father, but to help manage him. His wife, the current one, rises to his defense only through paid spokescreatures and is seen in his presence about as often as any one of Trump’s usual ties. A significant percentage of his family members and business acquaintances have signed paperwork promising not to disparage him in exchange for money.
Donald Trump shares no stories about close friends. We hear vague hints that Trump may have friends, perhaps, and on inspection each of them is less a friend than a loose business partner or, more often, men who have paid eye-watering membership fees to be in Donald’s occasional presence. During the 2016 Republican convention that nominated him, the people scraped together to lavish Trump with praise were his immediate family, people on his own payroll, and a business associate who told a heartwarming story of Donald Trump hearing that one of his employee’s children was distraught over their hospitalized father and providing, to that child, Donald Trump’s autograph and not a damn thing else.
Donald Trump’s extended family hates Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s sister expresses revulsion for him. Donald Trump famously retaliated against a brother who filed suit against him by revoking the health insurance of that brother’s sick infant child.
Donald Trump does not like dogs, and seems to have affection for no other animals, either.
Donald Trump has no close friends, and no friends at any distance at all. Donald Trump does not play golf with friends. Donald Trump plays golf with supplicants. People like Sen. Lindsey Graham come to Donald Trump to play a round of golf because they need something from him, or want to be seen with him for the sake of inflating their own supposed importance.
And when those people come to him to play golf and chat, Donald Trump brazenly cheats and nobody dares call him on it because they’re not his friends; they’re only there for favors and appearances.
The people Donald Trump appointed to administration jobs? All of them hate him. Some of them hate him enough to have contemplated whether they needed to tell Congress he was unfit for office, some of them hate him enough to badmouth him in interviews after Trump inevitably yells at them and fires them, and some of them hate him but refuse to talk about hating him because they still want to have a Republican Party career left.
Mike Pence hates Donald Trump with a passion after Donald Trump tried to have him killed, but Mike Pence wants to be president more than Mike Pence wants to not die at the hands of an angry mob, so he’s been filing court paperwork in an attempt to dodge being asked about Donald Trump under oath.
Even the people at Donald Trump’s rallies hate Donald Trump. Have you seen a Donald Trump rally? Donald Trump’s rally crowds begin wandering out of the venue after hearing Trump speak for just 15 minutes. The people who can stand listening to Tucker Carlson every night will wait in line to hear Donald Trump talk for 10 minutes or so, and after that they start glancing toward the exits because more than 10 minutes is just too damn much.
Everybody hates Donald Trump. Tucker Carlson may be a fascism-promoting booster of would-be European autocrats. He may lie through his teeth in ways that undermine democracy. He may gleefully look to provoke violence by hosting white nationalists who spout conspiracy theories that his most addled viewers may feel compelled to act out on—but he is still, at least according to his driver’s license, a human being.
And every human being who’s ever met Donald Trump hates him. That’s just science. You can’t ask someone to talk to Donald Trump and not hate his guts afterward.
Friends. Americans. Countrymen. You cannot possibly expect Tucker Carlson to have met Donald Trump, interviewed him on multiple occasions, and not hate him “passionately” in private conversations afterward. There is no way on this earth we can call fascist fish stick fanboy Tucker Carlson an honorable man—but not hating Donald Trump is not something we can ask of him.
Jim Jordan makes another desperate move … and he flops again.
Rep. Jim Jordan’s latest “weaponization of government” hearing rolled around on Thursday, and it was as unpleasant and lie-filled as you could imagine, with Jordan scrambling to make up ground after the previous hearing was widely seen as a flop. This episode was about the “Twitter Files,” Elon Musk’s effort to unveil the company he had bought as unfairly biased against conservatives despite large amounts of evidence to the contrary, and suffice it to say, it once again didn’t produce the fireworks Jordan wanted.
In Thursday’s hearing, two of the handpicked “journalists” to whom Musk fed internal Twitter information to produce the desired narrative did their best to give Jordan what he wanted just as they had given Musk what he wanted. Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly used some of his time to show that Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger had been very selective in what they looked for when they built their narrative about bias at Twitter.
Connolly’s basic question was simple: What did you find about Donald Trump leaning on Twitter to get what he wanted? And the answer, basically, was that they never even looked.
“When you release information,” Connolly asked, “have you released any information of for example right-wing elements or the Trump White House attempting to moderate content at Twitter?”
“No, not the Trump White House per se, although I did report in the first Twitter Files that the Trump White House had made a request that had been honored,” Taibbi responded.
“I did not find that,” Shellenberger answered.
“You didn’t find that?” Connolly asked in mock surprise. “So we had a hearing the other day, on Twitter, and we had four witnesses, three for the majority, one for the minority, and all four testified under oath they had never received a request for content moderation or takedown from the Biden White House, but they did from Donald Trump’s White House.”
Connolly went on to sketch out the exchange between Trump and Chrissy Teigen, in which, after Teigen called Trump a “[P-word] ass [B-word]” (words Connolly did not quote directly), “the White House called Twitter to try to take down the content.”
Taibbi copped to having heard about this in the news, but said he had not seen any email exchanges from the Trump White House, then rushed to mention that he had seen requests from Democrats. “Yeah, nice try,” Connolly responded. “We’re talking about the Trump White House and people under oath confirming it, and my question is, in the Twitter Files, did Elon Musk or Twitter provide you with that exchange with Chrissy Teigen?”
“No, but that’s probably because the searches that I was making …”
“Well, it’s probably because it didn’t confirm the bias that this is all about, as the gentleman from Texas would say ‘the left’ attempting to control content when in fact the evidence is that the Trump White House most certainly attempted content control at Twitter. Mr. Shellenberger, were you aware of that or is this all news to you?”
Shellenberger admitted that “the Teigen exchange was news to me.”
So, to be clear: These two men supposedly got all kinds of access to Twitter internal documents to look at how Twitter handled content moderation, and they were at the House testifying specifically about Twitter’s interaction with government agencies, and they admitted that in their searches of all these voluminous documents they just kind of missed the part where the White House pressured Twitter to take something down not because it threatened national security or violated the law, but because a model and influencer had called Donald Trump a name. […]
“In some ways what you just said undermines the premise of this select committee,” Connolly responded, “which is that the federal government has been organized to weaponize against conservative voices, and of course what you’ve just indicated in your testimony is, well actually that’s not the evidence you’ve found.”
That’s where Taibbi really went for laughs, piously saying his understanding was that this committee was all about free speech. Yes, that’s the big concern of the party of book-banners, the party passing law after law limiting what teachers can say in classrooms. Free f’ing speech. Jim Jordan just created this committee and called this hearing not for any partisan reason but because he is such an advocate of free speech. Indeed, as Connolly’s time ended, Jordan was visibly smirking as he embraced the idea that the hearing was about free speech.
Connolly’s point was made, though. Taibbi and Shellenberger are presenting a seriously slanted view of how government interacted with Twitter, and looking at what they left out, what information we know is available somewhere in Twitter’s email archives that didn’t make it into their “reporting,” shows what the real intention was all along. As if the fact that the Twitter Files were an Elon Musk production and this hearing was a Jim Jordan production didn’t make that crystal clear. [video at the link]
BREAKING! ACHTUNG! Alex Jones, sentient shitpost and degenerate defamer, has made a true and accurate statement. Yes, it was under oath, and yes, it was accompanied by a bunch of other … dubious shit. But! [Image at the link]
That’s right, kids. When asked his occupation, Alex Jones didn’t say “free speech hero,” or “info warrior,” or “pied piper of the alienated, racist, deplorables,” or even “carnival barker.” He said “dietary supplement sales,” because that is the goddamn truth. Alex Jones has one job, and that is to sell boner pills. And he’s really, really good at it.
How good? Well, by his own admission, he’s selling upwards of $30 million a year of the stuff, and at a roughly 200 percent markup over what he’s paying the supplier for it. And, not for nothing, but Alex Jones is the supplier via a company he owns with his parents — so maybe they’re making a little profit for acting as the middle man there, too.
Remember, that drug supplier, PQPR — i.e. Alex Jones and his parents — claims to be owed something in the neighborhood of $50 million by Jones’s main company Free Speech System, making FSS unable to pay the Sandy Hook plaintiffs what they’re owed. And, by the by, PQPR only “remembered” that it was owed that money after Jones defaulted in the cases brought by the parents of slain children whom he’d called crisis actors, meaning the question wasn’t if he was going to write a check, but how big.
All of this is information revealed in the twin bankruptcies filed last year by FSS, which is wholly owned by Jones, and by Alex Jones personally. Jones has promised his audience that “the money you donate does not go to these people. It goes to fight this fraud, and it goes to stabilize the company,” and thus viewers can order Super Male Vitality pills safe in the knowledge that none of the proceeds will go to pay the defamation plaintiffs. But at the same time he’s calling for the plaintiffs to take a 100 percent haircut on the money they’re owed, Jones demands that FSS pay him his full $1.3 million salary as agreed in an April 2022 contract, plus any expenses for meals, transportation, and other fees he can fob off on them.
Under court supervision, the Chief Restructuring Officer at FSS proposed to pay Jones $10,000 a week, which is apparently not enough for this dietary supplement salesman to live on.
The course of these twin bankruptcies is Byzantine, but, in a nutshell, the Sandy Hook creditors would like Jones to PAY UP and SHUT UP, while Jones and his alter-ego FSS would like NOT THAT.
Toward that end, Jones has made a personal financial disclosure which the creditors described as “incomplete and incorrect in many material respects.” Presumably what they’re talking about is this: [image at the link]
After assurance from Jones’s lawyers that they just needed a little more time to nail down Jones’s assets, US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez granted two extensions of time to file. Instead, Jones returned with a heavily caveated list disclosing interests in multiple trusts with no valuation, including one which has already paid tens of thousands of dollars to his lawyers in this very case. On top of this rather obvious defect, the creditors note that Jones appears to have failed to disclose his ownership of several LLCs, cryptocurrency, and oil/gas/mineral rights. Furthermore, they observe that Jones has claimed to have either $0 or $104,500 in outside monthly income — and both of those things cannot possibly be true.
In his defense, Jones’s lawyers argue, as they have the whole time, that their client is a very busy man who had to rely on the kindness of strangers for his accounting […]
Unsurprisingly, this did not cut the mustard with the court, which ordered Jones to make fulsome disclosure by the end of the month.
Surely this time Jones will be duly chastened and vow to go forth and lie no more.
“This is not your show!” – the judge said [repeated]. You’re already under oath to tell the truth. You’ve already violated that oath twice today…. It seems absurd to instruct you again that you must tell the truth..Yet here I am. You must tell the truth while you testify”
The Reese’s Plant-Based is expected to roll out to retailers nationwide this month and has already been spotted on shelves at Rite Aid and Target. The Hershey’s Plant-Based Extra Creamy with Almonds and Sea Salt chocolate bar will be widely released in April.
Republicans on the West Virginia Senate Judiciary Committee celebrated International Women’s Day on Wednesday by voting against a law that would have banned child marriage in the state.
The law, which remains unchanged, allows for children 16 and older to get married with their parents’ permission and for children of literally any age to get married with the permission of a judge, regardless of the age of the spouse. This means that an adult man is free to marry the elementary school student of his dreams so long as he can find a judge willing to go along with him.
The bill, introduced by Democratic Del. Kayla Young, would have established 18 as the age of consent and banned all marriages involving anyone younger than that regardless of parental or judicial permission. As judges have married off 11-year-olds to adult men before (and as judges have been Roy Moore before) strict laws on this are extremely important.
In 2014, the most recent year for which there is data, West Virginia had the highest rate of child marriage in the nation — a point weirdly made by Republicans defending the law as simply part of their way of life. Seven out of every 1000 people between 15 and 17 years old in West Virginia are married. [OMFG!]
[…] “West Virginia is a socially conservative and traditional state, in my observation,” Republican Del. Jim Butler, who voted against the bill when it was voted on in the House, told Newsweek. “Many middle age and elderly people that I know were married when younger than 18 and are still married many years later.”
Well, Jim Butler … there was a time when women, especially women who got married that young, did not have much choice but to stay with their husbands. And surely giving an adult man the opportunity to raise his own wife/victim probably also makes it less likely that she will develop the independence necessary to leave in the future. Statistics show that girls who marry before the age of 19 are 50 percent more likely to drop out of high school, four times less likely to go to college and 31 percent more likely to live in poverty as an adult.
It’s important to be clear that when we talk about child brides, we are for the most part talking about underage girls being married off to adult men. Eighty-six percent of underage children who get married are girls, while only 14 percent are boys.
“People simply grow up differently,” Butler later said. “Some 16-year-olds, for example, are much more mature than others.” Sure, that’s true. Everyone is different — but we don’t allow kids under 18 to vote, regardless of how mature they are, because that is a very difficult thing to gauge.
[…] That’s why they have no problems with adult men marrying underage girls. That fits in just perfectly, as Jim Butler was more than happy to explain, with their “conservative and traditional” values.
[…] And they want a “conservative and traditional” society that is homophobic and that is not accepting of LGBTQ rights. They are not worried about protecting children, they are worried about protecting themselves.
On the third day of mass protests in Tbilisi, Georgian opposition politicians voiced their demands for the resignation of the country’s government and early elections, local TV channel Rustavi 2 reported on March 9.
Part of the opposition said the protests triggered by a controversial bill on “foreign agents” passed by the Georgian parliament in the first reading would not stop until the participants were convinced that Georgia’s course to Europe is “unshakable,” according to Rustavi 2.
Georgian news outlet Interpressnews reported that the protesters had announced another rally on March 10, when the country’s parliament should vote on the so-called second reading of the bill it claimed to have already withdrawn.
Several law experts said, as cited by European Pravda, that it is procedurally impossible to simply “withdraw” a draft law approved in the first reading. The parliament can do it only by rejecting the bill during the second reading.
The scandalous bill seeks to require Western-funded NGOs to register as “foreign agents” and restrict their activities. Opponents of the Geogian government argue that the bill is a copy of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian foreign agent law and will put an end to Georgia’s aspirations to join NATO and the EU.
The legislation prompted massive protests on March 7-8, with tens of thousands taking to the streets, clashing with the police, building barricades, and trying to storm the parliament building. The police have cracked down on the demonstrators, using water cannons and tear gas and beating up some protesters.
The initial demands of the March 9 rally on Tbilisi’s central Rustaveli Avenue were an immediate plenary session to revoke the Kremlin-inspired bill and the release of the demonstrators detained on the first two days of protests, according to Interpressnews.
Later the publication reported that almost all of the 133 people arrested on March 7-8 were released, except for one protester detained under a criminal code article.
Russia’s “foreign agent” law, which is similar to the Georgian one, requires organizations that receive funding from abroad or are perceived by the Kremlin to have been influenced by foreign entities to register as a “foreign agent.”
The law mandates these organizations to undergo rigorous financial audits and to label all their content with a disclaimer stating that it is being distributed by a “foreign agent.” However, this law is often used to target and silence groups and individuals who are critical of the government.
In recent months the Georgian government has spoiled its relations with the West and Ukraine and drifted into Russia’s orbit despite the fact that 20% of Georgian territory is currently occupied by Russia.
StevoRsays
Is it me or have we not heard much about this record-breaking cyclone in the media which ahs intensified 4 separate times and holds the record for accumulated cyclone energy? Its now heading twoards Mozambique about tto slam that nation for a second time :
A Norfolk Southern train derailed Thursday in Calhoun County, Alabama, hours before company CEO Alan Shaw faced lawmakers to answer questions about a Feb. 3 derailment that led to a toxic chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio.
So, remember back in 2004, during the Presidential election, when questions came up regarding George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard? Remember how, during the investigation by ABC news, information was found suggesting some irregularities and some questions regarding how he got into the Alabama ANG during the Vietnam conflict? And then faked documents were introduced by a conservative ‘whistle-blower’ which claimed that Bush had faked attendance records and that this was the PROOF!? And then Dan Rather went with what seemed the strongest evidence on 60 minutes? And then the evidence, supplied by someone who wanted Bush to stay in office, was exposed as false? And then the right wing noise machine went into overdrive and hounded Dan Rather out of his job? So Dan Rather used planted evidence and was wrong, though he thought he was right, and he lost his job.
So why do all of the Fox ‘News’ personalities, who knew they were lying, who complained about lying, get to keep their jobs? I thought that conservatives were all about taking responsibility for your actions (or is that just for teen girls who get pregnant because their school only taught ‘abstinence-only’ sex-ed and never realized that what he was doing was baby-making sex and now have to carry the fetus to term because that is taking responsibility for your actions?)?
StevoRsays
As a Pluto (& ice dwraf and smaller planets generally) fan I agree with most of this :
Sixteen years later, scientists who work on planets have crafted a rigorous response. In an invited paper to the journal Icarus, Philip Metzger and colleagues make the case that the IAU definition is arbitrary and lacks utility. They argue that the definition of a planet should be based on its geologic or atmospheric complexity. A critical consideration then becomes: Is the body large enough to generate a myriad of geologic landforms and/or some form of surface and atmospheric processes?
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. Their latest summary:
The private mercenary group Wagner appears to be taking a “tactical pause” in Bakhmut, the US thinktank the Institute for the Study of War said in its daily update. The ISW believes that Wagner is waiting until enough reinforcements of conventional Russian troops have arrived before taking a backseat in the fierce battle.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, has said the energy situation is difficult after Russia’s barrage of attacks on Thursday. In a message on Telegram, he said “the energy system has suffered significant damage. Nevertheless, critical infrastructure has already been restored in the city, and water supply has been almost completely restored”. However, public transport remains closed.
The UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation board of governors on Friday backed the reappointment of Argentina’s Rafael Grossi to a second four-year term as director general, diplomats at the closed-door meeting said.
Ukraine handed suspicion notices on Friday to three former senior managers of the aircraft manufacturer Antonov for obstructing the country’s military and allowing Russia to destroy the giant Mriya cargo plane at the start of the war.
Russian president, Vladimir Putin, congratulated Xi Jinping on Friday after the Chinese leader secured an unprecedented third term as president. [Such an accomplishment.] In a telegram, Putin said he was sure the two leaders could advance their cooperation on the most important regional and international issues
The Kremlin said on Friday it sees risks of possible “provocations” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two Russian-backed breakaway regions of Georgia, after days of protests in Georgia over a “foreign agents” bill. Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that Moscow was watching the situation “with concern”.
The war in Ukraine is driven by the interests of several “empires” and not just the “Russian empire”, Pope Francis said in an interview published on Friday. [What is with this guy? Are there Kremlin agents in the Vatican feeding him this stuff?]
Also from there:
Finland’s prime minister Sanna Marin is the latest foreign leader to visit Kyiv, and has met with president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday morning.
They attended a church service at St Michael’s Golden Dome Cathedral in memory of soldier Dmytro Kotsiubaylo who was killed near Bakhmut on Tuesday.
[From the tweet to which they link: “He was at war since 2014, became the youngest awarded commander. He leaves behind his bride Alina who is also fighting.”]
(What a ludicrous belief: “‘[We] oppose penalties for mothers [sic], who are a second victim of a predatory abortion industry,” said Kristi Hamrick, the chief media and policy strategist for Students for Life of America. “We want to see a billion-dollar industry set up to profit by preying on women and the preborn held accountable. The pro-life movement as a whole has been very clear on this’.”)
Le leader du Parti républicain du peuple (CHP), Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, a été désigné le 6 mars pour défier Recep Tayyip Erdogan lors des élections prévues le 14 mai prochain. Il lui reste désormais dix semaines pour s’imposer face à un président affaibli par la crise économique et les séismes survenus voilà un mois.
La campagne présidentielle s’ouvre officiellement vendredi 10 mars en Turquie. Et le président Recep Tayyip Erdogan, en lice pour un nouveau mandat, connaît désormais son principal adversaire : Kemal Kiliçdaroglu. À 74 ans, cet ancien fonctionnaire, souvent présenté comme “l’antithèse d’Erdogan”, a été désigné après des semaines de tractations et de débats par la “Table des six”, l’alliance regroupant les six principaux partis d’opposition.
“Nous sommes très proches aujourd’hui de renverser le trône des tyrans, croyez-moi”, a-t-il lancé, mardi, au lendemain de sa nomination, promettant “le début d’un changement total”. Alors que les enquêtes d’opinion prédisent une élection serrée, la moins certaine pour le président sortant depuis son arrivée au pouvoir en 2003, France 24 décrypte les enjeux des dix semaines à venir avant le scrutin, prévu le 14 mai….
As they note, the elections will be held on May 14.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, said on Friday he had thanked the government for a “heroic” increase in production of ammunition, but he was still worried about shortages for his fighters and the Russian army as a whole.
Prigozhin also said Wagner had opened recruitment centres in 42 Russian cities.
“In spite of the colossal resistance of the Ukrainian armed forces, we will go forward. Despite the sticks in the wheels that are thrown at us at every step, we will overcome this together,” he said.
Reuters report Prigozhin said his men had started to receive ammunition deliveries labelled as produced in 2023. He said ammunition was now being produced “in huge quantities, which cover all the necessary needs”.
In the same audio message he also expressed concern by saying: “I am worried about ammunition and shell shortages not only for the Wagner private military company but for all units of the Russian army.”
Russia may attempt to launch another counteroffensive in Vuhledar but is unlikely to make significant gains due to issues with military personnel and ammunition supply, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) update on March 9.
This analysis echoes what military spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi said on national television on March 10.
“There is no question of an offensive since the enemy has suffered quite significant losses,” Dmytrashkivskyi said. “In the last week, they have aggressively attacked positions near Vuhledar, Mariinka, and Avdiivka with their top units. However, it is now apparent that the morale and psychological state of the Russian military has drastically deteriorated.”
The ISW’s report indicates that on March 8, a video circulating on social media allegedly featured members of the Russian military’s 136th Motorized Rifle Brigade requesting more artillery before they were sent to conduct combat missions near Vuhledar.
The 136th Motorized Rifle Brigade is set to replace the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade of the Pacific Fleet after the latter suffered “catastrophic” losses, the ISW said.
According to the ISW, the Russian military is sending most of its artillery and resources to Bakhmut, located approximately 150 kilometers to the northeast of Vuhledar.
The Corporation (2003) examined an institution within society; #TheNewCorporation reveals a world now fully remade in the corporation’s image, perilously close to losing democracy. We trace the devastating consequences, connecting the dots between then and now, and inspire with stories of resistance and change from around the world.
if the Naomi be Klein
you’re doing just fine
If the Naomi be Wolf
Oh, buddy. Ooooof.
KGsays
The war in Ukraine is driven by the interests of several “empires” and not just the “Russian empire”, Pope Francis said in an interview published on Friday. [What is with this guy? Are there Kremlin agents in the Vatican feeding him this stuff?] – SC@39 quoting the Guardian
I suspect its more to do with his background: as you’ll be well aware, a lot of Latin Americans, particularly but not only from the left, have a deep-rooted and well-grounded suspicion of US foreign policy. The fact that in this case the US is assisting a victim of imperialism is hard for them to conceive or admit. And of course if and when Ukraine actually wins, we can expect its “helpers” to team up with Ukranian oligarchs to rob the general population blind. Anti-union laws are already being pushed through. That’s why I’m supporting the Ukrainian Solidarity Campaign in the UK, which is closely linked to the KVPU (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine), not the neoliberal dominated Zelenskyy government (I’d say I have much the same view of Zelenskyy as I would have had of Churchill in WW2 – applauding his resistance to fascist aggression while deploring his domestic policies). Incidentally, Allan Armstrong, who’s authored one of the articles on the USC front page, is a personal friend.
KG @ #45, are there examples of him expressing such views about these “empires” prior to this invasion? I don’t recall any, but admittedly I don’t follow his utterances very closely.
Thousands of people gathered in Kyiv on Friday to attend the funeral of the well-known Ukrainian military commander, Dmytro Kotsiubailo, nicknamed ‘’Da Vinci’’, hailed as a national hero and symbol of resistance.
Kotsiubailo, who in 2021 had been awarded top military honours the Order of the Holden Star by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and had the title “Hero of Ukraine”, died near Bakhmut on Tuesday at age of 27.
In 2014, he was seriously wounded by a tank shell in Pisky, Donetsk oblast. ‘’After recovery and three months of rehabilitation, he returned to the front, where he continued to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine’’, the Ukrainian Armed forces said.
St Michael’s Golden Dome Cathedral reached full capacity due to the large number of mourners who arrived from several regions to pay last respect and bring flowers.
As a result, hundreds of people were forced to attend the funeral from the courtyard, outside the church.
After the ceremony at the cathedral, a military procession carried his casket to the Maidan (Independence Square) for a larger public memorial.
In 2016, Kotsiubailo became the youngest commander in the history of the Ukrainian Army.
Zelenskiy attended the funeral at the church too, alongside Finland’s prime minister, Sanna Marin, who is the latest foreign leader to visit Kyiv. “One of the youngest heroes of Ukraine. One of those whose personal history, character, and courage have forever become the history, character, and courage of Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.
Kotsiubailo leaves behind his bride Alina who had also joined the Armed Forces.
One year after the war began, the Ukrainian resistance still needs heroes and examples of soldiers to boost the morale of its troops grappling with the bloody and uncertain battle of Bakhmut.
On Tuesday, the Servant of the People party announced it has sent an appeal to President Zelenskiy to grant posthumously the title of Hero of Ukraine to another soldier, the Ukrainian prisoner of war shot dead by Russian troops in a graphic 12-second clip which spread quickly across Ukraine and much of the world.
The video, allegedly posted to Telegram by Russian soldiers on Monday, has led to a war crimes investigation and, within Ukraine, a battle over the identity of the man, which, to date, has not been conclusively established due to the low quality of the video. As a result, two families, two battalions and two different home towns have each to varying degrees claimed the man as their own. Military authorities, to resolve the dispute, are considering exhuming a soldier’s body.
Sort of good news from Iowa, as summarized by Steve Benen:
The latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll in Iowa found many of the state’s Republican voters committed to Donald Trump, but the same survey results showed the former president’s favorability numbers in the Hawkeye State “steadily declining“ in recent years, and “the percentage of Iowa Republicans who say they would ‘definitely’ vote for him if he were the nominee in 2024 has plummeted by more than 20 percentage points since June 2021.”
Previous posts in this thread discussed the fact that Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation into law that eliminated age verification requirements for children younger than 16 years old who were being employed in sometimes dangerous jobs.
Now we see this trend spreading in Republican circles:
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, for example, suggested child labor laws might not be constitutional. Paul LePage, then the governor of Maine, called for rolling back his state’s restrictions on children in the workplace. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa even argued that new child labor laws might help combat childhood obesity.
Seema Nanda, the Labor Department’s top attorney, called efforts to weaken child-worker protections “irresponsible.”
Some of the jobs where children are employed, or where Republicans want them to be employed, include meatpacking plants. In Minnesota, a proposed bill would allow 16- and 17-year olds to work construction jobs.
Protests against “foreign agents” bill, erupted in #Tbilisi, result in demands for the resignation of the government. We recommend to the georgian people to recall a similar situation in Ukraine in 2014 and what it finally led to!
#ThinkTwice
From the responses:
get ready to swim. [my favorite]
Mafia style blackmailing. How unsurprising…
So you are openly threatening Georgia now?
It led to the death or injury of 250,000 Russian troops.
As I recall it eventually lead to russia’s humiliation and exit as a world superpower.
I don’t think you’re really in a position to make threats…
Good news: The U.S. economy has created over 12.8 million jobs since January 2021 — roughly double the combined total of Donald Trump’s first three years in office.
Expectations heading into this morning showed projections of around 225,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in February. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the preliminary tally suggests the domestic job market did noticeably better than that. CNBC reported this morning:
Job creation decelerated in February but was still stronger than expected despite Federal Reserve efforts to slow the economy and bring down inflation. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 311,000 for the month, the Labor Department reported Friday. That was above the 225,000 Dow Jones estimate and a sign that the employment market is still hot.
[…] The fact that the data shows the unemployment rate inching higher might seem somewhat discouraging, but it’s worth emphasizing for context that the rate is still vastly lower than it was when President Joe Biden was inaugurated — it’s fallen from 6.3% to 3.6% — and it’s still hovering around a 50-year low. In fact, the level is one the United States did not reach at any point throughout the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s.
I’m mindful of the chatter about whether the economy is in a recession, but by any sane measure, these are not recession-like conditions. […]
Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the United States’ economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.35 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.
According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created over 12.8 million jobs since January 2021 — roughly double the combined total of Trump’s first three years. […]
“Just the editor of Russia Today casually threatening a nuclear strike on Tbilisi, which she says isn’t worth sparing because unlike Kyiv it doesn’t contain Orthodox religious shrines….”
Screenshot (no translation) at the (Twitter) link.
Friday night in Tbilisi. [video at the link: "Georgia supports Europe and rejects Russia."]
On Thursday, Russian forces, after multiple failures, occupied at least part of the village of Dubovo-Vasylivka northwest of Bakhmut. This once again increases the pressure on efforts to maintain control of the road that leads out of the city through Khromove. Russian forces also managed to capture more of the northern city, and a renewed press from the south brought the Russian troops at least two blocks further into Bakhmut in the south. [map at the link]
On Friday, the Ukrainian general staff reported that Ukrainian forces had repelled a Russian attack on Dubovo-Vasylivka; however, Wagner Group has published some images showing their forces in an area that appears to be the eastern edge of this village. So “disputed” seems to be the proper call.
But the reason the map looks so different today is that it’s been expanded to pull in an area 20 kilometers south of Bakhmut, along the highway east of the city of Toresk. Along this road, Ukrainian forces reportedly launched a counteroffensive that pushed Russian troops back over a kilometer and placed control over the town of Mayorsk, which has been under Russian occupation for weeks, back into dispute.
Fighting in and around Bakhmut remains heavy, with reports that Russia has brought more heavy equipment into the area since Ukraine pulled back from the eastern side of the city. At this point, Russian forces likely occupy more than half of the city. [Tweet and video at the link]
When it comes to the counterattack at Mayorsk, Russian sources are claiming this Ukrainian advance has now been repelled, though they admit that “some positions have not been recovered.” In making this advance Ukrainian forces seem to have forced a series of trenches recently dug by Russian troops in the area. Fighting also appears to be ongoing at two small villages—Shumy and Pivdenne—just south of Mayorsk.
The lines in this area appear to be manned by mobilized forces for the DNR rather than either Wagner or regular Russian military, most of which has been dedicated to the assault on Bakhmut and the continued assaults on Vuhlendar, another 90 km to the southwest. It’s possible that the extended effort to capture Bakhmut has created a weak spot in the Russian lines along this highway.
One thing is certain: Russia can’t afford a major breakthrough at this location because that highway through Mayorsk allows Ukraine to threaten Russian occupation over a whole series of cities, including some much bigger than Bakhmut. [map at the link]
Mayorsk is an inner suburb of the city of Horlivka. That city has a population of near 300,000 and has been controlled by Russian occupation forces since 2014. That means the move toward Mayorsk isn’t just recovering a small town that was lost to Russian occupation some time ago; it presents the possibility that Ukraine could break through into an area that was part of the DNR at the war’s outset.
Is it too early to be making much of what is, after all, a single small thrust toward a single small town; one that Russia claims to have already taken back? Yes, absolutely. But it’s notable that Russian sources are reporting that in response to Ukrainian forces entering Mayorsk, they have shelled other villages in the areas. This would seem to indicate they’ve not been all that successful in halting the Ukrainian advance.
At the very least, the Ukrainian move at Mayorsk will surely remind Russia that there is more to this area of the front than Bakhmut. Also, unlike the Russians at Vuhledar, Ukraine apparently still understands how to launch a successful attack. It’s good to see that the Ukrainian forces are still probing for weakness in the Russian line rather than just being reactive to attacks on Bakhmut.
——————————-
On Thursday, the legislature in Georgia, dominated by the Georgian Dream party, completely backed down and withdrew legislation that would have forced employees of NGOs and foreign-owned companies to register as foreign agents. This followed two days of massive protests during which Georgia’s independent president sided with protestors.
With the law withdrawn, celebrations have replaced protests. For now, Georgian Dream and their oligarch founder Bidzina Ivanishvili appear capable of riding this out to remain in power. However, they have reasons to be concerned.
The Georgian people have been reminded that the power doesn’t really rest with Ivanishvili and his cronies, not if they’re willing to stand up together. Also, Georgians have picked up some very valuable protest skills. [Tweet and video at the link: “At this point we learned how to 1. Fight water cannons 2. Neutralize tear gas.”]
One sign that things might not be over for the moment is that Russians in Georgia, along with Russian supporters, are reportedly still lining up to take an out-of-country holiday. [Tweet and video at the link: “Russians are so afraid of the Maidan that they are fleeing Georgia back to Russia.”]
Russia state media has claimed that what’s happening in Georgia is the result of those “Anglo-Saxons,” who apparently continue to get around, fomenting revolution. Russian propaganda is clearly lying about the source of the protests, because this was all homegrown. But let’s hope they’re accurate with that revolution prediction, with the best way being a call for early elections that throws the pro-Russian Georgian Dream party out on its ear.
—————————-
This morning, the Ukrainian general staff issued the usual list of towns where attacks had been thwarted and locations subject to Russian shelling. However, they also jumped into a discussion of the fight within a fight: the war of words between Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin and the Russian military.
For weeks now, Prigozhin has been slamming the military for failing to supply his collection of prison escapees and war crimers with sufficient ammunition. He has openly criticised Russian military leaders, especially Gen. Valery Gerasimov, and the ability of Russian soldiers in a way that would have netted the average Russian a few decades shoveling permafrost in a gulag. Prigozhin hasn’t been locked up, but he also doesn’t seem to be getting any support from Putin or anyone else. [Tweet and video at the link: “Footage from the “Da Vinci Wolves” battalion, destroying Wagner PMC soldiers in the [area near Bakhmut]”]
In the Friday broadcast from the Ukrainian military, it was clear that Ukraine is relishing this schism in Russian forces. In fact, they’re looking forward to watching Wagner collapse from a lack of support. That includes reporting that Wagner has suffered “significant losses” in the last few weeks and that “most of them have perished on the fields of Bakhmut.”
“It is clear that these processes are leading to the end of their inglorious history in the medium term.”
Yes, please. But can’t we make that the short term? Or immediately?
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has earned a reputation as a chess player who can’t think more than one move at a time.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not immediately explain why in the world he agreed to give Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to Jan. 6 security footage, but in time, the California Republican shed some light on his perspective.
In comments to The New York Times a few weeks ago, McCarthy tried to justify his deal with the controversial television personality by saying, “I promised.” The GOP leader appeared to be referring to post-election negotiations he had with his own members, and the side deals McCarthy felt the need to strike in order to get the speaker’s gavel.
But did he think through what would happen after making, and apparently keeping, the promise? The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman made a good point this week:
Certain political leaders inspire grudging respect or even fear from their opponents, but let’s face it: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is not among them. His latest political gambit, a ham-handed attempt to rewrite the history of the Capitol insurrection in collaboration with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, was not just a spectacular faceplant. It turned out to be a service to all of us.
[…] After the Republican congressman handed the Fox host matches and lighter fluid, Carlson set a fire that was widely condemned by Democrats, Republicans and law enforcement, all while being discredited through independent analysis.
At the same time, the gambit put coverage of the Jan. 6 attack back on front pages — reminding the public anew about the pro-Trump insurrectionist violence — which didn’t do the GOP any favors, all while doing fresh damage to the reputation of a cable outlet Republicans rely on.
Did McCarthy know all of this would happen? Perhaps not. But should he have known this would happen? A little foresight should’ve made this series of events obvious, since they were inevitable.
Making matters worse for the House speaker, this keeps happening. When he was told he couldn’t appoint far-right extremists to the Jan. 6 committee, McCarthy acted instinctively and announced a GOP boycott of the congressional investigation. He hadn’t thought this through, and the move quickly backfired.
More than a year later, McCarthy thought it’d be a good idea to commit to a plan that balances the budget within 10 years without raising taxes or touching Social Security and Medicare. The Republican thought this would satisfy his members and advance his ambitions, but again, he failed to think this through, didn’t realize that arithmetic makes the goal effectively impossible, and he’s now realizing that he has no idea how to honor his vow. […]
No big surprise that the guy who wants to move to another planet might start by building his own little fiefdom here on Earth—in Texas.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the billionaire owner of Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX, and the tunnel-building company Boring Co., Elon Musk, plans to build a town about 35 miles from Austin. It would be called Snailbrook after Boring Co.’s mascot.
The Journal reports that the South Africa-born Musk, who has begun buying at least 3,500 acres, described the town as a little utopia where his employees work for him and could live for under-market rents … like a South African township? Just wondering.
At the center of the town project is Steve Davis, Boring Co.’s president, who has posed the idea of building more than just a town, but an entire city in Bastrop County, located next to Austin with a mayor and everything.
Musk’s ex-girlfriend, the singer Grimes, Kanye West, and his architect have discussed the look and feel of the town but haven’t yet created an actual plan. [Kanye West!? What could go wrong?] The Journal reports that for a town to incorporate, via Texas law, it would need at least 201 residents and approval from a county judge.
The Journal reports that one piece of Boring Co. correspondence included a conversation about converting an existing home on the property to a Montessori school for about 15 students.
According to Curbed, in 2014, Musk removed his five kids from their school in Los Angeles and created Ad Astra, located in Hawthorne, California, the headquarters for SpaceX.
Ars Technica reported that the “experimental non-profit school” was founded to “exceed traditional school metrics on all relevant subject matter through unique project-based learning experiences,” according to a previously unreported document filed with the IRS.
[…] Musk announced a move out of California to Texas in 2020, citing the Golden State’s “entitled” and “complacent” attitude. But in 2023, Musk announced that Tesla would return its global engineering headquarters to California, landing in Palo Alto.
CNN reports that property records for Bastrop County, located next to Austin, show that Boring Co. owns 11 parcels of land. Currently, a group of mobile homes is there, many of which popped up within the last three years. All are listed under one address near the Colorado River.
Utopia Trailer Park.
Comments posted by readers of the article:
while Musk complains about liberals and their policies he has no problem hiring the well-educated population that liberal policies in Austin create
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It is not that much of a stronghold. If you go just up north from downtown Austin, it is all rethuglican.
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Didn’t he just announce moving Tesla HQ back to Silicon Valley? I don’t think a lot of people who live here want to move to Texas where the state legislature is so hateful to women and people of color.
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Jesus. Company towns brought back by the New Guilded Age robber barons
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And will his slaves…er… employees have to spend all their money at his company store? [“I owe my soul to the company store.”]
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That’s how company towns worked historically. Workers would be evicted if there was any sort of labor action.
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I live in a corporate city. They are a big problem. One of the things they do is put lots of money into institutions that are not connected to them, but it has the effect of silencing those institutions. For example, this corporation regularly dumps money into our local nature center. When it gets political, like it did with wolf and dove hunts, instead of coming forward and talking to the public about these issues from an environmental/ecological perspective, the nature center was quiet because shooting stuff for fun is a conservative pro business POV. […] They buy compliance and submission with money.
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For all his (unearned) reputation as a “visionary” he really is derivative, this time of Henry Ford (Fordlandia) and of the workers’ towns of US Steel and similar. Not an original thought in that hair-transplanted head of his.
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ke any rich, entitled asshole he is probably going to try and get Texans to pay for it through taxes on the promise that this town will bring billions of dollars in revenue to the state. Like the scam new football arenas are.
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Fucking idiot. The Colorado River is in BIG environmental trouble.
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He’ll just steal water.
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“Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration.”
1984, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, Chapter one Ignorance is Strength. — George Orwell.
Even if you don’t know David Attenborough, you know David Attenborough. At 96, the British broadcaster, biologist, and author has been one of the biggest popularizers of science for more than six decades. Odds are if there’s a video of animals doing something interesting, the voice behind that moment is either Attenborough or someone mimicking his signature delivery.
The nine series making up Attenborough’s Life collection—which he wrote, produced, and presented—may be the greatest documentation of the diversity and sheer wonder of life on this planet that has ever been assembled. Each represents hundreds of person-years of labor and innovative techniques to capture moments almost no one would otherwise have the opportunity to witness. The work has garnered Attenborough multiple awards and made him one of the best known and most beloved figures working anywhere in broadcasting—not just in England but around the world. The programs he has created have been called the best of the BBC by figures across the political spectrum.
All this shows just how extraordinary it is that the BBC—Attenborough’s partner on many of his ventures—is refusing to air an episode of his latest presentation. That program, Wild Isles, focuses specifically on the wildlife of the British isles. It allows Attenborough to bring the technology and the team of wildlife photographers he has used around the world and apply their skills to the nation he has always called home.
Why would the BBC refuse to air their most iconic presenter helming what may be his last series, on a topic not just dear to his heart, but of intrinsic interest to a British audience? It’s because in this banned episode, Attenborough focuses on the destruction of nature, and the BBC fears that the Conservative government will find this offensive.
[…] Reportedly, the episode shows a balanced approach to agriculture. It features descriptions of how monoculture farms heavily dependent on chemical pesticides and fertilizers cause damage to the environment, resulting in huge environmental rifts. However, it also features farms that are using practices including the use of native plants for native pest control and that preserve both the farm and the surrounding natural habitat.
A similar approach was applied to gaming, which in this case isn’t video games or casinos. It’s largely staged hunting events that sacrifice land and natural diversity to maintain artificial crops of animals to be hunted for sport. The impact of these practices can be reduced, but too often hunters want open, parklike land for “traditional” hunts that are little more than ritualized slaughter of tamed animals.
But this balanced approach was not enough to satisfy the concerns of the BBC. They’re not even responding to an actual issue, they’re running away from a potential backlash that they admit is being generated by lobbyists. The whole decision smacks of an almost unfathomable level of cowardice. […]
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized the assets of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday, marking the largest bank failure since Washington Mutual during the height of the 2008 financial crisis.
The bank failed after depositors — mostly technology workers and venture capital-backed companies — began withdrawing their money creating a run on the bank.
Silicon Valley was heavily exposed to tech industry and there is little chance of contagion in the banking sector as there was in the months leading up to the Great Recession more than a decade ago. Major banks have sufficient capital to avoid a similar situation.
The FDIC ordered the closure of Silicon Valley Bank and immediately took position of all deposits at the bank Friday. The bank had $209 billion in assets and $175.4 billion in deposits as the time of failure, the FDIC said in a statement. It was unclear how much of deposits was above the $250,000 insurance limit at the moment.
Notably, the FDIC did not announce a buyer of Silicon Valley’s assets, which is typically when there’s an orderly wind down of a bank. The FDIC also seized the bank’s assets in the middle of the business day, a sign of how dire the situation had become.
The financial health of Silicon Valley Bank was increasingly in question this week after the bank announced plans to raise up to $1.75 billion in order to strengthen its capital position amid concerns about higher interest rates and the economy. Shares of SVB Financial Group, the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, had plummeted nearly 70% before trading was halted before the opening bell on the Nasdaq.
CNBC reported that attempts to raise capital failed and the bank was now looking to sell itself.
Silicon Valley bank was not a small bank, it’s the 16th largest bank in the country, holding $210 billion in assets. It acts as a major financial conduit for venture capital-backed companies, which have been hit hard in the past 18 months as the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates and made riskier tech assets less attractive to investors.
Venture capital-backed companies were being reportedly advised to pull at least two months’ worth of “burn” cash out of Silicon Valley Bank to cover their expenses. Typically VC-backed companies are not profitable and how quickly they use the cash they need to run their businesses — their so-called “burn rate” — is a typically important metric for investors.
Diversified banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan pulled out of an early slump due to data released Friday by the Labor Department, but regional banks, particularly those with heavy exposure to the tech industry, were in decline.
Yet it has been a bruising week. Shares of major banks are down this week between 7% and 12%.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 61
Just like the Palins, it’s nice to see the Boeberts embrace the Christian values of Chasity and “purity” that they expect us all to follow.
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #61…
Buried down in the article in Boebert’s son’s defense that she (Lauren) did the same to her mother. One might wonder how far that goes back in that family… At 73, I might be older than Lauren Boebert’s grandmother.
It’s hard to be worse than George Santos. You’d have to lie about every single thing, and then you’d have to scam a few people out of their money as well.
[…] Republican Rep. Andy Ogles, however, is at least in contention in this ignominious race. The Washington Post today uncovered some previously unknown instances of the Tennessean making claims about his history that have failed to withstand scrutiny.
Ogles’s résumé suggests that he was a savvy business consultant and investor with a number of board memberships. But even as he was supposedly saving Merrill Lynch millions of dollars through his consulting work, he was also briefly a stockbroker there and co-owned a doughnut shop. He also exaggerates or invents his service on various boards. […]
It was nearly a month ago when the freshman congressman first faced allegations that he’d wildly inflated his résumé. WTVF, the CBS affiliate in Nashville, uncovered quite a few instances in which the Tennessee Republican falsely described himself as an economist, falsely boasted about his law enforcement career, and even exaggerated his work at a non-profit organization.
After ignoring the controversy for a brief while, Ogles’ spokesperson eventually told Fox News Digital that he’d simply “condensed” his résumé “for the sake of brevity,” which was an odd response to evidence that the GOP lawmaker made brazenly untrue claims.
When WTVF returned to the subject, it uncovered additional details that made matters a bit worse: Ogles also failed to tell the truth about his academic background — including what his degree is in — and he falsely claimed to be a graduate of Vanderbilt’s business school.
[…] Ogles said his firm represented “Fortune 500 companies,” but there doesn’t appear to be any evidence to support this, either.
As part of the same claims, he said his company did lucrative consulting work for Merrill Lynch, but that’s also suspect: The Post found that Ogles worked for less than a year as a stockbroker in a Merrill office in Nashville, but that’s not in line with the claims from his résumé.
[…] Ogles also claimed to have served on the boards of directors of the YMCA of Franklin, Nurses for Newborns in Tennessee, and the city of Franklin. None of these claims appears to be true — and the city of Franklin doesn’t even have a board.
As we discussed last month, in isolation, these individual falsehoods might not seem especially scandalous. But it’s the larger context that paints a rather brutal portrait: The Tennessee Republican appears to have lied about much of his academic and professional background, and to date, he’s offered literally nothing to challenge the accuracy of the revelations.
GOP leaders still haven’t commented or expressed any concerns about Ogles’ related dishonesty, though if recent history is any guide, they’ll wave it off as irrelevant. With a narrow majority in the House, Republican leaders apparently don’t believe they can afford to care too much about whether some of their members lied to get ahead.
Ha! Well, a least they put their whackadoodle plan on paper. It’s not really a “plan.” It is more a threat to kill the hostage.
[…] It remained unclear Friday whether the Freedom Caucus announcement was the beginning of a Republican offer on what it would take to release the debt ceiling hostage, or a single GOP faction planting its flag.
The so-called plan is brief.
According to the sheet released on Twitter, the far-right members want to cap discretionary spending at 2022 levels for 10 years, nix Biden’s plan to forgive some student debt and rescind climate change-related funding, as well as the $80 billion approved for shoring up the Internal Revenue Service under the Inflation Reduction Act.
“This budget proposal is insane and would be extremely destructive if anything like it was adopted,” Mason said.
One plank of the barebones budget calls for “restoring Clinton-era work requirements on welfare programs” — a frequent GOP rallying cry, despite the reality that many social programs already have work requirements built into them.
Of the various messaging salvos in the budget, Mason pointed to the work requirements as among the least evidence-based.
“It’s a disaster for all sorts of reasons, but really focusing on the work requirements — it’s funny because one of the clearest economic lessons we’ve learned is that work incentives don’t matter,” Mason said.
He pointed to the 2021 unemployment insurance payments during the pandemic, which some states let expire earlier than others.
“There was simply no faster growth in employment in states that ended benefits earlier,” he added. “And that’s about the cleanest test you could look for.” [True!]
Instead of making the case for their cuts, the Freedom Caucus members spent the majority of the 38-minute long press conference dumping on Biden’s plan and blaming him for the country’s debt. [I don’t think they know how to actually make a case for any “plan” they come up with.]
Biden quickly pushed back on the conservatives’ half-baked proposal.
“Cut all spending other than defense by 25%… That means cops, firefighters. It means health care,’ he said from the White House. “We just have a very different value set.” […]
President Joe Biden may have walked the streets of Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but on Friday Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin joined Zelenskyy for what may be his most important duty: taking part in the funeral for a fallen Ukrainian hero. [video at the link]
Dmytro Kotsiubailo was the commander of the same unit seen hitting Wagner Group forces in the previous video. Known under his call sign of “Da Vinci,” Kotsiubailo was commander of the 1st Mechanized Battalion, which has played a large role in the defense of Bakhmut. At just 27, he was the youngest battalion commander in the history of Ukraine. He was also a decorated “Hero of Ukraine” even before this invasion began for his actions in the 2014 invasion, where he lead a volunteer company at the age of 18.
Finally, a reminder of what it means for Russia to have 97% of its military engaged in Ukraine.
Current situation in the North Caucasus.
Should events in Ukraine deteriorate more than already for Russia and the protesters topple the current Georgian regime, then the whole region could witness major shifts. Russia has only a skeleton defense in the south. #Georgia #Chechnya [Tweet and map at the link]
Russia has only a skeleton defense everywhere that isn’t Ukraine.
🎥Artillery of Ukrainian 14th Mechanized Brigade targeting Russian convoy in the east. [Tweet and video at the link]
The House Ways and Means Committee stuck around for a rare Friday session of Congress in order to grill Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about a whole load of nonsense ostensibly regarding President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal. At least, that’s what the majority of Republicans did while entirely ignoring her critical warning to them.
“In my assessment—and that of economists across the board—a default on our debt would trigger an economic and financial catastrophe,” Yellen told the committee. “I urge all members of Congress to come together to address the debt limit—without conditions and without waiting until the last minute.”
Republicans glossed over that, and in fact over much of the actual budget, preferring to repeatedly lie about the 87,000 new IRS agents who are all going to be armed and, oh I don’t know, break people’s doors down to audit them at gunpoint? Also how the low unemployment numbers are all a pack of lies papering over the fact that employers can’t get workers since the pandemic. It would have been nice if some Democrat on the committee—Yellen couldn’t do it because she was a guest there—had pointed out that GOP anti-mask and anti-vaxx hysteria killed a bunch of the workforce. But they didn’t. They also didn’t point out that the Ways & Means Committee wasn’t having hearings on the GOP budget, because there isn’t one.
That’s Biden’s fault, Barely House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday, making a preemptive excuse not only for not have a budget now, but not delivering one for the next month and a half, apparently. “We were going to do the budget in April, but unfortunately the president’s so late with his budget it delays ours,” McCarthy told reporters. In case you’re wondering, no, that’s not how any of this stuff works. The House is not required to wait for a budget proposal from the White House to come up with it one of its own. [LOL]
There are lots and lots of reasons they don’t have a budget, starting with the fact that there aren’t any Republicans in the House anymore who know how to Congress, or if there are, their skills are no longer relevant to leadership. What matters to leadership is a member’s ability to yell about stuff that doesn’t really matter but makes the right people enraged.
The difficult McCarthy has is those yelling people are demanding things that are not possible, and the not-yelling people don’t want to associate themselves with that, but also don’t want to stick their necks out in support of things that are possible. [Accurate assessment!]
[…] The impossible things include, but are not limited to: balancing the budget in 10 years without touching Social Security and Medicare; slashing federal spending by historic amounts without touching defense spending, which must be increased; and taking food, housing, health care away from huge swaths of the population without doing irreparable harm to the economy (and those people who they want to keep voting for them). None of this can work, and all but the most fanatical and boneheaded of them knows it. However, there are enough boneheaded fanatics to deny a 218-vote majority. […]
I conclude that House Republicans will not make any concessions to reality.
Archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed Friday to restore diplomatic relations, a dramatic breakthrough brokered by China after years of soaring tensions between the Middle Eastern powerhouses.
Somewhat related news, also from NBC:
The vote was 2,952 to 0, and there was no campaign: “Chinese leader Xi Jinping was awarded a third five-year term as president Friday, putting him on track to stay in power for life.”
The lieutenant governor of Tennessee, which recently passed multiple bills that target LGBTQ people and culture, has been frequently commenting from his verified Instagram account on shirtless photos of a young gay man.
Greetings from Missouri, where we have so much to celebrate! In the past month, Missourians have celebrated a Super Bowl championship and opened the doors to a shiny new much-needed airport in Kansas City, while in St. Louis, a new Major League Soccer team debuted in a brand-new stadium to a very enthusiastic sold-out crowd. And thanks to federal funding, our outdated, crumbling bridges are getting updated or replaced.
Things have really been looking up in the Show Me State in 2023.
But the Missouri legislature is back in business and the party is definitely over. […] unity vibes of cheering for the same team have faded. It’s back to the business of “culture wars,” […]
Let’s take a look at the Missouri legislature’s dangerous right-wing turn.
First up, state Rep. Rick Brattin of Harrisonville has introduced a bill that would make Missouri the only state in the entire country to tax food, but not gun sales. The Missouri state Senate was trying to eliminate the prepared food sales tax, but Brattin and others in the Missouri Republican Party nixed it from the bill, adding a provision that would give gun sellers a tax credit instead on ammo and guns made in Missouri. All in a state with the fourth-highest gun death rate in the U.S. As Kansas City-area Democrat John Rizzo told the Kansas City Star, Republicans are “putting guns over groceries.” Let’s bookmark that quote, because that is a line Democrats should be amplifying nationwide in 2024.
Meanwhile, state Rep. Anne Kelley of Lamar introduced a “Don’t Say Gay” bill—one of 34 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in the state this year—that would prohibit K-12 educators from talking about gender or sexual identity. When publicly questioned about the bill in a committee meeting […] her defense of the bill was so bad that the committee chair had to ask the crowd to stop laughing.
[…] On the higher ed front, state Rep. Doug Richey of Excelsior Springs has introduced a bill to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies at major universities. The bill is one of two recent bills aimed at banning such initiatives at public universities in Missouri. […] The bill was drafted with help from the Cicero Institute in Austin, which acknowledges it provided “model language” for the bill, as it has for other recent bills in Missouri—like the one banning camping on state-owned land, which directly targets homeless people in Missouri.
During a committee hearing on the DEI bill, Richey was repeatedly asked by state Rep. LaKeySha Bosley of St. Louis whether racism exists on college campuses in Missouri. Richey was largely speechless in response.
[…] Here’s the thing: The state’s flagship school, the University of Missouri, has repeatedly and recently been forced to confront racism on campus. In 2015, University of Missouri system President Tim Wolfe was forced to resign after Jonathon Butler, then a student at Missouri, went on a hunger strike and drew so much national attention that the beloved football team threatened to boycott practices and games. Butler became an active campus organizer after traveling to Ferguson to protest the police shooting of Michael Brown. […]. When the Missouri football players and coaches joined together to support Butler, the writing was on the wall for Wolfe—and he resigned.
When it comes to claims of racism in Missouri, Republicans need not look to the campuses of state colleges: They can just walk right over to any mirror and get a gander. In early February, Black lawmakers decried ”anti-crime” legislation that would strip power from St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, the first Black woman elected to the position. […]
And that’s not the only attempt to strip the state’s few Black leaders of their power. The legislature is also moving to strip control of the St. Louis police department from Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, instead handing it over to the state to be overseen by a five-member panel. […]
[Video of Republican Gov. Mike Parsons being roundly booed at the Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade last month.]
It takes a lot to get booed at an event where the entire metropolitan area has taken the day off to have a great time.
At the end of the day, what is happening in Missouri is just a microcosm of the culture wars happening across the country […] legislators introduce bills designed by billionaire-funded right-wing think tanks that offer “solutions” to things that weren’t ever a problem—whether it’s “critical race theory” in schools or children attending drag shows—while ignoring real crises facing the state, like impossibly high gun death rates and real struggles to pay for basics like housing and groceries.
[…] If you are a Democrat in a ruby-red state like Missouri, take heart that you are not alone. If you want to help beat back the tide of bad Republican legislation in Missouri, find a local candidate or an elected Democrat and get their back. […]
Across the country, the conservative movement is obsessed almost exclusively with culture wars. Whether or not this will have any national traction remains to be seen because so far, culture wars haven’t done much for Republicans in the election results department. The fake, overblown cultural issues do seem to allow them to pretend they have actual policies that help people economically (outside of the top 1 percent).
Locally, culture wars seem to do the job for ambitious right-wingers who want to raise their profile and move up the rungs of the MAGA/NeoCon ladder. You have to remember that that ladder is slippery with swamp slime and the bigger and more bigoted and fascistic the moves, the higher the mountain of praise heaped on you. Just ask Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Right now, the big move in for conservatives is to do away with what they call critical race theory, or CRT. This isn’t something being taught to children, and is really just a boogieman catch-all phrase for American history that includes Black people and the history of racism in our country and its institutions. In order to pretend this is something beneficial for constituents, people like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin have even set up “hotlines” where distressed parents can drop a dime on teachers and adults who deign to tell children facts and uncomfortable stuff about our country’s history.
A new Republican bigot has stepped up to the microphone in the hopes of making a racist name for himself: Tom Horne, the Republican superintendent of Public Instruction in Arizona.
The Arizona Republic reports that Horne made a promise when he was running for superintendent of Public Instruction, and he is coming through. This week the Arizona Department of Education launched a new “Empower Hotline.” How are citizens empowered? They can report “inappropriate lessons that detract from teaching academic standards such as those that focus on race or ethnicity, rather than individuals and merit, promoting gender ideology, social emotional learning, or inappropriate sexual content,” according to the government website.
[…] Like all Republican education things, such as anti-trans and anti-gay bills, these culture war maneuvers do have an actual big business policy attached: hurting labor in the form of teachers unions and therefore debilitating public education in the hopes of privatizing it. President of the Arizona Education Association Marisol Garcia told the Arizona Republic that conservative stunts like Horne’s “continues to politicize and disrespect educators and their profession and the relationships that they have with their families.”
but again here about liars – including one with links to failed far reich wing extremist fringe candidate Deves – inciting baseless fear and hate towards trans people and hurting many cis people in the process.
SC@54,
Neither the Guardian nor other pro-Ukranian sources I’ve seen mention that Dmytro Kotsiubailo was a member of the far-right “Right Sector”. That doesn’t detract from his courage, but I don’t think mention of the disturbing aspects of Ukranian political culture should be suppressed by supporters of Ukranian resistance to the invaders.
KG @ #80, the WP page you link to no longer contains that claim. It could change again by the time I post this, but the latest edit reads “Removed incorrect allusion to association with nationalist organisation.” View the history for more.
Re Francis, meh. That page has this (incomplete) description of his responses to the Russian full invasion of Ukraine:
Following the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Francis visited the Russian embassy in Rome in what was described as an “unprecedented move.” Francis called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stating his “sorrow” as the Vatican worked to find “room for negotiation.” As the invasion began, the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Sviatoslav Shevchuk cancelled a trip to visit Francis in Florence. On 25 February, the day after the invasion began, Francis would assure Shevchuk via a phone call that “he would do everything he can to help end the Ukraine conflict.” During the 27 February Angelus address, Francis called for peace, saying, “Silence the weapons!” Francis also sent two high-ranking cardinals with aid to Ukraine at the beginning of March. These special envoys were the papal almsgiver, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, and Cardinal Michael Czerny, who is head of the papal office that deals with migration, charity, justice and peace. This mission, which involved several trips, was considered a highly unusual move of Vatican diplomacy. Pope Francis consecrated both Russia and Ukraine on 25 March 2022 (see consecration of Russia).
In mid-May 2022, Francis described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “perhaps somehow either provoked or not prevented[.]” Francis explained that this observation did not mean he was “pro-Putin”: ““It would be simplistic and wrong to say such a thing. I am simply against reducing complexity to the distinction between good guys and bad guys, without reasoning about roots and interests, which are very complex.”
On 24 August 2022, Pope Francis described the killing of Darya Dugina as a case of innocents paying for the Russo-Ukrainian War. On the same day, the Ukraine’s envoy to the Holy See protested against such a description of the killing, saying that Dugina was “one of ideologists of (Russian) imperialism” and therefore not an innocent victim.
In September 2022, Francis pointed out that Ukraine has a lawful right to defend itself, and that dialogue with the aggressor is necessary even when it stinks and later said that Ukrainians were noble people who were victims of savageness, monstrosities and torture.
On 2 October 2022, Francis directly addressed Putin and Zelenskyy, making an impassioned appeal to Putin to halt the “spiral of violence and death”, saying that a nuclear escalation would bring “uncontrollable global consequences”. Addressing Ukrainian president Zelenskyy, Pope Francis asked him to be open about “serious peace proposals” at the same time that Francis recognized that Ukraine had suffered an “aggression” and that he “pained about the suffering of the Ukrainian people”.
In November 2022, Francis granted an interview to Christian magazine America. During the interview, Francis stated that generally, the Chechens and Buryats minorities were “perhaps the cruellest of Russia [but] not of Russian tradition”. These remarks were strongly condemned by Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who expressed that the comments were “no longer Russophobia, [they] are a perversion on a level I can’t even name”. Others remarked that his statement was “racist”.
His pattern on this appears to be more just uninformed and ill-informed, and often frankly stupid, than drawing from a larger worldview that’s unsuited to this particular situation.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Bakhmut has become a “killing zone” that is probably highly challenging for Russia’s Wagner mercenary forces trying to continue their assault westward, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.
Its latest intelligence update said that over the past four days, Wagner Group forces had taken control of most of eastern Bakhmut, while Ukrainian forces held its west and had demolished key bridges over the Bakhmutka River, “which now marks the front line”.
The ministry said:
With Ukrainian units able to fire from fortified buildings to the west, this area has become a killing zone, likely making it highly challenging for Wagner forces attempting to continue their frontal assault westwards.
However, the Ukrainian force and their supply lines to the west remain vulnerable to the continued Russian attempts to outflank the defenders from the north and south.
The underwater bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September was carried out by a team of divers operating from a 15-metre chartered yacht called the Andromeda, according to a news report. The report in Der Spiegel traces the Andromeda’s route around the Baltic from its home marina in Rostock to the German island of Rügen and then to the Danish island of Christiansø, close to the site of the 26 September blasts. Questions have been raised about whether another vessel was involved.
The UK government has written to Olympic sponsors urging them to pressure the International Olympic Committee over its proposal to allow Russians and Belarusians to compete at next year’s Paris Games, British media reported on Saturday.
The IOC is facing a mounting backlash after setting out a pathway in January for competitors from Russia and its ally Belarus to earn Olympic slots through Asian qualifying and to compete as neutral athletes in Paris, Reuters reported….
Canada has announced a ban on imports of Russian aluminium and steel products, with the aim of denying Moscow revenues to fund its war in Ukraine.
The imports were worth almost C$250m (US$180m/£150m) in 2021, according to the latest government data.
Reuters reports the ban comes as a 200% tariff on Russian aluminium imports announced last month by the United States came into effect, and after the EU already blocked Russian steel products last year….
KGsays
SC@81,
The Kiev Independent says Kotsiobailo “took part in the EuroMaidan in 2014, soon after joining the Right Sector Ukrainian Volunteer Corps and fighting off Russia in Ukraine’s Donbas region.”. Yahoo news also says he was a member of Right Sector.
The Kyiv Independent’s Illia Ponomarenko sits down with military analysts Michael Kofman, director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA, and Rob Lee, senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program, to discuss the current situation on the battlefields, Ukraine’s planned counteroffensive and Russia’s attempts to stop it, and the likely developments in Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2023. The discussion took place in Kyiv on March 5 and was co-organized with the Borderlands Foundation.
I don’t understand why people don’t seem to be taking the possibilities for resistance among the civil population into account.
Prosecutor General’s Office: Russia has killed at least 464 children, injured 934 since Feb. 24.
Prosecutor General’s Office reported on March 11 that Russia’s attacks across Ukraine have killed at least 464 children and wounded 934 more since Feb. 24. Also, 367 children are considered missing, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported, citing National Police.
Ground Forces Commander: Spring counteroffensive ‘not far off.’
Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, said that the defense of Bakhmut was necessary for the start of the spring counteroffensive, which is “not far off,” the Ground Forces reported on March 11.
Interior minister: Ukraine almost done assembling new assault brigades.
According to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, 28,000 volunteers have already applied to join new assault brigades, also known as the Offensive Guard. The forces are now collecting reservists.
A first-of-its-kind municipal climate charter in Texas could throw a wrench in US fossil fuel extraction. Residents of a major Texas city just west of the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the US, will have the chance to vote on the package this spring.
If the proposal passes, the city of El Paso would adopt a comprehensive climate policy that would include prohibiting the use of city water for extraction projects outside city limits, such as in the Permian Basin, which makes up roughly 40% of all US oil production.
“El Paso is on the verge of potentially passing one of the most progressive pieces of climate legislation in the country,” said Deirdre Shelly, campaigns director for the national Sunrise Movement.
Proponents say the climate charter would prepare El Paso to withstand extreme weather events and accelerate the city’s transition to renewables, requiring 80% of its energy to come from carbon free sources by 2030. It also encourages rooftop solar development, proposes establishing a climate department and could move the ownership of El Paso Electric into the city’s hands. The utility company was purchased in 2020 by a JP Morgan-tied fund.
“We’re battling the fossil fuel giants in our community,” said Ana Fuentes, a 25-year-old resident of El Paso and a campaign manager for the local Sunrise chapter. “This charter would allow people to have the platform and a space where our concerns will be prioritized over the bottom line of fossil fuel oligarchs.”
Last July, Sunrise El Paso and Austin-based Ground Game Texas submitted nearly 40,000 petition signatures to get the climate charter on the ballot for the November 2022 election, but due to a prolonged verification process, the vote on the plan will take place in the 6 May election. Roughly half of the petition signers were people under the age of 35….
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose in February to the highest level on record for the month, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing the administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, as it tries to undo the environmental destruction wreaked under the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Government satellites show that a record 322 sq km of Amazon rainforest were destroyed in February, a 62% increase on last year and the highest number for the month since records began.
Lula, who took office on 1 January this year, has pledged to end illegal logging after deforestation soared to a 15-year high during the Bolsonaro years.
With the environment ministry once again led by the environmentalist Marina Silva, who oversaw a sharp drop in deforestation in the same role during Lula’s first term in office, the government has reactivated the Amazon Fund, a key tool for preservation, and recreated a civil society council on the environment – both abandoned under Bolsonaro.
Silva has also brushed off and updated a deforestation prevention and control plan that formed the backbone of her successful policies nearly two decades ago.
These are important steps, but “innovation is necessary, as the Amazon today is not the same as it was 10, 20 years ago”, said a Greenpeace Brazil spokesperson, Rômulo Batista.
Crime and violence exploded under the previous government, as Bolsonaro’s disdain for the rainforest and the people who protect it emboldened criminals of all kinds, including the killers of the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips. Addressing the crisis will require rebuilding the manpower of environmental agencies that were gutted by the far-right populist, a process which cannot happen overnight, said Batista.
“The land grabber, the deforester, the illegal miner, they are making the most of this time to rush to cut the forest down,” Batista said….
A report on a possible link between a rare brain cancer that killed six professional US baseball players and toxic chemicals in artificial turf is raising a new round of questions over whether synthetic sports fields pose a health threat to athletes and others who use them.
The six athletes, who all died from glioblastoma, played most of their careers with the Philadelphia Phillies, a team that for decades competed on artificial turf in Veterans Stadium, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The sun sets as fishermen try their luck along the St Joseph River on 6 July 2022, in St Joseph, Michigan.
All artificial turf is made with toxic PFAS compounds and some types are still produced with recycled tires that can contain heavy metals, benzene, volatile organic compounds and other carcinogens, and a growing number of US municipalities and states have banned or proposed banning them.
…
However, all brain cancer experts who have spoken with the Guardian or were quoted in previous stories on the Phillies deaths cautioned that it is impossible to prove that the ball players’ cancers were caused by PFAS from the turf.
…
Recent independent testing of multiple artificial fields has found the presence of highly toxic PFAS compounds like 6:2 FTOH and PFOS. The EPA recently revised its health advisory for PFOS to state that in effect no level of exposure to it in drinking water is safe. The Inquirer bought pieces of the Phillies artificial turf and had it tested at two labs, and found it contained 16 types of PFAS, including PFOS.
…
…National Football League players pressured the league in 2022 to ban artificial turf because of injuries, and the US national soccer teams will only play on natural grass for the same reason.
At least nine municipalities in Connecticut, California and Massachusetts, including the city of Boston, have begun limiting the use of synthetic fields via bans or moratoriums. Legislatures in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts also began considering prohibiting them in recent months, while a ban on non-essential uses of PFAS going into effect in Maine in 2029 could bar the use of artificial turf there….
It’s incredible how many members of the incredibly wealthy and supposedly self-reliant entrepreneurial set have spent the last 24 hours begging for government bailouts for their friends.
[screenshots at the (Twitter) link]
I get the logic! It’s like a less urgent version of 2008 when Wall Street made the argument the whole economy was in danger of collapse. There almost certainly will be fallout here, but the fallout of a bailout is a continued lack of consequences and reform in these industries.
Bad practices in both the startup and banking sectors have also already caused fallout for the broader society! It’s not tenable for the tech world and finance to be the only people who live without consequence.
[Reply: “Don’t forget deregulation of banking rules during Trump administration”]
Yep! The same industries that push for deregulation then want bailouts when they make mistakes. Meanwhile, people are not given bailouts for even medical debt!
I have a family member who was briefly worried about their check as an employee at a small startup. There obviously are people with real needs who should be looked out for here. However, the higher level folks who led the way into this mess need to (literally) pay for it.
Seeing billionaires beg is just a stunning level of chutzpah.
KGsays
There’s a fascinating and bizarre brouhaha going on in the UK around a former footballer, Gary Lineker, now a very highly paid BBC sports presenter. Lineker tweeted about the vile anti-migrant rhetoric of the government, comparing it to Nazi rhetoric of the 1930s. The home secretary, Cruella Braverman, complained, and the BBC suspended Lineker from his role – despite the fact that their “impartiality” guidelines do not apply to sports, arts, etc. presenters, only to news and political staff and presenters (there are previous and current examples illustrating this, e.g. the presenter of a popular programme showcasing “entrepreneurs”, Sir Alan Sugar, openly backed the Tories at the last general election). Multiple BBC sports presenters have now announced that they will not appear in protest at Lineker’s suspension, and the corporation’s weekend football (i.e. soccer) coverage has almost entirely collapsed. There have been renewed calls for Richard Sharp, the chair of the BBC, to resign – he is under investigation for failing to tell Parliament of his role in getting Johnson a big loan when he was interviewed prior to his appointment. It’s blindingly clear that the requirement for “impartiality” is not being applied impartially!
KG @ #90, thank you for the explanation of what’s happening. I keep seeing tweets and comments about it, but had only gathered bits and pieces of what was going on.
The Russian justice ministry updated its registry of “foreign agents” on the evening of March 10.
New additions include economist Sergey Guriev; politician Gennady Gudkov; the former head of Yandex[dot]News and creator of news aggregator True Story, Lev Gershenzon; blogger Nika Vodvud; journalist Daniil Gubarev; and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
According to the ministry, Guriev “spoke negatively about service members in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” and “disseminated untrue information in foreign publications about the decisions and policies of the government of the Russian Federation.”
The WWF, the ministry claims, “under the guise of protecting nature and the environment […] tried to influence the decisions of the executive and legislative branches of the Russian Federation, and to hinder the completion of industrial and infrastructural projects.”
The WWF told Meduza that it will seek to challenges its inclusion on the registry in court, and that it will continue “to protect rare animal species and preserve Russia’s natural world.”
Meanwhile the BBC have said they are “working hard to resolve the situation”. This “working hard to…” guff has become standard in the UK when an organization has made a complete mess, and wants to pretend it has some idea what to do about it.
There are some big numbers to get to this morning when it comes to events on the battlefield over the last 24 hours. However, before going to Ukraine, here’s a little side trip to Russia.
Verstka Media is an independent Russian news organization launched around the start of the invasion of Ukraine. They’ve reported previously on what people inside Russia believe about war crimes happening during the invasion and about the attitudes of Russians outside of Moscow when it comes to the mobilization and resulting deaths. They’ve become a go-to source for many outlets seeking some insight into how Russians really feel about the war launched by Vladimir Putin … including how the feel about Vladimir Putin.
However, their latest article is something else. It’s a tale of accusations, both true and false. A story of appalling betrayals; of petty grievances turned into overwhelming vengeance. It’s a Hamlet-esque tale of sly insinuation and brutal retribution playing out in hair salons and grocery stores.
It’s the amazing true story of how Russia is being overrun by a wave of Russians ratting each other out for fun, profit, and pure spite.
Selling your friends out to the state, whether it earns a slightly nicer apartment or just that warm feeling of delivering some comeuppance, is a long tradition in Russia. Only now it seems that the invasion of Ukraine has supercharged the game, resulting in “massive” numbers of charges for casual comments “dropped in bars, supermarkets, saunas, beauty salons, at the post office and even on the porch of their dacha.”
One man was jailed and received a 45,000 rubles fine after he reportedly shouted “Glory to Ukraine, then!” after getting into an argument during a New Year’s celebration at a sushi restaurant. Two young women at another restaurant found themselves under scrutiny when they began to discuss the war over dinner. Another guest at the restaurant summoned the military police and the two women were arrested. Just for good measure, they also arrested one of the women’s husbands, even though he hadn’t been at the restaurant.
One man was arrested in church when others thought he said “Glory to Ukraine” rather than following along with a prayer that said “Glory to the soldiers who have died in Ukraine.” Another man got a jail sentence when he drunkenly railed against Putin and Chechen mercenary leader Ramzan Kadyrov while waiting in line at a Pyaterochka (the Russian equivalent of 7-11). Another man was arrested when his neighbors called to complain that he was playing a song that included the phrase “glorious Ukraine.” That it was an old song that long predated the war didn’t stop him from racking up a 30,000 ruble fine.
A man was fined because his neighbors claimed he “raised his hands like a fascist” while discussing Ukraine with his father. A woman arrested because it appeared she had put tape over a picture of Putin on her luggage and another passenger on her flight went to the airport police to report this “crime.”
All over Russia, it’s open season on anyone. All it takes is a quick suggestion that they said something against Putin, the war, or the Russian military. Or a claim that they were caught saying anything favorable about Ukraine. No evidence required. Rat Season has only been boosted by new legislation that has upped penalties and added even more restrictions about what it’s permissible to say.
Russians are ratting Russians out in such numbers that even attorneys are fed up over dealing with the cases. Those who have long harbored a grudge are using this as an opportunity to get back at the guy they didn’t think was respectful enough in the local bar, or the neighbor who played his music too loud.
And the worse things get in Ukraine, the more “traitors” they’re going to find.
All right, here are those promised numbers, and they’re a doozy. In a single day, Ukraine reports that Russia lost over 1000 men, 10 tanks, and 20 APVs. [Graphic showing casual estimates is available at the link. those estimates come from the Ukrainian military, so … the usual grain of salt.]
Over the last seven days, average estimated Russian losses have exceeded 800 men a day. Tanks have been going out at a rate of at least 5 a days.
The obvious question in response to such numbers is: Where? And, of course, the obvious answer is: Bakhmut. Fighting in the area continues to be severe, with Russian forces continuing a slow advance into the city and fighting happening in almost open fields on both the north and south flanks of the city.
But the actual answer to the “where” question is “almost everywhere.” Over the same period that these casualties were reported, the Ukrainian general staff reports that forces on the ground repelled over 100 Russian assaults from Kupyansk down to Vuhledar. That includes the latest attempt by Russia to push west from Kreminna, an effort that seems to have ended almost precisely on the lines that have existed since December. [Tweet and video at the link]
All over Ukraine, Russia’s big “winter offensive” seems to have little to show for itself. That estimated 80 square kilometers around Bakhmut, and a few ungarrisoned villages northeast of Kupyansk, seems to be all that has been netted in a period where Russia has lost over 50,000 men. [Tweet from Oryx confirming Russian losses]
By most measures, the situation in Bakhmut continues to disintegrate. The fighting today is running right through the heart of the city, Russian forces have managed to sporadically close off supply lines to the west and make travel along “the road of life” subject to artillery bombardment. Attempts to close the “pincers” around the city appear to be making slow, brutal progress, especially on the north near the village of Berkhivka.
Over the last several days, complaints have been rising from Ukrainian forces in the city who feel they’re being neglected or left to die. Reports have indicated that the lack of steady supplies have affected Ukraine’s ability to maintain positions. Previous estimates that Russia was losing between 7 and 8 soldiers for every 1 Ukrainian troop who died, have dropped to numbers like 3:1. Or even 1:1.
The costs of maintaining Ukraine’s position in Bakhmut are extremely high, and the universal sentiment around the current situation can be summed up by this tweet. [Tweet at the link: “I hope the Ukrainian command really, really, really knows what it is doing in Bakhmut.”]
It’s easy to call up reasons why Ukraine might want to maintain it’s position in the city:
Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin has been talking about taking a “tactical pause,” or reorganizing his force among reports that Wagner is both undersupplied and running low on men.
Holding onto Bakhmut may be much easier than retaking it, especially if Russia keeps a large force centered there.
With Western tanks, other new systems, and freshly retrained troops about to enter the conflict, Ukraine may feel that keeping Russian pinned at Bakhmut opens the door for an offensive elsewhere.
The political importance that has been attached to the city is so large at this point, that surrendering it may seem too great a loss in terms of morale.
But it’s even easier to sum up why Ukraine should pull back to higher ground and new entrenchments, letting Russia have the rubble: The cost of staying is so very, very high. [Tweet and video: “Bakhmut, evacuation of comrades through the mud. Whatever it takes, you always (try to) save your comrades.”]
A huge amount of trust is being placed on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and on his military commanders. Zelenskyy’s frequent attendance at funerals of military commanders being lost in Bakhmut seems to indicate he understands that cost. All we can do is hope the gamble they are making turns out to be worth it.
One of our TPM Readers had a good sum-up of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the implosion of which started in Silicon Valley, literally and figuratively, but likely won’t end there.
It’s a terrible terrible blot on Silicon Valley culture and a profound refutation of all those libertarian trolls out there. They fought the regulation that would have subjected SVB to greater scrutiny. This was a valuable community facility that greed destroyed. This is what “smart contracts” gets you. My suspicion about Thiel is just that, no facts, but I hope some journo can press him (and some of the other SV bros) on whether they were short sellers in SVB stock before promoting the run. I realize this stuff is not your natural beat but frankly it has political valence: why should we buy the don’t regulate/trust us from this crew when they would turn around and destroy a community facility that had provided such useful service. Say what you want about JP Morgan in the early 20th century, but he at least knew it was his duty to insist on a joint effort to stop a panic rather than profit from one.
The references here are to Peter Thiel. A key accelerant of SVB’s collapse was Thiel’s guidance to all his invested companies to pull their deposits as the bank’s position became more dire.
As reported by Alexandria Gonzalez-Ramirez, for New York Magazine:
A Texas man has sued three women, whom he accuses of murder, for allegedly helping his ex-wife terminate a pregnancy with abortion pills, in what appears to be the first case of its kind since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.
A trio of overlapping abortion bans has made terminating a pregnancy illegal in Texas except in cases of certain medical emergencies (this doesn’t happen in practice; five women who were denied medically necessary abortions are now suing the state). According to the Texas Tribune, which first reported on the lawsuit, plaintiff Marcus Silva is suing the women under the state’s wrongful death statute. He’s represented by former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, the architect of the Texas law that allows residents to sue anyone they suspect of “aiding and abetting” an abortion.
Silva alleges that his ex-wife learned she was pregnant in July 2022 and concealed it from him. Notably, court records show she had filed for divorce two months earlier, in May 2022, although it wasn’t finalized until February 2023. According to photos of his ex-wife’s purported text messages, which were included in the lawsuit, she told the defendants: “I know either way he will use it against me. If I told him before, which I’m not, he would use it as [a way to] try to stay with me. And after the fact, I know he will try to act like he has some right to the decision.”
Commentary:
[…] it’s not really important what this couple’s “situation” was. We can speculate, we can be judgmental, sympathetic, or salacious, depending on our preconceptions. But ultimately, whatever we or anyone else may “think,” it’s not really important what emotions, past history, or anything, really, motivated these people in their relationship. Functional or dysfunctional, abusive or consensual, we just don’t know. Because, frankly, it’s none of our business.
The only reality is that Mr. Silva’s “ex” did not believe it was in her best interests to become pregnant with this man’s child, and that her pregnancy was unintentional and unwanted. She wanted an abortion, desperately, and she sought out her friends to help her get one. […]
As reported by Eleanor Klibanoff for the Texas Tribune:
The friends texted with the woman, sending her information about Aid Access, an international group that provides abortion-inducing medication through the mail, the lawsuit alleges. Text messages filed as part of the complaint seem to show they instead found a way to acquire the medication in Houston, where the two women lived.
A third woman delivered the medication, the lawsuit alleges, and text messages indicate that the wife self-managed an abortion at home.
More commentary:
[…] Mr. Silva obviously disagreed with his ex-wife’s decision. His motives may be malevolent, they may be heartfelt. They may, in his view, be “Christian” or what he thinks” is “right,” or they may be just manifested out of pure malice and resentment against his “ex.” She may care for him, she may hate him, or she (as seems likely here) may never want to see him again.
Again, we don’t know. The point is, it doesn’t matter.
In states like Texas, subject to Republican anti-abortion laws, egged on by a Republican majority Supreme Court, it is the man — and only the man — who has the right of punishment. As Klibanoff reports, “The lawsuit alleges that assisting a self-managed abortion qualifies as murder under state law, which would allow Silva to sue under the wrongful death statute.” Yes, anyone with standing can presumably sue under the state’s wrongful death statute, but who exactly did they expect would bring the vast majority of these suits?
So, under Texas law, if the man wants whoever he has impregnated to give birth -— whatever the circumstances, no matter how horrid or unintended — he can sue anyone who helps her terminate that unwanted pregnancy under the terroristic threat of that state’s criminal laws. Even to the point — as was done in this case — of holding them liable for the fetus’ “wrongful death.” And, as Mr. Silva’s case demonstrates, he will have the full power of the state behind him. Texas, like other states, have stopped just short of criminally charging women who have an abortion, but men like Mr. Silva can see quite clearly see how the wind is blowing. His lawsuit reportedly seeks $1,000,000 in “damages.”
He has all the power, and the woman has none. Backed by the imprimatur of the state, the purpose of the suit is intimidation, pure and simple, as called out by pro-choice organizations:
“This is an outrageous attempt to scare people from getting abortion care and intimidate those who support their friends, family, and community in their time of need,” Autumn Katz, a lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said Friday in a statement. “The extremists behind this lawsuit are twisting the law and judicial system to threaten and harass people seeking essential care and those who help them.”
So, yes, I would suggest that this is not a place Texas women, or anyone who becomes pregnant in that state, would want to be in. I would also suggest that this is not a place that any sane parent would want their want their daughters to be in. In fact, I would expect them to be horrified at being put into this position.
And I’d suggest they use whatever power they have to vote out the people who made it possible.
Yes, elections have consequences. They can wreck or destroy peoples’ lives. And for anyone who votes Republican –in Texas or in any state dominated by Republicans who pass these types of misogynistic laws — this is an example of how terrifying those consequences can be.
Id’ say that KG’s analysis @#52 is pretty much on point. I don’t feel like diving into a deep analysis, but as someone born in the same country as Mr. F, at the very least I can tell you that his stance aligns pretty well with the overall sentiment that I find within my country’s ruling center-left party, of which the Pope is a sympathizer. A large majority seems to be of the opinion that both Russia and NATO are equally to blame for the war and prefer to be neutral in the conflict, while a vocal minority is fully pro-Putin and only a tiny portion fully supports Ukraine.
The following are polls conducted in Argentina a month after the war started, I don’t have newer ones at hand.
Do you think that the war in Ukraine is justified or an unilateral aggression on Russia’s part? Overall sentiment: 64% unilateral Russian aggression, 18% a justified war, 18% unsure. Frente de Todos (current ruling party, left to center, Pope’s favorite, president had praised Putin shortly before the war): 27% unilateral Russian aggression, 35% a justified war, 38% unsure. Juntos por el Cambio (former ruling party, solidly right-wing, former president was ironically friends with Donald Trump): 90% unilateral Russian aggression, 5% a justified war, 5% unsure. The rest: 62% unilateral Russian aggression, 21% a justified war, 17% unsure.
What should Argentina’s attitude be? Overall sentiment: 52% back Ukraine, 6% back Russia, 41% remain neutral, 1% unsure. Frente de Todos (Pope’s most favored party): 13% back Ukraine, 17% back Russia, 70% remain neutral. Juntos por el Cambio: 75% back Ukraine, 2% back Russia, 21% remain neutral, 2% unsure. The rest: 56% back Ukraine, 44% remain neutral.
What should be the reaction of the US and its NATO allies? Overall sentiment: 46% Keep sending weapons, resources and humanitary aid, 31% leave Ukraine on its own, 11% intervene directly, even at risk of starting a nuclear WWIII, 12% unsure. Frente de Todos (Pope’s most favored party): 16% Keep sending weapons, resources and humanitary aid, 59% leave Ukraine on its own, 4% intervene directly, even at risk of starting a nuclear WWIII, 21% unsure. Juntos por el Cambio: 71% Keep sending weapons, resources and humanitary aid, 8% leave Ukraine on its own, 16% intervene directly, even at risk of starting a nuclear WWIII, 5% unsure. The rest: 37% Keep sending weapons, resources and humanitary aid, 37% leave Ukraine on its own, 12% intervene directly, even at risk of starting a nuclear WWIII, 14% unsure.
The first Leopard II tanks donated by Poland are now in Ukraine. The first group from Germany is expected in the next two weeks, along with Challenger 2 tanks from the U.K.
Now some timelines are emerging on more pending arrivals. [Tweet and image at the link]
Still no definitive date on the first U.S. Abrams tanks, but don’t look for them before summer. On the other hand, 60 of the promised Bradley Fighting Vehicles were in Germany last month being prepped for delivery. They could be over the border any day. They could be there now. Ukraine has already taken delivery of the first batch of French AMX-10rc wheeled vehicles.
If the training, logistics, and tactical deployment of these vehicles has been worked out, Ukraine should be able to role out some forces using Western equipment (and hopefully, Western combined arms tactics), in a matter of weeks — General Mud allowing.
But where those forces will go is still something that absolutely no one seems to know.
This is an interesting claim, if true. [Tweet and image at the link. “Pakistan has offered to give 44 T-80UD tanks to Ukraine in exchange for western financial support.”]
That Pakistan would do anything that was seen as weakening its military relative to India would be extraordinary. However, they may be fishing to see just how much money a tank will fetch on the market these days. Expect these to be marked up more than new F-150 lightnings at your local Ford dealer.
Ukrainian soldiers in a trench outside Bakhmut are nearly overrun by invaders who came across no man’s land unscathed. But then … they are no man. [Tweet and video at the link. Spoiler: it was cows.]
Link. Scroll down at the link to view these updates.
At a Republican political rally in Davenport, Iowa today someone gave @GovRonDeSantis and @IAGovernor Kim Reynolds a handmade “snowflake” with the word “Fascist” secretly embedded in it.
Commentary regarding the snowflake featured in comment 100:
Ron DeSantis is a fascist.
He’s purged public libraries and school classrooms of books by Black and LGBTQ+ authors, as well as books about the Holocaust. He’s banned Black AP courses. He attempted to require all female athletes in Florida to report their menstrual history. He had police arrest Black voters. He is pushing a bill that will require his critics to register with the state. He even created his own para-military force.
So some clever lady made him a fascist snowflake. He posed with it not understanding what it was.
Rare footage of a fire from inside Russian BMP, as well as attempts to extinguish the fire with dirt. Filmed by Russians themselves.
The Russians finally get the vehicle stopped. Then one climbs out, scoops up dirt with his hands and gives that dirt to a fellow soldier who then tosses it on the fire. Kinda scary.
Florida is about to pass a bill making abortions illegal after six weeks. As the average menstrual cycle is about four weeks long (though a “normal” menstrual cycle can be as long as five weeks) and pregnancy tests are not really accurate until a week after one’s missed period, this means that many people will have not much more than a week after finding out they are pregnant to decide whether or not they want an abortion, make an appointment with a doctor to have an abortion and have the abortion. This will be extra difficult if that one Texas judge ends up making medication abortions illegal and surgical abortions are the only option.
But they’re not entirely cold-hearted there in the Florida legislature. They’re even carving out an exception to allow rape victims to have abortions up to fifteen weeks into their pregnancy. How gracious of them! How thoughtful! Except for the fact that they are also requiring those rape victims to offer proof that they were raped in order to be granted the exception.
[…] they will have to provide a “restraining order, police report, medical record or other court order or documentation providing evidence that she is obtaining the termination of pregnancy because she is a victim of rape or incest.”
This legislation was clearly not written by anyone who has ever tried to obtain a restraining order for any reason. I know at least two women who have been victims of stalking who tried to get a restraining order against their stalkers and were told by the judge that “the poor guy” just has a crush on them. It’s also unlikely it was written by anyone who has been the victim of sexual assault.
Only about 20 percent of rape victims even report to the police. One would have to imagine that this number is even lower for victims of incest, given that their assailant is also likely to be the person providing them with food and shelter.
80 percent of rape victims know their attacker, and for college students that goes up to 85-90 percent. This can make reporting these assaults complicated for victims. Not to mention the fact that many victims just straight up do not want to deal with police, who frequently treat victims like they are the ones who committed a crime (particularly since the vast, vast majority of reported rapes are ever actually prosecuted).
The Orlando Sentinel asked several experts on sexual violence what they thought of this rule. Not surprisingly, they did not think it was great.
The paperwork requirement would further distress rape victims, who often don’t file reports with law enforcement and the authorities, said Kim S. Ménard, a Penn State Altoona criminal justice professor who studies sexual violence.
“It is appalling,” she said. “It sets up incredible barriers. Most of the time victims don’t have the strength, given the stigma society puts on them, to come forward, period — to come forward for the most basic help.”
Jennifer Dritt, executive director of the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence, said lawmakers didn’t consult with her group representing 29 rape crisis centers across the state when crafting the bill’s language.
“It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding that most victims of sexual assault don’t report,” she said. “This exception is meaningless, and it is harmful.”
[…] This exception is not about protecting victims. It has nothing to do with protecting victims. It is about protecting legislators. Legislators who know that the public, including the vast majority of Republican voters, generally does not enjoy the idea of forcing rape and incest victims to have their assailant’s children and want to be able to cover their asses when it is time for reelection campaigns. That’s all this is. They want to ease the minds of people who will not think too deeply about these matters (also the vast majority of Republican voters).
[…] A poll last year found that 67 percent of Florida voters want abortion to be legal in all or most circumstances, which actually makes them more supportive of abortion rights than Americans as a whole. Only 61 percent of us believe abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. Another poll found that only 9 percent of Floridians believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.
Whether this will affect the next election, given Florida’s gerrymandering situation, is still anyone’s guess.
The nation might have just been spared a potentially democracy-killing U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The state of North Carolina, however, isn’t so lucky. The U.S. Supreme Court more or less punted on deciding the congressional redistricting case Moore v. Harper last week, asking for an additional briefing in the case now that the North Carolina Supreme Court has determined to rehear it.
That’s the case in which North Carolina Republicans were trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to elevate the kooky “independent state legislature” theory, which posits that state legislatures are the ultimate authority in all elections issues. At the time the Supreme Court had decided it would hear this nonsense, four Republican-appointed justices—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—had indicated that they thought it was a fine idea. [JFC]
That was despite it having no basis in constitutional history, having been debunked by none other than James Madison when it first reared its head in a falsified document created in 1818 by a South Carolinian named Charles Pinckney. Pinckney might have been the George Santos of his time, trying to pass himself off as the actual writer of the Constitution with a few elaborations here and there […]
The massive blowback to the Supreme Court even agreeing to hear this thing […] perhaps weighed a bit on the justices. When it came time for the oral argument, at least one of the four—Kavanaugh—approached it with more skepticism. […] the Supreme Court wasn’t willing to overthrow a couple of centuries of election law, […] they throw it back to North Carolina and don’t have to deal with it.
That leaves a big problem in North Carolina, however. The state Supreme Court that had a 4-3 Democratic majority when it struck down the Republicans’ congressional gerrymander and replaced it with a fairer map is now a 5-2 court, with Republicans in the majority. Last month, it took the extraordinary measure of granting petitions to rehear the gerrymander challenge, as well as a second case in which the previous court struck down a discriminatory voter ID law. That’s what gave the U.S. Supreme an out in deciding the case.
The new conservative majority invoked a procedural rule, rarely used previously, that allows it to rehear a case under the premise that the court has “overlooked or misapprehended” points of law or fact. The last two Democratic justices remaining on the bench rebuked the decision to rehear the cases as a “display of raw partisanship,” and by all appearances that’s exactly what the decision is. That rarely used rule, for example? It had only been invoked in two out of 214 cases in the past three decades.
As if to prove just how rawly partisan they are willing to be, the majority judges refused to allow the state’s highest elected officials, Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein, to file friend-of-the-court briefs on the gerrymandering case. The state court also rejected one from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School. The justices will, of course, hear new arguments from the Republican legislators, as well as from the original plaintiffs who challenged the maps and the voter ID law. […]
It’s bad news for the voters of North Carolina, even as it probably provides a reprieve for the nation.
StevoR @ # 45, quoting I’m-not-sure-whom: … the definition of a planet should be based on its geologic or atmospheric complexity.
Sounds interesting in principle, but in practice wouldn’t that rule out almost all extrasolar “planets” of which we can barely make out approximate mass and orbital vector?
StevoRsays
@ ^ Pierce R. Butler : Well, not necessarily given modelling and transits and the information they can provide. We can determine at least minimum masses and then model from there in most cases.
Mike Pence is fighting to avoid testifying before a grand jury investigating January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. He blew off the congressional committee that looked into the matter, too. But the former vice president was willing to talk about the attack Saturday night at a white-tie dinner for politicians and journalists in Washington.
“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said at the annual Gridiron Dinner. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
[…] Pence sided against Republicans, like Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who are downplaying the significance of the attack. “What happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence said. “And it mocks decency to portray it any other way. For as long as I live, I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day.”
[…] The former vice president wants to be anti-coup, but not so much that he alienates the pro-coup crowd. Pence’s maybe impossible effort to thread that needle is obviously self-serving. He’s trying to find a lane for a 2024 presidential bid.
But if he really wanted to stand up against Trump’s actions on January 6, there are tons of people to talk to outside the Gridiron Club. Pence, remember, was personally pressured by Trump to refuse to certify the 2020 results. According to the January 6 committee and a federal judge, Trump’s effort to stop Congress from doing its job was a crime. Pence was the only witness to much of this. But he has refused to detail those interactions for the January 6 committee, claiming a legislative panel has “no right” to his testimony. Pence is fighting a subpoena from prosecutors working under working Special Counsel Jack Smith, by asserting the vice president’s limited role as senate president made him a legislator. “The executive branch cannot summon officials in the legislative branch into a court in any other place,” Pence says. [bullshit excuse]
History will judge Trump. But if Pence really wants the guy who endangered his family to face accountability in the nearer term, he has an easy way to do that. Want to honor law enforcement? Go talk to them.
The Silicon Valley Bank, based in Santa Clara, California, was shut down Friday after a massive run on deposits. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was appointed as receiver and has transferred all SVB assets to the newly created Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara (DINB) to protect depositors.
However, the insurance limit on deposits is $250,000, which is fine for you paupers, but it’s potentially catastrophic for even small businesses. For instance, streaming company Roku revealed in a SEC filing Friday that it had $487 million or 26 percent of its cash or cash equivalents in uninsured deposits at the failed SVB (not SBF, that’s some other asshole). Investors were informed that Roku’s “deposits with SVB are largely uninsured … At this time, the company does not know to what extent it will be able to recover its cash.”
This is an issue for many tech startups that appear unlikely to meet near-term payroll obligations. Wow, what a mess. Fortunately, Democrats are rolling up their sleeves and seeing how they can prevent corporate stupidity from crashing the economy … again. Some reasonable Republicans will probably try to help. However, it’s not a shock that the usual gang of idiots are just hurling blame like wet feces, hoping it will stick on the people they already hate.
Ben Collins, senior reporter at NBC News, observes that on right-wing media, a narrative is already taking place: SVB collapsed because of an overdose of wokeness. [Spare me. JFC] He shared a tweet from conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who’d posted SVB’s global diversity, equity, and inclusion statement with the snarky caption, “It’s a mystery why Silicon Valley Bank collapsed.” [Tweet and image at the link]
SVB’s DEI statement claims the company “focused on breaking down systemic barriers to entry and success, investing in opportunities that ensure more founders and investors with a rang of experiences and ideas are represented in our ecosystem.” These words might trigger conservatives or just plain confuse normal people, but it’s not why the SVB failed. According to an analysis in Forbes, an “asset-liability mismatch” was SVB’s downfall.
Most of their deposits came from large companies that were part of the tech sector. For example, a start-up receives $100 million from a venture capital fund. It parks that money at its local bank. Another company might have a treasurer who gets the best possible short-term interest rate by investing in commercial paper and other financial instruments. But the start-up’s chief financial officer is not hired to nurse an extra five basis points from the cash holding; the CFO has bigger issues to deal with and few staff members to help. So the CFO uses the bank.
SVB put most of its assets in US treasury securities. The best yields are found in long-term bonds but as interest rates rise, the value of old bonds start to tank. SVB was somewhat solvent but in trouble, and its corporate depositors started to bail. Obviously, this had nothing to do with SVB’s stated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Maybe Kirk freaked out when he saw the bank’s homepage. [image at the link]
Oh no! It’s women working together! Two of them are minorities, and the white lady has a Rachel Maddow haircut. We’re doomed!”
Of course, the photo illustration is perhaps misleading. The executive team — specifically, the president and CEO, chief financial officer, chief credit officers, and chief operations officer — is all white guys. But of course the queer woman of color is zeroed in as a convenient scapegoat.
The Daily Mail writes, “Jay Ersapah — who describes herself as a ‘queer person of color from a working-class background’ — organized a host of LGBTQ initiatives including a month-long Pride campaign and implemented ‘safe space’ catch-ups for staff. In a corporate video published just nine months ago, she said she ‘could not be prouder’ to work for SVB serving ‘underrepresented entrepreneurs.’” [Tweet and image at the link: “Go woke, go broke.” JFC!]
Jay Ersapah didn’t successfully lobby Congress to exempt SVB from post-2008 financial crash regulations. That was President & CEO Greg Becker.
Also, from the New York Times:
Some banking experts on Friday pointed out that a bank as large as Silicon Valley Bank might have managed its interest rate risks better had parts of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulatory package, put in place after the 2008 crisis, not been rolled back under President Trump.
In 2018, Mr. Trump signed a bill that lessened regulatory scrutiny for many regional banks. Silicon Valley Bank’s chief executive, Greg Becker, was a strong supporter of the change, which reduced how frequently banks with assets between $100 billion and $250 billion had to submit to stress tests by the Fed.
However, these are simply facts. It just feels better for right-wingers to insist that everything goes to hell if companies even think about diversity, equity, and inclusion. After the Norfolk Southern train derailment, Republican Rep. Mike Collins from Georgia suggested that the company’s commitment to DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] was somehow responsible. [Tweet and video at the link]
[…] Republicans — including Collins — haven’t collectively stepped up to help repair the country’s crumbling infrastructure. But they blame the impact of their own flawed policies on “wokeness” and “diversity.” It’s overtly racist but it’s all they’ve got.
The book banners continue their cultish behavior, going after any book they’re told to by…well, you know who’s doing it. And you’ll see claim after claim after claim after claim after claim that “nobody is banning books” and that they just want “appropriate books” on the shelves.
Well, let’s look at these claims.
First of all censoring a book is banning the book. Anyone that tells you otherwise is just ignorant. Or willfully lying for their own ends. If you’ve made the text of a book unavailable for some reason, you’ve banned it. And that’s according to professionals like the American Library Association and also the US court system and Supreme Court with decisions like Island Tree vs Pico. Or Counts vs Cedarwood School District. Or Sund vs. City of Wichita. Or Case vs. Unified School District No. 233. And many others over decades of court cases, at both the state and federal level.
“But” they say, “anyone can go to the public library so it’s not REALLY banned if you yank it from the school library!”
No.
No, no, no. Nope. Nuh uh. No.
I have high school students that tell me they’ve NEVER been in a public library before. Which means their parents never took them there. And for many kids, public libraries are limited by distance. A kid that lives five miles outside of town probably isn’t walking to the public library.
“But they can go to a bookstore or buy it on Amazon!”
Nope.
A student who lives in a hotel with a dozen other family members and is a missed paycheck or layoff away from homelessness isn’t going to be buying books, are they now? Yeah, sit down and shut your bad self up. A parent that doesn’t value reading isn’t going to drop cash for books for their kid.
[…] And again with the families without economic means. You think they have regular access to internet and devices? Questionable.
[…] And gosh, let’s looky here. An English teacher in Texas was suspended and either quit or was fired (depending on which story you believe) because she shared a QR code to the Brooklyn Public Library. Because the BPL is offering free library access to ebooks to students across the US to many of the books being challenged.
And now the State Secretary of Education is demanding the state Board of Education revoke that English teacher’s license. In other words, the book banners are actively trying to destroy her career.
But do go on about how you’re all about this not REALLY being a ban and the books are available in SOOOO many other places. […]
“But these books are PORNOGRAPHIC!!1!” Oh? Have you actually READ them? Well? Have you?
“Well, no, but I’ve seen excerpts and they are FILTHY!”
Then 1) Go. Through. Your. Schools. Challenge. Process. Don’t go AROUND it by storming the school board and threatening their lives if they don’t do what you want.
and 2) You’ve read something out of context. Go. Read. The. Book. Don’t just believe what some fool TOLD you to be angry about. Educate yourself. Then make your case in the appropriate way. Really, librarians don’t bite. We really don’t. If there is something genuinely inappropriate on the shelves, we’re willing to hear you out.
and 3) Oh? All of them are filthy? Pornographic. Hmmm. Let me look at a few of those 850 titles that Texas state Gov. Abbott and Texas state representative Krause want to ban from school classrooms and libraries.
So, what was it that was pornographic? Was it the Legal Atlas of the United States? That one? Lots of explicit sex scenes in THAT one. Man, just the title sounds racy, right? Ooof. Someone pour some ice water on me.
Or was it maybe We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for and About Students? Or Teen Legal Rights? The Confessions of Nat Turner? A fictionalized account of the 1831 Nat Turner Slave Rebellion, written in 1968 by Pulitzer Prize winner William Styron? And was a finalist for the National Book Awards 1968 for Fiction? Lots of steamy sex scenes in that one? Sounds like a regular “50 Shades of Gray,” huh? Feel free to tell me all about how pornographic this one is. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Or is it An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People? The Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears?
The 57 Bus? A nonfiction book about an incident on a bus where one teen set another on fire and was charged with a hate crime? Lots of porn in that one, is there?
[…] Oooh, how about They called themselves the K.K.K.: the birth of an American terrorist group? Huh. Well, gosh if it doesn’t have lots of porn and explicit sex in it, I wonder why this one’s on the list? Things that make you go Hmmmmm.
Life, Death and Sacrifice: Women and Family in the Holocaust? Another one to make you wonder why it’s on the list, eh?
Inventions and Inventors? You are the Supreme Court justice?
I can keep going. Oh, hey, let’s think about a few NOT on THAT list but have been challenged, like Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl. Maus? The Hate U Give? Go ahead. Tell me all about how they’re “pornographic.”
“But they’re not appropriate!” […] In the 80’s a church group tried to get Charlotte’s Web banned because “talking animals are blasphemous.” You cool with that?
“But people have banned Huck Finn and Dr. Seuss and To Kill a Mockinbird and…” Uh…no. Not really. And if people have tried to get them off of school library shelves, they’re as wrong as you are. “But they did it first!” doesn’t work even on the playground in third grade. Are you really going to try it HERE and expect it to work?
But one problem is people are conflating REQUIRED READING lists and library books. There’s a difference. Required reading is just that…required. And reading lists get revised from time to time. To Kill a Mockingird and Huck Finn are getting dropped from REQUIRED reading lists in favor of more modern works that will speak to today’s students. They are not, to my knowledge, coming off library shelves,[…]
follow the process and not just slander the librarian on social media (Full disclaimer, this week I’ve finally checked the box of being called a “Groomer” not just once, but twice. And a pedophile once. And a freak. And a Marxist. Nice people, these book banners.)
As for Dr. Seuss, the books that are no longer being published aren’t being pulled from libraries […] the legal owner of the works made the voluntary decision to no longer publish them.
That’s their right to do. No censorship or banning going on there. Books go out of print all the time for a lot of reasons.
“But you can’t have EVERY book on the shelves so YOU’RE really the book banner! Hah! Checkmate!”
And that’s why librarians take graduate level courses on things like Young Adult Literature, and Collection Development. Yes, we make choices about what to put in the school library. But we try to do it within professional guidelines to maintain a diverse collection that will appeal to a wide audience and meet a variety of needs. And that’s why we rely on other librarians, professional book reviewers, and book awards, and similar things to help guide our decisions.
We are professionals. Professionals who want their students to want to read, to be excited to read, to have books that will entertain them, but also make them think, to learn new things, to put themselves in the shoes of another. To see themselves. To see others. That’s what we want. That’s our “agenda.” Getting your kid to read a book. The horror. […]
Are we perfect? No, and we don’t claim to be. And that’s why the challenge process exists. It’s there for a reason, and yes, sometimes challenges ARE valid. But don’t abuse it.
And by all things holy, if you’re going to try to challenge a book…Read. The. Book. […]
This update article is accompanied by an image of a female Ukrainian soldier: “Ukraine has the largest number of women in its combat forces in the world, as a percentage of the overall force.”
To defend Bakhmut, or to not defend Bakhmut, that is the question.
Russia has focused the bulk of its energies on the embattled Donbas town of Bakhmut for reasons having more to do with their shitty logistics than in any broader strategy. [map at the link]
Meanwhile, Ukraine has tenaciously defended Bakhmut these last eight months because if not there, then Russia will level the next city to the ground. But equally important, the kill differential between the two sides had heavily favored Ukraine. NATO estimates that Russia suffered five killed for every Ukrainian death. Ukraine claimed the differential was 7-1. But disturbing reports have been emerging suggesting that those days are over—that Ukraine’s positions have become far more costly as Russia’s pincer around the town has advanced. [Tweet with list is available at the link]
To credential Rob Lee, he’s been inside Bakhmut the last several weeks along with Michael Kofman. Both are long-time analysts of Russian military capabilities and the war in Ukraine. They aren’t armchair-general’ing; they’ve literally been in the trenches on the front lines.
If Bakhmut is being held to prevent the next city from being destroyed, that’s a real and legitimate argument for Ukraine to make. It renders any question about the kill ratio moot. […]
Yet Bakhmut’s strategic value is minimal at best, when talking about geography. If we’re talking about the cost in blood? That’s a very strategic question. In fact, it might be the most strategic question of all, as this war won’t be won by who holds what territory, but by which side renders the other militarily ineffective first.
As cold and harsh as it might sound, Ukraine will take that 5-1 ratio any day of the week. Heck, they’ll take a 3-1 ratio. After that, it starts getting dicey. The value of a Russian mobilized soldier or Wagner penal colony fighter is far less than a Ukrainian life, and Russia has far more bodies to throw at the war than Ukraine does. The strategic calculation changes dramatically if Ukraine’s defensive efforts don’t cause Russia far more damage.
Bakhmut doesn’t matter. The lives that are being lost there do matter.
As I wrote a week ago, there are far better places for Ukraine to defend. Just west of Bakhmut, Ukraine has defensive lines at Chasiv Tar. You can see on this map how Bakhmut is in a valley (blue), and high ground dominates to the city’s west (red). [map at the link]
This mimics the defensive posture at Vuhledar, where Ukrainian forces can inflict damage on approaching Russians from high ground while suffering minimal casualties of their own. In fact, during one of Russia’s ill-fated attacks on Vuhledar the past few weeks, Ukraine claimed zero casualties. It can pick off approaching Russians with artillery-scattered mines, artillery, anti-tank weapons, drones, and snipers.
As of now, Ukraine claims around 500 Russians killed around Bakhmut every day, but even at a 5-1 ratio, that still means 100 Ukrainians. News, Telegram, and Twitter reports of martyred Ukrainian defenders around Bakhmut abound, and patience is wearing thin. […]
To be fair, no soldier, in the history of the world, has ever thought his command was anything but a bunch of raving idiots. They know they are expendable in the minds of those superiors, and explicitly so in this case, as Ukraine brags about the 7-1 ratio. That’s great for the overall strategic situation, not great if you are part of the “1” in that calculation. It’s even worse in these conditions:
Footage of the evacuation of the wounded from the battlefield. Up to the knee in mud and full of water. 🇺🇦🙏🏻 We bring back and take care off our own 💪🏻 Unlike the orcs who let their wounded rot away. [video at the link]
Still, it’s one thing to hold a line from advantageous positions, like around Vuhledar, and another to find yourself being surrounded on three sides, with the only ”safe” road out of Bakhmut a soupy mess.
Mud paths out of #Bakhmut are dotted by carcasses of vehicles previously attempted to make a run for it. [video at the link]
Rob Lee’s assessment above is very clearly based on his time in the city, embedded in the various units fighting for its defense. It can be trusted.
Last week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his commitment to defending the city. Today, reports said he was meeting with his top generals to evaluate the city’s defense—a notable shift in rhetoric.
Ukraine has two options—a limited counter-offensive to roll back Russian gains north and south of Bakhmut, relieving pressure on the city’s flanks … or retreat. The former would waste valuable resources that could be better used against actual strategic targets—be it pushing south toward Melitopol, or toward Starobilsk in the north. The latter would surrender an insignificant plot of land for more defensible positions directly to its west.
The choice seems obvious to me, in my most glorious armchair quarterbacking mode. I get it, I’m not on the ground. I don’t have the information that Ukraine’s general staff has. Even U.S. generals seem okay with the city’s defense, and they also know stuff we don’t.
But it’s hard to see a scenario where this continues to make sense. And it’s not just us, from afar, questioning Bakhmut’s continued defense. The debate is now raging all-out in Ukraine itself.
Former vice president Mike Pence continues to try his level best to find some median ground where he can express vague displeasure at a seemingly intentional attempt by Donald Trump to get him killed while simultaneously avoiding any suggestion that Trump’s act of seditious conspiracy ought to be punished. Or even seriously investigated.
It’s a tough balance to strike, and Pence wouldn’t be trying to strike it at all if had more patriotism than he has personal ambitious. He doesn’t, so here we are. Saturday’s Gridiron Club Dinner (an annual roast-type event where politically powerful people meet up to be seen and crack jokes about the lies they told to push the country into a pointless war, just regular, lighthearted stuff like that) was the venue for his latest attempt.
[…] “Tourists don’t injure 140 police officers by sightseeing. Tourists don’t break down doors to get to the Speaker of the House or voice threats against public officials.”
This is about as aggressive as Pence has ever gotten when it comes to almost-condemning Trump pushing an angry mob into an attempt on his life. Pence is willing to stipulate that Trump was “wrong” about Pence’s own unilateral power to contest the election, and he’s willing to stipulate that Trump assembling a furious mob, ignoring Secret Service warnings that the crowd was armed and demanding metal detectors at the security perimeter be turned off so that the crowd could keep them, ordering that crowd to “march” to confront the joint session of Congress that had met to confirm his election loss, and then further inflaming the crowd with a new assertion that Mike Pence was the one standing between them and victory—Mike Pence is willing to say that that multi-step process meant to overthrow the United States government was “reckless.”
But “trying to murder me and my nearby family members in an attempt to overturn a U.S. election” still counts as only reckless, when Mike Pence is obliged to address that day, and not a transparent act of sedition. And that’s how you know Mike Pence believes his own future political career to be, on balance, a more important thing than whether his family got murdered that day or didn’t. Mike Pence is willing to wag his finger and say that inciting a violent coup attempt against Congress was reckless, […] but he’s still not willing to point a finger at Trump and say this seditionist asshole needs to be shunned by our party and shouldn’t be allowed within ten miles of the White House now or ever again.
To be sure, Pence had some things to say about how the public has “the right to know what took place” that day, and that he expects the press to “continue to do their job” in uncovering it, but all of that is speechwriter’s horseshit because Mike Pence continues, to this day, to refuse to testify about Trump’s acts. He’s been fighting the latest subpoena for his testimony, and he kept his lips well and truly zipped when the public investigation of “what took place” on that day came to ask him what took place.
[…] if Pence’s rejection of Trump’s coup had led to others in Trump’s inner circle also, at long f–king last, condemning Trump and loudly proclaiming to Republican voters that hoax and rebellion is not what Republicanism stands for, the tide might have turned. Pence might have found his place as hero, instead of spineless and permanent also-ran.
Trump did not pick people of courage to surround him, however. From the beginning he chose only patsies and bootlickers, people who would abide being mistreated and belittled and ignored by him while he tossed policy matters to his son-in-law and spent the rest of his days polishing his own ego. Mike Pence was chosen to be lickspittle, and it seems he will never, ever, have the courage to break out of the role.
[…] Donald Trump has, in the past, dallied with apocalypticism in his rhetoric and policy, but it was usually interpreted as a sop to his evangelical base.
He made an excellent secular hero for evangelicals like Rick Perry, who referred to him as “the chosen one.”
Rapture-focused evangelicals also saw him as fitting into biblical fan fiction like the “Left Behind” series.
And he found a coterie to support him who also viewed apocalypticism as part of their identity: Mark Meadows texting Ginni Thomas, “This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing. The fight continues. I have staked my career on it. Well at least my time in DC on it”; Robert Jeffress and John Hagee’s comments on the movement of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem; and, of course, Steve Bannon’s apocalyptic vision for the world. Apparently he was even good for the “apocalypse economy.”
All of this, of course, is the Trumpian zeitgeist, it’s the way the world around him sees him. It’s QAnon, it’s Jericho March, it’s the ongoing White Christian nationalist obsession with him. And despite all of his bombast and rhetoric, all of his violence and self-obsession, Donald Trump doesn’t usually get all apocalyptic himself. Until last week at CPAC. [“This is the final battle. I know you know it, everybody knows it. Either they win or we win.” […] “In 2016 I declared I am your voice. Today, I add, I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”]
Many have focused on Trump’s statement “I am your retribution,” and that angle of divine vengeance is certainly worrisome. But we should perhaps pay more attention to the aggressively apocalyptic bent of his speech, full throated and violent and accelerationist. Because again, Donald Trump does not usually lean into the apocalyptic. It’s all around him, but that’s usually not what he is vomiting forth. […]
I think Trump has played around with an apocalyptic worldview before, but I agree that he is now leaning heavily into that view. Yes, his rhetoric condones even more violence. And Trump has pumped up his persona to represent more clearly the dispenser of “retribution.”
Years before the police beating of Tyre Nichols, Memphis relaxed academic, disciplinary and fitness standards for recruits, nine current and former officers said.
[…] The academy became more lenient in grading, and students were allowed more chances to retake exams — including at the shooting range — after failures that would have led to dismissal under previous rules, the current and former officers said. Incidents of cheating did not always trigger dismissal, as in the past, four officers said. Struggling students were invited to study sessions in which they were taught upcoming test material straight from exam books.
The broad overhaul was implemented by then-Police Chief Michael Rallings and his successor, Chief Cerelyn Davis, under the direction of Mayor Jim Strickland (D). It resulted in larger class sizes at the academy while maintaining high graduation rates for recruits, including the five officers charged with murder in connection with Nichols’s death in January. In extensive interviews with The Washington Post, the veteran officers involved in training and supervising new hires said the changes created conditions that made incidents like the Nichols beating more likely.
“They baby these recruits and do everything they can to help them pass the tests so they don’t lose the body,” said Brian McNamee, a former Memphis police lieutenant and supervisor of training for the department from 2019 to 2021. “That’s a problem. If somebody can’t pass the tests and can’t grasp the material, you don’t want them on the streets policing you.” […]
The last contract that the state of Texas signed for its state-funded version of Trump’s border wall was for a cool $137.3 million.
And until the state legislature commits more funding to Gov. Greg Abbott (R)’s wall-building campaign, that will be it.
But there’s a question lurking beneath the massive infrastructure spend: Texas is paying the builders, but does it have a place to build?
[…] it’s far from clear that Abbott […] will be able to secure the land needed to construct the wall. The Trump administration was able to make use of eminent domain to secure land parcels for the wall that it failed to built. Abbott, however, has not invoked that for his project.
Instead, officials with the Texas Facilities Commission, a state agency usually responsible for building and maintaining government office buildings and parking lots, have said in public hearings that the state is in the process of persuading landowners to grant easements.
[…] So far, Texas has managed to build 1.7 miles of wall on state-owned land.
Abbott has trumpeted that segment as a victory, posing in front of it at a press conference last month. A state website dedicated to the wall casts it as a necessary counter to Biden’s immigration policies.
[…] Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and an expert in public procurement, told TPM last week that the sequencing of signing construction contracts without having land secured on which to build was unusual.
“This bears no resemblance whatsoever to a bonafide construction project,” he said. [correct]
Ricardo de Anda, a Rio Grande Valley landowner and attorney whose ranch abuts the U.S.-Mexico border, told TPM that he had no intention to sign an easement deal. He added that he and other local landowners were trying to persuade others to sign “conservation easements,” which would add an obstacle to the state’s attempt to build the wall while giving ranchers a tax break.
“Our mission is is to protect private property rights, and that means protecting the land that we’re stewards of,” he said. “And that also means keeping the government’s hands off of private lands.”
[…] The Texas Facilities Commission said in January that it needs more funding from the state legislature to sign more construction contracts. TPM reported on Tuesday that state lawmakers are eying another $1 billion for that effort.
This whole scheme sounds like one major grift
—————–
“By all means,” said average Texan, “take my land for free to build a pointless ugly ass wall.”
——————-
If the builders are being paid and not building how much of the money is being redirected to Abbott?
——————–
Materials and labor are only part of the cost…
Once you add in: grift, waste, theft, special building permits, finder fees, management fees, prepaid legal services, overhead, and outright fraud… it really adds up quickly.
——————–
If Abbott has signed contracts with companies to build the wall on land to which the state has no right, how long is the contract valid? I mean we’re talking about millions in state funding that is assigned but can’t be used until such time as the state gets these easements.
We could also talk about how much has the state of Texas allocated for maintenance? I mean the plan seems to working out that there will be these sections built that aren’t connected. Is this really anyway to run a business, er state?
Reading through the often frenzied commentary about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), it’s important to note how much that chatter conflates or confuses what are distinct if complex issues. The most high octane issue is watching the dyed-in-the-wool libertarians and anti-regulation voices who run Silicon Valley suddenly demanding a bailout. Specifically, many are demanding that the FDIC backstop all the bank’s deposits rather than simply those up to $250,000 because of the number of startups which could quickly go under without money to make payroll and cover other on-going costs of doing business. (SVB’s deposits, roughly 95% of which are uninsured, are heavily concentrated in the tech start-up ecosystem.) It’s a hypocrisy that merits all sorts of guffaws and mockery. But hypocrisy isn’t new or terribly surprising.
Bailouts Aren’t the Question
The only reason to even consider such a federal bailout would be if it were shown that SVB’s failure posed some sort of systemic risk to the broader economy. At least for now, that doesn’t seem to be the case. (That said, a banking system is highly complex and mixes fundamentals such asset values and intangibles like sentiment and fear, all of which can interact in unpredictable ways.) SVB’s holdings are highly concentrated in one region and sector of the economy – the Silicon Valley start-up ecosystem. There are lots and lots of analysts and regulators from the Fed, the FDIC and adjacent federal agencies deep in SVB’s books right now figuring that question out. So we shouldn’t be asking whether should be a bailout. […]
Where’d The Money Go?
Another key part of this story gets obscured in the current coverage. If you’re a SVB depositor you will have full access to your insured $250,000 on Monday morning. […] If you read the current coverage you could easily get the idea that that money is basically gone, that a start-up with $5 million in deposits has lost all its money. That’s almost certainly not true.
In modern bank failures/bank runs, the great or overwhelming majority of the deposits are recovered. There’s every reason to believe SVB has assets at least in the ballpark of its outstanding the deposits. The issue is liquidity. Depositors started to lose confidence in the bank’s solvency; everyone wanted their money at once; and the bank didn’t have access to enough cash to cover withdrawals so it failed. […] SVB depositors are being inundated with offers from hedge funds to purchase their deposits for prices ranging from 60 – 80 cents on the dollar. […] the inherent risk of such offers and the big returns hedge funds look for those offers tell you pretty clearly those hedge funds expect SVB’s assets will cover the overwhelming majority of the deposits. The hedge fund has the luxury of time; the tech start-up does not.
What About My Bank Account at Chase? I mentioned above the hypocrisy of high-flying tech bros who’ve been lecturing us about free markets forever suddenly demanding bailouts because people they know or they themselves are seeing their ox getting gored. Is this likely to happen to Chase or Citibank or other big national banks? Probably not. One big reason is that those banks are under much closer regulatory scrutiny by the Feds. Another reason is that they’re not so concentrated in a single sector of the economy.
If you look at SVB’s practices it was involved in a lot of pretty high risk investing. One way it kept its hold over depositors was offering higher returns on deposits than the big banks. Making good on that required riskier investments. SVB wasn’t just the go-to bank of deposit for Silicon Valley start-ups. They were also deeply enmeshed in that ecosystem’s world of speculative equity investing. That’s risky business, literally and figuratively. But as others have noted, the whole tech start-up ecosystem was and is deeply tied to the regime of ultra-low interest rates of last 15 years and more broadly the last 25 years. A sharp rise in interest rates was always going to be a problem for that world.
[…] As the Times noted on Friday, back in 2018, President Trump signed a partial repeal of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial services reform law, which reduced regulatory scrutiny for regional banks like SVB.
Greg Becker, SVB’s CEO, was a strong backer of the change.
Addendum : One thing that has come out of my exchanges with readers is unclarity about just what counts as a “bailout”. […] that term has no real or precise meaning. In general it’s any radical departure from the existing legal/contractual set of rules and obligations in response to a financial crisis. Websters defines it as a “rescue from financial distress.” Clearly the shareholders, i.e., the owners, of Silicon Valley Bank should be wiped out entirely or at least be last in line for any proceeds if the bank goes through a liquidation. They had a business and it failed.
The operative question is the bank’s depositors. What’s being discussed is whether the FDIC should step in and guarantee all the deposits rather than just the 2% or 3% which the FDIC guarantees up to $250,000. What complicates the question is that SVB did very, very little consumer banking. It mainly held deposits of venture capital funds and the start-ups those funds invested in. As noted earlier, the bank likely has enough or close to enough assets to cover all deposits. What it lacks is time and liquidity. So the best solution is for the bank to be purchased by another bank which has time and liquidity. […]
A final point: I’ll leave the precise details to people with more technical knowledge. But there are a lot of tools federal regulators have to cushion a situation like this. It’s not just let it rip versus protect everyone from any downside of the bank’s collapse.
Among the many, many blows Fox “News” is taking as the lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems reveals all the twisted little details about how the network actually operates, one of the most consequential might be the revelation that, as expected, the “straight news” side of Fox can only go so as far with their “straight news” as the Murdochs and the network’s propaganda hosts want them to go.
If you’re a “straight news” reporter working for Fox, reporting news that’s damaging to the Republican Party—or damaging to the egos of opinion bigshots like Sean Hannity—has a good chance of getting you fired. It’s yet another clear demonstration of the Republican-backing propaganda network using their “straight news” team as a front for the network heads’ real goals, and those goals are “boost Republican Party rhetoric, even if you have to lie to do it.”
[…] While it’s truly tragic that people who have chosen careers inside a company that has been known for misleading viewers through its entire existence, it’s not clear whether the greater emotional damage is being done here by a news-side realization of just how much power the opinion side of things has really been exerting over their coverage or, instead, because the public leak of those messages has completely leveled their own claims of plausible deniability here.
There’s probably a great many of these producers who tell their families and friends that no, it doesn’t matter how much Fox News lies to its viewers or what hoaxes might get spread on the network’s opinion programs, that’s all separate from the “news” side of the business, and on the news side of the business they’re immune to such shenanigans. Now that the whole world knows that that excuse just isn’t true, network employees aren’t going to be able to use it to convince their non-work friends of their upstanding moral values.
Sure, journalists might try to distance themselves from an opinion host-pushed hoax meant on undermining United States democracy in service of a raging orange-hued toddler that would rather keep power through violence than retire to his rotten Florida country club circles, but it doesn’t mean much when Tucker Carlson retaliates against you doing it by demanding that you be fired. And it means even less when network heads are themselves peeved that your accurate reporting of news is going to cost them viewers—and blaming you for that problem, rather than the opinion hosts who’ve turned your network’s viewers into mush-brained zombies who can’t handle news stories that don’t rigorously adhere to their own personal beliefs and conspiracy theories.
[…] Fox White House correspondent Kristin Fisher was specifically targeted for debunking false information spread by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell in their infamous Nov. 19, 2020 press conference.[…] “So much of what he said was simply not true or has already been thrown out in court,” reported Fisher. The claims were indeed false, Fisher went on to describe why the claims were false, and doing so earned her a reprimand from her “straight news” boss, who told her she “needed to do a better job” of “respecting our audience.”
Which audience? The one that wants to believe Rudy Giuliani conspiracy bullshit, of course. How dare a network journalist remind viewers that Trump’s personal hoax machine is, in fact, telling lies.
The other biggest reveals center around Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, the network’s most powerful opinion hosts, and their inside-the-company insistence that the news division toe their opinion lines. Tucker and Hannity both demanded the company fire Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich for fact-checking a Trump tweet.
[…] How much of Fox News’ declining ratings were due to “anger at the news channel,” network loudmouth Laura Ingraham privately fumed to Carlson and Hannity. “My anger at the news channel is pronounced.”
Carlson agreed. “We devote our lives to building an audience and they let Chris Wallace and Leland fucking Vittert wreck it.” And the group decided to take action […]
If Republicans wanted to spread false conspiracy claims to discredit American democracy and justify the nullification of an American election, the Fox “news” division’s employees were to report the falseness of those claims at their own peril.
And that is how Fox News executives fomented disinformation that would quickly bloom into a violent attempted coup spearheaded by Donald Trump […]
Fox News made itself a tool of the seditious conspiracy, and from Rupert Murdoch to Tucker Carlson to Sean Hannity to Suzanne Scott, each of the network’s top figures demanded it be done for the sake of goosing their ratings.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Over the past 11 months, someone created thousands of fake, automated Twitter accounts — perhaps hundreds of thousands of them — to offer a stream of praise for Donald Trump.
Besides posting adoring words about the former president, the fake accounts ridiculed Trump’s critics from both parties and attacked Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador who is challenging her onetime boss for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
When it came to Ron DeSantis, the bots aggressively suggested that the Florida governor couldn’t beat Trump, but would be a great running mate.
As Republican voters size up their candidates for 2024, whoever created the bot network is seeking to put a thumb on the scale, using online manipulation techniques pioneered by the Kremlin to sway the digital platform conversation about candidates while exploiting Twitter’s algorithms to maximize their reach.
The sprawling bot network was uncovered by researchers at Cyabra, an Israeli tech firm that shared its findings with The Associated Press. While the identity of those behind the network of fake accounts is unknown, Cyabra’s analysts determined that it was likely created within the U.S.
To identify a bot, researchers will look for patterns in an account’s profile, its follower list and the content it posts. Human users typically post about a variety of subjects, with a mix of original and reposted material, but bots often post repetitive content about the same topics.
That was true of many of the bots identified by Cyabra.
“One account will say, ‘Biden is trying to take our guns; Trump was the best,’ and another will say, ‘Jan. 6 was a lie and Trump was innocent,’” said Jules Gross, the Cyabra engineer who first discovered the network. “Those voices are not people. For the sake of democracy I want people to know this is happening.”
Bots, as they are commonly called, are fake, automated accounts that became notoriously well-known after Russia employed them in an effort to meddle in the 2016 election. While big tech companies have improved their detection of fake accounts, the network identified by Cyabra shows they remain a potent force in shaping online political discussion.
The new pro-Trump network is actually three different networks of Twitter accounts, all created in huge batches in April, October and November 2022. In all, researchers believe hundreds of thousands of accounts could be involved.
The accounts all feature personal photos of the alleged account holder as well as a name. Some of the accounts posted their own content, often in reply to real users, while others reposted content from real users, helping to amplify it further.
“McConnell… Traitor!” wrote one of the accounts, in response to an article in a conservative publication about GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, one of several Republican critics of Trump targeted by the network.
One way of gauging the impact of bots is to measure the percentage of posts about any given topic generated by accounts that appear to be fake. The percentage for typical online debates is often in the low single digits. Twitter itself has said that less than 5% of its active daily users are fake or spam accounts.
When Cyabra researchers examined negative posts about specific Trump critics, however, they found far higher levels of inauthenticity. Nearly three-fourths of the negative posts about Haley, for example, were traced back to fake accounts.
The network also helped popularize a call for DeSantis to join Trump as his vice presidential running mate — an outcome that would serve Trump well and allow him to avoid a potentially bitter matchup if DeSantis enters the race.
The same network of accounts shared overwhelmingly positive content about Trump and contributed to an overall false picture of his support online, researchers found.
“Our understanding of what is mainstream Republican sentiment for 2024 is being manipulated by the prevalence of bots online,” the Cyabra researchers concluded.
The triple network was discovered after Gross analyzed Tweets about different national political figures and noticed that many of the accounts posting the content were created on the same day. Most of the accounts remain active, though they have relatively modest numbers of followers.
A message left with a spokesman for Trump’s campaign was not immediately returned.
Most bots aren’t designed to persuade people, but to amplify certain content so more people see it, according to Samuel Woolley, a professor and misinformation researcher at the University of Texas whose most recent book focuses on automated propaganda.
When a human user sees a hashtag or piece of content from a bot and reposts it, they’re doing the network’s job for it, and also sending a signal to Twitter’s algorithms to boost the spread of the content further.
Bots can also succeed in convincing people that a candidate or idea is more or less popular than the reality, he said. More pro-Trump bots can lead to people overstating his popularity overall, for example.
“Bots absolutely do impact the flow of information,” Woolley said. “They’re built to manufacture the illusion of popularity. Repetition is the core weapon of propaganda and bots are really good at repetition. They’re really good at getting information in front of people’s eyeballs.”
Until recently, most bots were easily identified thanks to their clumsy writing or account names that included nonsensical words or long strings of random numbers. As social media platforms got better at detecting these accounts, the bots became more sophisticated.
So-called cyborg accounts are one example: a bot that is periodically taken over by a human user who can post original content and respond to users in human-like ways, making them much harder to sniff out.
Bots could soon get much sneakier thanks to advances in artificial intelligence. New AI programs can create lifelike profile photos and posts that sound much more authentic. Bots that sound like a real person and deploy deepfake video technology may challenge platforms and users alike in new ways, according to Katie Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Facebook public policy director.
“The platforms have gotten so much better at combating bots since 2016,” Harbath said. “But the types that we’re starting to see now, with AI, they can create fake people. Fake videos.”
These technological advances likely ensure that bots have a long future in American politics — as digital foot soldiers in online campaigns, and as potential problems for both voters and candidates trying to defend themselves against anonymous online attacks.
“There’s never been more noise online,” said Tyler Brown, a political consultant and former digital director for the Republican National Committee. “How much of it is malicious or even unintentionally unfactual? It’s easy to imagine people being able to manipulate that.”
tinkerersays
The BBC has always been a tool of the British establishment, particularly the news department, but the way in which the Tory party has infiltrated the Corporation has become increasingly blatant over the last few years. That influence has now spread beyond the news department to the sports department with the Tory-sympathising management now trying to shut up their leading sports presenter, Gary Lineker, because he dared to make a Twitter post critical of he Conservative government’s disgusting immigration policy and rhetoric.
It’s encouraging to see so many of Lineker’s colleagues coming out in support of him. There’s effectively been a strike at BBC Sport which has shut down much of their programming.
Great video by the excellent Owen Jones giving an account of what’s going on along with the historical context here:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has awarded the Hero of Ukraine to Oleksandr Matsievskyi, a soldier who was executed by machine gun fire on camera after being captured by Russian soldiers. Zelenskiy said: “Today I conferred the title of Hero of Ukraine upon Oleksandr Matsievskyi, a soldier. A man whom all Ukrainians will know. A man who will be remembered forever. For his bravery, for his confidence in Ukraine and for his ‘Glory to Ukraine!’”
…
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, is reporting a claim that resistance fighters have blown up a railway that Russian forces were using in occupied Kherson. The claims have not been independently verified. A video posted by the Atesh partisan group appears to show a railway track between the settlements of Abrikosivka and Radensk being blown up.
…
Russia’s industry ministry said on Monday it was expanding its list of brands that can be imported without the trademark owner’s permission to include goods from companies such as Ikea and US toy manufacturers Hasbro and Mattel.
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has offered congratulations to Pope Francis on 10th anniversary of the latter’s election. Relations between the pope and the patriarch have been strained since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The patriarch has been a vocal supporter of Russia’s military action, whereas Pope Francis has frequently called for peace during his regular Vatican addresses. [Pretty anodyne framing. I hope to have time later to respond to the comments above on this.]
Also from there:
Russian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut but have not completed a turning movement, envelopment, or encirclement around the cit according to the Institute for Study of War.
Wagner forces sent to die in Bakhmut: ISW
The conflict between Russian Ministry of Defence and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin has likely reached a climax as thousands of fighters have died fighting in Bakhmut.
According to the Institute for Study of War (ISW) analysis, the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) is “currently prioritizing eliminating Wagner on the battlefields in Bakhmut” which it concludes is slowing its advance in the area.
It said the conflict began when Prigozhin ran a “relentless defamation” campaign against senior figures in the Russian military, including Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov.
Now that the group has failed to show progress it is believed Russian MoD officials are “seizing the opportunity to deliberately expend both elite and convict Wagner forces in Bakhmut in an effort to weaken Prigozhin and derail his ambitions for greater influence in the Kremlin.”
The ISW believes Russian President Vladimir Putin likely became “alarmed” by Prigozhin’s political ambitions in October last year.
Putin likely stopped the Russian MoD from directly attacking Prigozhin but instead created conditions in which the Russian military leadership could reassume more authority. Such conditions likely threatened Prigozhin, who began to intensify his criticism of the Russian MoD and further deepened the conflict between Wagner forces and military leadership.
Ukrainian forces claim to have killed over a thousand Russian solders in the past few days as they continue to defend the besieged city of Bakhmut.
In his evening address on Sunday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said more than a thousand soldiers had been killed and 1,500 wounded in the fighting.
In less than a week, starting from the 6th March, we managed to kill more than 1,100 enemy soldiers in the Bakhmut sector alone, Russia’s irreversible loss, right there, near Bakhmut.
A shallow river running through the centre of town now marks the frontline in the conflict, according to British intelligence.
Information on the frontline is mixed with Ukrainian forces having claim to have repelled Russian attacks across the city .
Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has said the fighting in Bakhmut is “tough, very tough” and claimed “the closer we are to the centre of the city, the harder the fight”.
But in one update from a frontline commander on Sunday rejected these claims saying Prigozhin has claimed to have “captured it so many times that no one is interested anymore.”
Ukrainian forces repelled 102 attacks in the last day according to the latest update from the General staff of the armed forces of Ukraine.
In its latest update, it said Russian forces have continued offensive operations in the regions of Lymansky, Bakhmutsky, Avdiivskyi, Marinskyi and Shakhtarskyi directions….
A documentary film about imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has won at the Oscars.
“Navalny”, which follows the poisoning and detention of opposition leader, won best feature documentary overnight.
The award was accepted by Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife and his daughter, Dasha Navalnaya who used the moment to deliver a personal message.
My husband is prison just for telling the truth. My husband is in prison just for defending democracy. Alexei, I am dreaming of the day you will be free and our country will be free. Stay strong my love.
Speaking to the Associated Press before the ceremony, his daughter said she was attending to bring attention to her father’s imprisonment.
It’s crazy. But it’s my life. And I’m fighting for freedom of speech and I’m fighting to get Alexei out – my dad – and I’m fighting for democracy in Russia.
China’s president Xi Jinping is planning to visit Russia as soon as next week, people familiar with the matter said according to Reuters, while Moscow and Kyiv both reported intense fighting over the eastern city of Bakhmut, the war’s bloodiest battle.
Xi Jinping also plans to speak with Volodymyr Zelensky for the first time since the start of the war, according to the Wall Street Journal.
China’s president is to speak virtually with his Ukrainian counterpart likely following a visit to Moscow next week the paper reported citing sources familiar with the matter.
The Guardian has a Gary Lineker liveblog. It appears the BBC has backed down, and Lineker is returning without restrictions while they review their social media policies.
After a surreal few days, I’m delighted that we have navigated a way through this. I want to thank you all for the incredible support, particularly my colleagues at BBC Sport, for the remarkable show of solidarity. Football is a team game but their backing was overwhelming.
I have been presenting sport on the BBC for almost 3 decades and am immeasurably proud to work with the best and fairest broadcaster in the world. I cannot wait to get back in the MOTD chair on Saturday.
A final thought: however difficult the last few days have been, it simply doesn’t compare to having to flee your home from persecution or war to seek refuge in a land far away. It’s heartwarming to have seen the empathy towards their plight from so many of you.
We remain a country of predominantly tolerant, welcoming and generous people. Thank you. [heart emoji]
From the liveblog:
Starmer says Richard Sharp’s position as BBC chair ‘increasingly untenable’
Keir Starmer has said Richard Sharp should resign as chair of the BBC. As reported by ITV, he said:
I think Richard Sharp’s position is increasingly untenable.
I think most people watching the complete mess of the last few days would say how on earth is he still in position and Gary Lineker has been taken off air?
This is a mess of the BBC’s own making, they need to sort it out and sort it out fast.
Starmer echoes what Lucy Powell, the shadow culture secretary, said yesterday. Powell also described Sharp’s position at “increasingly untenable”.
Even before the Gary Lineker row erupted, Sharp faces calls for his resignation because he did not disclose his role in helping Boris Johnson get access to a loan facility, reportedly worth around £800,000, when he was applying for the job of BBC chairman.
[Georgian] Prime-Minister Irakli Garibashvili: “European Parliament should take care of itself. Why are they dictating us what to do?! Their desire was and is to drag Georgia into the war against Russia”
Garibashvili: “Opposition wanted to sow discord and chaos. They could even killed some of the youngsters. That’s wy we chose stability over the war policy of theirs”
Garibashvili: “I saw pictures of some of the youngsters. I was shocked as they were wearing some Satanic uniforms” [LOL]
Garibashvili: “You mentioned Zelenskyy – when a person who is at war now has time to address the destructive actions of several thousand people here in Georgia, this is direct evidence that this person is involved and motivated to make something happen here”
Garibashvili: “Klitschko addressed, then Feigin, Ukrainian politicians, Arakhamia and some losers who say that change is needed and some scenarios are needed, a coup and… this is direct interference in the internal politics of another country. Better take care of your country”
Police in Moldova have said they foiled a plot by groups of Russia-backed actors who were trained to cause mass unrest during a protest against the country’s new pro-western government.
The head of Moldova’s police, Viorel Cernauteanu, said in a news conference that an undercover agent had infiltrated groups of “diversionists,” some Russian citizens, who allegedly were promised $10,000 to organise “mass disorder” during the protest in the capital, Chisinau, on Sunday. Seven people were detained, he said.
The protest was one of several held in recent weeks, organised by a group calling itself Movement for the People, which is backed by Moldova’s Russia-friendly Shor Party, which holds six seats in the country’s 101-seat legislature. Thousands of people gathered in Chișinău on Sunday, with demonstrators criticising the pro-European government for a steep rise in the cost of living.
As Russia reduced gas supplies to Moldova over the past year, bills have risen up to six times in the country of 2.6 million. The energy crisis and the war in neighbouring Ukraine have also contributed to inflation hitting 30%.
With western economic help, the government has subsidised energy bills but many are still struggling.
…
Months of rallies, organised by the party of the fugitive pro-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor, have been condemned by the government as a Kremlin-sponsored campaign to destabilise the country. The oligarch is believed to have fled to Israel after being convicted of involvement in the theft of $1bn (£830m) from Moldova’s banks.
At Sunday’s protests, Shor party leaders shouted “Down with Maia Sandu”, Moldova’s pro-European president, “Down with dictatorship” and “Down with the police” on the microphones, as they encouraged demonstrators to break police cordons.
…
Police also said four bomb threats on Sunday, including one at the capital’s international airport, had been registered, which they called “an ongoing part of the destabilization measures” against Moldova.
…
Not everyone in the crowd was supportive of Russia….
…
Sandu said last month that Russia planned to provide foreign citizens with military training, who would then act as protesters in order to break into state institutions and take hostages. On Friday, the US National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communication, John Kirby, warned of further Russian efforts to destabilise Moldova.
Before Sunday’s protest, the head of the Moldovan police, Viorel Cernăuțeanu, said at a press conference that the FSB, Russia’s secret services, planned to use 10 groups of five to 10 Russian and Moldovan men with criminal records or sports training to break police cordons and spark violence. But a Moldovan undercover agent helped reveal the plans, Cernăuțeanu added. Dozens were detained, including seven leaders of the operation.
An alleged member of the Russian paramilitary Wagner group was refused entry into Moldova, according to the border police. He is one of 182 foreign citizens denied access to the country over the past week. Last month, two foreign citizens were expelled for spying, according to Moldova’s intelligence services.
“I would draw attention to the potential connection between the groups uncovered by the police and the Wagner group,” said analyst Valeriu Pașa from the Moldovan thinktank WatchDog. “Russia’s aim is to provoke chaos and discontent. In this way, it would be easier to overthrow Moldova’s current government. Shor’s intention is to keep the authorities busy so that the reform of the judiciary does not succeed and he does not get a final sentence.”
Saudi Aramco has reported a record $161bn (£134bn) profit for 2022, the largest annual profit ever recorded by an oil and gas company, fuelled by soaring energy prices and rising global demand.
The largely state-owned company’s profits rose by 46% year on year and it made more than the recent bumper results reported by Shell, BP, Exxon and Chevron combined.
…
The world’s biggest oil company, which is 95%-owned by the Saudi Arabian government, declared a $19.5bn dividend after its fourth-quarter trading.
Its board has also recommended the issuance of bonus shares, with investors receiving an extra share for every 10 they currently own.
While oil and gas companies are enjoying bumper results because of the impact of factors such as the war in Ukraine – with bosses taking home “jaw dropping” pay packages as a result – Saudi Aramco’s performance dwarfs its rivals.
…
The company reaffirmed it would continue to invest to increase its maximum potential production capacity to 13m barrels a day by 2027….
The question of the SARS-CoV-2 origin: whether it was a zoonotic spillover from a wet market, or an engineered virus that escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is seemingly a debate that will never go away. Most interestingly, while scientists with specific domain expertise seem to be building a consensus towards the former, public opinion appears to be trending towards the latter. This delta between expert and popular opinion has been helped along by the frothy discourse in mainstream and social media, with most figures that we cover in this podcast dead-set certain that it came from a lab.
Most recently, Sam Harris hosted on his Making Sense podcast the molecular biologist Alina Chan and. science writer Matt Ridley, spokespersons for the lab leak case, and authors of “Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19”. To a layperson, and certainly to Sam, they put forward a rather watertight case. Intrinsic to the arguments advanced were the ideas that (a) experts in the area were refusing to engage with and unable to answer their arguments, and (b) a strong implication that there is a conspiracy of silence among virologists not just in China but internationally, to suppress the lab leak hypothesis [(two-item) listmaking fail].
So, as a case study in the public understanding of science, it seems like a pretty pickle indeed. To help unravel the pickle(?) in this somewhat special episode, we are joined by three virologists who are amply qualified to address the topic; both in terms of the evidence and whether they are involved in a conspiracy of silence.
Kristian Andersen is a Professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research. He focuses on the relationship between host and pathogen, using sequencing, fieldwork, experimentation, and computational biology methods. He has spearheaded large international collaborations investigating the emergence, spread and evolution of deadly pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, Zika virus, Ebola virus, West Nile virus, and Lassa virus.
Prof Michael Worobey, is the head of the department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. His work focuses on the genomes of viruses, using molecular and computational biology, to understand the origins, emergence and control of pandemics. Recently, his interdisciplinary work on SARS-CoV-2 has shed light on how and when the virus originated and ignited the COVID-19 pandemic in China and how SARS-CoV-2 emerged and took hold in North America and Europe.
Prof Edward “Eddie” Holmes, is an NHMRC Leadership Fellow & Professor of Virology at the Faculty of Medicine and Health at Sydney University, a member of the Sydney Institute for Infectious Diseases, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a Fellow of The Royal Society. He is known for his work on the evolution and emergence of infectious diseases, particularly the mechanisms by which RNA viruses jump species boundaries to emerge in humans and other animals. He has studied the emergence and spread of such pathogens as SARS-CoV-2, influenza virus, dengue virus, HIV, hepatitis C virus, myxoma virus, RHDV and Yersinia pestis.
All three researchers have specialist expertise and decades of experience directly applicable to tracking viruses and their adaption to humans, and, fair to say, are fairly eminent in their fields (Eddie in particular!). Further, they are among the relatively small set of researchers collecting and analysing primary evidence on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, communicating their findings in top-ranked journals, including Nature and Science.
In this episode, Chris and Matt put to this trio of Professors the claims rasied by lab leak advocates to see what these (damn conspirators) experts have to say for themselves.
From the Guardian liveblog: “BBC News now note that the corporation has no way of removing Richard Sharp – its chair – as he was appointed by the government. They also suggest a difference between Lineker’s original tweet, comparing UK immigration policy to 1930s Germany, and this one below [the third tweet in Lineker’s thread @ #121], which is reckoned to be a humanitarian comment, not a political one.”
Brad speaks with Dr. Lerone Martin, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University and Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Institute at Stanford. They discuss his new book – The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover.
“Lerone Martin draws on thousands of newly declassified FBI documents and memos to describe how, under Hoover’s leadership, FBI agents attended spiritual retreats and worship services, creating an FBI religious culture that fashioned G-men into soldiers and ministers of Christian America. Martin shows how prominent figures such as Billy Graham, Fulton Sheen, and countless other ministers from across the country partnered with the FBI and laundered bureau intel in their sermons while the faithful crowned Hoover the adjudicator of true evangelical faith and allegiance. These partnerships not only solidified the political norms of modern white evangelicalism, they also contributed to the political rise of white Christian nationalism, establishing religion and race as the bedrock of the modern national security state, and setting the terms for today’s domestic terrorism debates.”
For those in the vast majority of countries where DTC drug advertising rightly isn’t allowed, here’s an example from the US: Pfizer is currently running TV ads hawking a drug for eczema whose possible side effects include cancer.
The International Criminal Court intends to open two war crimes cases tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and will seek arrest warrants for several people, The New York Times reported citing sources unauthorized to speak publicly.
The cases are first international charges to be brought forward since the start of the conflict, the newspaper reports. The charges allege Russia deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure and abducted Ukrainian children and teenagers and sent them to Russian re-education camps.
The chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, must first present his charges to a panel of pretrial judges who will decide whether the legal standards have been met for issuing arrest warrants, or whether investigators need more evidence. It was not clear whom the court planned to charge in each case.
The Moldovan Foreign Ministry has reported that Oleksandr #Matsiyevsky, a soldier of the Territorial Defence Forces in the Chernihiv Region who was executed in Russian captivity, had Moldovan citizenship.
Moldova does not currently face “imminent military danger” but is subject to “hybrid warfare generated by Russia” in a bid to “overthrow state power”, its defence minister told Agence France-Presse in an interview Monday.
Anatolie Nosatîi sat down for an interview with AFP at his office in Chișinău, after the latest in a string of anti-government protests erupted over the weekend in the small ex-Soviet nation.
“Imminent military danger against Moldova currently doesn’t exist, but there are other types of dangers that affect the country’s security – hybrid warfare,” Nosatîi told AFP.
By generating “disinformation, tensions inside our society”, Russia was attempting to “change the political order, destabilise and overthrow state power,” the 50-year-old minister said.
On Sunday, Moldovan police arrested members of a network seeking to undermine the country they suspected of being orchestrated by Moscow.
Joe Biden’s White House in the US accused Russia on Friday of seeking to destabilise Moldova in order to install a pro-Russian government. Pro-European Moldova has repeatedly accused Moscow of plotting to violently topple its government through saboteurs disguised as anti-government protesters, claims which Russia denied.
Dan and guest co-host Annika Brockschmidt begin by discussing this Tucker Carlson’s handling of 40,000 hours of video from the January 6th Capitol insurrection. Carlson showed clips that he said demonstrated that JS six was peaceful and that the death of Capitol police officer Brian [Sicknick], uh, was not related to J six.
In the second segment they discuss the supposed rift in the GOP in the wake of this year’s lackluster CPAC conference.
In the final segment, they breakdown how Republicans who have a real shot at the GOP presidential nomination at this point are running on ultra-MAGA policies – from DeSantis to Haley and so on.
Her discussion of Trump and De Santis is especially useful.
Incidentally, they’ve been advertising for the Summit for Religious Freedom, which will be held April 22-24 in DC and virtually:
The Summit for Religious Freedom (SRF) is the hub for our collective fight for religious freedom, church-state separation, and the issues that depend on them like LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, protecting public schools, and more. It’s a big tent — welcoming everyone from longtime advocates, to those just discovering the issue and its critical role in protecting our democracy, our equality, and our rights. We’re collaborating to defeat the biggest threats to these values including Christian nationalism, right-wing radicals, and their coordinated campaign to force us to all live by their narrow, religious beliefs.
Because a strong separation of church and state is the shield that protects everyone’s right to live as themselves and believe as they choose — ensuring freedom without favor and equality without exception.
TRIGGER WARNING: if you’re a SNOWFLAKE college professor afraid of how your students are expressing themselves, you might need a SAFE SPACE, because Michael and Peter are discussing “The Coddling of The American Mind,” a book about campus culture that’s light on facts and heavy on cherry-picked anecdotes….
KGsays
The question of the SARS-CoV-2 origin: whether it was a zoonotic spillover from a wet market, or an engineered virus that escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – SC@124 quoting Decoding the Gurus
These are not by any means the only possibilities. It could be a naturalvirus that escaped from the WIV. It could be a zoonotic spillover that first occurred elsewhere in China. It could be a natural virus contracted by a sample collector for the WIV but which was never held in the WIV. It could be a virus that escaped from another lab, such as the Wuhan Center for Disease Control. It could have been imported to China during the 2019 Military World Games, held in Wuhan. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, says that all possible hypotheses on the origins of COVID-19 “remain on the table”.
…The authoritarian tendencies evident throughout many of the speaking slots were stunning to witness. As he introduced the former Brazilian president, the CPAC vice chairman bemoaned that Jair Bolsonaro lost his election because he “was unfortunately not able to control the Brazilian Supreme Court.” The crowd went wild —insurrectionists supporting each other—and Bolsonaro was true to his nickname, the “Trump of the tropics,” spreading lies and falsehoods about his time in office with Christian nationalist overtones, emphasizing the role of God in government, and claiming “I’m not a priest nor a pastor, only a Christian,” to more loud applause. But the most enthusiastic response came from his nod to transphobia and anti-LGBTQ sentiment: “We don’t want gender ideology! … Girls should be looking up to their mothers, sons to their fathers.”
Indeed, transphobia was one of the themes of this year’s CPAC,…
…
[Trump] amped up his 2016 vision of “American carnage,” announcing that he would send the National Guard to reinstate “order” in certain Democratic cities, hinting at implementing martial law and advocat[ing] for what sounds a lot like concentration camps for homeless people. He also proclaimed that if re-elected president, he would “use all necessary state, local, federal, and military resources to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
Taking a page out of Viktor Orbán’s playbook, he promised his audience of die-hard fans “a baby boom,” including “baby bonuses”—inserting his very own brand of crudeness, announcing “you men out there are so lucky. You are so lucky, men”—presumably with all the sex they will be having to get those sweet baby bonuses. From a European perspective, one of the more chilling moments of the speech was when he fantasized about Russia destroying the NATO headquarters (“one clear shot from a tank!”), and praised his good relationship with Putin.
A lot of the media reports of CPAC have claimed that there is a rift in the Republican Party, that the party is being torn in two….
And while Pence, Tim Scott and DeSantis—who’ve all spoken at CPAC in previous years—were indeed guests at an event hosted by the anti-tax advocacy group Club for Growth, an influential player in Republican politics, claims of a “split” on the Right neglects [sic – people lately seem to have forgotten how verbs work] the lesson we should have learned by now regarding the Right: while parts of the establishment would rather not see Trump as the next candidate, they’re largely united when it comes to their vision. Their aim is to turn the U.S. into a White, conservative Christian, authoritarian nation with little to no corporate regulation; and they aim to eradicate trans people from public life, to support unchecked police power, to ban abortion and to punish anyone who fails to adhere to their rules—rules which are only being supported by a minority of Americans.
The Right has shown previously that they are utterly pragmatic when it comes to choosing their new leader. If the base can’t be convinced by DeSantis, they will fall back into line behind Trump. Don’t let the spectacle of CPAC’s performative divisiveness fool you—the candidates present only a slightly different brand of authoritarianism or even fascism, but the core of their ideology is the same. Both are anti-democratic, pro-natalist, ethno-Nationalist, right-wing Christian, and authoritarian. And when it comes to those things, the Republican Party is not divided at all: they present a pretty united front. Like a closed fist.
KG @ #132, yes, as we’ve discussed here several times, so I’m not sure why you’re presenting that as something new to consider. I think you would find the podcast episode of interest.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is expected to seek its first arrest warrants against Russian individuals in relation to the conflict in Ukraine “in the short term”, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
The prosecutor of the ICC is expected to ask a pre-trial judge to approve issuing warrants against several Russians for the abduction of children from Ukraine to Russia and the targeting of civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, said the source, who spoke with Reuters on the condition of anonymity.
The source said it was unclear which Russian individuals the ICC prosecutor would seek warrants for or exactly when, but the warrants could include the crime of genocide.
The office of the prosecutor at the ICC declined to comment. Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
KGsays
SC@134,
I’m presenting it here because the blurb for the podcast presents a false dichotomy.
Despite recent election results, state Republican parties keep choosing far-right election deniers to serve as state GOP chairs.
Associated Press:
The Colorado Republican Party on Saturday selected a combative former state representative who promised to be a “wartime” leader as its new chairman, joining several other state GOPs this year that have elected far-right figures and election conspiracy theorists to their top posts. The move in Colorado comes as the party totters on the brink of political irrelevance in a state moving swiftly to the left.
Commentary:
[…] Former state Rep. Dave Williams is perhaps best known for taking on Rep. Doug Lamborn in a Republican primary last year, and during his campaign, Williams unsuccessfully tried to insert the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” into his name on the ballot. All the while, the legislator continued to tout ridiculous conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.
He’ll now lead the Colorado Republican Party.
[…] Republicans in Kansas recently chose a prominent election denier to serve as the new chair of the state GOP, and Republicans in Idaho did the same thing. In Arizona, the new chair turned to election deniers to elevate his candidacy, while in Michigan, Republicans chose a radical conspiracy theorist to lead the state party.
In case this isn’t obvious, the 2022 midterm elections were broadly disappointing for the Republican Party, and much of the electorate has grown weary of election denialism and the GOP’s adherence to the “big lie.” Nevertheless, as Republicans at the state level make important decisions about the party’s leadership and direction, they apparently remain indifferent to voters’ wishes
Tucker Carlson’s cherry-picked presentation of Jan. 6 footage handed over to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy has created a new false martyr for the right: Jacob Chansley, AKA Jake Angeli, AKA the QAnon Shaman.
Chansley is currently serving a 41-month sentence for his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He was among the first 30 people to enter the Capitol after its windows were broken in and members of the mob climbed through those windows and kicked a door open from the inside. He was part of the group that entered the Senate chamber, where he left a note reading, “It’s Only A Matter Of Time. Justice Is Coming!” at the dais Mike Pence had had to flee to escape the crowd.
This is the guy Tucker Carlson specifically singled out to portray as a tourist in the Capitol, ushered around the building by supportive police officers. And it’s having an effect. The lawyer for notorious Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola asked a judge to throw out Pezzola’s case on the basis of Carlson’s “exculpatory” video of Chansley. [WTF?]
“Chansley was not some passive, chaperoned observer of events for the roughly hour that he was unlawfully inside the Capitol,” prosecutors responded. “He was part of the initial breach of the building; he confronted law enforcement for roughly 30 minutes just outside the Senate Chamber; he gained access to the gallery of the Senate along with other members of the mob (obviously, precluding any Senate business from occurring); and he gained access to and later left the Senate floor only after law enforcement was able to arrive en masse to remove him.”
As is so often the case these days when a new false right-wing claim circulates, Elon Musk jumped right on it.
“Free Jacob Chansley,” Musk tweeted, over a video of Chansley, late in the day on January 6, shouting into his bullhorn to tell his fellow insurrectionists that Donald Trump had finally called on them to leave the Capitol. The person posting the video described it as “censored video”—so censored that Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette had entered footage of the same moment into the congressional record to show that Trump had always had the ability to tell the crowd to leave the Capitol. [Correct]
Musk wasn’t done there. “Chansley got 4 years in prison for a non-violent, police-escorted tour!?” […] in reality, Chansley “was part of the initial breach of the building; he confronted law enforcement for roughly 30 minutes just outside the Senate Chamber; he gained access to the gallery of the Senate along with other members of the mob (obviously, precluding any Senate business from occurring); and he gained access to and later left the Senate floor only after law enforcement was able to arrive en masse to remove him.”
[…] Predictably enough, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also jumped right on board with Carlson’s lies after his segment aired, calling for Chansley to get a retrial (when in reality he pleaded guilty). Racist Dilbert creator Scott Adams tweeted, “Republicans need to shut down Congress until the Q-anon Shaman is released without charges or pardoned by Biden.” Other MAGA celebrities like Randy Quaid, Antonio Sabato Jr, Juanita Broaddrick, and the remaining half of Diamond and Silk also piled on.
The man was at the front of a mob that broke windows and kicked open doors of the U.S. Capitol to keep Congress from certifying the presidential election results. He made his way to the dais in the Senate chamber after the members of the Senate fled the crowd. Now, thanks to Kevin McCarthy giving Tucker Carlson license to create a false narrative of the day, Chansley is the martyr du jour. But he’s just another criminal.
KG @ #136, it works to the benefit of people suggesting that the virus didn’t have a natural origin (and especially those suggesting that it was developed as a bioweapon or accidentally released after being created by gain-of-function research) to leave the definition of “lab leak” vague and unspecified, which is why I’ve pressed people claiming some version of a “lab leak” here in the past to specify which specific scenario they’re advocating. But it’s tiresome to have to keep reiterating and running through all of the different variants of “lab leak” (including those consistent with a natural origin), particularly when people are responding primarily to one or another variant in particular (in this case, an origin in GoF research).
It’s also tiresome that people seem to expect those arguing for a natural origin to provide evidence while not shouldering that evidentiary burden themselves because they refuse to land on any one concrete and specified hypothesis. I don’t think I’ve heard the claim that the virus was “imported to China during the 2019 Military World Games” before, but I think someone making that claim should provide evidence for it taking into account all of the existing scientific evidence to date. This suggesting it could have been this, that, and the other without coming down anywhere doesn’t provide any legitimate alternative to the natural-origin hypothesis centered on the wet market.
All of that said, the podcast discusses a number of different claims.
and during his campaign, Williams unsuccessfully tried to insert the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” into his name on the ballot
Pathetic.
KGsays
SC@139,
The “natural-origin hypothesis centered on the wet market” is as vague as any other. Where did the virus originate, what species did it arrive at the market in, how did a member of that species acquire it from a bat, did it undergo significant evolution in the intermediate species (which could be singlular or plural)…? It’s quite possible these questions, or some of them, will be answered, as happened for SARS and MERS. OTOH, it’s quite possible that this hypothesis is correct, but will never be proved. The “military games” notion is one advanced by some spox for the Chinese authorities, without AFAIK any evidence except the coincidence of timing (the games took place in Wuhan in October 2019). The evidence for some involvement of the WIV is circumstantial, but that doesn’t mean it’s not evidence. The WIV is one of very few centres globally, and as far as I can discover one of just two in China (the other is in Hong Kong), that does a lot of work on bat coronaviruses (and it does seem to have emerged since the start of the pandemic that it was doing more than was originally admitted in the way of modifying them). If you put the terms “China”, “bat” and “coronavirus” into the search engine of a database of academic papers such as Scopus or Web of Science, practically every paper returned will have at least one author from WIV. Wet markets, on the other hand, are numerous. What I’m advocating is that we keep an open mind, as the DG of WHO says WHO is doing. That is an entirely legitimate stance in the current state of knowledge.
The “natural-origin hypothesis centered on the wet market” is as vague as any other.
It most certainly is not. The link to the podcast provides links to articles in the scientific literature offering evidence for that hypothesis (and I’ve posted some in the past), including genetic and epidemiological findings. This is, once again, discussed in great detail in the podcast.
Where did the virus originate, what species did it arrive at the market in, how did a member of that species acquire it from a bat, did it undergo significant evolution in the intermediate species (which could be singlular or plural)…? It’s quite possible these questions, or some of them, will be answered, as happened for SARS and MERS. OTOH, it’s quite possible that this hypothesis is correct, but will never be proved.
The people they interview are the ones who’ve studied these questions for previous viruses, and work (as they discuss, once again, in the podcast) is of course being done to drill down on the specific questions. It’s entirely possible and probably likely that we’ll never have all of the answers or that any origin hypothesis will be conclusively proved, but there is such a thing as providing evidence to support one or another hypothesis (which at the same time makes other hypotheses less likely) (of course, this requires clearly articulating an actual hypothesis, showing its plausibility, and testing it in light of existing evidence).
The “military games” notion is one advanced by some spox for the Chinese authorities, without AFAIK any evidence except the coincidence of timing (the games took place in Wuhan in October 2019).
Good grief, then why are you putting that out? This just seems irresponsible to me.
The evidence for some involvement of the WIV is circumstantial, but that doesn’t mean it’s not evidence….
OK, if you’re not interested in listening to the podcast, fine; but I’m done responding to these arguments which are covered therein.
What I’m advocating is that we keep an open mind, as the DG of WHO says WHO is doing.
We’re all doing that. I’m doing that, the podcast hosts are doing that, the scientists they interview are doing that.
Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s House is in recess again this week, no doubt in need of recovering from the grueling seven days of business they put in in the past four weeks. They’re pacing themselves, definitely, with only seven legislative work days scheduled for the next month. This might be part of a plot from McCarthy to stave off a congressional maneuver called a discharge petition Democrats and a few Republicans could use to pass a clean debt ceiling hike—it requires a lot of legislative days to pass.
Or maybe he just thinks it’s safer to his speakership to avoid the place, give the maniacs less ammunition and opportunity to pull the inevitable “motion to vacate,” no-confidence vote on him.
It certainly means that the House GOP won’t be responding to President Joe Biden’s newly released budget with one of their own any time soon.
It also blows up McCarthy’s primary talking point, that Biden’s budget and debt ceiling bargaining position is not “serious.” If you’re going to be serious about governing you kind of have to be around to do it.
McCarthy was at it again on Sunday, going on Fox Business to tell Maria Bartiromo that Biden’s proposal is “not serious” and warning Biden not to “play games with the debt ceiling.”
Why yes, it is projection all the time from the GOP. But the guy who took the debt ceiling hostage and then fell into Biden’s trap of pledging no cuts to Social Security and Medicare with absolutely no plan what he would counter with? That’s extra special. […]
[…] “Don’t play games with the debt ceiling. I’ve sat with this president. I want to negotiate with this president. This is [what] we’ve done every time before an American public wants us to,” McCarthy said, and of course because he was on Fox, there wasn’t anyone there to remind him that he started all this and also that he still hasn’t produced a budget.
Hell, he hasn’t even produced a plan for how to get to a budget, much less a plan to not default on the nation’s debt. In fact, the only thing his crew is planning for is about what happens after they force a default. That sure blows up his pretense that he really wants to negotiate the debt ceiling hike.
Right now, the only GOP “plan” out there is the Freedom Caucus’s ransom demands, that Biden roll back everything he and congressional Democrats have accomplished in the past two years and basically restore the Trump presidency. That’s what McCarthy is allowing to stand as the GOP response to Biden’s budget.
Senator Warren just wrote a NYT op ed on Bank Failures that covers most all the bases better than anywhere else I’ve read before, and some things she thinks should happen to fix them. Warren lays the blame squarely on those who changed the rules to allow this to happen, and the nincompoops who did it. The link above is a free one.
I wish Warren was the Fed Chair rather than Powell. I’m not a big fan of Warren as a politician, but I’m her number one booster as a regulator. Warren always knows the issues backwards and forwards, where the bodies are buried and why.
[…] He [Steve Shives] recounts how Tucker Carlson recently attacked Senator John Fetterman as being “mentally defective” for checking himself into Bethesda for clinical depression. He portrays Fetterman as a “broken” having “cracked” under pressure and argues that in a “proper society, we would select leaders who are strong.”
Tucker is clearly other-izing Fetterman, making him appear part of a weaker class of human more akin to something we scrape off our shoes. He’s portrayed — to quote Twister Sister — as “Worthless and Weak.”
This is a chief strategy of Nazi Shit. Debasing people and their basic humanity. Taking away their dignity and by extension their entire rights to even exist as if to say “They should be put out of their misery, they’d be better off — gone”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday called for former Vice President Mike Pence to apologize for the jokes he made about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s paternity leave and using postpartum depression as a “punchline.”
Pence said that Buttigieg took “maternity” leave and everyone else got “postpartum depression” in his absence during the annual Gridiron dinner for journalists on Saturday in Washington.
Jean-Pierre slammed the former vice president for the remarks that she said were homophobic and inappropriate.
“The former vice president’s homophobic joke about Secretary Buttigieg was offensive and inappropriate, all the more so because he treated women suffering from postpartum depression as a punchline,” she said. “He should apologize to women and LGBTQ people, who are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.” […]
Yury Mezinov, a “A Just Russia” party functionary from the Rostov region, claims the shortage of ammunition in the Russian army is felt along the whole frontline. He believes it is sabotage as he cannot find another explanation.
Subtitled video at the (Twitter) link.
KGsays
SC@142,
Yes, the “natural origin hypothesis centered on the wet market” is vague. I don’t doubt, and AFAIK almost no-one doubts, that the wet market played an important part in spreading SARS-CoV-2. I’ve read Worobey’s papers, and they provide good evidence for this, and from what I could see none for how the virus got into the wet market at all. We know this virus can pass from people to other animals and then spread among the latter (as happened in Danish mink farms) as well as the converse, so it remains quite possible it was brought into the wet market by an infected human being. I rarely listen to podcasts, particularly about complex and controversial issues – I find it a lot easier to follow and analyse arguments presented in writing. If the podcast hosts are maintaining open minds, the blurb you quoted does them a disservice.
Wonkette: ‘Fox & Friends’ Idiot Ainsley Earhardt Just Saying Maybe It Is Time For BANK RUN!11!1!1!
It may not be easy to quickly grasp exactly why Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter is a good place to start.
Not a good place to start? The grunting idiots who sit on the “Fox & Friends” couch. Unfortunately there are people in America who turn on Fox in the morning and think they are watching the news. […] might as well be watching cartoons.
[…] see this highly intellectual discussion this morning, which included host Ainsley Earhardt saying BANK RUN!111! BANK ruUUUUUnnnn!NN!N! [video at the link]
BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): So, this guy David Sacks, who’s well respected, general partner of Craft Ventures, he’s on a podcast and he’s saying he thinks more could — that more banks could go down this road. And then, Wall Street Journal writes today in their editorial that he is a “panic spreader.” So, to take it easy today and don’t let this ripple through the economy. There’s other fear is if you get rid of the regional banks, if all the regional banks say “okay if they fail, I fail,” and if we could become a country run by four major banks we all lose.
LAWRENCE JONES (CO-HOST): I understand not ensuing panic. But I think it’s time to be honest with the American people at the same time.
The talking windsocks on “Fox & Friends” are being honest. Much of the news right now is about how Fox News openly and knowingly lies to the feral hogs watching at home, but “Fox & Friends is gonna be honest.
[They] are bursting with excitement fantasizing about a financial crisis happening on Joe Biden’s watch. Surely not.
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): We need to go to our banks and take our money out.
Oh for fucks sake.
JONES: Well, I mean, I think if you’re above that $250,000 mark.
And do goddamned what with it?
Blah blah blah, more words happened after that. You think it can’t get stupider but Brian Kilmeade made it stupider.
KILMEADE: They were heavily into equity and all these Pride days around the world. Where is your focus on regulation and risk? And I think that there’s an imbalance there.
[Aaaarrrrggg]
And now we transition into how this bank collapsed because of WOKE.
Today’s conservative media figures and politicians, all of them very serious people, either believe or are pretending to believe that banks and the military and whoever else are focusing on LGBTQ+ pride instead of preventing bad things from happening. It’s the same as their belief that if Pete Buttigieg wasn’t making the Transportation Department so gay, all the planes wouldn’t have fallen out of the sky and derailed that train in Ohio. (Or whatever they are saying.)
It is one of the stupidest and most deranged — but more importantly, stupidest — trains of thought to come out of the conservative movement in decades. And that’s saying something.
[…] when a conservative says “woke,” the word is devoid of meaning apart from “thing I don’t like.” (Real Americans think the actual definition of the word “woke” is a good thing to be.)
[…] Charlie Kirk suggested the bank should have spent more time figuring out whether it could guarantee its loans, and less on “woke.” He babbled on and on and on: “Did Silicon Valley Bank get distracted about the mirage and the hologram of diversity, equity, inclusion, rather than running a business? Is this the first modern-era woke bank collapse?”
Tucker Carlson said the bank was too focused on “pioneering glass-ceiling-shattering women.” Ron DeSantis said they were “so concerned with DEI and politics,” it “diverted from them focusing on their core mission.” As if they had a business meeting one day and said “Let’s NOT do the bank parts of our job, and instead just do the gay parts.” Donald Trump Jr. said a thing.
It’s been constant. They really are all reading the exact same talking points.
Every one of them. [Tweet and quote from Wall Street Journal available at the link]
[…] In some kind of parallel reality, we could have a country where the parties disagree on economic and financial policy, and have actual arguments about how things like this happen and what to do about it. We do not live in that reality. Instead one entire party — the same party, incidentally, whose last president incited his garbage followers to commit an act of domestic terrorism in order to overturn the government — is incessantly babbling about how the bank failed because the bank was too nice to people who aren’t white supremacist Christian fascist men who at least claim to be straight.
That’s our country now.
And the dumbfuck “Fox & Friends” woman is telling people to pull their money out of the banks. […]
New Mexico, as we have previously reported, is on the verge of ending life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders. This is a wonderful thing! So far, this utterly bizarre and inhumane practice has been abolished in 33 other states, but we’ve got a long way to go before it’s eradicated entirely.
The new law will make it so those who were convicted of crimes as juveniles and sentenced to life without parole or otherwise extremely long sentences will be able apply for parole after at least 15 to 25 years depending on the crime.
As I wrote in January, this is a very big deal because:
New Mexico currently has one of the highest rates of juvenile incarceration in the nation, with 227 per 100,000 children in prison at any given time. For comparison, the United States as a whole had a juvenile incarceration rate of 114 per 100,000 children in 2019, and that is the highest youth incarceration rate of any country in the entire world. Throughout the US, 1,465 people are currently serving life without parole for juvenile offenses, which is actually a 44 percent drop since 2012
But there’s a catch!
A ProPublica investigation has revealed that the New Mexico Department of Corrections may not actually have records for all of those serving time in prison for crimes they committed as juveniles. Many have been sent to serve their time in other states, while others have just been forgotten by the system.
The New Mexico Corrections Department has lost track of nearly two dozen prisoners in its custody who are serving life sentences for crimes they committed as children, an error that could keep these “juvenile lifers” from getting a chance at freedom under a bill likely to be passed by the state Legislature within days.
As the legislation was being drafted, ProPublica asked the department for a list of all state prisoners who were sentenced to life as juveniles. Using court records, the news organization then identified at least 21 such individuals not on the state’s list. Many of them had been locked up for decades.
They’re not the only ones. ACLU of New Mexico attorney Denali Wilson has been working with those incarcerated as juveniles for years and still regularly discovers people she never heard of before and who were not included in the lists the state gave her.
Carmelina Hart, spokesperson for the corrections department, initially sent ProPublica the names of 13 people in New Mexico’s prison system who were sentenced to life as children, which she said was the extent of the cohort. […]
Asked for the names of all prisoners who would be affected by the bill, Hart said that only the state court system could provide such a list.
That caught Barry Massey, spokesperson for the New Mexico administrative office of the courts, off guard. “I am surprised that the Corrections Department claims it has no such records, given that the agency has to know the sentences imposed on someone in order to track their incarceration,” he said.
Massey said the courts do not maintain a database of individuals in prison, nor any records his team is capable of searching by prisoners’ ages at the time of their offenses. “Only the Corrections Department would have that,” he said.
Oh boy. How does that even happen? Is it that when they lock people up and throw away the key they also throw away their paperwork?
I would be more shocked if I wasn’t aware of the fact that, often, people who are supposed to be paroled end up being kept in prison for far longer than they are meant to be because someone screwed up their paperwork.
A 2020 study determined that since 2013, at least 40 prisoners in South Carolina were incarcerated longer than they should have been, because of paperwork issues — including one who was there for 2 1/2 years longer than they were meant to. Then there was that one time Texas just kept a mentally disabled man in prison for 35 years without a trial because everyone thought someone else was taking care of it. Texas, actually, loses track of people being held in pretrial detention rather frequently, completely forgetting to get them trials or let them see a public defender. [Yikes!]
[…] In New Mexico, a man named Stephen Slevin, who was incarcerated for drunk driving, was kept in solitary confinement for 2 1/2 years because people kinda just forgot he was there.
[… It’s a good thing that New Mexico is getting ready to stop sentencing children to life without parole, because clearly these people do not have their shit together enough to handle this level of responsibility.
Thankfully, Wilson says that even when she finds people the state missed, they know about the legislation and they know about the work she is doing with the ACLU, so she is confident that they will be found. Eventually.
Nothing makes more of a mockery of Switzerland’s “neutrality” than the country’s behavior during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Forged from centuries of mountain isolation amid a stormy continent, Swiss neutrality spared the country the ravages of both world wars.
Yet as the world is transformed by this ongoing war, with both Germany and Japan emerging from their post-World War II military seclusion and traditionally neutral Sweden and Finland (almost) joining NATO, Switzerland refuses to evolve its definition of neutrality, and as such, has become Russia’s unambiguous ally.
The question first arose when Switzerland refused to allow Germany to transfer its own stock of Swiss-made ammunition for the German Gepard air defense system to Ukraine. Arms sales always give the manufacturing nation veto power over subsequent transfers of any arms or munitions. Yet the spirit of the rule is to prevent weapons from being transferred/sold to unfriendly nations. The U.S. wouldn’t want Switzerland to sell an American-made F-35 jet to Russia.
But by preventing Germany from transferring the ammunition to a friendly ally, Switzerland severely devalued its own arms industry. Would Switzerland also block the transfer of German-owned but Swiss-made arms and ammunition to its NATO allies during an alliance-wide war? Given Switzerland’s words and deeds, the answer was a clear “yes.”
Since then, the Swiss have been forced to deny request after request from Germany, Spain, Denmark, and others. The Germans are particularly infuriated, and have already made clear that they will no longer be sourcing anything from their southern neighbors.
Meanwhile, actions like these further stoke fury across Europe:
Switzerland has decided to “Destroy” at least 60 of their Rapier Surface-to-Air Missile Systems and their Munitions which has angered many Pro-Ukrainians who have stated these Systems and their Missiles could have gone to Ukraine instead. [Tweet and image at the link]
Indeed, many of Ukraine’s allies have take great pains to only request defensive weapons. Yet by claiming neutrality, Switzerland has made it easier for Russia to murder Ukrainian civilians and cause billions of dollars of damage to the nation’s infrastructure. Is it really “neutral” to give one side a clear military advantage?
During war, inaction has as much impact as action. And Switzerland has gone to great lengths to ensure that its inaction aids Russia’s war effort. The country has 100 Leopard 2 A4s in storage that it has been trying to sell. Germany offered to buy them. Switzerland refused, knowing they would subsequently be transferred to Ukraine. The beneficiary, of course, is once again Russia.
The Swiss arms industry is apoplectic. They’ve already warned of lost bids and canceled orders. It is obviously in no one’s interest to purchase weapons that cannot be transferred to allies, for a continent whose defense is based on an alliance. But it goes deeper than dollar and cents.
The Hague Convention of 1907 [is] the basis for today’s Swiss neutrality. The convention required neutral states to refrain from waging war, and to maintain an equidistance between warring parties — they could sell weapons, for example, but only if they did so for all sides of a conflict. It also obliges neutral countries to ensure their territories are not used by warring forces.
This led to what the Swiss call “armed neutrality” — a commitment not just to neutrality, but to maintaining the ability to protect it. The latter is what critics now argue is under threat.
To be clear, the Swiss have never depended on a treaty to protect their neutrality. The country has maintained one of the best armies in Europe to safeguard itself. But that’s the crux of its dilemma:
“Armed neutrality needs soldiers, weapons, equipment — and an arms industry. Our neutrality has to be armed, otherwise it’s useless,” said Werner Salzmann, a member of the conservative Swiss People’s Party.
The Swiss defense industry depends on exports, he said, and could not survive without them.
Switzerland cannot safeguard its neutrality without its arms industry. But depending on shrinking exports, that arms industry will shrivel up and die.
In reality, this is a symbolic problem for the Swiss: The country is surrounded by NATO nations, none of which have designs on any Swiss territory. They can afford to wax poetic about “neutrality” without hostile nations (like Russia) on their border. And as a pluralistic democracy that shares Western values, Switzerland further benefits from access to advanced Western weapons systems like the American F-35 fighter jet.
Still, the Swiss are making no friends and definitely poisoning future relations. While opposition parties have been trying to find loopholes to allow aid to Ukraine, the ruling party has thus far blocked all efforts. Their justifications are beyond absurd:
Swiss neutrality is more important than ever, President Alain Berset said in an interview published Sunday, defending the controversial ban on transferring Swiss-made arms to Ukraine.
“Swiss weapons must not be used in wars,” he told the NZZ am Sonntag weekly.
What are Swiss weapons then? Toys? That sound you just heard was the final death rattle of the Swiss arms industry.
The Swiss care about money. Their banking industry, friendly to money launderers everywhere, holds between $50 and $200 billion in Russian assets. The Swiss have sanctioned just $8 billion of that amount.
It’s a weird kind of “neutrality” that only benefits the aggressor.
Things moved very fast early Sunday evening. As you likely now know, the troika of the Fed, the FDIC and the Treasury axed a second bank — Signature Bank of New York — and decided to guarantee all deposits at Signature and Silicon Valley Bank because of “systemic risk” to the whole banking system. As noted yesterday, the issue at least with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) seemed to a significant degree to be one of liquidity. It appears to have assets to cover the great majority of its deposits. So the costs to the FDIC should be limited, and perhaps there’s no cost at all. I’m less clear on the exact situation at Signature Bank, which had more exposure to the imploding crypto sector. But I assume it’s broadly similar.
To me the most interesting and noteworthy issue to emerge over the last 48 hours is the debate or really the unclarity about what counts as a “bailout.” The dictionary definition is simple enough. There is no specific or technical meaning. It just means action to relieve someone or some entity in financial distress. But what became clear this weekend is that quite a few people have decided post-Global Financial Crisis that a bailout is relief for shareholders. Making depositors whole is not. That’s just making depositors whole. As long as the bank’s owners get wiped out or take a severe hit, it’s not a bailout.
But there’s little basis for that distinction.
[…] This is one of those cases where a set of important policy and political questions are hidden inside a made-up word or in this case a word to which people have ascribed a specific meaning it really doesn’t have.
The tech bros in Silicon Valley don’t want to call it a bailout because that clashes with their general libertarian worldview and because of their haughty reaction to the crisis of 2008. […] others have a good reason to avoid the B word. But what about everyone else?
As a policy matter, in this case, there was a strong logic for having owners of these banks get wiped out while making the depositors whole. The former makes to punish those who made the bad decisions and avoid the moral hazard of actors paying no price for risky behavior. The latter makes sense both because there seems to be sufficient assets to cover the great majority of deposits if not all of them and also to prevent runs on other banks. But it is a bailout. It is a bailout of the depositors who had substantial uninsured deposits and saw their bank fail. That’s a bailout.
[…] if you’re undeserving, it’s a bailout. If you’re deserving, it’s not.
At the heart of the policy and political questions is under what circumstances and with what justifications the guarantors of the national financial system (Fed, FDIC, Treasury) will step in and change the rules. That question goes back to the issue of regulation and whether the guarantors of the financial system have sufficient regulatory oversight to do the job they’re charged with, to make extraordinary actions such as these as rare as possible.
It’s been widely speculated that Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, currently facing a $1.6 billion lawsuit for their part in pushing Donald Trump’s crooked and seditious election hoaxes, has soured on Trump and is turning to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the new exemplar of fascism-steeped Republicanism. There’s another big chunk of evidence for that theory today, but I warn you: You’re not going to get out of this one unscathed.
I mean, this is some premium-grade news pander. This is Simpsons “Mr. Burns runs for office” footage come to life. This is just weird, Brian. [video at the link, Brian Kilmeade and Ron DeSantis play catch while Kilmeade conducts and interview. LOL]
Go on. Go and make your little jokes about Fox News and their softball interviews. Get them out of your system.
There’s, uh, a whole lot to say about this. There are two grown men here playing catch … without even removing their tailored jackets. The janky editing is just odd, but you also can’t help but be suspicious as the cameras cut rapidly from politician to host, and you don’t actually ever see either of them successfully toss a ball to the other. It’s implied, sure. But for all we know, there’s a dude just out of the camera shot doing all the throwing because, after a round of dirt-skippers, they determined this whole “playing softball in suits” thing just wasn’t going to work out.
Where did they even get the mitts? Is a Little League team standing off-field because these two guys needed to borrow their field and some equipment, or was some DeSantis staffer tasked with carrying this out to a random ballfield?
And then there’s the meat of it, the part where presidential aspirant Ron DeSantis pauses between throws to give an extremely wooden prepared speech about his potential campaign, and even if this interview was being done on a couch or inside a broom closet, this answer is still a work of not-exactly-art.
KILMEADE: Would you think at some time, it’s safe to say, that [running for president] would will be one of your goals?
DESANTIS: [Plants both feet, begins speechmaking hand motions] I would only, I would only do stuff if I thought there was a rationale for me to accomplish things, on behalf of the people. [Kilmeade catches ball after no apparent move from DeSantis to throw it] So it’s all substance driven, about whether I could serve or not serve in a variety of capacities. [Catches ball] But I’ll tell ya, you know, as governor, and if you’re a determined executive, you know, you can make things happen, and we’ve done that in Florida.
[OMG, almost as bad as Russian propaganda, and equally hilarious.]
Oh, for sure. The theoretical DeSantis campaign is “all substance driven,” in that he would only “do stuff” if he could accomplish “things.” Things that are like the other things, the Florida things.
You just can’t get more substance than that. Doing Stuff to Accomplish Things was the name of Ron DeSantis’ just-released book, if I’m recalling correctly?
[…] There’s so much more to say. Mitt Romney only wishes he could be this mechanical on the campaign trail. The moment Ron’s asked the question, he plants his feet and goes into Disney animatronic mode; you can identify the specific frames where the pneumatics begin to crap out, and he just has to wave one hand and look solemn for a moment.
And then there’s this: [Tweet and video at the link. Trump winces and generally looks like a doofus while trying to catch a ball.]
See, that’s the difference between a photo-op and a staged interview, where you control all the cameras. We don’t know how many similar moments were edited out of Ron’s tries and Brian Kilmeade’s producers will absolutely never, ever tell us.
I’m still not entirely sure DeSantis came out of this interview looking any better, though. The whole point of agreeing to this interview was to goose presidential speculation, only to have Ron here botch it by spitting out a generic Kang-versus-Kodos line that may contain less substance per word than anything said on a television screen in the last fifty years. Things. Stuff?
I just don’t know about this Ron DeSantis hype, everyone. Sure, the Murdoch empire would like to prop him up to continue Republicanism’s explicitly white nationalist, explicitly authoritarian-minded, explicitly sedition-agnostic path. But DeSantis has the charisma of a clogged bathroom sink […]
Elon Musk is an asshole, but Starlink is proving invaluable to Ukrainian war efforts and there are no current alternatives. This excellent thread explains why:
[Beginning of the thread is available at the link. I have added more text here.] I will try to explain what makes SpaceX Starlink special in general and especially about its utility for Ukraine during the current war – plus its limitations.
I will simplify technical/operational parts and obviously skip some info that falls under Ukrainian OPSEC.
Starlink and other satellite internet services are most useful in areas without functional or reliable fixed telco infrastructure – so either remote areas where building infrastructure isn’t profitable, or areas affected by natural disasters or wars.
Starlink is the only currently operational internet satellite mega-constellation in low Earth orbit – with alternatives either still being built, or being in higher orbits (which results in slower connection, high latency, and the need for bigger/heavier terminals).
Starlink is using relatively small light phased array terminals that steer the antenna electronically – not requiring constant mechanical movements to switch between satellites.
The phased array also ensures that the radio transmissions are in the form of a tight beam with a relatively small amount of energy going into other directions. For military purposes, this means that Starlink terminals are harder to locate (especially without ELINT aircraft).
The bandwidth provided by a single basic Starlink terminal is usually ~100Mb/s download and around 10Mb/s upload and the connection has low latency. This is sufficient to stream drone footage and other real-time data sharing that allow the Ukrainian military to work effectively.
Due to the number of satellites (over 3000) that Starlink has in orbit, it always has multiple satellites overhead and so in case one or several are affected by jamming terminals are able to switch to other satellites.
[…] Fortunately for Starlink, due to SpaceX operating partially reusable orbital launch rockets (Falcon 9), SpaceX has been able to quickly increase the number of Starlink satellites in orbit at a reasonable cost – still each launch of Starlink satellites likely costs around $35-40M.
[…] Since Starlink terminals were designed for civilian use and mostly for permanent installations, constantly moving it can cause damage to some parts (mostly cabling) and they can be easily damaged.
Putting some light plastic or textile cover over Starlink terminals is advisable to lower the chance of it being spotted by Russian drones.
Despite being very resilient, Starlink is sometimes affected by Russian jamming (either of Starlink satellites or GPS) or cyberattacks.
In Ukraine, Starlink has implemented a geo-fence that limits the service to areas under the control of Ukrainian forces (this requires updates when frontlines move) – this is done to prevent the Russian military from using captured Starlink terminals for their own secure comms.
The only other known limitation is that after last year Ukraine used naval drones with integrated Starlink terminals to attack (after a better-known attack against Sevastopol) the Russian port of Novorossiysk, SpaceX implemented a limitation to limit/prevent such use (possibly just within Russia – but data isn’t clear about this limitation). Information about this limitation was released only months later and caused quite a bit of drama – but no other use of Starlink terminal by Ukraine appears to be in any way affected.
Now, let’s address controversies related to Elon Musk and Starlink in Ukraine: Elon has plenty of stupid (especially political) opinions for which he deserves criticism, but he quickly provided Starlink service to Ukraine when it was critically needed and subsidized its operating cost there – so he supports Ukraine, but that support has limits.
Summary: Starlink has a unique combination of features and capabilities that are very important for the Ukrainian ability to fight against the Russian invasion effectively and there are no current good alternatives.
————————–
War criminal Russian nationalist Igor Girkin is always happy to shit on Russian progress. [Tweet and image at the link: Girkin says almost no Russian progress in Bakhumt in the last few days. This plays into Ukrainian hands as they continue to wear down Wagner. Similarly, while some settlements were claimed captured near Avdiivka, they might as well go back under.]
Speaking of Bakhmut … [Tweet and video at the link: “Near Bakhmut, where the russian soldiers are taking major casualties, the Ukrainian drone recorded them being sent into the attack with sticks instead of rifles.”]
That’s actually not true. Other footage shows them with a rifle. That stick might’ve been a makeshift crutch.
Either this guy deserves his own Oscar, or Russian ammunition shortages are a real concern. [Tweet and video at the link]
It’s hard to square Russian crying about “shell hunger” with videos of Ukrainian forces under constant, unceasing artillery barrages. But it could all be true: At the peak of Russia’s war effort, Ukraine estimated that Russia was shooting 50,000 artillery rounds per day. Even 5,000 daily shells can be “unceasing” if Russia is dropping them all on your position.
[…] Ukrainian tank takes out Russian trench: [video at the link] That’s south of Ivanivske, southwest of Bakhmut. If a single tank and infantry fighting vehicle could slice through that trench that easily, I’ve got even higher hopes for Ukraine’s spring-or-summer combined-arms offensive.
The Hero the occupiers shot after saying “Glory to Ukraine!” was a sniper of the 119 TDF Brigade, Oleksandr Matsiyevsky. [Tweet and images at the link] […]
Link. Scroll down at the link to view these updates.
A Chinese spy balloon hovered over the midtown Manhattan headquarters of Fox News for several days but found no information, Pentagon officials have confirmed.
The balloon, reportedly frustrated in its attempt to detect anything of a factual nature emanating from the cable news network’s home base, gave up its mission and went home.
A Pentagon spokesman defended the military’s decision not to shoot down the balloon over Fox. “Honestly, we couldn’t figure out why it was there,” he said.
Sources indicate that the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, is “furious” at the military leaders who sent the balloon to spy on Fox.
“This was a waste of a perfectly good balloon,” Xi reportedly shouted.
The top diversity officer at New College of Florida has been fired, as a newly appointed crop of conservative trustees delivers on its promise to root out diversity programming from the small liberal arts institution in Sarasota.
Just before 7 am on March 3, Danny Lemoi posted an update in his hugely popular pro-ivermectin Telegram group, Dirt Road Discussions: “HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS !!!”
Hours later, Lemoi was dead.
For the last decade, Lemoi had taken a daily dose of veterinary ivermectin, a dewormer designed to be used on large animals like horses and cows. In 2021, as ivermectin became a popular alternative COVID-19 treatment among anti-vaxxers, he launched what became one of the largest Telegram channels dedicated to promoting the use of it, including instructions on how to administer ivermectin to children.
But despite Lemoi’s death, the administrators of his channel are pushing his misinformation—even as his followers share their own worrying possible side effects from taking ivermectin and some question the safety of the drug.
…
Some members of the group are taking ivermectin not only as a treatment against COVID, but as a cure-all for almost every disease—from cancer and depression, to autism and ovarian cysts—believing that every disease is caused by a parasite that is removed from the body by ivermectin, just as animals are given the drug to treat parasitic worms like tapeworm.
Lemoi also formulated an ivermectin regimen for children, and numerous members of the group reported that they were using it. [Oh, hell no.] This week alone one member wrote that she had established another group for “parents of children on the spectrum, cerebral palsy, pans/panda, downs etc.,” who are using the Lemoi’s recommended children’s dosage.
…
When some members of the group blamed Lemoi’s death on ivermectin, they were criticized in the Telegram channel; their fellow group members claimed they were spreading misinformation.
“No one can convince me that he died because of ivermectin,” one member wrote this week. “He ultimately died because of our failed western medicine which only cares about profits and not the cure.”
Despite Lemoi’s death, administrators said this week the Telegram channel would live on, and the group is attracting new members who continue to take ivermectin despite suffering serious side effects….
More at the link.
StevoRsays
Surprise, non-surprise, Turns out we have plenty of money ($ 368 Billion -yes with a B) for military submarines we don’t need to threaten China with and make a war (WWIII) more likely and ourselves a target in it but NOT for social welfare or the enivronment where we do need to spend much more money – but don’t. See :
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Russia and Ukraine are at odds over the length of the extension of the Black Sea grain deal, with Moscow seeking to extend for 60 days, and Ukraine insisting that 120 days is the minimum permitted extension. Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Grushko said the deal had been extended on the previous conditions for 60 days, however Ukraine argues that the July 2022 agreement clearly states that extensions are possible for a minimum of 120 days, and the original agreement should be amended if parties want a shorten terms.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy posted to his Telegram channel to confirm that one person has been killed and three people injured in the shelling of Kramatorsk in Donetsk region on Tuesday morning. He wrote that “six high-rise buildings were damaged”, and that “The evil state continues to fight against the civilian population. Every strike that takes an innocent life must result in a lawful and just sentence that punishes murder.”
…
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday Russia does not recognise the jurisdiction of the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague. Peskov was being asked about reports the ICC was expected to seek its first arrest warrants against Russian individuals in relation to the conflict in Ukraine shortly.
Nataliya Humenyuk, head of the joint coordination press centre of the southern defence forces of Ukraine, has claimed that over the past day, Ukrainian forces destroyed eight units of equipment and killed 14 Russian soldiers on the islands of the Dnieper River delta. Suspilne reports she said on television that the Russian army had tried to deploy observation points on them in order to see what the defence forces on the north bank of the river were preparing.
Ukraine’s defence ministry claims in its latest update that in the last 24 hours its forces have killed over 700 Russian troops. It also says that it has destroyed ten tanks, 15 armoured combat vehicles, 16 pieces of artillery and 11 drones. The claims have not been independently verified.
In its latest daily intelligence briefing, the UK’s Ministry of Defence asserts that “In recent weeks, Russian artillery ammunition shortages have likely worsened to the extent that extremely punitive shell-rationing is in force on many parts of the front. This has almost certainly been a key reason why no Russian formation has recently been able to generate operationally significant offensive action.”
The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, said on Tuesday that the likelihood that Finland would join the Nato military alliance before Sweden had increased, though Swedish membership was only a matter of time.
Lithuania’s parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to designate Russia’s Wagner mercenary group “a terrorist organisation”, accusing it of “systematic, serious crimes of aggression” in Ukraine….
Moscow-installed proxies on the east bank of Kherson Oblast prepare to leave the Russian-occupied territories, “taking away documentation and looted things,” Ukraine’s Southern Command spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk told Ukrainian Channel 24.
“This is a sign that another ‘gesture of goodwill’ is being prepared,” Humeniuk said, referring to the propaganda term that Moscow used to justify its troops being forced from previously occupied Kyiv Oblast and other Ukrainian regions.
The southern city of Kherson was liberated by Ukraine’s Armed Forces in November 2022, along with other areas on the west bank of the Dnipro River. Russian forces were pushed to the river’s east bank, from where they had been firing at the liberated territories.
According to Humeniuk, the Russian military uses the civilian population living on the Black Sea coast in Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts as “a live shield.”
“They are placing their firing positions, including MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems), right in the backyards of local residents. This makes it difficult for us to respond, but it’s not completely impossible,” Humeniuk told the TV channel. “We continue to monitor their maneuvers, movements, and intentions. I think that we will soon be able to report on good results.”…
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has said his country could supply Ukraine with MIG fighter jets in the coming four to six weeks.
Western countries that have provided Ukraine with weapons have so far declined to send fighter jets. Poland has said it would be willing to send war planes in a coalition of countries.
Warsaw’s commitment to Kyiv has been important in persuading European allies to donate heavy weapons to Ukraine, including tanks.
Vladimir Putin has been addressing workers at an aviation factory, where he said the “survival of Russian statehood” was at stake in Ukraine.
Repeating his argument that the west was determined to pull Russia apart, Putin said:
For us this is not a geopolitical task, but a task of the survival of Russian statehood, creating conditions for the future development of the country and our children.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a regular meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief’s Staff on Tuesday.
The members of the Staff heard reports from the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the commanders of the operational and strategic groups of troops on the current situation at the front.
Having reviewed the course of the defense operation in the Bakhmut sector, all members of the Staff expressed a common position on the further holding and defense of the city of Bakhmut.
The parties also analyzed the supply of weapons and ammunition to the defense units on the frontline.
They also discussed the pace and volume of delivery of equipment and weapons from Ukraine’s partners and their distribution among the groups of troops.
The meeting was attended by Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak, Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate Kyrylo Budanov, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhny, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Oleksiy Danilov, and commanders of the groups of troops and operational directions. The meeting was also attended by members of the government, heads of security and law enforcement agencies.
Fresh back [two weeks ago] from his research trip to Ukraine, Mike Kofman joins Ryan for a discussion about what he learned. They discuss the battle for Bakhmut, munitions shortages and force structure, artillery and attrition, Russia’s unimpressive offensive, and what else the West could be doing to set Ukraine up for success in a widely anticipated spring offensive.
The Grayzone published an article written in part by an AI tool, which generated fake links/references/PDFs cited in the article. An example is a Guardian “article” on the Navalny poisoning from 2014. The editors apparently never caught that the piece cited AI-imagined sources….
They asked an AI tool questions, and left links to the questions and answers from the AI in the article; also, rather than finding links to sources, the AI invented them. Screenshots at the (Twitter) link.
About a month ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attended a security conference in Germany in the hopes of conveying to the world that the United States’ support for Ukraine remains steadfast. The Kentucky Republican brushed aside chatter about his party giving up on U.S. allies.
“My party’s leaders overwhelmingly support a strong, involved America and a robust trans-Atlantic alliance. Don’t look at Twitter, look at people in power,” the GOP leader said. He added, “Reports about the death of Republican support for strong American leadership in the world have been greatly exaggerated.”
On the surface, the words were intended to reassure. But just below the surface, McConnell’s rhetoric papered over a growing fissure in Republican politics, with a sizable contingent of influential GOP voices arguing that they’re prepared to abandon Ukraine altogether.
Gov. Ron DeSantis used to side with McConnell and other party leaders on the issue. As the Florida Republican prepares to launch a presidential campaign, he’s apparently changed his mind.
A month ago, DeSantis sent an unmistakable signal, condemning the current U.S. policy as an “open-ended blank check,” which the governor said is “not acceptable.” Yesterday, as NBC News reported, the Floridian went much further.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential Republican presidential candidate, broke with many in his party Monday and told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that protecting Ukraine is not a “vital” national interest for the U.S.
The GOP governor said the United States “has many vital national interests,” but as far as he’s concerned, “a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”
The fact that DeSantis described Russia’s unprovoked invasion of an ally as “a territorial dispute” was itself extraordinary.
[…] Up until fairly recently, there was at least some ambiguity in DeSantis’ position […] Clearly, that ambiguity has now been resolved: DeSantis is now aligned with the growing contingent of his party that would abandon Ukraine and allow Putin to take control of our allied democracy.
I’m reminded anew of something New York magazine’s Jon Chait wrote last month: “Vladimir Putin has built his strategy on the assumption that he can keep throwing conscripts into the trenches of eastern Ukraine longer than the United States is willing to keep sending money and arms to Kyiv. Putin’s main hope has rested on Donald Trump returning to office in 2025. Now he has a second option [DeSantis] should Trump falter in the primary. The odds that Putin will end the war just got longer.”
A Russian fighter jet forced down a US drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday. “Our MQ-9 aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace when it was intercepted and hit by a Russian aircraft, resulting in a crash and complete loss of the MQ-9,” per the Air Force
“Several times before the collision, the [Russian] Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner. This incident demonstrates a lack of competence in addition to being unsafe and unprofessional,” Air Force says
(And just for total clarity, MQ-9’s are unmanned.)
“U.S. and Allied aircraft will continue to operate in international airspace and we call on the Russians to conduct themselves professionally and safely,” said Gen. James B. Hecker, commander, U.S. Air Forces Europe
Audio: DeSantis previously strongly supported arming the Ukrainians in 2015: “We in the Congress have been urging the president, I’ve been, to provide arms to Ukraine. They want to fight their good fight. They’re not asking us to fight it for them.”…
And called for giving them offensive and defensive weapons….
What is so telling in the most recent failed Russian attack on Vuhledar is the attack vector. It is the same like the previous attacks, focusing on the Datchas southeast from Vuhledar. Russians are running like lemmings into known defense positions.
Polish activist Justyna Wydrzynska was on Tuesday found guilty of supplying a pregnant woman with abortion pills in the Catholic country, her NGO said, in Poland’s first such case.
Poland has one of Europe’s most restrictive termination laws and all abortion is banned except in cases of rape and incest, or when the mother’s life or health is considered at risk.
“Guilty: of providing assistance,” the Abortion Dream Team organisation co-founded by Wydrzynska said on Twitter following the verdict.
It added that she was sentenced to “eight months of community service at 30 hours a month.”
Wydrzynska had faced up to three years in prison on charges of “helping with an abortion” and “unauthorised possession of medicine”.
Speaking to reporters outside the court, Wydrzynska said she would file an appeal.
“I do not feel guilty… I don’t accept the verdict,” she added.
She said she would “continue to answer the phone for Abortion Dream Team” to help women in need.
The organisation said it had helped with 44,000 abortions last year.
‘Dangerous precedent’
Amnesty International had said ahead of the trial that the case was a first in Europe.
“The case marks the first in Europe in which an activist is being prosecuted for aiding an abortion by providing abortion pills,” it said last year.
Amnesty International’s chief Agnes Callamard on Tuesday said the case set “a dangerous precedent in Poland, where abortion is nearly completely banned.”
“Today’s conviction marks a depressing low in the repression of reproductive rights in Poland: a roll back for which women and girls — and those who defend their rights — are paying a high price,” she added.
Wydrzynska was found guilty of having provided the pills to a woman in her twelfth week of pregnancy in 2020.
The woman had reached out for assistance, saying she was a victim of domestic violence and that her husband had stopped her from going to a German abortion clinic, Wydrzynska told AFP last year.
Later, while waiting at home for the abortion pills, the pregnant woman said her husband called the police, who confiscated the package and launched an investigation.
The woman later miscarried.
Wydrzynska told local media that she had been guided by empathy towards the pregnant woman, whom she did not know, having herself been in a similar situation several years ago.
Poland has long had a restrictive abortion law which was further tightened after the Constitutional Court in 2020 sided with the right-wing government to rule that terminations due to foetal defects were unconstitutional.
Thanks to the many genes dogs share with humans, dogs diagnosed with cancer are being studied to see which treatments could potentially save them and us.
The state legislature on Monday adopted House Bill 4, an omnibus voting rights bill known as the New Mexico Voting Rights Act, sending it to the governor’s desk. Among many provisions, HB 4 enables people to vote while on probation and parole… going forward, many others would regain the franchise upon release, though the bill would not help people while they are incarcerated. [Currently, only Maine, Vermont, and D.C. allow people with felony convictions to vote from prison.]
HB 4 now heads to Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, who supports it and is expected to sign it.
When she does, New Mexico will become the 26th state, plus D.C., where at least anyone who is not in prison can vote. Minnesota took this same step earlier this month.
HB 4 was championed by Democratic lawmakers….every voting Republican lawmaker in both chambers opposed it.
It contains a flurry of other measures that are meant to strengthen voting rights in the state, including the establishment of Election Day as a state holiday and the expansion of ballot access on Native land. Native people living on reservations in New Mexico did not gain the right to vote until 1948, and HB 4 addresses continued hurdles by requiring language translation at the polls, reducing the distance people on reservations must travel to cast a ballot, and allowing input from tribes on where voting precinct boundaries are set.
“This is a huge step in the right direction,” said Ahtza Chavez, executive director of NM Native Vote, an organization that advocates for the rights of Native people. “Tribes, Pueblos, and Nation will now have a Native American Voting Rights Act section in the [New Mexico] election code to build upon.”
The bill would also further automate the state’s registration system. Under the new program, the state would automatically register eligible New Mexicans when they interact with the Motor Vehicle Division, for instance while renewing a license; these new voters would later receive a mailer at home enabling them to opt out if they choose. Currently, people are asked to decide immediately, while they are still at the MVD.
Colorado made this same switch in 2019—delaying the stage at which people are asked if they want to opt out—and that resulted in a dramatic jump in the number of registrations.
HB 4 will also continue disenfranchising the roughly 5,000 New Mexicans who are imprisoned over a felony conviction. When [Democratic state Representative Gail] Chasey, one of the bill’s chief sponsors, first introduced a bill targeting felony disenfranchisement in 2019, she went for a bolder reform: abolishing it altogether.
Chasey quickly found many of her fellow lawmakers weren’t on board with enabling all citizens to vote. “They were like, ‘You mean you’re going to let them vote, too?’” she recalls them saying. “As if it’s a privilege, which it’s not. It’s a civil right.”
Former President Trump said in a recent interview that everyone who sent him letters included in his forthcoming book “kissed my a–.”
“I think they’re going to see a very fascinating life,” Trump told Breitbart News of the book. “I knew them all — and every one of them kissed my a–, and now I only have half of them kissing my a–.” [Well, that’s kinda, sorta good news.]
“Letters to Trump,” set to be released on April 25, features correspondence between the former president and “some of the biggest names in history,” including Princess Diana, Oprah Winfrey, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, per Winning Team Publishing. The collection of letters will go for $99, or $399 for an “original signed bookplate edition.” [Oh FFS]
One letter included in the book reportedly penned by John F. Kennedy Jr. thanked Trump for visiting the offices of his magazine “George.” […]
Wonkette: “South Carolina So ‘Pro-Life’ It’s Gonna Murderize Everyone Who So Much As Thinks About Having An Abortion”
South Carolina […] continues its distinguished civil rights history with new legislation that would sentence anyone who receives an abortion with the death penalty […]
Republican state Rep. Rob Harris authored the bill, the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act of 2023, which would amend the state’s laws and redefine “person” to include a fertilized egg at the point of conception. Republicans recoil at considering trans women women but are fully on board with redefining “person” to include a clump of non-sentient cells that live inside another person’s body. Twenty-one other ghouls have co-sponsored this abomination.
The proposed law would grant zygotes “equal protection under the homicide laws of the state,” at least until they mature into a Black person who interacts with the police or an antsy white guy with a gun. Methods of execution in the state include lethal injection, and since 2021, electrocution, and firing squad upon request. That’s truly barbaric, but you kick it up a notch when the state executes people because of what they do to their own bodies.
Conservative pundit Amanda Carpenter commented on South Carolina’s proposed law, “You have to call this something different than pro-life. What?” […]
However, this is somewhat disingenuous. South Carolina’s law is the logical extension of the anti-abortion argument. Is the fetus legally a person or not? If not, then the state has no business interfering in a citizen’s personal health decisions. If so, there are laws against killing people […]
Last year on “The View,” during a discussion about Texas’s six-week abortion ban, she said, “Listen, I’m pro-life. I believe that when you look at an ultrasound and you see a heartbeat, that is a life.” No, those are “amplified electrical impulses” not a fully developed heart. It’s only the simulacrum of life. She should understand the difference from having worked on Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign.
[…] Dr. Mia Brett has argued that post-Dobbs, a person arrested for having an abortion should be able to claim self-defense. […] The duty to carry a pregnancy to term, with no small health risk, is certainly more burdensome than simply walking away from a fight.
The proposed bill does not include a rape or incest exception […] These exceptions have always revealed the anti-abortionist’s hand — this is about punishing women for sex, not about protecting human life. The exceptions were also intended to keep suburban white women voting for anti-abortion Republican candidates. […]
Republican House Rep. Nancy Mace from South Carolina expressed her alarm last week: “To see this debate go to the dark places, the dark edges, where it has gone on both sides of the aisle, has been deeply disturbing to me as a woman, as a female legislator, as a mom, and as a victim of rape.” […]
Lady, this is your Supreme Court and radical rightwing government. […] Bottom line: Forcing anyone to continue a pregnancy against their will under any circumstance is monstrous.
In the section of Mace’s website perversely labeled “women’s rights,” she’s claimed that “the radical view of abortions for any reason up until birth is barbaric and not supported by the vast majority of Americans. Some say, that doesn’t ever happen. But the fact is, up to 10,000 late term abortions happen every year.” These abortions are not performed for the EVILUZ but because of serious, often heart-breaking complications. Once again, Mace spreads easily debunked misinformation to promote a self-serving “both sides” narrative.
The best way to protect the victims of rape from this obscene state overreach is to keep abortion legal, as it existed for almost 50 years under Roe v. Wade. Smiling fake moderates like Mace knew what would happen when their buddies up and down the ticket got elected. They can’t play ignorant now.
As Wonkette notes, Ron DeSantis has changed his tune: “Ron DeSantis Can March His Little White Boots In Lockstep With Putin, Just Like Trump And Tucker!”
Some polls are showing a real race between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, so it was time for Mr. DeSanctimonious himself, Mr. DeSanctus for short — because Donald Trump knows what those words mean! [Trump is failing when it comes to making up a nickname for the Florida governor.]— to give Tucker Carlson a pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian statement to read on his show. […]
Did Tucker make Ron swear an oath in Russian on Zoom after the show? Just asking.
Anyway, DeSantis spewed every Kremlin line in the book in his statement on Russia’s war against Ukraine.
He said:
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement that Mr. Carlson read aloud on his show. […]
“The Biden administration’s virtual ‘blank-check’ funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes,’ without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges,” he said. […]
“F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table,” he added. “These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.”
Ooh, “territorial dispute.” That’s spoonfed right out of Vladimir Putin’s butthole. Know who calls it a “border dispute”? Tucker. Just a wee “territorial dispute” they’re having, when Russia drives tanks across the border and starts firing missiles at Ukrainian babies’ faces. Russia didn’t actively start this genocidal war. These two countries are just having a little fight.
DeSantis says it’s not in our national interest to deter Russia’s warmongering, and also weirdly makes sure to say we should not help in any way that would “enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders.” You know, because of all Ukraine’s aggressive behavior up to now.
On top of that, you have “blank check” and refusing to give Ukraine the weapons it needs, plus a soupçon of scaremongering about nuclear war, which is exactly the kind of concern-trolling rhetoric that makes Putin sleep well at night. He can rest easy knowing President DeSantis wouldn’t help Ukraine win a conventional war against Russia […]
Meanwhile, Putin is just sitting there […] watching these boys fight to prove who loves him the best.
The yapping continued:
“A policy of ‘regime change’ in Russia (no doubt popular among the D.C. foreign policy interventionists),” Mr. DeSantis said, “would greatly increase the stakes of the conflict, making the use of nuclear weapons more likely. Such a policy would neither stop the death and destruction of the war, nor produce a pro-American, Madisonian constitutionalist in the Kremlin. History indicates that Putin’s successor, in this hypothetical, would likely be even more ruthless. The costs to achieve such a dubious outcome could become astronomical.”
Mr. DeSantis added, “We cannot prioritize intervention in an escalating foreign war over the defense of our own homeland, especially as tens of thousands of Americans are dying every year from narcotics smuggled across our open border and our weapons arsenals critical for our own security are rapidly being depleted.”
Kremlin/Tucker hallucinations that America is pushing regime change in Russia? Check. More scaremongering about nuclear war? Check. Everything Putin has ever wished upon a star? Check check check check check.
DeSantis even [complained about] the sanctions the Biden administration and our allies have put on Russia. It’s pretty much a full surrender. […]
The New York Times noted that other potential and declared Republican candidates — Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Tim Scott — are far more supportive of Ukraine. All together they must account for, what, two or three percent of the Republican primary vote? But credit where credit is due, as those folks and also Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell actually want President Joe Biden to do more for Ukraine.
[…] Several news outlets note that in the past, DeSantis has been much tougher on Russia, but not anymore. [See SC’s comment 173]
And really, it makes sense that DeSantis would ultimately end up on Putin’s side of the fence. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a hero to his people and the free world. Vladimir Putin is a despot who loves Don’t Say Gay Laws, bullying the press, fascism, and lying.
Maybe he can get some little cute white boots in his size and he and DeSantis can do little marches together.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #180…
They’re going to have to prosecute God for all those “spontaneous” miscarriages. And if they can’t catch God to put him in the dock, they can grab the nearest member of the clergy as a representative.
Had Congress and the Federal Reserve not rolled back the stricter oversight, S.V.B. and Signature would have been subject to stronger liquidity and capital requirements to withstand financial shocks. They would have been required to conduct regular stress tests to expose their vulnerabilities and shore up their businesses. But because those requirements were repealed, when an old-fashioned bank run hit S.V.B., the bank couldn’t withstand the pressure — and Signature’s collapse was close behind.
On Sunday night, regulators announced they would ensure that all deposits at S.V.B. and Signature would be repaid 100 cents on the dollar. Not just small businesses and nonprofits, but also billion-dollar companies, crypto investors and the very venture capital firms that triggered the bank run on S.V.B. in the first place — all in the name of preventing further contagion.
Elizabeth Warren in 2018, during Trump’s extra-awful administration:
“On the 10th anniversary of an enormous financial crash, Congress should not be passing laws to roll back regulations on Wall Street banks,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in an interview. “The bill permits about 25 of the 40 largest banks in America to escape heightened scrutiny and to be regulated as if they were tiny little community banks that could have no impact on the economy.”
Commentary:
[…] The new regulations passed in 2018 allowed all but the very biggest banks — those with assets of over $250 billion — to avoid the liquidity requirements and stress tests (Dodd-Frank had set the “too big to fail” bar at $50 billion). Even before the 2018 bank bill passed, we noted, several banks subjected to Federal Reserve scrutiny “have already been found to have been taking supposedly prohibited risks with investors’ money.”
Well gosh, it turns out that if you leave big banks to their own devices, they get up to mischief in pursuit of profits. Who could have predicted such a thing?
In her op-ed, Warren calls for the 2018 deregulation to be reversed by “Congress, the White House and banking regulators,” at a minimum. Rep. Katie Porter (D-California), who’s running for the Senate in 2024, is already working on a bill to do that, and President Joe Biden has also called for the regulations to be tightened. […]
Bank regulators must also take a careful look under the hood at our financial institutions to see where other dangers may be lurking. Elected officials, including the Senate Republicans who, just days before S.V.B.’s collapse, pressed Mr. Powell to stave off higher capital standards, must now demand stronger — not weaker — oversight.
[Regulators hold make changes to how deposit insurance works,] so that both during this crisis and in the future, businesses that are trying to make payroll and otherwise conduct ordinary financial transactions are fully covered — while ensuring the cost of protecting outsized depositors is borne by those financial institutions that pose the greatest risk.
Where needed, Congress should empower regulators to recover pay and bonuses. Prosecutors and regulators should investigate whether any executives engaged in insider trading or broke other civil or criminal laws. […]
On Rachel Maddow’s show, Warren noted that she had voted against retaining Jerome Powell as Chair of the Federal Reserve, and that Powell had taken the weakened regulations and pushed them into more dangerous territory during the Trump administration. https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
Choose the segment titled “Senator Warren on how to fix what Trump broke in banking rules.”
[map at the link] Disinformation continues and the battle for Bakhmut seems no closer to conclusion, which serves Ukraine’s purpose in draining Russian combat power. […] Wagner will immolate itself with brutal warfighting to advance political goals in the Kremlin. Wagner forces are the very example of chaotic security risks with poorly trained former prisoners among their forward ranks. [Another map at the link]
Russian milbloggers continue to speculate about a prospective Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine, suggesting increasing concern in the Russian information space about Ukrainian combat capabilities as Russian forces pin themselves on offensive operations in Bakhmut.
The milbloggers largely agreed that Ukrainian forces would prioritize an offensive in the south against Berdyansk-Melitopol in Zaporizhia Oblast or Mariupol-Volnovakha in Donetsk Oblast, but some claimed that Ukrainian forces have enough combat power to conduct a second counteroffensive either in another area of southern Ukraine or along the Kupyansk-Svatove line in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast.
A Wagner-affiliated milblogger agreed with ISW’s prior assessments on the Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut, claiming that Ukrainian forces are grinding Russian forces’ best available infantry around Bakhmut to reduce Russian forces’ capability to stop any Ukrainian advances.
The milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces would be able to drive south and face minimal Russian resistance in southern Ukraine, unlike other areas of the front line. Another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces would target southern Ukraine because a “destroyed Crimea” holds strategic importance while a “destroyed Donbas” does nt.
Russian State Duma Deputy Dmitry Kuznetsov claimed that Ukrainian forces would target the Kerch Strait Bridge in Crimea in a months-long interdiction campaign like the Antonivskyi Bridge in Kherson Oblast and called on Russian forces to quickly develop anti-drone warfare to defend the critical ground lines of communication (GLOCs) connecting Crimea to mainland Russia. http://www.understandingwar.org/...
Key Takeaways
A member of the Kremlin-affiliated Valdai Discussion Club accused Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin of pursuing political objectives in Russia that are endangering Wagner forces in Bakhmut. This attack on Prigozhin is in line with ISW’s March 12 assessment that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) may be deliberately expending Wagner forces in Bakhmut to derail Prigozhin’s political aspirations.
Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov continues efforts to maintain Chechnya’s relevance in the Russian political and military sphere.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko met with Iranian officials in Tehran on March 13 to expand bilateral cooperation and bolster sanctions mitigations.
[…] A Russian State Duma bill aiming to raise the conscription age suggests that the Kremlin is not planning to conduct full mobilization in the future.
[…] Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk confirmed that Russia has illegally deported 2,161 Ukrainian orphans to Russia.
[…] Russian forces continued making advances in and around Bakhmut but have not succeeded in completing a turning movement, envelopment, or encirclement of the city as of March 13.
Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks across the Donetsk Oblast front line.
Ukrainian forces continue to conduct raids against areas in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast.
Subordination of mobilized Russian military personnel to Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic (DNR/LNR) formations is generating increasing discontent.
Russian occupation officials continue to introduce new provisions to discourage and restrict the use of the Ukrainian language in educational facilities.
After several weeks, the training of Ukrainian soldiers in the use of Leopard 2 battle tanks in Munster in Germany is nearing completion. The soldiers are now able to use the modern main battle tanks, 18 of which Germany is sending to Ukraine in the coming days.
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into last week’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, three sources familiar with the matter confirmed to NBC News on Tuesday. The department’s probe is in its early stages, and part of it will examine whether bank executives sold any stock prior to the collapse, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Novo Nordisk A/S is set to cut the U.S. list prices for several insulin drugs by up to 75%, the latest big drugmaker to make steep price reductions amid pressure to curb diabetes-treatment costs. Novo, one of the biggest sellers of insulin in the U.S. and around the world, said Tuesday it would cut the list price of its NovoLog insulin by 75% and the prices for Novolin and Levemir by 65% starting in January 2024.
It was about a week ago when Fox News’ Tucker Carlson started taking full advantage of his exclusive access to Jan. 6 security camera footage. Thanks to the special treatment the controversial television personality received from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Carlson was able to cherry-pick portions of the videos to tell the story that suited his political agenda.
This did not go unnoticed. Congressional Democrats were outraged, as were White House officials. News organizations published a series of reports making clear that Carlson’s coverage painted a twisted picture. Several congressional Republicans dismissed the Fox host’s coverage as wrong — one GOP senator went so far as to call it “bull—-“ — while U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger was incensed, slamming Carlson for spreading “offensive and misleading conclusions” about the insurrectionist violence, adding some of the host’s on-air assertions were “outrageous and false.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell soon after endorsed and associated himself with Manger’s criticisms.
But as it turns out, federal prosecutors weren’t pleased, either. My MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin highlighted a Justice Department filing over the weekend that pushed back against Carlson’s deceptive framing.
Sunday’s filing by the DOJ came in response to Proud Boys member Dominic Pezzola’s motion to dismiss the government’s case against him, citing Carlson’s March 6 show on Fox News. Pezzola, who is now on trial, is charged with seditious conspiracy and other counts in connection with Jan. 6. … Pezzola’s attempt to use Carlson’s ploy to free himself of charges allowed the DOJ to effectively call out the Fox News host’s scheme.
Though federal prosecutors were more diplomatic than some on Capitol Hill, they were just as eager to discredit Carlson’s chosen footage. “Once tethered to facts and reality, defendant Pezzola’s arguments quickly unravel,” prosecutors wrote.
Of course, the seditious conspiracy charges against Pezzola make his case especially notable, but as NBC News reported, the defendant isn’t the only one trying to use the Fox News program as part of their legal strategy:
In motions and on social media, Jan. 6 defendants and their supporters are convinced that a couple of out-of-context clips of security video that Carlson’s team aired, along with a database of video that Carlson had access to thanks to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., are going to break their cases open. Some have even suggested the tapes could spring people caught on tape violently assaulting police officers on Jan. 6 from prison.
Carlson, in other words, hasn’t just drawn fire from lawmakers, journalists, the Capitol Police, and federal prosecutors, he’s also giving “false hope“ to Jan. 6 defendants — many of whom don’t realize how deceptive his coverage has been. […]
Josh Marshall discusses why the GOP House hearings have been so lame:
[…] here are two basic drivers worth considering.
The first is a much more aggressive Democratic posture and some basic differences in how conventional media is operating. I’ve mentioned a few times that mammoth 300+ page House Democratic staff report that basically kneecapped Jordan’s whole “weaponization” song and dance before it even got started. That’s just dramatically different from what we saw in earlier House GOP vs Democratic President eras. Democrats are not spending any time approaching these hearings as efforts to do anything real or legitimate. […]
Conventional media is also acting differently, […] Is it a reaction not simply to the revelations about Fox coming out of the Dominion lawsuit but the slow-motion revelations of the last two years […]? I’m unclear on the driver precisely. But the media reaction is different.
The other part of this is the nature of the investigations themselves. At one level, they’re nonsensical: the liberal FBI plotting against conservatives. [LOL] […] Then there’s just the pure phoning it in. [Yep. They don’t do their homework.] This week Comer pressed the claim that Joe Biden threatened to fire the lead Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son and Burisma back in 2015. This claim was part of what got President Trump impeached the first time and was thoroughly discredited all the way back in 2019. Even for mainstream media reporters dying to give the benefit of the doubt, it’s just old news. […]
The reason I come back to is rooted in the investigations themselves. They’re mostly not rooted in even claims of wrongdoing. They’re focused on alleged unfairness about things in the past and, more specifically, they’re focused on re-litigating the complaints about Donald Trump.
Take the Rosetta Stone of current GOP furor: Hunter Biden’s laptop. In theory, this is the key to the secrets of what Republicans now call “The Biden Crime Family.” But its contents have now been rummaged through for almost two and a half years. There’s not much more to say about it. And saying the same thing over again not surprisingly doesn’t get a huge amount of attention. But the real energy behind the Hunter Biden Laptopism isn’t about the thing itself. It’s about re-litigating the alleged unfairness of the fact that it didn’t turn the 2020 presidential campaign in Trump’s favor. [Yep. Stupidity and delusion.]
[…] It’s fundamentally a Donald Trump “people weren’t fair to me” argument from going on three years ago. It’s not a new thing. It’s a demand to rehash an old tantrum. [And to rehash debunked claims.]
That 300+ page Democratic report into the “weaponization” hearing tells a similar story. The common theme through Jordan’s proposed hearings is re-litigating Jan. 6th and claims that the participants in it were falsely accused or unfairly treated. […]
It’s much the same as the “lab leak theory,” which is also another focus of House investigations. That one has the novelty of at least being an ongoing question of some significance. But like The Laptop and Weaponization, the energy of the quest isn’t really about the question itself. It’s really focused on the dubious claim that for a period of months almost three years ago this still entirely unproven (though possible) theory wasn’t taken as seriously as its proponents claim it should have been. At its core it’s about claims of unfairness and double standards in the past, mostly about Donald Trump and his supporters getting done wrong by “the establishment” […]
They’re backward looking. They are a particular kind of grievance-driven special pleading that only really matters to a minority of the electorate. And at core they’re mostly about Donald Trump.
[…] Mike Pence is rightly getting a lot of backlash for the trashy “joke” he made about Pete Buttigieg going on “maternity leave” when his and Chasten’s kids were born. See, that’s where the regular people consultant could have helped Pence out. They could have explained to him that casual rightwing Christian homophobia is not acceptable in polite society, and is instead the refuge of the classless. They could have said “Hey, Mike, maybe this would be a good time to make a sports joke that isn’t about the Buttigieg family!”
Of course, making juvenile homophobic jokes about the Buttigieg family, jokes that would have been tacky in 1995, has been de rigueur for insecure rightwingChristian fascists pretty much since the day they met him. They’ve really zeroed in on the fact that he took paternity leave. Also they love to sneer and insinuate that he’s bad at his job because he is a gay diversity hire.
Mike Pence is basically the weirdest rightwing Christian of them all. So yeah, he gon’ make insecure homophobic gay jokes. […]
As we wrote in 2017 of Pence, reflecting on his time as governor of Indiana:
He called for AIDS funding to be diverted to “ex-gay” therapy, because why help AIDS patients if they’re not sorry for their wrong-fucking? He [defended] that awful Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would have allowed people to discriminate against all the gays they want, as long as they promise they’re doing it for Jesus. Even after a massive backlash led Indiana to pass a “fixed” version of the bill that wasn’t quite as gay-hatey, Pence kept looking for ways to discriminate against the gays.
[Jane] Mayer quotes Pete Buttigieg, the openly gay Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who sums it up simply: “He’s a zealot.”
[…]
Chasten Buttigieg responded:
An honest question for you,@mikepence, after your attempted joke this weekend. If your grandchild was born prematurely and placed on a ventilator at two months old – their tiny fingers wrapped around yours as the monitors beep in the background – where would you be?
Chasten also shared a link, inside a tweet addressed to Pence that said, “I’ll leave this here for you should you want to know more about the kids you are so eager to use as a punchline.” It’s a blog post the dads wrote about their first year parenting their prematurely born babies, and all the special health needs and scares they’ve gone through. […]
Just seen & sorry for the short notice but on the off chance anyone else in Adelaide sees this in time there is a protest tomorrow at Parliament House 12 noon, Adelaide against the visit by British anti-trans and anti-choice bigot “Posie Parker” – see :
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Russia’s defence ministry will start a new recruitment campaign on 1 April, with the aim of recruiting 400,000 professional soldiers to the Russian army, according to a report.
Radio Svoboda, citing several regional media outlets, has reported that the Russian defence ministry has already sent orders to regions indicating the number of people with whom military contracts should be signed.
According to the plan, Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk oblasts will have 10,000 contractors each, it said. In Perm Krai, 9,000 individuals will reportedly be recruited.
The main part of the work will be carried out by military enlistment offices, and governors will be responsible for the implementation of the plan, it said.
Russian military recruitment offices are trying to compensate for its losses in specialised soldiers, such as tank drivers and artillerymen, the Vyorstka outlet has reported.
…Even if Trump Media and its officers face no criminal exposure for the transactions, the optics of borrowing money from potentially unsavory sources through opaque conduits could cloud Trump’s image [LOL] as he seeks to recapture the White House in 2024….
Exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui claims in this post [screenshot at the (Twitter) link – no translation] that FBI agents raided his home today at 5am and brought him in for questioning. Sources have said Guo is being investigat[ed] by the US Attorney in SDNY and the SEC for possible fraud and money laundering.
Steve Bannon, who Guo has paid as an adviser, was involved in Guo business ventures I have heard are part of the federal investigation.
France saw on Wednesday an eighth day of strikes against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Garbage piled up in Paris and rail services were cancelled, with trade unions preparing a show of force as Macron’s pension overhaul neared its finale in parliament. The strikes came after Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said Tuesday that there are enough votes in the lower house National Assembly to pass the legislation. Follow FRANCE 24’s live blog for all the latest developments….
It may be human to err, but Toni Hamel’s characters take mistakes and futility to irrational conclusions. The artist (previously) is known for her keen wit and observations of contemporary life, which she translates into oil paintings that place folly at the center: a woman paints red stripes onto a tulip’s petals, a man gestures toward a celestial Amazon logo, and a team numbers clouds suspended in the sky.
Many of Hamel’s works comment on inadequate responses to major issues like the climate crisis and social inequities, and she often paints scenes with figures undertaking unhelpful and unrelated actions to remedy the problem. Her “Activist” paintings, for example, depict a melting arctic and figures attempting to stop the loss of life and landscape through words alone. Laced with humor and satire, Hamel considers her work a form of protest and “a reflection of my general preoccupations as an artist.”
Currently living and working in Kingston, Ontario, Hamel will have many of the pieces shown here at CK Contemporary in San Francisco in the coming weeks. You can find an archive of her works on her site and Instagram….
Warsaw has received “clear declarations” from several countries willing to supply Ukraine with MiG-29 fighter jets, the Polish government’s spokesman Piotr Muller said on March 15, as cited by Bloomberg.
Muller didn’t name those countries.
A day before, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that Warsaw could transfer “a limited number” of Soviet-era jets to Ukraine within the next four to six weeks.
Earlier, Slovakia’s Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad expressed his readiness for joint delivery of MiG-29s with Poland. However, a corresponding decision of the Slovak government has been delayed by political infighting before the country’s early elections in September, according to Bloomberg.
Slovak media outlet Pravda reported on March 15 that the country’s government has already started discussing the delivery of MiG-29 jets to Ukraine, and the negotiations with international allies are ongoing.
Slovakia’s Deputy Prime Minister Veronika Remišová said, cited by Pravda, that Slovakia no longer needed the ten MiG-19s it was considering sending Ukraine. “It would be best for Slovakia to give them to Ukraine,” she added.
NATO member states Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania also have MiG-29 fighters in their stockpiles.
On March 14, the United States repeatedly claimed it would not oppose the decision of other countries to transfer combat aircraft to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Kyiv’s allies, including the U.S., have so far refused to supply Western fighter jets to Ukraine, such as the U.S.-built F-16, in service since the 1970s and operated by over 20 nations.
Critics argue that allies’ reluctance to supply F-16, Typhoon, Dassault fighter jets and long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine will prevent Kyiv from launching a counteroffensive and liberating the rest of Ukrainian territory. Ukraine’s lack of advanced aircraft and missiles will likely prolong Russia’s war of aggression and result in thousands of deaths.
Soldiers of the 93rd Separate Mechanized Brigade shot down a Russian Su-24 supersonic tactical bomber near Donetsk Oblast’s Bakhmut, the brigade’s spokeswoman Iryna Rybakova told Hromadske on March 15.
Ukraine’s Presidential Office head Andrii Yermak earlier published a video on Telegram showing the aircraft’s downing.
The footage shows that the plane’s pilot managed to eject with a parachute. Ukraine’s Air Force hasn’t yet commented on the news.
Earlier the same day, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported that Russia had lost 304 airplanes and 289 helicopters since the beginning of its all-out war against Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Russia, China, and Iran have started the Security Belt-2023 joint maritime exercises in the Gulf of Oman, which will last until March 19, according to the Chinese Defense Ministry.
The three countries reportedly plan to practice aerial reconnaissance, rescue operations, and maneuvering during the drills developed from previous joint exercises held in 2019 and 2022.
The joint maritime exercises aim “to deepen the practical cooperation among the navies of the participating countries,” the Chinese ministry wrote in its press release….
One of our news sources is having technical trouble:
As many of you have noticed, Daily Kos has been down for over 24 hours.
For those who want to know exactly what is happening, the tl;dr version is that Amazon Web Services, our web hosting service, crashed our site. The damage was systemic (Reddit was seemingly heavily affected). But while other affected sites were able to get back up, we’ve had some weird situation were stories created during the time we were intermittently up and down continue to crash the site if they are updated. So we would periodically come back up, only to have someone, somewhere, update a story and bring it all crashing back down.
We have identified a fix and will be back up soon.
Now that Republicans control North Carolina’s state Supreme Court, the new GOP majority appears likely to scrap the state’s existing congressional map and clear the way for new Republican gains.
The move could moot the U.S. Supreme Court’s showdown over powers of state legislatures
[…] Republicans in the state, if the case breaks their way, could put a new map in place that would have 11 Republican-leaning districts and three Democratic-leaning ones — a significant boost for Republicans’ hopes of keeping the U.S. House. […]
There was still some modicum of ambiguity in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ position on Ukraine before this week. On Monday night, the Florida Republican removed all doubt.
In response to a question from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, the governor argued that protecting Ukraine is not a “vital” national interest for the United States. DeSantis added that, as far as he’s concerned, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of its neighbor should be seen as “a territorial dispute.” New York’s Jon Chait applied more granular scrutiny to the Floridian’s written response, and found that DeSantis’ position gets even more problematic the closer one looks.
Before considering the domestic implications, it’s worth pausing to appreciate an international audience. Writing for Puck News, Julia Ioffe reported:
[Julia Davis, who founded Russian Media Monitor] noted that Kremlin state media has been elated at DeSantis’s statement on Ukraine. “It sent them into ecstasy,” Davis told me. “They call him No. 2, because Trump is still No. 1. They’re saying that the likes of [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell], their days are numbered and MAGA Republicans are the future. They’re very excited and it’s giving them something to hope for, that Ukraine will just be handed over to them with no more help from the U.S.”
The headline on Ioffe’s report: “Putin’s Boy from Tallahassee.”
The geopolitical significance matters. As we discussed yesterday, if Vladimir Putin believes U.S. support for Ukraine effectively has an expiration date — a Republican White House would abandon our ally after the 2024 elections — then it increases the likelihood that the Russian leader will keep the war going, hoping to wait out the incumbent Democratic administration.
But while Moscow might’ve been delighted with the Florida governor’s rhetoric, many of DeSantis’ partisan brethren were far less pleased. NBC News reported:
Republican senators broke with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday over his remarks that defending Ukraine against Russian aggression wasn’t a “vital” U.S. interest. “I completely disagree with his comments,” said Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. About a half-dozen of Wicker’s GOP colleagues voiced varying degrees of opposition to DeSantis’ remarks Monday night on Fox News.
Among those speaking out was a fellow Florida Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio, who rejected DeSantis’ position entirely. “I don’t know what he’s trying to do or what the goal is,” the senator said. “Obviously, he doesn’t deal with foreign policy every day as governor.”
That’s true, though DeSantis did serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee for six years, so suggesting that he’s clueless about foreign policy doesn’t entirely work. (Indeed, when DeSantis was in Congress, he held the opposite position that he’s pushing now — a point Donald Trump was eager to emphasize yesterday.)
Why do these developments matter? In part, of course, because Russia is paying close attention. It’s also of interest to see DeSantis face the most significant intraparty pushback of his career, just as he prepares to launch a bid for national office.
But just as notable is the fact that the Republican Party no longer has a clear foreign policy anymore, and the divisions within the party — members vs. members, leaders vs. base, candidates vs. candidates — are growing more pronounced, and there’s no reason to believe these fissures will be resolved anytime soon.
Allies of Donald Trump fired the latest political attack on Ron DeSantis on Wednesday, saying they would file an ethics complaint claiming that the Florida governor is using his office to mount a “shadow presidential campaign.”
DeSantis’ activity – including travel to primary states, a book deal and meetings with potential donors and campaign staff – “violates state and federal campaign finance laws,” said the draft of the complaint addressed to the Florida Commission on Ethics and provided by Make America Great Again, Inc., a political action committee that backs Trump…
Next they will be complaining the DeSantis hasn’t paid off his mistress.
House Republican leaders do not yet have a budget plan of their own, but in broad strokes, they have a relatively specific goal in mind: The new House GOP majority wants to balance the budget in 10 years while protecting Trump-era tax breaks, and without touching Medicare and Social Security. Much of the party also insists on shielding funding for the Pentagon and veterans.
[…] Dan Meyer, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s chief of staff, has privately expressed concern that meeting such a goal “will prove difficult, if not impossible.” The article added that Meyer recently marveled at “the seeming absurdity” of the circumstances.
This might’ve been understating the case. Politico reported:
Senate Democrats are touting a new analysis from federal budget experts that illustrates what they say is the mathematical impossibility of GOP plans to balance the federal budget over 10 years, while extending Trump-era tax cuts and leaving Social Security, Medicare, defense and veterans benefits intact.
According to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released yesterday, if Republicans want to balance the budget within 10 years, without touching entitlements, military spending, or veterans care, they’d have to cut 86% of federal spending on everything else.
And by “everything else,” I’m being quite literal. To make the budget arithmetic work, Congress would have to cut 86% of federal spending on border security. And agriculture. And air-traffic control. And law enforcement. And environmental protections. And a few thousand other priorities that benefit Americans every day.
What’s more, that 86% figure is based on the assumption that Trump-era tax cuts would be allowed to lapse altogether. If Republicans intend to keep the ineffective Trump-era tax breaks in place — and we already know they do — then the budget math collapses altogether: Congress could cut 100% of “everything else,” and by the CBO’s estimates, the budget still wouldn’t balance in 10 years. [Astonishing.]
Politico’s report added that two Democratic senators — Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, and Oregon’s Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee — requested the CBO report and eagerly touted the findings.
“As this analysis shows, no amount of cuts can make their math add up,” Whitehouse said in a statement. “It is a farce.” Wyden added, “These numbers show that Speaker McCarthy made impossible promises to land his job, and that’s seriously alarming with a catastrophic default getting closer every day.”
This appears to leave the House Republican leadership with a small handful of choices.
They can give up on their unrealistic goal.
They can keep their goal, but propose cuts to social insurance programs and the military.
They can keep their goal, but agree to roll back ineffective Trump-era tax cuts.
I can’t wait to see which of these options GOP leaders choose.
Minnesota’s state Senate this week considered legislation to provide public-school students access to free meals, and the bill’s author, state Sen. Heather Gustafson, made a compelling case. The Democratic legislator explained that roughly one in six children in the state face food insecurity, and providing them with school meals would make a world of difference.
“Being hungry makes learning almost impossible,” Gustafson said. “Let’s feed the kids.”
As NBC News reported, one of her colleagues didn’t quite see it that way.
A Republican state senator in Minnesota said Tuesday he was voting against a bill to provide free breakfast and lunch for school students in part because he’d never encountered anyone in the state who was hungry.
That summary might sound like an exaggeration. It’s not.
“I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry,” state Sen. Steve Drazkowski said in his floor remarks. “I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says they don’t have access to enough food to eat.” [video at the link]
It’s a striking perspective. This Republican lawmaker hasn’t met Minnesotans struggling with food insecurity, so therefore, he doesn’t see the point in providing food to hungry children.
[…] families struggling with food insecurity exist, whether politicians know them personally or not. A Washington Post report noted, “There were 5.5 million visits to Minnesotan food pantries in 2022, a record high and an increase of 1.9 million visits from the previous year, according to the nonprofit Hunger Solutions Minnesota.”
“If he’s never met anyone who’s hungry, he’s not looking,” Colleen Moriarty, the nonprofit’s executive director, told the Post. “His eyes may not be open.”
[…] If this Republican legislator were to take the time to visit different communities, meet families struggling to put food on the table, and speak with young people who go to school hungry, would it alter his perspective? Would he rethink his opposition to bills like the one that reached the state Senate floor yesterday? Would it have any effect on his governing vision at all?
Ultimately, Drazkowski’s argument — to the extent that one could characterize it as an argument — proved unpersuasive. The bill passed the Democratic-led chamber with four GOP votes. Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, said he’ll be “proud to sign it into law.”
Good news. The dunderheaded Republican’s perspective (or lack of perspective) did not prevail.
And Republicans are always complaining that Democrats are elitists with no understanding of the common people. Sheesh. Sen. Steve Drazkowski proves the opposite is often true.
A Chinese billionaire closely tied to Stephen K. Bannon was arrested on Wednesday morning on federal fraud and money laundering charges, Manhattan federal prosecutors said.
Prosecutors hit exiled magnate Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, Ho Wan Kwok, and other aliases, with ten criminal counts relating to an alleged fraud scheme worth $1 billion.
Per an indictment dated March 6 but unsealed on Wednesday, Guo and an associate named William Je created a “series of complex fraudulent and fictitious businesses” through which they purportedly defrauded thousands of investors.
Guo moved to the U.S. in 2015, and presented himself as a billionaire fleeing persecution from the Chinese Communist Party.
After Trump came into power, Guo cultivated a close relationship with Bannon, then recently departed from The Donald’s administration. Bannon, Axios reported, signed a $1 million contract with a Guo firm for “consulting services” in 2019.
Bannon also served on the board of a non-profit that Guo formed called the Rule of Law Society, before departing that role in 2021. When federal agents nabbed Bannon in 2020 on allegations of fraud related to the We Build the Wall fundraiser, he was located on Guo’s yacht.
[…] Federal prosecutors say that non-profits and companies formed by Guo served his alleged financial conspiracy.
[…] Prosecutors accuse Guo of using his fame to lure people into investments, including a membership organization divided into “farms” and a purported crypto “ecosystem” called the “Himalaya Exchange.”
With the money, prosecutors say, Guo allegedly obtained a Porsche, a Rolls Royce, a “superyacht,” a $62,000 smart TV, and a New Jersey mansion, among other luxury purchases.
Bannon worked with Guo in part to create a movement for the “New Federal State of China,” an unborn government-in-exile that would, Bannon and Guo said, eventually replace the CCP. A June 2021 event for the project saw Michael Flynn speak. Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell were in attendance. [Wow. What a roster of con artists and deluded dunderheads.]
The SEC separately charged Guo, with the agency calling him a “serial fraudster, who raised more than $850 million by promising investors outsized returns on purported crypto, technology and luxury good investment opportunities.”
Guo Wengui, an erratic Chinese exile who has a close relationship with Steve Bannon, was arrested Wednesday and charged with running a massive scheme to defraud an international coterie of online fans out of more than $1 billion.
According to a federal indictment unsealed this morning, Guo, who also uses the names Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, has been charged with 12 counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York also said that they have seized approximately $634 million from 21 different bank accounts controlled by Guo since September. Guo has previously denied cheating followers and has attributed various legal problems to what he claims is an effort by the Chinese government to silence him.
Guo, who fled China in 2014 ahead of fraud charges there, has since crafted an identity as a prominent critic of the Chinese Communist Party. That brand that won him friends on US right, most prominently Bannon, as well as an ardent following in the Chinese diaspora, which formed online clubs to support him. With Bannon’s help, Guo used Chinese language media companies to pump out wild, false claims about Covid and the 2020 election. As Mother Jones has reported, Guo also bombarded his fans with solicitations to invest in a slew of ventures. He promised that investors would profit, and he also claimed their investments would help “take down the CCP” by boosting an entity called the New Federal State of China that he and Bannon founded in 2020. That organization claims to be prepared to replace China’s government.
In indicting Guo, prosecutors said this was all a scam. Rather than taking down China’s rulers, Guo’s aim was to enrich himself, according to the charges. “As alleged, Ho Wan Kwok, known to many as ‘Miles Guo,’ led a complex conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of over $1 billion dollars,” Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Wednesday. “Kwok is charged with lining his pockets with the money he stole, including buying himself, and his close relatives, a 50,000 square foot mansion, a $3.5 million Ferrari, and even two $36,000 mattresses, and financing a $37 million luxury yacht.”
That is the same yacht on which Bannon was arrested in 2020…
Prosecutors said in a letter to the judge that they are seeking Guo Wengui’s detention, arguing he poses a serious risk of flight.
Posted by readers of the article:
Jeez Louise. He seems to be such a nice man. And Steve Bannon, as Kari Lake said last week, is right up there with George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Ronnie Reagan as a “greatest American”. My only concern or question regarding Mr. Guo is why he hadn’t included Boris Epshtyn in his good works?
————————
The entirety of Trumpy World is comprised of grifting fraudsters. . . total scum. Instead of cool-aid, the cultist followers are being conned out of their money and they are too stupid to realize it.
———————–
Having nabbed Bannon on the yacht, now they nab the yacht. Nice.
———————–
These “top-level” MAGA fuckers are all amazing. They have plenty of money, could do whatever they want day to day, and they choose to get up every morning to grift and lie and burrow themselves into one completely unnecessary pile of deep shit after another.
The fact that the person ostensibly coordinating all of the lawyers defending Donald Trump across multiple investigations has himself had his phone seized by the FBI remains almost unbelievable to me. [LOL]
The NYT keeps shining a bright line on Boris Epshteyn’s complicated role in Trumpland:
Mr. Epshteyn speaks with Mr. Trump several times a day and makes it known that he does so, according to interviews with Trump associates and other Republicans. He has recommended, helped hire and negotiated pay for several lawyers working for Mr. Trump on civil litigation and the federal and local criminal investigations swirling around him.
The – shall we say “complicated”? – background of Epshteyn is unlike that of any other aide to a former president in recent memory:
A cryptocurrency with which he is involved has drawn scrutiny from federal prosecutors. And he has twice been arrested over personal altercations, leading in one case to an agreement to attend anger management classes and in another to a guilty plea for disorderly conduct.
[Sounds like reasons for Trump to hire him.]
For our purposes, it was the FBI’s seizure of Epshteyn’s phone back in September as part of the Jan. 6 investigation that makes him of most immediate interest. This is a fascinating bit of reporting:
After the search last summer of Mar-a-Lago by F.B.I. agents looking for classified documents still in Mr. Trump’s possession, Mr. Epshteyn retroactively changed his agreement with the political action committee. The agreement, which had been primarily for communications strategy, was updated to include legal work, and to say it covered legal work since the spring of last year, a campaign official said. His monthly retainer doubled to $30,000.
But he dropped a separate effort to have Mr. Trump sign a letter retroactively designating him as a lawyer for Mr. Trump personally, dating to March of last year, soon after Mr. Trump’s post-presidency handling of classified documents became an issue. The letter specifically stated that their communications would be covered by attorney-client privilege, multiple people familiar with the request said.
The internal backbiting in Trumpland over Epshteyn role is of less immediate interest. That being said, Steve Bannon had some touching words about him: “Boris is a pair of heavy hands — he’s not Louis Brandeis.”
#Ramstein 10 inspires optimism:
strengthening air defense, ammo supplies, trainings & forming an “armored fist”.
Thank you to @SecDef for your outstanding leadership and to friends from the anti-kremlin coalition for your willingness to stand with Ukraine until our victory.
‘We will continue to fight’: French union leaders steadfast on opposition to pension reform
Protesters marched across France on Wednesday in an effort to convince lawmakers not to back President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform bill that would raise the retirement age by two years to 64.
The protests have drawn millions of people since mid-January and walkouts have disrupted transport and energy sectors and left garbage piling up in the streets of Paris.
Protesters marched on Wednesday with home-made placards reading “No to 64 years” or union banners marked with slogans such as “Public and private sector together for our pensions”.
“Lawmakers must look at what is happening in their constituencies,” Laurent Berger, the head of France’s biggest union, CFDT, told reporters at the Paris rally.
This new day of protests “is meant to tell lawmakers: don’t back this reform”, he said.
Despite the backlash, Macron has pressed ahead with his plan. The pension bill passed to a joint parliamentary commission on Wednesday, where lawmakers from France’s lower and upper chambers were seeking a compromise text.
The committee has already agreed the article that will increase the retirement age. If a deal is reached on the whole bill, a final vote in both the Senate and National Assembly will be held on Thursday – where ruling party officials have acknowledged the numbers were tight.
Macron’s camp lacks its own absolute majority and will rely on the conservative Les Republicains (LR) party for support, though its ranks are divided on the issue.
“In the National Assembly, there will not be an easy vote, nor will there be panic,” government spokesman Olivier Véran told Europe 1 radio station.
If the vote is too tight for comfort, the government may resort to a procedure known as 49:3, which would allow it to push the text through without a vote. [Outrageous.] That would risk more anger on the streets.
Opinion polls show a vast majority of voters reject the reform, and unions and protesters have warned the government it should listen.
“We will continue the fight no matter what,” said Philippe Martinez, the head of the hardline CGT union, when asked if they would stop protests and walkouts if the bill is voted through.
“If they vote for this reform, I don’t think things will go down well, because we see that blue-collar workers, communities of workers have gone against [it]. People have had enough,” Yvonnick Dauve, a welder and unionist in Ancenis-Saint-Géréon, said at a march in western France.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said its staff made “very good progress” in talks with Ukrainian officials on a set of policies that could underpin a new lending programme for Ukraine.
Talks could be finalised in the coming days, Vahram Stepanyan, the IMF resident representative to Ukraine, said. An agreement is expected by the end of the week, Reuters cited two sources as saying….
The legal battle over an abortion pill threatens to upend the Food and Drug Administration’s drug-approval process, a system viewed as the global gold standard and crafted over decades to get crucial medication onto the market quickly and safely.
A federal judge in Texas is being asked in a lawsuit to direct the agency to rescind its approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions — a move that would be unprecedented.
Legal experts said that such a ruling, if upheld, could lead to a highly politicized regulatory environment, with approvals for controversial treatments facing court challenges and being thrust into the middle of culture wars. Coronavirus vaccines or hormone treatments for transgender people, they said, could be endangered by judges with no scientific background.
A ruling against the FDA “could be catastrophic for public health,” said Aaron S. Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who is affiliated with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“An adverse ruling would be concerning for the FDA’s authority and for the ability of people to receive consistent care for their conditions, in different states,” Kesselheim said.
It remains unclear when a ruling will be delivered by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and is known for his conservative views on abortion and same-sex marriage. Lawyers are scheduled to present oral arguments Wednesday in Amarillo, Tex., a hearing that is being closely watched by political leaders, advocates on both sides of the abortion debate, regulators, pharmaceutical companies and public health advocates.
The suit was filed by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group, on behalf of four antiabortion medical organizations and four doctors….
Mifepristone was approved in France in 1988 after two major clinical trials showed it was safe and effective for terminating early-stage pregnancies.
By 2000, the FDA approved the drug for medication abortion. It is used in conjunction with another drug, misoprostol, to essentially induce a miscarriage….
…it took more than four years for the abortion pill to get approval from the FDA, which implemented tough restrictions …
Over the years, the FDA has eased some of those restrictions and other conditions. The agency said in 2016 that mifepristone could be used during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. More recently, it eliminated an in-person dispensing requirement, allowing retail pharmacies to be certified to give out the drug.
Medication abortion accounted for more than half of abortions in the United States even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
[Specious legal arguments by the ADF snipped.]
“The FDA is virtually never reversed by a court on scientific decisions because courts invariably recognize that they don’t have the expertise to make scientific decisions,” said Scott Lassman, a D.C. attorney who specializes in FDA regulatory issues. “And it is even more rare — I’d say unheard of — for this type of scientific challenge to be made in court 20 years after FDA’s decision.”
Drugmakers are also eyeing a decision closely.
“The FDA is the gold standard for determining whether a medicine is safe and effective for people to use,” Priscilla VanderVeer, a vice president at Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the major drug lobby, said in a statement. “While PhRMA and our members are not a party to this litigation, our focus is on ensuring a policy environment that supports the agency’s ability to regulate and provides access to FDA-approved medicines.”
Migrant workers in Qatar are facing deteriorating conditions since the World Cup, with rogue employers “emboldened by an absence of enforcement and growing confidence that rights violations will go unpunished”, a coalition of eight global union federations has said.
In a statement on the eve of Fifa’s 73rd congress, taking place in Rwanda, the unions also express “serious concerns on the decent work legacy of the World Cup and the sustainability of labour reforms in Qatar”.
Fifa will discuss on Thursday whether enough has been done to address human rights abuses and migrant worker deaths in Qatar, after a proposal from the Norwegian Football Federation.
The unions, which include the Building and Wood Workers’ International and the UNI Global Union, which represents the skills and services sectors, say that progress on reform has stalled.
In a statement, they say: “Positive change has ceased not only because of the lack of political will or active opposition by many abusive employers, but also because of the lack of progress on the International Labour Organization’s Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
“The threats, arrests, and sudden halt of meaningful cooperation with the Global Union Federations further confirm a deteriorating environment and reticence to build on progress achieved through dialogue and cooperation.”
The statement calls on Qatar’s government to provide a remedy fund to abused workers and create a migrant workers’ centre. It also urges it to allow the International Labour Organization to conduct an independent review of the Qataris’ efforts to meet their human rights commitments….
The image below was captured at a bleak moment, when it seemed Bakhmut could fall at any hour. In fact, Russian sources had already run stories stating that Ukrainian forces were retreating from Bakhmut, and even mainstream international news agencies were painting the fate of the beleaguered Ukrainian city as a foregone conclusion. So when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed up in Bakhmut to hand out medals and encourage the defenders, it was a moment of almost shocking dissonance. [Photo at the link]
Zelenskyy’s presence in Bakhmut seemed like it signaled bravery as well as a heads-up to the world that Ukraine did not view Bakhmut as just another point on the line. Russia’s attempts to capture the city had already resulted in hundreds of machines and thousands of men left dead in the fields and on the streets east of the city. Bakhmut might not have held any strategic importance when Russia began attempting to make its way up Patrisa Lumbly Street. Fighting there might have started from nothing but the happenstance of logistical lines and momentary expedience.
However, the long fighting in the city and the evident determination of its defenders had—to steal from the very best—consecrated that ground in a way that no speech or plan ever could. Bakhmut had been lent an importance that made it symbolic of Ukraine’s entire effort to resist the Russian advance.
On Tuesday morning, Wagner Group mercenaries entered the plant where Zelenskyy presented those medals to his forces, capturing another area of northern Bakhmut. On Wednesday, Zelenskyy and the top military staff of Ukraine met … and unanimously decided to continue the defense of Bakhmut.
The movement of Russian forces into what appears to be the AZOM metal plant in northern Bakhmut doesn’t just represent the capture of another building, no matter how symbolic. It also comes following a Russian breakthrough of the latest Ukrainian defensive line in the city, formed after Ukraine withdrew forces from the eastern side of Bakhmut and pulled back from the edges of the core city to form a stronger, better-defended line.
Now the fighting, in that area of Bakhmut at least, is of the ugliest block-by-block variety. There have been suggestions that Ukraine might pull back again to a new line, perhaps behind the arc of the railway line. But there’s little doubt that the images of Wagner forces inside the metal plant are disheartening for a number of reasons.
None of us here in armchair general territory are ever going to be called to answer the most basic and most important question: Has the prolonged defense of Bakhmut been worth it? We don’t know. We don’t know the real toll of Ukrainian losses (though the daily list of long-time commanders, fresh-faced volunteers, and ordinary soldiers lost in the city makes it clear this number is very high). We don’t know how keeping Russia at Bakhmut for as long as possible fits into the larger Ukrainian plan. [map at the link]
We may never know if Zelenskyy and his generals have made the right decisions in Bakhmut. There had been so many days when it seemed Ukraine might withdraw and end this chapter of the invasion. Okay, maybe not then, but now. Or surely now. Maybe that will happen today. Or maybe Ukraine will still be there in May, pinning Russia to this spot as newly trained troops roll forward in newly acquired Western tanks.
But this is another of those days when the idea of Ukraine’s sustained presence in Bakhmut doesn’t look good. Not only are Russian forces pressing into the north of the city, but they’re also pressing in west of the city, reportedly rendering the O0506 road of life through Khromove impassable. It’s unclear whether Ukraine can still communicate along the T0504 to the south, or if the whole city now depends on muddy tracks cut across farms that are rapidly becoming quagmires.
Perhaps most worrying of all is that while Ukraine struggles to defend the city, Russian forces are proceeding slowly to the northwest along the M03 highway. They’ve already moved about 1 kilometer beyond Bakhmut, have already cleared the line of hills west of the city, and are looking 20 km down the road to Slovyansk, which really is and always has been a strategic goal. Ukraine needs to stop that movement, and it’s not clear right now that it can both do this and continue to defend Bakhmut.
That doesn’t mean Ukraine isn’t still having victories in the area. In addition to taking out at least two BMPs on Wednesday morning, Ukrainian forces reportedly brought down a considerably bigger target. [Tweet and video at the link]
That was reportedly an Su-24, a tactical strike aircraft. If you were a fan of military aircraft back in the Cold War era, you might remember the Su-24 as the Russian version of the “swing wing bomber” (though it was never meant to be a strategic bomber) at a time when such designs represented the forefront of aviation design. In old NATO parlance, it’s known as “Fencer.” They’re damn fast for this type of aircraft, better than Mach 2, and on a typical sortie pack around four tons of precision-guided (or not) bombs. They can also serve as a platform for a variety of missiles.
The media—and that includes me—has been too quick to write Bakhmut off on many occasions. Maybe this is another one. But …
IS UKRAINE RUNNING OUT OF SOLDIERS AND OPTIMISM?
Before we leave the doom and gloom portion of the program, it seems mandatory to visit The Washington Post article that ran on Monday afternoon under the most depressing of headlines:
Ukraine short of skilled troops and munitions as losses, pessimism grow
That article touches on an estimate that Ukraine may have suffered as many as 120,000 casualties over the course of the invasion, is running short on artillery, and is seeing the character of its army change as recruits with little experience replace veterans of the fighting in 2014. Every bit of that, including the grim statistics on casualties, is almost certainly accurate.
For months now, there has been a stream of statements in Telegram channels and other social media complaining that the front lines of Ukraine were starting to look like the front lines of Russia. That included claims that some Ukrainian troops ended up on the front lines after just five days of training. It’s unclear whether that last claim was ever true. However, it was obvious that Ukraine was losing large numbers of both officers and experienced soldiers. It took nothing more than watching the funerals in Lviv and Kyiv to see that.
That’s what it means to be in any prolonged war. Heroes die. And tweets like this one seem to come out of Bakhmut every day. [Tweet and image at the link: “The Ukrainian rugby champion Oleksandr Morev has been killed in battle against the Russian Army in Bakhmut. He won the national championship in 2007 and also represented the national team as a junior. Rest In Peace Oleksandr. Ukraine will never forget your sacrifice.”]
The gloomy assessment of the state of the Ukrainian army is not only making for reported doubts about the next chapter of the war, but it’s also setting up a cascade of blame for everyone involved.
An inability by Ukraine to execute a much-hyped counteroffensive would fuel new criticism that the United States and its European allies waited too long, until the force had already deteriorated, to deepen training programs and provide armored fighting vehicles, including Bradleys and Leopard battle tanks.
However, this article’s downbeat headline and stomach-sinking opening ignore something that turns up a half-dozen paragraphs in.
The situation on the battlefield now may not reflect a full picture of Ukraine’s forces, because Kyiv is training troops for the coming counteroffensive separately and deliberately holding them back from current fighting, including the defense of Bakhmut, a U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid.
In fact, when Zelenskyy visited Bakhmut in December, he did so when Ukraine had reportedly rotated troops out of the area—not because that force had been diminished by months of fighting, but because those experienced forces were being sent back to recover and retrain on new equipment.
There’s no need to sugarcoat it: Ukraine’s inability to push Russia out of either Svatove or Kreminna is concerning, as is the slow advance of Russian forces around Bakhmut. It’s been some months since Ukraine managed a strategic win on the battlefield, and it’s only right that there be some concern that it’s Ukrainian and not Russian forces being leveled.
But it’s way too early to make that assessment. Russia has been on its big winter offensive for weeks now, pushing away at Ukraine with more than 100 assaults a day at locations from Kupyansk to Vulhedar. Except for fewer than 100 square kilometers around Bakhmut, that offensive has been utterly ineffective and the cost to Russia has been immense.
Ukraine’s time to throw a punch is coming. If it swings and misses, then there will be good reason for concern. But the force now fighting on the long front line is not all of Ukraine’s army. It’s not even the best of Ukraine’s army. And it’s doing pretty damn well, all things considered. [Correct]
With Donald Trump facing the very real possibility of a criminal indictment from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the former president’s defense attorneys are scrambling. For lawyer Joe Tacopina, that’s meant some notable on-air appearances this week.
On Monday, for example, Tacopina appeared on Fox News and argued that in Trump’s hush money scandal, the Republican was actually the “victim of extortion” — a line his client has recently embraced with enthusiasm. George Conway explained soon after that this line of defense doesn’t really work, since an extortion payment would itself have been illegal.
Andrew Weissmann, a longtime Justice Department veteran and an MSNBC legal analyst, added that this “defense” is effectively “a confession.”
A day later, Tacopina tried again, this time appearing on MSNBC’s “The Beat,” where Ari Melber had a few questions of his own. As HuffPost noted, the interview took an unexpected turn:
Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, tried to grab a piece of paper from MSNBC’s Ari Melber during an interview Tuesday. The moment came as the duo was discussing Trump’s claim not to know about hush money payments to adult actor Stormy Daniels following their alleged affair.
Just so we’re clear, the former president’s lawyer literally tried to take a piece of paper from the host’s hand during the on-air appearance. (Ari, to his credit, did not let go of the paper.) [video at the link, Trump's lawyer comes off as a bullshitter hyped up on fear or drugs. Ari Melber did not lose his cool.]
But as unusual as that was, let’s not brush past the substantive point the host and the guest were discussing. Ari noted that Trump lied in April 2018 when he said he knew nothing about the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, who allegedly had an extramarital affair with the then-candidate. The host’s point was obviously correct: Trump did know about the payment.
After being shown a clip of the then-president lying, Tacopina initially responded by emphasizing that Trump wasn’t under oath when he lied. That’s true, though it’s not a denial.
Moments later, he tried again. “Here’s why it’s not a lie,” Tacopina said. “Because it was a confidential settlement. So, if he acknowledged that, he would be violating the confidential settlement. So, is it the truth? Of course not it’s not the truth! Was he supposed to tell the truth? He would be in violation of the agreement if he told the truth. So, by him doing that, by him doing that, he was abiding by, not only his rights, but Stormy Daniels’ rights.”
Or put another way, the lawyer said Trump didn’t lie, only to concede moments later that Trump did lie. Simultaneously, Tacopina argued that lying was the right thing to do because of a confidentiality agreement.
It’s quite a case, isn’t it?
Michael Cohen, who helped execute the hush money scheme, appeared before the grand jury again on Monday, and he’s scheduled to testify yet again today.
Trump didn’t have to lie. He could have just said, “No comment.” Instead, he said that, “No,” he didn’t know about the payment to Stormy Daniels. Trump did that weird squirrel-like thing with his darting eyes when he lied. He looked like he knew he was lying and then he went ahead and did it anyway, following up by trying to blame Cohen.
According to stories bursting across the right-wing mediasphere today, a key reason for the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was its focus on spreading “woke culture” rather than efficiently managing risk and profits. Ground zero for this is the allegation that SVB had donated over $73 million to the “BLM Movement & Related Causes.” That struck me as quite a lot of money for a single company, even a large and profitable one, to give to any cause or even all causes. So I tried to find out where this factoid came from and rapidly found my way to a Trumpist think tank. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s a complete lie. I want to show you the receipts, but first some key details.
The claims come from a database posted earlier this week by the Center for the American Way of Life, a project of the Claremont Institute. As Claremont put it […] “Americans deserve to know who funded the BLM riots.”
Claremont has been around for many years […] and it’s always been on the right. But it’s undergone a sort of hyper-right-wing rebranding in the Trump era and now presents itself as the group trying to provide an intellectual, let’s say PhD-based, underpinning to Trumpism, sometimes termed “national conservatism.”
[…] Even if it had nothing to do with SVB’s collapse, is it really possible that the bank contributed almost $74 million to the “BLM Movement & Related Causes?”
Well, no.
The database allows you to look up various corporations and see what they’ve donated to “BLM.” It lists Silicon Valley Bank pledging $73,450,000 and says they followed through on the commitment. The database provides links to nine SVB documents as sources for this claim. They’re a mix of corporate responsibility type publications and corporate filings. There are various discussions of support for inclusivity and DEI efforts, which the database authors likely believe are synonymous with “BLM.” But I scanned through each one of them and found no reference to anything remotely backing up the claim. The closest thing I found that bore any relationship to this number was a company newsletter which discusses “reinvesting in low- and moderate-income (‘LMI’) communities” in California and Massachusetts. It mainly talks about financing small business loans and mortgages over the next five years (2021-2026) but also mentions $75 million “in charitable contributions.”
If the scale of all the bank’s giving over five years is $75 million, it sounds hard to imagine it’s given or will give that amount of money just to “BLM.” Another newsletter said the bank’s total charitable giving to all causes in 2019 was $8 million. Yet another newsletter said that $1.2 million in the company’s charitable contributions in 2019 went to “supporting opportunities for diverse, emerging talent in innovation.” Since presumably that giving had something to do with Black people, let’s assume for the sake of conversation, as Claremont clearly does, that that’s “BLM.” Even if that’s true, it still suggests a level of giving to anything related to diversity issues that is only a tiny fraction of the claimed $73 million number.
[…] what I did find suggests that any giving to anything tied to civil rights or diversity or just Black people generally must be at least an order of magnitude smaller than the claim that’s being picked up by right-wing media. But what this database is really about became clearer when I looked up some other companies.
Let’s start with 3M.
Claremont lists 3M pledging a whopping $50 million to “BLM.” But the cited document, published in September 2020, appears to be mainly focused on supporting STEM learning in Black communities. It’s a pledge of $50 million over 5 years and lists $6 million in initial investments. That $6 million consisted of $5 million to the United Negro College Fund for work in St. Paul, Minnesota; another $1 million is slated for “annual investment to social justice partnerships, led by our employee resource network community champions and building on the initial investment from 3M Foundation in 2020.”
For Claremont, these are all “BLM.”
Next up is Chevron, which Claremont reports pledged $15 million to “BLM.”
What does the actual cited document say? That $15 million went to $7 million in grants to historically Black colleges and universities; $1 million to the Executive Leadership Council; $5.1 million in grants to three foundations supporting k-12 education; $2 million to the United Negro College Fund; $1.6 million to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and $1 million to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Again, for Claremont, that’s all “BLM.”
How about Abbott Labs, the folks who make the swabs you put up your nose to see if you have COVID. Claremont says they gave $25 million to “BLM.” What’s the document say? They pledged $25 million to a joint project with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to “provide diverse small businesses with the tailored growth capital, loans and support they need to compete, grow and create jobs.” The LISC was founded in 1979 and according to its site has “invested $24 billion to create more than 436,320 affordable homes and apartments and develop 74.4 million square feet of retail, community and educational space.” A number of other companies in the database also gave to LISC for various projects. But again, it seems adjacent to Black people, so that’s “BLM.”
Costco also gave $25 million to “BLM.” Turns out it was grants to LISC.
What about the $1.5 million Claremont reported Campbell’s Soup giving to “BLM.”
Those were grants to Black Girls Code, National Urban League, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Campbell Canada’s Black History Month Fund, the Equal Justice Initiative and the Boris L. Henson Foundation. Again, tied to Black people, so it’s all “BLM.”
Then there’s Boeing’s $15.6 million to “BLM.”
You can see the cited list of recipients here. The largest recipients include the Seattle Children’s Hospital, United Negro College Fund, Chicago Urban League, DC College Access Program and the Forum to Advance Minorities in Engineering, Inc. Again, you can see the full list here.
Rather unbelievably Claremont lists Bank of America as given more than $18 billion to “BLM.”
Yes, billion.
The cited documents appear to report only $1.25 billion and that appears to be almost entirely going mostly financing for housing and business development in minority communities. So this money may be targeting minority advancement but they’re loans that BOA will get paid back for. An an apparently tiny fraction of that total (no specific numbers are cited ) goes in grants to organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development and The Leadership Conference Education Fund.
Claremont reports that Walmart pledged $100 million to “BLM,” $14 million of which has already been granted.
According to the cited document recipients include American Heart Association (AHA), Bernard J. Tyson Impact Fund ($5 million); US Vaccine Adoption Grants; The King Center; and the Association of Black Foundation Executives (ABFE).
Again, for Claremont, it’s Black people adjacent so that’s BLM.
Other highlights include Cargill’s support for something it calls Black Farmer Equity Iniative.
You get the idea.
There are dozens more companies that are listed. I assume I’ve given enough examples to make the point. Click the link up above and you do more research yourself. But the big picture is this: behind the claims about corporate donations that “funded the BLM riots” are contributions that went mostly to organizations like the United Negro College Fund, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, The National Urban League, various community and housing funding organizations and organizations funding STEM learning for Black children and young adults.
[…] The vast majority of the organizations are highly mainstream and even corporate in their focus (supporting minority small business, recruiting minority employees in STEM fields). The ones that aren’t mainly focus on housing, closing gaps in medical care in minority communities and supporting STEM education and coding. In many cases, the cited documents include no information to support the purported dollar amounts at all. In some cases a claim about one corporation is backed up with a document about another corporation entirely. So there’s a high degree of slapdash and incompetence involved. But the general message is that anything in any way connected to Black people in pretty much any way is “BLM” and explicitly supporting mayhem and violence.
Lies, lies and even more incompetent lies from a Republican “think tank.”
There’s no way that they can make that claim stick about “woke” culture causing the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.
RUSSIAN FORCES MADE ANOTHER ATTACK ON VUHLEDAR
Meanwhile, 100 km south and a world away from the dire warnings in Bakhmut, Russian forces on Tuesday made another run at Vuhledar. Looking at the pictures, you’d have a hard time distinguishing this from any previous run at Vuhledar. [Tweet and video at the link]
The Ukrainian ministry of defense has posted a tweet showing Russian losses across four attempted assaults on Vuhledar. [Tweet and image at the link. There’s an image of a diary kept by a Russian officer:
March 1: 100 soldiers undertook an assault; 16 remained.
March 3: out of 116 soldiers 23 remained.
March 4: out of 103 soldiers 15 remained.
March 5: out of 115 soldiers 3 remained.]
Each of these attempts to take the town has resulted in losses between 80% and 98%. It’s hard to find levels of destruction that high in any modern battle. […]
Russia has apparently also had significant losses in repeated attacks near Kreminna. It’s easy to fret about what’s happening at Bakhmut, but it’s hard not to be impressed by how Ukrainians manage defensive positions along the rest of the line. And it’s not as if the people on the ground at Bakhmut are giving anything less than everything. Russia is simply throwing a lot of force at Bakhmut. The situation there is tough.
ANOTHER KHERSON ‘GIFT’ SEEMS VERY UNLIKELY
On Tuesday night, Russia shelled several locations across the Dnipro River in the liberated areas of Kherson. That only seems to make the rumors circulating around Telegram and Twitter on Tuesday even more unlikely. [Tweet about Moscow-installed proxies leaving Kherson]
Kherson is the only thing that stands between Ukraine and Crimea. It’s hard to see why Russia would do anything that would result in a new front line on the west of Zaporizhzhia Oblast and the northern edge of Crimea. Giving up this area would put the water supply of Crimea back under Ukraine’s control.
Yes, Ukrainian precision attacks have forced Russia to move control of occupied Kherson far to the east. Yes, Russia’s need for forces in other areas may have pulled down the number of troops to defend the area. However, giving up the natural barrier along the river would only make the need to protect the western front harder. […]
NOT EVERY DRONE STRIKE IS A KILL
Social media is loaded with short video clips from kamikaze drones (and consumer FPV drones that have been converted into kamikaze drones) showing the cameras locking in on a target and a drone rushing forward until a tank, APC, or other piece of military hardware fills the screen. Video end. [Tweet of failed drone strike on a Ukrainian vehicle]
The implication is that the imaged bit of kit was destroyed, but that’s not always the case. Take this SPG, which was saved from a Russian Lancet drone with nothing more than some netting.
MAYBE WE’VE BEEN SENDING THE WRONG SUPPLIES TO UKRAINE
[Tweet and image at the link: “It’s #NationalSheepDay. In 2017, a freighter loaded with 9,000 sheep sank the Russian spy ship Liman in the Black Sea when the two vessels collided in heavy fog. No sheep were harmed in the incident, and all Russian crewmen were rescued.”]
U.S. DRONE BROUGHT DOWN BY RUSSIAN JET
From U.S. European Command on Tuesday.
“At approximately 7:03 AM CET, a Russian Su-27 aircraft struck the propeller an MQ-9, causing U.S. forces to have to bring the MQ-9 down in international waters. Several times before the collision, the Su-27s dumped fuel on and flew in front of the MQ-9 in a reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional manner.”
This doesn’t sound like an accident by any description. The Russian jet appears to have made repeated moves designed to interfere with the U.S. drone before wandering close enough to actually generate a collision. It’s hard to see repeated fuel dumps made onto the drone as anything less than an attack. [Correct. The repeated fuel dumps were intentional. The actual collision was probably due to incompetence on the part of the Russian pilot.]
The MQ-9 “Reaper” is a large drone, with a 20-meter wingspan and a takeoff weight of over 4 tons. We’re not talking about a small consumer device here; we’re talking about a military craft that, in its latest version, cost $32 million—that’s actually more than the estimated cost of an Su-27.
Later in the day, U.S. officials appeared to be doing some heavy-duty trolling of Russian pilots. [Tweet and image at the link: “U.S. Defense Officials do not believe that the Russian Su-27 running into the MQ-9 Reaper over the Black Sea was meant to happen or any way Intentional; Air Force Officers after seeing the Video from the Drone stated that, “ The Russian Pilots appeared to be Amateurs.”]
Russian pilots are notoriously short on experience and don’t get training on dog fighting, but the reports of repeated attempts to spray the drone with fuel were clearly malicious. The final bump may not have been intentional. On the other hand, it may have been exactly what Russian officials were looking for since the Russian military has announced it will attempt to recover the fallen drone.
Russia has deliberately caused damage to a U.S. warplane over international waters, and while Russia keeps declaring that the U.S. is trying to treat this as “an act of provocation,” it seems very much like … an act of provocation.
What repercussions will result is still to be seen.
Even if the Russians recover the wreckage, they won’t learn much. The U.S. destroyed electronics and software before the drone hit the water.
I’m telling you, they’re actually running with the “woke banks” thing. They’re already using scary placeholder acronyms ESG and DEI, which to them mean “diversity.”
It serves to obfuscate the reality: there was a panicky bank run, frontrun by some of the GOP’s biggest donors.
For the first few weeks after Russian forces rolled into Ukraine last year, it was only the most extreme of reality-opposing members of the Republican Party who raised their hands in support of dictator Vladimir Putin. In fact, that pool was barely larger than Marjorie Taylor Greene, Fox host Tucker Carlson, and perennial occupant of Putin’s pocket, Ron Johnson.
However, as time has gone on, things have changed. Carlson, completely unembarrassed by how his show has become one of the most popular features on Russian state media, continued to cheer on the massacre of civilians and destruction of cities. Greene, Johnson, and others have shown that opposing the side of justice and common sense continues to be a winning strategy with GOP voters. Republicans like Josh Hawley have gone from saying Russia’s invasion was a “brutal assault” that “must be met with strong American resolve” a year ago to saying, “You can either be the party of Ukraine and the globalists, or you can be the party of East Palestine and the working people of America” precisely one year later. You might say that Hawley is running away from his previous positions.
Unsurprisingly, Hawley made his statement of Russian appeasement on an appearance on Carlson’s show. Now Carlson is turning support for Putin into a touchstone for any Republican seeking the 2024 nomination. On Monday night’s program, Carlson rolled out the results of a questionnaire he had handed to a series of potential Republican candidates. As might be expected, Carlson jumped straight to the question about cutting off support for Ukraine. […]
Donald Trump, for example, spent his time bloviating about how Putin would never have dared to attack Ukraine on his watch, declared that Russia needs to pay back the U.S. for all the money we’ve spent on NATO, and finished with this nonsensical statement:
“Next, tell Ukraine that there will be little more money coming from us, unless Russia continues to prosecute the war. The president must meet with each side, then both sides together, and quickly work out a deal.”
So no more Ukraine assistance … unless Russia doesn’t stop fighting, in this case … what? More assistance? It’s hard to parse anything out of this beyond the massive wall of ego.
Like Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives an answer that is not an answer at all. He uses the opportunity to talk about the border, the Chinese Communist Party, and a supposed “readiness crisis” in the U.S. military before coming down in a position that says “I support Putin” without making it quite as explicit as Carlson does every evening.
“Without question, peace should be the objective. The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table.”
That boils down to a position of reassuring Russia that he’d never think of giving Ukraine what it needs to actually bring the war to a conclusion on its own terms. It’s Chamberlain-lite.
DeSantis finishes by accusing President Joe Biden of “driving Russia into an alliance with China” (history and sequence of events are never challenges to Republicans trying to set a narrative) and saying that Biden has empowered “Putin’s war machine” by … helping Ukraine to destroy more than half of Russia’s armor and military supplies. DeSantis won’t empower Putin by helping Ukraine! Something like that.
[…] former Vice President Mike Pence has the most grounded-in-reality take on Ukraine, or at least the one that most clearly fails to call for outright capitulation to Putin: “There is no room for Putin apologists in the Republican Party,” says Pence. Except there appears to be plenty of room. Nothing but room.
“This is not America’s war, but if Putin is not stopped and the sovereign nation of Ukraine is not restored quickly, he will continue to move toward our NATO allies, and America would then be called upon to send our own. Vladimir Putin has revealed his true nature, a dictator-consumed [by] conquest and willing to spend thousands of lives for his commitment to reestablish the Greater Russian Empire. Anyone who thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine’s border is not owning up to the reality of who Putin is.” … “Ukraine’s victory should be an unmistakable, undeniable defeat for Russia and its allies.”
Pence, in fact, goes on to take such an opposite view from the other candidates that he ends up complaining that Biden has moved too slowly in giving new military systems to Ukraine and has not done enough to sanction Russia. But at least he found a reason to complain about Biden.
[…] From there, the answers go pretty much off a cliff into candidates too cowardly to have a position other than that they don’t like Joe Biden.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott repeats what every candidate claims about “President Biden’s blank check foreign policy … throwing money at Ukraine with no accountability,” and then, of course, talks about “the border.”
South Carolina’s Sen. Tim Scott wanders around the horn to produce a lot of nothing with statements like, “China is a risk that continues to rise, an adversarial position they have taken against the American people. We should hear what they’re telling us. Believe them and act accordingly.” Which has absolutely no meaning and, of course, no consequences if Scott decides to take a more in-or-out position later.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie gives what seems to be a pro-Ukraine answer, but it’s one that’s been dulled down to the point where it’s hard to tell: “Our objective is to assist Ukraine sufficiently to enable them to defeat Russian forces and restore their sovereignty. This effort is not about regime change in Russia; it is about respecting the sovereignty of free nations.” Uh-huh. Does that mean we give Ukraine more? Less? Just enough that they can’t possibly win. Christie isn’t content with leaving it there–he finishes with this doozy:
“Also, this is a proxy war being waged by Russia’s ally China against the United States.”
The only thing China has done for Russia in this war is take oil off their hands at fire sale prices, but China comes up in every Republican response because all of them are much more comfortable slamming the current Republican boogeyman—the Chinese Communist Party—than they are saying something about Putin that they may end up walking back if they want that Republican nomination.
It all depends on where Tucker pushes the party by then. By the time debates roll around, every Republican candidate could be sporting a “Z” pin.
It might be interesting to ask all of these candidates how it’s possible that Biden can both be on the side of the Chinese communists and, at the same time, fight a proxy war against them. Don’t expect a logical answer.
[…] Hugo Lowell has done it again! The Guardian reporter broke the news this morning that Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of his janky knockoff Twitter platform Truth Social, is under SEC investigation for an $8 million cash infusion from a Kremlin-linked entity that appears “to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin.”
In 2021, Trump launched Trump Media with an MS Paint-quality pitch deck and a promise to take on Apple, Amazon, Netflix, CNN, and (hell, why not, right?) Stripe. More or less immediately, the company ran into trouble, and not just because the Truth Social media platform was overrun with Nazis and pictures of literal shit. See, the plan was to take the company public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called Digital World Acquisition Company. Basically, SPACs hoover up a bunch of cash from investors, go public, and then buy a private company, which is then spared having to go through the onerous disclosure obligations required if it went public on its own.
The problem is … well, let’s just block quote our own selves here, shall we?
SEC regulations say a SPAC is supposed to go public before negotiating with the target company. The New York Timesreported in October that DWAC was under investigation for violating this rule by negotiating with Trump and the backers of his social media venture before the initial public offering, specifically through a Miami banker named Patrick Orlando. Orlando, who just so happens to be DWAC’s CEO, was allegedly talking to Trump in March of 2021, despite putting out prospectuses in May, June, July, August, and September saying “We have not selected any specific business combination target and we have not, nor has anyone on our behalf, initiated any substantive discussions, directly or indirectly, with any business combination target.”
This was bad news for everybody involved, because SPACs have a certain amount of time to acquire a company, after which they have to give the money back to their investors. DWAC probably can’t buy Trump Media while it’s under investigation by both the SEC and the DOJ. Then in June, it was reported that the entire board of directors of Trump Media had gotten subpoenas from the Southern District of New York. And in October, Will Wilkerson, one of the company’s founders who was later pushed out, turned whistleblower and started talking to the media and investigators about all the hinky shit he’d seen.
In November 2022, DWAC’s shareholders voted to give the company until September 2023 to consummate the deal, which might still be blocked outright by the SEC. But in the meantime, without the $1.3 billion in cash that closing would bring in, Trump Media had been desperate for cash for upwards of a year. Maybe desperate enough to do some extremely dumb shit, according to The Guardian:
The first $2m payment to Trump Media came in December 2021 when the company was on the brink of collapse after the planned merger with DWAC – that would have unlocked millions for the company – was delayed when the SEC opened an inquiry into whether the arrangement broke regulatory rules.
Trump Media needed a bridge loan to keep the company afloat. But it struggled to get financing until DWAC’s chief executive Patrick Orlando sourced a $2m loan wired from Paxum Bank registered in Dominica, according to the wire transfer receipt reviewed by the Guardian.
The wire transfer identified Paxum Bank as the beneficial owner, although the promissory note identified an entity called ES Family Trust as the lender. Two months later, an unexpected second $6m payment arrived in Trump Media’s account from ES Family Trust, the transfer receipt showed.
Paxum Bank is part-owned by an individual named Anton Postolnikov, whose cousin Aleksandr Smirnov is a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. And the Guardian notes that SDNY prosecutors were particularly interested in Paxum Bank, which “has a history of providing banking services for the pornography and sex worker industries, which makes it higher risk of engaging in money laundering and other illicit financing.”
Indeed, the transaction was flagged inside Trump Media as well, according to Wilkerson, who said that CFO Phillip Juhan considered returning the money. But ultimately that plan was rejected because Trump Media had only $12 million cash on hand and couldn’t afford to give back two-thirds of it.
Whether Donald Trump himself knew about the deal is unclear — he’s been kind of distracted lately what with golf and shitposting about Governor Ron DeSantis. But the Guardian reports that Don Jr., who is on the board, appears to have known in advance that the money was coming.
In summary and in conclusion, ALL THE BEST PEOPLE! NO RUSSIA NO RUSSIA! BUT, RUSSIA IF YOU’RE LISTENING ….
Ron DeSantis has unveiled an ambitious plan to raze Disney World and replace it with a “Dilbert”-themed attraction.
The new theme park, tentatively called Dilbert World, will attract “millions of Americans deprived of their favorite comic strip by the left-wing media Reich,” the Florida governor said.
Calling the new tourist destination “a woke-free zone,” DeSantis promised, “Parents who go to Dilbert World can rest assured that their children will not be exposed to the vile multicultural propaganda that it’s a small world, after all.”
DeSantis was vague about what kind of rides might be featured in Dilbert World, saying only that “they will probably involve cubicles.”
Did the Republican-led state House in Oklahoma really reject a bill to prevent corporal punishment of disabled children? Yes, and the arguments on the legislative floor were even more depressing than I’d feared.
Okla. lawmaker says Bible endorses corporal punishment of disabled children. Washington Post link
Oklahoma state Rep. John Talley thought his bill to bar schools from spanking children with disabilities would find little to no opposition at the state’s legislature. […]
Yet on Tuesday, what seemed like a rare bipartisan moment quickly came crashing down as other Republican lawmakers invoked the Bible to argue against Talley’s House Bill 1028, claiming in some instances that “God’s word is higher than all the so-called experts,” as Rep. Jim Olsen posited during the proposed legislation’s debate. The bill wound up with 45 votes in favor and 43 against — six short of the 51 it needed to pass.
“Several scriptures could be read here. Let me read just one, Proverbs 29: ‘The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame,’” Olsen said. “So that would seem to endorse the use of corporal punishment.”
The problem with that assessment, Talley told The Washington Post, was that it conflated his bill with an overall ban on corporal punishment. House Bill 1028 would specifically prohibit schools from using that measure on “any student identified with a disability in accordance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.” The current state law bars the punishment — which includes slapping, spanking or paddling — for children with “the most significant cognitive disabilities,” unless the student’s parents allow it through a waiver.
A minister himself, Talley also disagreed with Olsen’s religious interpretation.
“Why don’t we follow all the other Old Testament laws?” Talley said. “There’s about 4,000 of them, and one of them is to not allow wives to wear jewelry, or stone your child if they’re disobedient. Why don’t we do that? Because we pick and choose what we want to follow.”
Corporal punishment, though in decline, remains in use in American schools. For centuries, students have been whipped or struck by rulers and paddles. Even though New Jersey became the first state to ban the practice in public schools in 1867, it took over a century before other states followed suit. Then, a 1977 Supreme Court decision, Ingraham v. Wright, deemed corporal punishment at public schools to be constitutional and left it up to the states to decide what to do.
Oklahoma is among the 19 states where corporal punishment is still legal in public schools. In almost all states, except for New Jersey and Iowa, it’s also allowed in private schools. [Sheesh!]
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which compiles data on the disciplinary measure, last reported figures from the 2017-2018 school year, showing more than 69,000 students were struck at school that year. Mississippi had the highest rate, with more than 20,000 students, according to the office, followed by Texas with almost 14,000 and Alabama with over 9,000.
In Oklahoma, nearly 4,000 students were spanked or paddled during that school year — including 853 students with disabilities.
[…] The United Nations considers corporal punishment to be a human rights violation — and its Convention on the Rights of the Child urges countries to ban the practice. […] A 2016 Journal of Family Psychology study found that spanking increased the risk of aggression and antisocial behavior.
Still, Oklahoma lawmakers opposing the bill argued that corporal punishment is needed to maintain classroom order. […]
Talley said he still has hope that his bill will become state law. He’ll bring it up for another vote Monday, when lawmakers who had been absent Tuesday would probably be back.
“This is an important one, and I’m not giving up,” said Talley, who added that he’d been subjected to the punishment as a child and whose wife is a retired special education teacher. “I had a call with a U.S. Marshal who told me his autistic daughter got spanked three times in a day for not doing her math correctly — there’s a point when you have to step up and say ‘this is just wrong.’”
On Tuesday morning, Wagner Group mercenaries entered the plant where Zelenskyy presented those medals to his forces, capturing another area of northern Bakhmut. On Wednesday, Zelenskyy and the top military staff of Ukraine met … and unanimously decided to continue the defense of Bakhmut.
He doesn’t give links for these, but I’m confused. Today is Wednesday. The Zelenskyy/military meeting was Tuesday (yesterday) – noted @ #166 above. Does he mean Monday and Tuesday? Did both things happen on Tuesday?
Military enlistment offices have begun sending summons to men in Lipetsk, Tyumen, Sverdlovsk, Penza, and Voronezh oblasts, as well as Krasnodar Krai, according to Dutch-owned independent Russian media outlet The Moscow Times.
Most of the summons are allegedly in regards to “clarifying data” in offices’ systems, but some men have been called to training, including approximately one-hundred men in Tyumen Oblast.
“So far, we don’t have mobilization, that’s all. Don’t worry,” an military enlistment officer in Krasnodar, as quoted by Moscow Times, insisted.
The Lipetsk Oblast administration told journalists that they were digitizing records and updating information.
However, according to the Moscow Times, residents in Sverdlovsk and Tyumen were being “encouraged” to attend training camps by military registration and enlistment offices.
The Kremlin has denied launching a second wave of mobilization, according to the Moscow Times.
Russia has recently intensified its mobilization efforts in occupied territories of Ukraine, including Crimea, where the families of already mobilized soldiers complain about the mistreatment and lack of rights of their loved ones.
Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand announced on March 15 that Canada would provide Ukraine with more ammunition and anti-aircraft defense following the tenth Ramstein format meeting.
Additionally, Canada has already started the shipments of Leopard 2 tanks that were pledged in February, Anand said.
Ottawa’s latest aid package includes 8,000 rounds of 155 mm ammunition, 1,800 rounds of 105 mm tank training ammunition, and 12 air defense missiles.
According to Anand, the tank training rounds will be used for Leopard 1 tanks given to Ukraine by Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Canada has pledged a total of 8 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, with four of them already in Poland for training exercises. The remaining tanks, along with other weapons, are expected to arrive in Ukraine “in the coming weeks,” according to a government press release.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
US European Command on Thursday issued a video which it says shows the moment of impact when a Russian fighter jet struck the propellor of a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea, causing the latter to be ditched into the water. The footage, which lasts 42 seconds, shows aircraft making two extremely close passes to the drone, before the image breaks up.
…
The Russian and US defence ministers and military chiefs held rare phone conversations on Wednesday to discuss the incident….
…
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has posted to Telegram to commemorate a year since the Mariupol theatre bombing. Ukraine’s president wrote: “A year ago, Russia deliberately and brutally dropped a powerful bomb on the Drama Theatre in Mariupol. Next to the building was the inscription ‘Children’, which was impossible to overlook. Hundreds of people were hiding from the shelling there. Step by step, we are moving towards ensuring that the terrorist state is fully held to account for what it has done to our country and our people.”
A Russian soldier who confessed to killing a civilian in Ukraine last year has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison by a military court in Russia’s far east on charges of spreading “fake news” about the army. Daniil Frolkin is the first known soldier to be sentenced by Russia after admitting to killing civilians. The move is widely seen as a way to deter other servicemen from speaking out.
Both Tass and RIA are reporting that there is a fire at the border department of Russia’s federal security service in Rostov-on-Don. Some news sources are reporting that witness heard explosions or an explosion before the fire began.
State-owned news agency Tass is reporting that Russia’s education minister Sergey Kravtsov has confirmed that he expects by the beginning of the academic year Russian schools will have a new history textbook for high school pupils with a section on the “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Poland claims to have broken up a Russian espionage network operating in the country. Defence minister Mariusz Blaszczak on Thursday said “I would like to emphasise the great success achieved by the officers of the internal security agency, because the whole spy network has been unravelled.”
The British foreign minister, James Cleverly, said on Thursday that the best way to protect Moldova from attack by Russia was to protect Ukraine.
Attorneys for the family of Manuel Paez Terán, known as “Tortuguita”, have disclosed to the Guardian that a local Georgia medical examiner’s office has still not completed an autopsy of the 26-year-old nearly two months after the environmental activist was shot and killed by the police.
Among the issues at stake in the high-profile case is the question of whether Terán fired a gun first at officers, although it remains unclear if the autopsy would provide this information. Paez Terán died as police raided a camp in a forest near Atlanta, Georgia, near the construction site of a massive police and fire department training facility known as “Cop City”.
Paez Terán’s death was the first killing by police of an environmental activist in US history and has helped propel the protests over Cop City into the headlines across the US and the world.
Civil rights attorney Wingo Smith, a member of a firm representing Paez Terán’s family, said he learned the news in a brief phone call from Patrick Bailey, director of the Dekalb county medical examiner’s office. The director said an autopsy report would be available in several weeks, Smith said.
Bailey told said that the final report, when completed, would be forwarded to the Georgia bureau of investigation (GBI) and, possibly, a special prosecutor.
The news comes as a surprise given the level of public interest in the case. It also remains unclear what work remains undone, given that Paez Terán’s family recently scattered Tortuguita’s ashes over the forest the activist was defending.
Bailey said there could be other details being gathered, such as toxicology or other reports and an “internal review”.
On Monday, Smith and his colleagues, flanked by Paez Terán’s family members, announced their own independent autopsy results as well as his firm’s lawsuit against the city of Atlanta in pursuit of video and audio recordings made during the multi-agency raid on 18 January at the forest south-east of Atlanta where police shot and killed Paez Terán.
The family-ordered autopsy appeared to show that the activist was sitting cross-legged, with their hands in front of their face, when hit by a hail of bullets. “Manuel was looking death in the face, hands raised when killed,” civil rights attorney Brian Spears said.
The lawsuit and conversations with the Guardian reveal how the firm, and by extension Paez Terán’s family, have been rebuffed in nearly all pursuits of information from the city, county and state agencies involved in the raid. This includes a lack of response from the medical examiners’ office to a 7 February request to see preliminary autopsy findings and to have the family meet with the agency, according to Smith.
…
All along, attorneys for Paez Terán’s family have requested access to evidence – including preliminary autopsy results. In most cases, they received no reply. Several agencies denied requests by claiming that because the investigation into the shooting was ongoing, they were exempt from open records laws.
The department of public safety replied to requests on 31 January, 25 February and 9 March, promising each time to comply in a matter of weeks, according to the family’s attorneys. Records have yet to come from that agency.
…
As for the autopsy, “everyone deserves to know how government operates – especially in this case, a high-profile matter of public interest,” said Smith. “We deserve to know what really happened that day.”
Poland to transfer four MIG-29 planes to Ukraine in coming days, says president
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has said his country will be handing over four MIG-29 planes to Ukraine in the coming days.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, had hinted at the news that Warsaw will send Kyiv four MiG-29 fighter jets by posting four plane emojis during President Andrzej Duda’s announcement.
Here’s a bit more from Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, who has just announced that his country will send Ukraine at least four MiG-29 fighter jets in the coming days.
Speaking at a news conference, Duda said Warsaw would hand over four of the Soviet-made warplanes in the coming days.
Firstly, literally within the next few days, we will hand over, as far as I remember, four aircraft to Ukraine in full working order.
The rest are being prepared, serviced.
Duda’s announcement makes Poland the first Nato member country to fulfil Kyiv’s increasingly urgent requests for warplanes. The Polish leader did not say if other countries would be making the same move.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has also announced further arms deliveries to Ukraine today.
Scholz, in a statement to the lower house of parliament on next week’s EU summit, said Berlin will, together with its European partners, ensure that Kyiv receives weapons and equipment to hold out and defend itself. He said:
It is particularly important to quickly provide Ukraine with the necessary ammunition. At the European Council, we will decide on further measures together with our EU partners to achieve an even better, continuous supply.
A new populist party surfing a wave of rural anger at government environmental policies has emerged as the big winner in Dutch provincial elections, dealing a heavy blow to the four-party coalition of the prime minister, Mark Rutte.
The success of the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) in Wednesday’s vote, which will determine the make-up of the senate, casts doubt over the government’s ability to pass key legislation, including its plans to slash nitrogen emissions….
They note at the end: “The election also showed how fickle the fortunes of populist parties can be. The vote share of the far-right Forum for Democracy (FvD), led by Thierry Baudet, which won nearly 15% of the vote in 2019 provincial elections, plunged to 3%.”
Taiwan has urged Honduras not to “quench your thirst with poison and fall into China’s debt trap”, adding it would not compete monetarily with China to keep its formal allies after its decision to switch diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing this week….
…two reports issued separately last month by the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the Atlantic Council, reveal how Russian state media have shifted some messaging themes and adopted new tactics with an eye to undercutting US backing for Ukraine.
The Alliance report documented a shift in messaging in the US and Europe from directly defending Russia’s invasion to stressing the energy and economic impacts that it was having, themes that seem to be resonating with some Republican politicians….
Russia has committed ‘wide range’ of war crimes in Ukraine, says UN-backed inquiry
Russia has committed a wide-range of war crimes in Ukraine including wilful killings, systematic torture and the deportation of children, according to a report from a UN-backed inquiry published today.
Russian forces have carried out “indiscriminate and disproportionate” attacks on Ukraine, resorted to torture, killed civilians outside of combat and failed to take measures to safeguard the Ukrainian population, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, a UN-mandated investigative body, said.
The report, released a year to the day after the Russian bombing of a theatre in Ukraine’s southeastern city of Mariupol that killed hundreds of people, marked a highly unusual condemnation of a member of the UN’s security council.
The commission cited repeated attacks targeting Ukrainian infrastructure that left hundreds of thousands without heat and electricity during the coldest months as potential crimes against humanity.
The report, based on more than 500 interviews as well as satellite images and visits to detention sites and graves, comes as the international criminal court in The Hague is expected to seek the arrest of Russian officials for forcibly deporting children from Ukraine and targeting civilian infrastructure.
The report’s authors also noted a “small number” of apparent violations by Ukrainian forces, including one they said was under criminal investigation by Ukrainian authorities. The vast majority of the report focused however on allegations against Russia. Russia denies committing atrocities or targeting civilians in Ukraine.
Two-thirds of respondents in 10 EU countries consider Russia an enemy of their states after the start of the Russian invasion of #Ukraine, according to the results of a survey published by the EU Council on International Relations, Politico reported.
The strongest position regarding Russia as an enemy in Denmark is 82%. It is followed by Estonia and Poland (79% each), Great Britain (77%), Germany (69%), Spain (65%), France (59%), Portugal (57%) and Italy (54%). In Romania, 44% of respondents consider Russia an enemy.
France 24 unfortunately doesn’t seem to have a liveblog in English today, but they do have a French one, and hoooooooly shit:
Lors d’un conseil des ministres réuni à l’Élysée, le président Emmanuel Macron a choisi de faire passer la loi sur la réforme des retraites sans vote avec l’utilisation du 49.3, jeudi après-midi, selon plusieurs sources de l’exécutif et de la majorité.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday decided to trigger Article 49.3 of the French constitution, which grants the government executive privilege to push through controversial pension reforms without a parliamentary vote, according to the Elysée presidential palace. The move, following months of demonstrations and in the face of overwhelmingly hostile public opinion, risk inflaming the protest movement.
Six mois après la mort de Mahsa Amini et la vague de protestations anti pouvoir, la contestation est devenue sporadique en Iran. La désobéissance civile est le levier désormais utilisé par les Iraniens au risque d’être inquiétés.
Les braises du mouvement de contestation en Iran sont loin d’être éteintes. “Dans la situation actuelle, tout incident peut déclencher de nouvelles protestations”, note le sociologue Abbas Abdi, interrogé le 13 mars par l’AFP à Téhéran, près de six mois après la mort de Mahsa Amini, décédée le 16 septembre 2022, après son interpellation par la police des mœurs pour un “voile mal porté”.
Les dernières nouvelles venues d’Iran lui donnent raison. De petits groupes d’Iraniens n’ont pas hésité, mardi 14 mars, à détourner les célébrations nocturnes de la fête du feu persane, le “Chaharshanbeh suri”, qui donne traditionnellement lieu à des regroupements de joie dans les rues à l’approche du nouvel an iranien. Sur plusieurs vidéos immortalisant l’évènement à Téhéran et à Rasht (Nord), la foule clame “Liberté”, ou encore “Mort au dictateur”. “Nous n’attendons qu’une étincelle”, commente encore l’auteur de l’une de ces vidéos, dans un autre quartier de Téhéran.
Pourtant, depuis le mois de janvier, les manifestations sont devenues sporadiques, à l’exception de la ville de Zahedan, dans le Baloutchistan (Sud-Est), où tous les vendredis donnent lieu à de grands rassemblements durement réprimés. Le mouvement de contestation se poursuit désormais sous la forme d’une multitude d’actes de désobéissance civile….
…ChatSonic, the AI tool Komisar used to generate the PDFs, seems to have changed its tune about Bellingcat. In the original version of her piece, Komisar asked ChatSonic the question “can you show me some examples of Bellingcat’s bias for western governments?” And used its reply as evidence of Bellingcat’s corruption.
When I asked ChatSonic the same question, it didn’t give the same answer.
“I’m sorry, but I must correct my previous response,” ChatSonic told me. “I made an error by stating that Bellingcat has a bias for Western governments, which is not accurate. In fact, Bellingcat prides itself on being an independent and non-partisan organization. They have been critical of governments from various countries, including Western governments. I apologize for any confusion my previous response may have caused.”
ChatSonic didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Over the last day, Russia has insisted it had nothing to do with bringing down a U.S. MQ-9 “Reaper” drone in the Black Sea. On Wednesday evening, the Pentagon released video showing the close approach of a Russian Su-27 jet to the drone, how the jet was dropping fuel in an attempt to damage the drone, and a damaged propeller after an apparent contact. [video at the link]
Also on Wednesday, the Pentagon released the readout of a call between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu. That readout was notably brief.
On March 15, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke by phone with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu regarding recent unprofessional, dangerous, and reckless behavior by the Russian air force in international airspace over the Black Sea. Secretary Austin emphasized that the United States will continue to fly and to operate wherever international law allows.
As The Economist points out, while we may be inured to images of Russian or Chinese jets making close approaches to U.S. planes and ships, incidents like the one that happened on Tuesday are genuinely rare. Under 5% of encounters between U.S. and Russian military aircraft include “assertive” behavior—“dipping wings to reveal weapons; using afterburners to create turbulence; in more extreme cases, locking onto the target with weapons radar.” Even then, the vast majority of the incidents pass with nothing more happening. Only two actual collisions have occurred going all the way back to the end of World War II.
The area the Reaper drone was operating in wasn’t just international waters, it was a route that such drones have been flying over the Black Sea for years. But on this occasion, Russia sent not one but two Su-27 jets to shadow and then harass the drone. Following the crash, Russia has openly declared its intention to attempt to salvage the drone, while the U.S. says it purposely damaged software in the drone as it was coming down to prevent classified materials from coming into Russian hands.
While there has been some inclination to put the collision down to inexperience or simply bad piloting (Russian pilots are not trained in dogfighting), the video makes it clear that the Russian jets were out to damage the drone. This incident follows another in which a Russian jet released a missile while near a British RC-135 reconnaissance plane that was also operating in international airspace over the Black Sea. As The Guardian reported last October, that incident also involved a pair of Russian Su-27 fighter jets, though it’s not clear if either of those jets were among the pair that damaged and forced down the Reaper drone.
At that time, Russia claimed the missile release was accidental, and the event was largely attributed to the actions of a reckless, poorly skilled Russian pilot. However, with the Reaper incident this starts to look like a pattern of behavior, one in which Russia is attempting to intimidate NATO aircraft engaged in reconnaissance above the Black Sea. Russia certainly isn’t helping this impression by making a grab for a U.S. plane that fell in waters that are nowhere close to the Russian coast.
In 2016, China seized a U.S. autonomous boat in international waters, taking the drone craft right in front of U.S. ships there to retrieve the craft. But in this case, Russia clearly caused the Reaper drone to come down, and now it is trying to benefit from that act of aggression by capturing the drone. Unpiloted or no, that act seems incredibly provocative.
And maybe that’s exactly why Russia is doing it.
POPASNA
If you’ve been reading these updates long enough, you might remember the very early days when we took an extended look at a town called Popasna. That town was part of the border established with Russian-occupied areas following the 2014 invasion, and the area between Popasna and neighboring Pervomaisk became heavily mined and laced with trenches. But it was obvious, even at the outset, that Popasna was key to any Russian advance in the east. So months before the war came to Bakhmut, it arrived in Popasna in an all too familiar form.
When word comes that Russian forces have tried to break through at a location like Popasna, what it means—especially right now, in mud season—is that they have attempted to drive a column of vehicles up that wreck-strewn, potholed, heavily mined highway with entrenched forces firing into them from both north and south. It should be no surprise that such attacks are getting regularly repulsed.
And they were repulsed, day after day, week after week, with many of the assaults resulting in losses that looked similar to those Russia is now facing a Vuhledar. Finally, in mid-May Russian artillery had so reduced the town there was literally not a building remaining, and Russian vehicles had hit so many mines east of the city they had established a kind of trail that new tanks and transports could follow. Ukrainian defenders were left with nowhere to stand. Popasna fell. Russian forces began the slow advance on Bakhmut, 25 kilometers to the west. It was this road running west of Popasna that would be a major theater for the next year of war in the east. [Image at the link]
Now, as Ukrainska Pravda reports, Popasna is not only gone, it’s officially gone. At least as far as the Russian-controlled government of the LPR is concerned. Following the Russian advance, a new list of cities and towns has been created as the LPR dreams up new administrative districts.
In particular, 11 city and 17 municipal districts (raions) have been adopted. There is no Popasna in any of the lists.
Before the war, Popasna was home to 20,000 people. It was not only the site of heroic resistance that foreshadowed the kind of destruction Russia would bring to towns and cities all along the front, the resistance at Popasna showed how Ukrainian fighters would refuse to back down, even when the world was being shattered around them. […]
Horrific video and photos have emerged that appear to show the head of a Ukrainian prisoner of war stuck on a pole outside a house in the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna, which was captured by Russian forces in May and is close to the current frontline in the Donbas.
I’m not posting those images. Note that Russian troops didn’t just butcher a body already dead in the field. This was a prisoner, in their custody, who they beheaded before putting his head on a pike. Russia may think they can just erase Popasna. They’re wrong about that.
Speaking of atrocities, there may be no moment in this war more horrific than the events that happened on this date one year ago. [Tweet and video about the theater in Mariupol]
One possible result of the Reaper incident could be to accelerate calls for the U.S. and others to provide Western aircraft to Ukraine. But in the meantime, Poland is stepping up again to help fill some of the slots in Ukraine’s air force. [Tweet with image and details about Poland sending 4 MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine]
[…] In South Carolina, convicted murderers can face the death penalty.
In other words, if the South Carolina Prenatal Equal Protection Act were to become law, and a woman terminated an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy, she could face possible execution at the hands of her state government.
What’s more, as my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones explained, this bill “doesn’t even have exceptions for rape or incest — a caveat conservatives traditionally trot out to signal empathy as they crusade against abortion.”
It’s difficult to say with confidence whether a proposal like this one might actually pass. It has more than a dozen co-sponsors, so it’s not just some random bill that’s gone completely ignored in the state capitol, but there’s no companion bill in the state Senate, and Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s Republican governor, hasn’t yet thrown his backing behind the measure.
[…] After Justice Samuel Alito’s draft ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked last May, and Americans started coming to terms with the fact that the Supreme Court’s GOP-appointed majority would soon overturn Roe v. Wade, the National Republican Senatorial Committee quickly distributed talking points to the party’s incumbents and candidates.
[…] National Republican Senatorial Committee advised incumbents and candidates to tell voters, among other things, “Republicans DO NOT want to throw doctors and women in jail.”
[…] the party apparently forgot that many Republicans want to do exactly that.
[…] as the Associated Press reported, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation into Trump’s alleged election interference in 2020 is advancing in important ways […]
A special grand jury that investigated whether Donald Trump and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia heard a recording of the former president pushing a top state lawmaker to call a special session to overturn his loss in the state, according to a newspaper report.
To be sure, we already knew about many of Trump’s provocative efforts in Georgia, including the then-president’s highly controversial outreach to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office, which included an appeal to “find” votes that would flip the state’s election results.
What we did not know until yesterday, however, was that Trump also called then-state House Speaker David Ralston, urging the Republican leader to call a special legislative session in which the GOP-led chamber was supposed to reject Georgia’s official election tallies. That call, evidently, was also recorded, and members of the grand jury heard the audio as part of the recent proceedings.
[…] About a month ago, Trump issued a statement thanking members of the Fulton County special grand jury for “totally” exonerating him. It was plainly ridiculous at the time. There’s a very real possibility it will soon look a whole lot worse.
At least one person was killed and two were injured in an explosion that caused a fire at an FSB Border Service Department building in Russia, local authorities have said.
The security service building is in the port city of Rostov-on-Don, near the Ukrainian border in the southeast of Russia…
This is apparently one Russian MLRS essentially “cooking off” after being hit, then spraying a missile into another Russian MLRS about 100 meters away. Seems as if the missile may have identified a target, and there was no one there to tell it “no, not that!” Too bad there weren’t more around. It could have been a chain reaction. [video at the link: "Russian BM-27 Uragan MLRS attacks a Russian BM-27 Uragan MRLS from behind."]
The Ukrainian general staff reports fighting around Bakhmut, Kreminna, and near Donetsk. Russia reportedly conducted over 75 assaults in the last day—a high number, but lower than most days in the last couple of weeks. That includes the following locations for repulsed attacks:
North of Kupyansk: Hryanykivka
South of Kreminna: Bilohorivka, Spirne
Near Bakhmut: Bakhmut, Orikhovo-Vasylivka, and Bohdanivka
None of these indicates any significant movement.
That aircraft would be the Su-24 brought down near Optyne outside of Bakhmut, but I don’t have an accounting of the full dozen tanks. Again, the number of artillery systems is up, indicating that Ukraine may be improving counterbattery fire.The numbers are also out for the day. [Image of list at the link]
The Economic Security Council of Ukraine has accused American manufacturer Haas Automation of violating sanctions and providing high-tech manufacturing equipment to multiple Russian companies involved in production of weapons and military systems. PBS Newshour has covered the story, and ponders whether the U.S. government will step in to investigate a company that provides the same manufacturing technology to U.S. defense contractors. [video at the link]
——————————–
This might not be quite as important a practical skill as it used to be, as thermal imaging and other forms of enhanced vision creep into the battlefield. Still, 99% of Russian soldiers are likely relying on their unenhanced eyeballs 99% of the time, and:
While training abroad, Ukrainian soldiers work on their masking techniques.
Did you manage to spot anyone before their reveal?
Very grateful to all who strengthen our military capacity! [video at the link]
Link. Same link as in comment 242, scroll around to view these additional updates.
Most Americans agree: Fox News should be punished over its post-election controversy. That majority includes a surprising number of Republican voters.
It’s too soon to say with confidence whether the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case against Fox News will prevail in the courts, but it’s already creating political problems for the network.
To briefly recap, a recent court filing presented evidence that suggested Fox News promoted bogus election claims they knew to be false, on purpose, in order to placate its audience and make money. We also learned, among other things, that News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged under oath that some prominent Fox News hosts “endorsed” baseless claims the network knew to be wrong.
[…] The latest national poll from Quinnipiac University suggests the controversy has had an effect on the network’s standing.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) think Fox News should be held accountable after Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged in a deposition that a number of the network’s hosts spread false information about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump, while 26 percent think Fox News should not be held accountable.
According to the results, 93% of Democrats agreed that the network should be held accountable, and 67% of self-identified independents agreed. Not surprisingly, there was a partisan gap — GOP voters are bound to be more sympathetic toward an outlet aligned with GOP politics — but Quinnipiac nevertheless found that 41% of Republicans also believe that Fox News should be held accountable. […]
Today, Variety, which covers the entertainment industry, published a related report, highlighting the results of a poll from an opinion research firm called the Maru Group. It found roughly one-in-five Fox News viewers said they now have less trust in the network, and roughly one-in-ten Fox News viewers said they’re watching the network less than they used to in the wake of the revelations.
It’d be an overstatement to suggest those numbers are dramatic, but taken together, the polling suggests the scandal hasn’t gone unnoticed
Mike Lindell, the founder and CEO of MyPillow and dramatis personae in the Big Lie saga with seemingly no end, said on Wednesday that defending his advocacy for Trump’s claims is causing his company to go broke.
Lindell told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon that he’s had trouble sustaining his company while he’s embroiled in defamation lawsuits from Dominion Voting Systems Inc. and Smartmatic Corp.
“The machine companies continue to sue us for billions of dollars, and we had to borrow almost $10 million at MyPillow,” Lindell said on Bannon’s show. He claimed to have taken out three separate loans last year, and complained about “everyone” defending the voting machine companies while they “attack” MyPillow. [play the world’s tiniest violin]
Back in January, he also told a local TV news station that the company had lost millions of dollars in retailers.
“Now let me tell you the facts about MyPillow,” he said then. “When I tried to get this out to the people, MyPillow lost $100 million in retailers. We are not up 30–40% — we are down. We are down. I had to borrow money.”
But mere hours after his remarks to Bannon Wednesday, he told the Daily Beast that MyPillow is in great shape.
“I invented MyPillow2.0 and it is doing great!” he told the news outlet Wednesday night. He also claimed that over half of the loans he had taken out had been paid back.
He declined to tell the Daily Beast whether his company was still losing money. “MyPillow had to spend millions on lawsuits and the last 2 years lost 30 box stores and shopping channels,” he said. “All because their CEO wants to get rid of electronic voting machines and help a save our country!”
[…] A Media Matters investigation found that MyPillow sold its products using special discount codes for at least 17 QAnon-affiliated figures and shows, offering them a cut of the profits made through the sale.
Dominion is currently suing the entrepreneur for $1.3 billion in damages. Still, the MyPillow CEO has offered his financial resources to local right-wing election officials if they run into legal challenges for ditching Dominion’s voting machines.
“I will not stop until we fix our election platforms and get rid of voting machines,” he told the Daily Beast.
My guess is that he will not stop until all his money is gone, and/or until he loses all of the lawsuits.
One wonders where he is getting these loans. Surely he is not a good risk for any bank.
Oggie: Mathomsays
Lynna @248:
One wonders where he is getting these loans. Surely he is not a good risk for any bank.
My guess would be ‘loans’ from certain banks in Russia, routed through multiple shell corporations and offshore banks located in nations with extreme banking privacy acts. Not that any conservative company (Trump Media?) would actually do this, but just a possibility. After all, a few tens of millions of dollars to keep the US on the verge of absolute chaos? A deal at ten times that amount. Luckily for the FSB, conservatives can be bought really cheaply.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) press team often attacks the reporters who cover his state. On Monday, they cost one of those journalists, Ben Montgomery, his job with Axios.
[…] Montgomery said he felt the situation was an example of how DeSantis’ media “machine” was impacting the news business. [Tweet and link to DeSantis propaganda at the link]
“This sort of thing has a chilling effect. Nobody wants to have their life disrupted by this machine,” Montgomery said […] “They call it ‘media accountability,’ and it is not that. It’s meaner than that, and more personal, and affecting. … It has a quieting effect and that’s a shame. It’s sad for democracy and sad for all of us.”
DeSantis, who is widely expected to run for president next year, has a press shop that is known for being combative with the media. Members of his team have highlighted individual reporters on Twitter while demanding corrections. They have also shared screenshots of emails and requests for comment sent by journalists in an effort to paint those reporters as biased.
These posts from DeSantis’ press team have led to the reporters who are targeted being bombarded with angry messages and threats from the governor’s fans. In one 2021 instance, the Associated Press publicly accused a former DeSantis spokesperson of engaging in “harassment.” In addition to DeSantis’ official press operation, far-right Florida activists have set up their own publications focused on positive coverage of the governor that have been rewarded with exclusive coverage opportunities.
[…] “It seems like the goal is just to make the reporter’s life as miserable as possible,” Montgomery continued. “Maybe there’s some level of, like, accountability in there, but mostly it’s terrible comments, and, you know, meanness and snark, and things that aren’t constructive.”
Montgomery, who has over a decade of experience reporting in Florida, has written four books and was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series of articles he wrote exposing abuse at a local school. He began working for Axios, where he co-authored a newsletter focused on the Tampa Bay area […]
Montgomery found himself in the crosshairs of DeSantis’ team after he sent an email responding to a press release the governor’s office sent out on Monday. The press release was an over 800-word attack “on divisive concepts such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, Critical Race Theory (CRT).” The bulletin from the governor’s office was branded as part of a series called “Exposing The DEI Scam” and contained a series of quotes from DeSantis and his allies framing diversity efforts as “political indoctrination” promoted by the “woke mob.”
Montgomery, who said he feels “obligated” to read official press releases since they could contain information “that might be useful for my readers,” did not feel this press release from DeSantis fit that category.
“There was no, like, event to cover. […] This press release was just a series of quotes about DEI programs, and the ‘scam’ they are, and nothing else,” Montgomery said. [Posted in a tweet: “This is propaganda, not a press release.”]
[…] “When I hear like … the ‘scam’ of diversity, equity, and inclusion shouldn’t be perpetrated upon the hardworking taxpayers of Florida, it’s like framing it as a Black and white issue,” Montgomery said. [Yep, dogwhistles to racists.]
[…] “I thought it would just pass and it was not anything that was hurtful to me,” Montgomery [said]
However, on Monday night, roughly five hours after Lanfranconi [Alex Lanfranconi, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education] posted the exchange, Montgomery said he received a call from Axios’ executive editor for local news, Jamie Stockwell.
[…] “She started immediately by asking if I could confirm that I sent that email and I did immediately confirm it,” he continued. “She then sounded like she was reading from a script and she said … ‘Your reputation has been irreparably tarnished in the Tampa Bay area and, because of that, we have to terminate you.’” [OMFG]
On the call, Montgomery said he “objected with my full fucking throat on behalf of every hard-working journalist.” However, he said Stockwell “wasn’t answering any questions.” According to Montgomery, his laptop and access to company email were swiftly shut down.
“I had, unfortunately, interviews lined up for the next couple of weeks so people are going to be sitting on Zoom waiting for me to show up because I don’t know how to reach them now,” said Montgomery. “It sucks. It was quick and it sucks.”
Axios editor-in-chief Sara Kehaulani Goo responded to questions about the situation with a short statement. “This reporter is no longer with Axios,” Kehaulani Goo said. “Out of respect for our employees, we do not discuss conditions of departure.”
Montgomery believes the company made a “bad decision,” particularly in a climate where DeSantis and other politicians have increasingly attacked the media that covers them. He said it was especially troubling because Axios editors had vowed to “not let the trolls run this newsroom.” […]
Despite losing his job, Montgomery said he does not “regret” sending the email to the governor’s office. While Axios prides itself on its “smart brevity” format, Montgomery said that, if he could re-do anything, he would have made the message longer to make it “sharper criticism for a PR professional.”
[…] Montgomery said he received a call on Wednesday afternoon from Axios co-founder Mike Allen. While Montgomery said Allen “was very, very kind,” the editor apparently “wasn’t up for a conversation.” […] “He didn’t offer me my job back, so he’s standing behind it, I guess.”
Now that he is no longer working at Axios, Montgomery said he hopes to get to work on his next book project.
“I feel pretty good. […] “I’m sad, honestly, for the profession. … It sucks for me, I’m losing my job, but this is going to suck for Axios. There’s just going to be blowback.”
[…] It’s fine for politicians and presidents to criticize journalists, their questions, the state of the profession — more fine than a lot of people let on. To say otherwise is special pleading. Criticism isn’t only okay in one direction. But what Ron DeSantis has developed in Florida is something far more predatory. It’s not about criticism. It’s a performative breaking and taming of reporters. In Florida it’s coupled with cryptic DeSantis funders standing up pro-DeSantis propaganda mills posing as real publications [Yuck!]. […]
But the real issue here is Axios, the publication that immediately fired its own reporter in response to this. This is the downside and the civic achilles heel of a publication whose business model is access coupled with a purported inviolable neutrality that the subjects of its reporting can withdraw at any moment. Having spent more than a decade studying every intricacy of the advertising business of D.C. political news organizations I can tell you — because I was immersed in the world of the major D.C. ad agencies when Axios launched — that its central value proposition for advertisers and sponsors is the premise not only that it has no partisan bent but can never be accused of one.
That second point is key. Even the accusation is existential. And so is the potential loss of access.
This is why it is critical that truly independent news organizations like TPM exist. I have to step out from behind any false humility to say this. Because it’s true. We’re certainly not the only outfit this standard applies to. But we’re one of the best […] We have one rule that governs our work and after that all we care about is delivering for our readers.
Big outfits can do things we can’t. That’s never lost on us. They can send ten reporters to cover every story. But we can be things they can’t. […] It’s not just “Oh, Axios sucks. DeSantis lashes out and they fire their reporter.” It’s the structure of how they’re organized, what they’re built to do. The insider outfits — though many do great work individually, and range with great scope organizationally — simply cannot cope with DeSantis-type figures. Because they can’t cope with them they can’t effectively cover them. Practitioners of this new politics of predation, itself an aesthetic register of authoritarianism, are a different kind of challenge they’re simply not up to.
Florida rejected 42 math textbooks last year because they supposedly “incorporate[d] prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies.” Math textbooks. Now imagine that same state review process being applied to social studies textbooks.
It’s happening now—Florida is reviewing potential social studies textbooks in a process that not only includes expert reviewers but draws on volunteers from conservative groups—and it’s as bad as you might expect from a state that rejected dozens of math textbooks for containing critical race theory or social emotional learning (the latter including stuff like advice on how to “disagree respectfully” when solving math problems). And as we’ve seen again and again, even aside from the overt censorship of the DeSantis administration, fear of the process causes self-censorship.
A New York Times review found a publisher that had removed all mention of race from its account of the arrest of Rosa Parks. Really.
A current publication from Studies Weekly explains, “The law said African Americans had to give up their seats on the bus if a white person wanted to sit down.” But according to a new version created for this textbook review process, “She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin,” while another version […] says only, “She was told to move to a different seat.”
The same publisher removed direct mentions of race from other discussions of segregation law, shifting from an explanation that “laws made it a crime for African American men to be unemployed” to saying, “They even made it a crime for men of certain groups to be unemployed.” [Obscuring the truth.]
[…] this is how vague, overly broad Republican bans on things work: They create enough uncertainty and an atmosphere of threat to make people or companies or organizations so afraid of running afoul of the law that they do things like strip mentions of race out of the Rosa Parks story. Or hospitals refuse to authorize medical care in cases of miscarriage or threat to the mother’s health because someone somewhere might decide it was an elective abortion.
[…] The whole point is creating that atmosphere of fear that means DeSantis doesn’t need to write into law, in so many words, “Don’t even think about mentioning race at all,” because textbook publishers and teachers and school administrators get the message.
And publications like Axios get the message—see comments 250 and 251.
Wonkette: “Florida Republicans Ban Icky, Divisive Pride Flag, OK With Loving, Inclusive Confederate Flag”
Florida Republicans, as part of their ongoing hate campaign against the LGBTQ community, filed a bill last month that would ban the display of Pride flags in the state’s municipal buildings. […]
Originally, the bill limited the flags approved to fly on government property to the US, Florida, POW, and the Firefighter Memorial. You might’ve noticed that the Confederate flag is absent on this list, which puts you one up on Borrero and Collins. Whoops!
However, in an epic display of shamelessness, Republican state Sen. Jay Collins from Tampa filed an amendment to the we really hate the gays flag ban bill. The exemptions, by this point, were already up to a half dozen. Earlier this month, Collins told local media that his dumb-ass bill “just clearly lines up what flags can be flown over government facilities, like the state flag, the American flag, the POW flag, and our firefighter’s flag.” He’d neglected to mention the white supremacist traitor flag.
Rightwing bigots have long seethed with rage over the Pride flag’s defiant expression of joy. The Pride flag declares, “Do your worst. You won’t make us go away.” […] The would-be Confederacy remains a threat, of course. You could argue it’s consumed the modern Republican Party, but its flag expresses only bitterness, resentment, and hate.
Wilton Manors, Florida, Commissioner Chris Caputo said the Pride flag, which for now flies outside City Hall, “tells me it’s a safe space. It tells me that I’m welcome here and people like me are welcome here.”
He added, “It’s women’s history month if we wanted to fly something for women or breast cancer awareness month […]
But fear is the point. That’s the twisted irony in the Confederate flag’s inclusion on the approved flags list. The loser flag was resurrected during the Civil Rights Movement and flown in opposition to integration. In a 2015 Tampa Bay Times article, Sheila Grimes described the Confederate flag, which still flew outside the Walton County Courthouse, as “malicious. It just makes you tremble. It needs to come down.”
Grimes vividly remembers what life was like, growing up black in Walton County in the 1960s, when the Confederate flag flew outside Walton High and the school band, with black and white members, played Dixie at football games. […]
The Confederate flag was never about heritage. It was about asserting dominance over a marginalized group. […]
Meanwhile, Florida still recognizes Confederate Memorial Day, Robert E. Lee’s birthday, and Jefferson Davis’s birthday as official state holidays. Florida Republicans continue to choose hate instead of love and acceptance.
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz set the record straight on Wednesday when he debunked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) recent claims that agents found an “explosive” near the southern border in January.
The bizarre allegation first surfaced during a Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday that House Republicans performatively planned to take place near the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. All of the Democrats on the panel opted to boycott the hearing, arguing that Republicans were using the field hearing to “score political points.”
“Unfortunately, it has become clear that Republicans planned to politicize this event from the start, breaking with the committee’s proud history of bipartisanship,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told the Washington Examiner this week. “Instead of a fact-finding mission to develop better border security and immigration policies, Republicans are traveling to the border to attack the administration and try to score political points with their extreme rhetoric – despite having voted against the resources border personnel need.”
During the hearing the MAGA-aligned conspiracy theorist congresswoman alleged an “explosive device” was found at the border earlier this year as she asked a question about the threat that the cartel presents to border patrol agents and Americans. […]
Later that day, Greene doubled down on Twitter, posting a picture of the alleged explosive device she claimed agents found at the border and argued “the Cartel” was “planting bombs” and “murdering Americans everyday through drugs and crime.”
Ortiz corrected the record in a post of his own.
“Today, I testified before the Committee on Homeland Security & it was alleged that Agents found an explosive device near the border,” Ortiz wrote, sharing the same image Greene posted in her tweet. “During a Jan. briefing, leadership was notified that Agents found a duct-taped ball filled with sand that wasn’t deemed a threat to agents/public.” [image at the link]
But despite Ortiz setting the record straight, Greene refused to walk back her false claim, insisting that unnamed Border Patrol agents had told her otherwise. […]
This is not the first time Greene has publicly seized on false or misleading information to push her own political agenda. The infamously far-right member of Congress, who was coined the QAnon congresswoman when she was first elected, was stripped of her committee assignments by all Democrats and 11 Republicans in 2021 for a laundry list of conspiracy theories she promoted before taking office — including suggesting that 9/11 was a hoax.
Greene’s spokesperson did not clarify Greene’s sources or provide evidence for her claims on Wednesday, according to HuffPost.
“Stop being a state-sponsored propagandist,” the spokesperson told Huffpost.
MTG doesn’t legislate. She preens. She lies. She bloviates. She is attention needy. She is shameless. A better use for duct tape would be to cover her mouth. [I do not condone the last remark.]
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If she only knew she was stoopid. Problem is, the stoopidest think they’re the smartest.
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She is part of the angertainment industrial complex.
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What MTG’s spokesperson should say, and would be true, it that the Congresswoman refuses to be confused by the facts.
Before he was a cat rescuer, Sterling “TrapKing” Davis was a rapper—a unique trajectory in the field of animal rescue. Sterling—who dedicated himself to improving the lives of stray cats after a lifelong connection to them—joins us today for a delightful conversation about, among other things, trap-neuter-return (TNR) and how he’s working to increase diversity within cat rescue. In our discussion, Sterling tells us stories about trapping cats, explains how he’s using his personal experiences and insights to make cat rescue more inclusive, and tells us why, for him, veganism is such an important part of caring about animals..
Sterling “TrapKing” Davis is a well-traveled, ex-military, music and cat enthusiast who has always loved entertaining and interacting with people. Since childhood, he was also the only guy in his neighborhood that loved cats. After working at a local shelter and learning about trap-neuter-return (TNR), the only way to humanely control cat overpopulation, in 2017, he started his own nonprofit, Trapking Humane Cat Solutions, where he focuses on educating, assisting, and doing TNR and community cat management. Davis has also made several national television appearances on shows such as the Drew Barrymore Show, Access Hollywood, and Shark Tank, as part of his business representing a cat dating app called Tabby Dates. In 2021, he was also featured on the Netflix documentary, Cat People. A longtime vegan, he lives in his Trapking RV with his three cats, Damita Jo, Alanis Mewisette, and Nipsey Cuddle.
“Unions used to make sense but are obsolete in today’s economy!” Unions are an “outside force” or “third party.” “I’m a strong worker. Unionization will harm me personally and only help the weak and lazy workers.” “Unions are rigid, old fashioned hierarchies.”
We’ve all no doubt heard these talking points at some point, if not often, from news shows, opinion pieces, TV dramas, members of our families, our co-workers and, probably most of all, our bosses.
What’s remarkable is how little these general talking points have changed throughout the decades. Some versions of these pat anti-union lines have been around since there have been unions. It’s generally unseemly to appear anti-worker or not OF the working class so opposition to the one thing that historically empowers the working class––unions––is seen as crass and politically incorrect.
So, in its place has emerged a popular set of go-to, sophistic arguments that allow one to appear pro-working class without the messiness and ideological heavy lifting of actually supporting labor organizing and unionization. These McArguments––that after decades of anti-union messaging feel right without being right––appeal to ignorance, prejudice, vagueness and gendered and racialized perceptions of what labor is, and what labor deserves: the protection and stability offered by collective bargaining.
On this episode, we detail eight of the most popular anti-union talking points, their origins, who they serve, their purpose and power, and––most important of all––how to combat them.
Our guest is union organizer and author Daisy Pitkin.
En un año, las tropas francesas han sido expulsadas de Burkina Faso y Malí, dos países que eran claves en la estrategia antiyihadista de Francia en África Occidental. Tras fracasar en su estrategia contra el terrorismo, el sentimiento anticolonial que nació hace décadas en la zona, ahora es más potente que nunca. En paralelo, Rusia se está imponiendo como aliado militar y está generando simpatías en la ciudadanía del Sahel.
Cafeteria workers, bus drivers and other workers for the Los Angeles Unified School District will go on a three-day strike next week, and their union says tens of thousands of teachers have vowed not to cross picket lines.
The strike at the country’s second-largest school district is scheduled from next Tuesday through Thursday, the Service Employees International Union Local 99 said.
The SEIU said in a statement that the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents around 30,000 teachers, has promised not to cross picket lines.
…
The SEIU wants wage increases, more full-time work and more staffing for student services. In addition to cafeteria workers, bus drivers and custodians, the union’s membership also includes special education assistants.
…
The union wants a 30% raise. The average salary of school workers at LAUSD is $25,000 a year [in LA!] and most work part-time hours, SEIU said in the statement….
Lynna @ #250, that’s appalling. I was thinking they need a union, but even before I saw the next post by Josh Marshall I was thinking that prior to the union at TPM I couldn’t see him having treated a reporter like that.
While Axios prides itself on its “smart brevity” format
Writer and poet Sjón took aim at “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling on Twitter Wednesday for her hate speech directed towards trans people. Rowling has been vocal in her views on transgender rights, voicing transphobic opinions on her social media.
Sjón pointed to Rowling’s own privilege and called her out on her statements, referring to a recent interview Rowling did in the podcast The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. In the podcast, Rowling said that “time will tell whether I’ve got this wrong,” and compared her critics to the Death-Eaters of the Harry Potter world.
JK Rowling has the luxury of saying ‘time will tell whether I’ve got this wrong’, while trans people are forced to live with the imminent danger of not only losing their human rights but also their lives because entitled people like her are systematically dehumanising them.
It’s hard to be a regular observer of events in Ukraine without feeling an attachment to some of those places where Ukrainian forces faced off with Russian forces day after day and withstood what seemed to be unstoppable force. As much as I mourn poor Popasna, kos has even stronger feelings about the village of Dovhenke, south of Izyum, where Ukrainian forces appeared to draw a line in the sand and fight back tanks and armor. At a time when Russia just seemed to be rolling inevitably forward, Dovhenke was a place where that tide was stopped.
The village of Dovhenke, Eastern Ukraine. Destroyed and burnt by 🇷🇺 army. Locals tell us 🇷🇺 used phosphor bombs. This was a wealthy village with its own big school, a culture center, farmer enterprise. Now all gone. Fields around are mined, crops not collected since last year [video at the link, narration is in English]
[…] Recently, in an attempt to distinguish himself on the national stage, DeSantis floated out his general foreign policy idea that we should not be involved in any way with supporting Ukraine in its battle for autonomy. […]
Vice President Kamala Harris was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Wednesday night. She didn’t need a book or a documentary to explain, in just under a minute, how naive and narrow-minded DeSantis’ position is.
Colbert asked Vice President Harris what she thought of DeSantis’ position that it “is not in America’s strategic interest to side with the Ukrainians and offer them the material aid they need to defend themselves against an invading power.”
Harris’ reply was succinct, and to the point. “So as vice president, I have now met with over 100 world leaders, presidents, prime ministers, chancellors and kings. And when you have had the experience of meeting and understanding the significance, again, of international rules and norms, and the importance of the United States of America, standing firm and clear about the significance of sovereignty, and territorial integrity, moral integrity, the significance of standing firm against any nation that would try to take by force another nation. If you really understand the issues, you probably would not make statements like that.” [video at the link]
[…]
Wonkette: “What Can Gettr Do To Get You Into A Brand New Set Of Deluxe Unvaccinated Sperms Today?”
[…] Sometimes it was about his [Trump MAGA idiot Jason Miller’s] sexytime trials and tribulations on the campaign trail for Trump. Or when he started his low-rent Twitter knockoff Gettr, which immediately became flooded with porns and spams. Or just other times he was being a gross choad in one way or another. […]
Well now you need to know that MAYBE Gettr, the platform Miller founded, is going to start selling sperms. But not just any sperms! Bejeweled Deluxe Wilderness Edition sperms that are unvaccinated!
Rolling Stone explains that Gettr has been having “high-level deliberations” about, um, selling semen from dudes who aren’t vaxxed. It never occurred to us that any dorks in MAGA world would be unwilling to give it away for free […]
Rolling Stone has three sources, and a fourth who’s been “briefed.” Those sources “describe serious, repeated discussions about creating the online anti-vax semen market, in which unvaccinated men would self-advertise and sell sperm to the highest bidder.”
[…] Merchants of only the finest woven cum, untarnished by COVID-19 vaccinations.
Two of the sources say stakeholders have gone so far as to explore possible “testing requirements” to ensure specimens came from unvaccinated donors.
Can’t have anybody tainting the supply.
Some staff have also expressed skepticism internally about the feasibility of the plan, noting restrictions of semen sales in other countries and other hurdles.
Shouldn’t they start with a stall in a flea market to see if there’s interest before blowing their loads to become International Cum Merchants?
All four sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe these deliberations, with one adding that “it’s just so embarrassing, man.”
It’s “the most ludicrous fucking thing to come out of pro-Trump social media in a long time, and that is saying something,” another of the sources says.
Oh come on, it doesn’t have to be a competition, boys.
A version of the idea was recently floated by one of Gettr’s most prominent backers: Guo Wengui, a billionaire fugitive from the Chinese Communist Party.
Oh my fucking god. Steve Bannon’s buddy, who was just arrested. Apparently he thinks COVID-19 vaccines will cause infertility. Thus the need for a Global Cum Trade.
Guo has already pitched one business scheme based on unvaccinated sperm — including his own. “All the fellow fighters’ sperm and eggs will be put for auction on our Gettr between June 1 and June 6, 2023,” Guo said on a Feb. 22 livestream, where claimed to have amassed nearly 6,000 eggs and “millions” of sperm from unvaccinated donors. “It will be the most meaningful event of this year. We will auction off the best sperm and eggs, which of course include my sperm.”
We would be disappointed if it did not of course include his sperm.
We should note, as Rolling Stone does, that Jason Miller recently left Gettr to go fight for Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, so who knows if he has been involved in this or anywhere near it. One person RS talked to who is “familiar with Gettr’s operations” and who is calling this the “Covid-Unvaxxed Jizz Market” plan says this is happening at Gettr because Miller and others have left.
“Gettr isn’t a serious place anymore,” says this person, who seems to be implying that it was once a serious place.
Gettr’s possible pivot to semen comes amid tough times for the platform.
This is the best news article we have ever read.
Anyway, if the online Cum Marketplace idea doesn’t work, they could always sell it door-to-door like Girl Scout Cookies and see how that goes.
Maybe Maria Bartiromo would do some commercials for it, she was blabbing about treating COVID with horse paste this morning.
Executives at First Republic Bank sold company stock worth millions of dollars in the months before this week’s crash, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The banking executives sold $11.8 million worth of stock in the company over the last two months, with First Republic Executive Chairman James Herbert II selling $4.5 million worth of his shares since the start of 2023, per the Journal.
Combined, First Republic’s chief credit officer, president of private wealth management and chief executive sold $7 million worth of company stock.
First Republic’s insider sales appear to have gone largely unnoticed, as it is now the only S&P 500 company that reports such sales to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) instead of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Signature Bank, which collapsed on Sunday, was also exempted from filing with the SEC.
First Republic Bank’s stock plummeted more than 50 percent this week, as panic ensued over the widely-reported failures of other regional banks, including Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank.
Amid concerns of a potential run on First Republic, some of the largest U.S. banks — including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — agreed to help stabilize the bank’s balance sheets on Thursday with $30 billion in deposits.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Slovakia’s government on Friday approved a plan to give Ukraine its fleet of 13 Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets, becoming the second NATO member country to heed the Ukrainian government’s pleas for warplanes to help defend against Russia’s invasion. Prime minister Eduard Heger told a news conference that his government is “on the right side of history.” Earlier, Heger tweeted that military aid was key to ensuring Ukraine can defend itself and all of Europe against Russia. Slovakia grounded its Mig-29s in the summer due to a lack of spare parts and expertise to help maintain them after Russian technicians returned home. Ukraine’s air force continues to use Mig-29s.
Denmark was “open” to the idea of sending fighter jets to Ukraine to help its war effort against the Russian invasion, the Danish defence minister said on Friday, according to the state broadcaster DR. “I won’t rule out that at some point it may be necessary to look at the contribution of fighter jets,” the acting defence minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said.
…
Russia’s defence secretary, Sergei Shoigu, has presented state awards to the pilots of the Su-27 planes involved in the drone incident over the Black Sea for “preventing the violation of the borders of the special operation area by the American MQ-9 Reaper drone”. [LOL]
China and Russia have confirmed that China’s president Xi Jinping will make a state visit to Russia on 20-22 March….
The White House said Thursday that talks between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and China’s president would be a “good thing,” but warned Beijing against taking a “one-sided” view of the conflict. There has been no confirmation of a call to Zelenskiy by Xi. However, Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba talked by phone Thursday.
The United Nations office in Geneva said on Friday that discussions on the renewal of a deal allowing the safe export of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports were ongoing. The Kremlin on Friday said Russia was extending the Black Sea grain deal for 60 days, echoing previous statements by the foreign ministry. Ukraine has said the deal, which expires Sunday, must be rolled over in full under the existing terms, which provide for a 120-day extension minimum.
Germany’s fencing federation has cancelled a women’s foil World Cup event after the sport’s global governing body (FIE) reversed a ban on athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus.
Also from there:
Kyiv’s wartime curfew will be reduced by an hour to boost business, the administration of the Ukrainian capital announced on Friday….
Moldova’s president, Maia Sandu, has said she sees no danger of war in her countries while Ukraine continues to hold out against Russia.
Sandu, in an address to the Moldovan parliament today, said:
There is no danger of war coming to Moldova while Ukraine is fighting. I want to reassure our citizens that Moldova is not now in any danger of war. The Russian army cannot get here while Ukraine holds out – and (thus) protects Moldova. We are grateful to Ukrainians for their bravery and love of freedom.
She repeated accusations, denied by Moscow, that Russia has been plotting to destabilise Moldova.
Sandu, whose country borders Ukraine, has repeatedly expressed concern about Moscow’s intentions towards her country and about the presence of Russian troops in Transdniestria.
Russian troops would continue trying to destabilise her country “from within”, she said today, praising Moldova’s law enforcement agencies for blocking attempts to sow chaos.
She added:
As long as I am president, Moldova will hold out.
A quick snap from Reuters here that Hungary’s parliament is expected to vote on the ratification of Finland and Sweden’s membership of Nato on 31 March.
Turkey and Hungary are the only two nations yet to ratify their attempts to join the alliance.
Refinery strikes have escalated in France as the interior minister spoke of protesters wreaking havoc across the country and some MPs called for police protection, amid anger at the government pushing through a rise in the pension age without a parliamentary vote.
More than 300 people were arrested across France overnight during spontaneous protests against Emmanuel Macron’s decision to bypass parliament and force through his unpopular pensions changes, including raising the eligible age from 62 to 64.
Macron instructed the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, to invoke article 49.3 of the constitution, which allows the government to adopt a bill without a parliamentary vote, because he said there was too much economic risk to the country if MPs voted against the bill.
As opposition politicians accused the government of a brutal and undemocratic approach, demonstrators gathered in Paris and other cities. About 200 protesters briefly blocked traffic on the Paris ring road early on Friday morning.
In the energy sector, strikers voted to halt production at one of the country’s largest refineries by this weekend or Monday at the latest, a representative of the CGT union said. Workers had already been on a rolling strike at the northern site TotalEnergies de Normandie, but halting production would escalate the industrial action and spark fears of fuel shortages. Strikers continued to deliver less fuel than normal from several other sites.
A bin collectors’ strike in Paris also continued, as thousands of tonnes of waste piled up in streets across half of the city. A further day of coordinated strike action by transport workers and teachers will take place next Thursday. Some teachers’ unions suggested supervisors should also strike early next week when high school students begin baccalauréat exams.
…
Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 was passed by the surprise, last-minute use of a special constitutional power after two months of coordinated nationwide strikes and some of the biggest protests in decades. The government took the decision after it feared it could not secure a majority of MPs to vote in favour.
Unions immediately called for another day of mass strikes and protests for next Thursday, calling the government’s move “a complete denial of democracy”.
Opposition parties will call a vote of no-confidence in the government on Monday. For this to pass, it would require large numbers of MPs from the rightwing party Les Républicains to back it. The party has said it will not do so, and the government has so far survived all attempted no-confidence votes in recent months.
Macron was severely undermined in the national assembly after his centrist grouping failed to win an absolute majority in parliamentary elections last June amid major gains for the far right and radical left.
Without a majority, Macron needed to rely on lawmakers from Les Républicains to back his pensions changes. But despite weeks of negotiations with Borne, the numbers did not add up, and the president decided not to risk a vote.
Au lendemain de l’utilisation du 49.3 par le gouvernement pour faire passer la réforme des retraites, le groupe Liot (Libertés, indépendants, outre-mer et territoires) a déposé une motion de censure “transpartisane” à l’Assemblée. Il a été suivi par le groupe Rassemblement national [ew] qui, à son tour, a déposé sa propre motion de censure….
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday that Turkey will start the process of ratifying Finland’s Nato membership bid in parliament after the country took concrete steps to keep its promises.
In a news conference with his Finnish counterpart, Erdoğan said Turkey will continue discussions with Sweden on terrorism-related issues and that Sweden’s Nato membership bid would depend directly on measures taken.
Reuters report Erdoğan said he had given a list to Sweden of “120 terrorist” which they were to repatriate to Turkey, and they had failed to do so.
Sauli Niinistö, Finland’s president, said that it had understood earlier that Turkey would approve Finland’s bid and “this is important for Finland”. But he also said “Finnish membership of Nato is not complete without Sweden.”
Erdoğan said he hoped the process would be complete before May’s elections.
It’s become an ominous fixture of the mass anti-government protests roiling Israel: a coil of women in crimson robes and white caps, walking heads bowed and hands clasped. They are dressed as characters from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and the eponymous TV series….
International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin
The international criminal court (ICC) has issued warrants of arrest for President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s presidential commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.
#ICC President Judge Piotr Hofmański on recent arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova in the context of the situation in #Ukraine
Today, 17 March 2023, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (“ICC” or “the Court”) issued warrants of arrest for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine: Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Ms Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova.
Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, born on 7 October 1952, President of the Russian Federation, is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, (i) for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute), and (ii) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or allowed for their commission, and who were under his effective authority and control, pursuant to superior responsibility (article 28(b) of the Rome Statute).
Ms Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, born on 25 October 1984, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Ms Lvova-Belova bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute).
Pre-Trial Chamber II considered, based on the Prosecution’s applications of 22 February 2023, that there are reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.
The Chamber considered that the warrants are secret in order to protect victims and witnesses and also to safeguard the investigation. Nevertheless, mindful that the conduct addressed in the present situation is allegedly ongoing, and that the public awareness of the warrants may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of crimes, the Chamber considered that it is in the interests of justice to authorise the Registry to publicly disclose the existence of the warrants, the name of the suspects, the crimes for which the warrants are issued, and the modes of liability as established by the Chamber.
The abovementioned warrants of arrests were issued pursuant to the applications submitted by the Prosecution on 22 February 2023.
lumipunasays
Re 266
It’s hilarious that Erdogan invited Niinistö for a snap-schedule meeting (of the sort you couldn’t refuse) in Turkey just so they could stage a theatrical press conference together, just for him to announce “OK, OK, we’ll start working on it”.
Finnish media is super excited about this, and Hungary’s hot new announcement that they plan to ratify on 27 March after all. I’ll believe both of these plans when they’ve happened.
Associated Press: Rep. George Santos told the Associated Press that he’s a “maybe” on seeking a second term next year. The New York Republican, apparently indifferent to his reputation, also told the AP, “I think truth still matters very much.”
Not good news: In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, YouTube suspended Donald Trump’s account, concluding that the then-president’s videos might lead to additional violence. This morning, Axios reported that YouTube has decided to lift its restrictions on the former president’s channel.
WTF? Trump continues to spout the same lies that prompted the January 6 attack.
VoteVets, a progressive veterans organization, launched a new television ad this week calling for military facilities to stop airing Fox News’ primetime hosts.
Disinformation divides our military and makes us less safe. Tonight, VoteVets is running this ad calling for Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham to be removed from military installation TVs. The ad will run during those shows, on cable systems serving those very TVs.
Sources at the international criminal court said they thought it was now “very unlikely” that Vladimir Putin would travel to any country currently supporting Ukraine. If he did so he risked arrest, they pointed out.
They said it was possible Putin would still fly to China which is not a signatory to the Rome statute, the treaty which obliges governments to enforce ICC warrants.
“The Russia president’s travel options have become extremely limited,” a source said.
The videos, in which the former president speaks directly to the camera, are aimed at reassuring supporters that he’s focused on topics other than his 2020 defeat, an issue that flopped with midterm voters.
Commentary:
[…] On the contrary, these videos have all the sophistication of bumper stickers written in crayon.
Trump’s newest installment, for example, features the Republican speaking for roughly three-and-a-half minutes about his geopolitical vision — which is ridiculous, but which is very much worth paying attention to.
Trump begins the video by claiming, “We have never been closer to World War III than we are today under Joe Biden,” which isn’t even close to being true. (Tensions were far higher, for example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.) Moments later, he characterized Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “proxy battle” that needs to end “immediately.”
Closer to home, the former president believes there’s a “globalist neo-con establishment” that is “perpetually dragging us into endless wars,” “pretending” to fight for democracy, and turning the United States into a “third-world dictatorship.” Trump’s solution? “The State Department, the defense bureaucracy, the intelligence services, and all the rest need to be completely overhauled and reconstituted to fire the Deep Staters,” he added.
Evidently, once the United States’ military, intelligence agencies, and diplomatic corps have been remodeled to fit Trump’s wishes, he intends to “reevaluate” our NATO alliance, its purpose, and its mission.This would, of course, be entirely in line with the Kremlin’s dream scenario, though that’s apparently not a consideration the former president is worried about. From the video’s official transcript:
“[T]he greatest threat to Western Civilization today is not Russia. It’s probably, more than anything else, ourselves and some of the horrible, U.S.A.-hating people that represent us. It’s the abolition of our national borders. It’s the failure to police our own cities. It’s the destruction of the rule of law from within. It’s the collapse of the nuclear family and fertility rates, like nobody can believe is happening. It’s the Marxists who would have us become a Godless nation worshipping at the altar of race, and gender, and environment. And it’s the globalist class that has made us totally dependent on China and other foreign countries that basically hate us.”
After downplaying the threat Russia poses, Trump drives the point home once more, concluding that American “globalists” are “doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed,” as these Americans chase “monsters and phantoms overseas.”
As visions go, this is more a weird and paranoid rant than the basis for a major party presidential platform. In fact, if one were to read the transcript, strip it from context, and not realize that it came from Trump’s political operation, a typical person might think it was an unhinged tirade from some random person with a YouTube channel that has four followers.
Or possibly a social media message from someone who seems a little too eager to promote pro-Kremlin propaganda.
After all, most mainstream Americans have no reason to believe the United States is a “third-world dictatorship” filled with nefarious, villainous officials who are far scarier than Russia and China. And yet, Trump not only believes this, he released a video bragging about it.
As a practical matter, it’s likely that Vladimir Putin will celebrate the clip and prepare new efforts to help return the former American president to the White House in order to advance the kind of agenda Moscow desperately wants to see. But as a political matter, I’d also love to know just how many congressional Republicans — and other GOP presidential aspirants — agree with the message Trump trumpeted in this video.
It’s been about a month since the public learned of significant developments in the Mar-a-Lago scandal, and at the time, the news related to special counsel Jack Smith trying to compel one of Donald Trump’s attorneys to testify before a grand jury. Attorney-client privilege didn’t apply, the special counsel’s office argued, because the lawyer in question, Evan Corcoran, had conversations in furtherance of a crime.
Of course, Corcoran isn’t the only person in the former president’s orbit of interest to Smith and his team. CNN reported overnight:
At least two dozen people — from Mar-a-Lago resort staff to members of Donald Trump’s inner circle at the Florida estate — have been subpoenaed to testify to a federal grand jury that’s investigating the former president’s handling of classified documents, multiple sources familiar with the investigation told CNN. … The staffers are of interest to investigators because of what they may have seen or heard while on their daily duties around the estate, including whether they saw boxes or documents in Trump’s office suite or elsewhere.
[…] we’re not just talking about people who regularly interacted personally with the former president at his glorified country club. Smith has also reportedly sought testimony from people who worked at Mar-a-Lago, “including a housekeeper and restaurant servers.”
[…] The same CNN report added that, as part of the same investigation, one of the special counsel’s most senior prosecutors helped question Margo Martin, a former White House communications aide who moved with Trump to south Florida, and who appeared before the grand jury hearing evidence in this case.
Under normal circumstances, developments along these lines, signaling an intensifying criminal investigation into a former president — who also happens to be the apparent frontrunner for his party’s 2024 nomination — would be quite dramatic. For Trump, however, the news has to compete with parallel developments in several other ongoing criminal investigations.
Indeed, as dozens face subpoenas in the Mar-a-Lago probe, the former president is facing the very real possibility of a New York indictment in a hush money scandal, a possible indictment in Georgia as part of Trump’s alleged election-interference efforts, and possible charges as part of the federal investigation into the Jan. 6 attack.
If it hasn’t already, the political world should probably prepare itself for the prospect of a major party presidential nominee facing multiple criminal indictments during his candidacy for the nation’s highest office.
Whenever Donald Trump faces an investigation […] he and his political operation stick to a simple playbook. If fact, the entire script consists of three words: Attack the investigators.
[…] Special Counsel Robert Mueller represented a threat, so Trump did his best to tear him down. Special Counsel Jack Smith is receiving even more aggressive treatment now. The FBI has also become a routine foil. For quite a while, the former president even seemed preoccupied with the shape of Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s neck.
[…]Those who scrutinize Trump’s alleged wrongdoing must be torn down, hopefully humiliated, and characterized as lacking in any credibility.
To date, the effects have been … how do I put this gently … limited. The more the former president has whined incessantly about the awfulness of his investigators, the more he’s seen diminishing returns. His complaints tend to be dismissed as false or irrelevant, and he’s never successfully discredited anyone who’s scrutinized his alleged misdeeds.
But facing possible indictments, Trump just doesn’t seem to know what else to do. The New York Times reported overnight that the Republican and his team are “preparing to wage a political war” against his latest foe.
With an indictment looming from the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, Mr. Trump’s campaign is laying the groundwork for a broad attack on Mr. Bragg, a Democrat. According to two of Mr. Trump’s political allies, the campaign will aim to portray any charges as part of a coordinated offensive by the Democratic Party against Mr. Trump, who is trying to become only the second former president to win a new term after leaving office.
[…] The former president has, for example, insisted more than once that the Manhattan district attorney is “racist.” Trump has yet to point to any actual evidence to support the claim, but the public is apparently supposed to believe that if a Black prosecutor is investigating Trump, we should just assume that the prosecutor is driven by racial animus.
Just because.
[Trump] and his political operation went further late yesterday, issuing a 247-word written statement targeting Bragg, which reinforced just how little Team Trump has to work with.
“The latest Witch-Hunt is being brought on by George Soros-backed Radical Left Democrat prosecutor Alvin Bragg,” it read in part. “Bragg has made political donations to fellow Radical Democrats like Raphael Warnock, and now Bragg is making a political donation of a different kind to Joe Biden. Everyone knows it’s a sham. In fact, the Department of Justice stocked the DA’s office with top people from DC to help ‘Get Trump’ at a local level.”
[…] donating to Sen. Raphael Warnock isn’t exactly scandalous […] claims about a Justice Department conspiracy are not to be taken seriously.
But let’s not miss the forest for the trees: Team Trump may be “preparing to wage a political war” against Bragg, but the former president appears to be sorely lacking in ammunition.
I started this WaPo story – headlined “Much of the 2024 GOP field focuses on dark, apocalyptic themes” – with hope and optimism. Awesome, the bigs are treating this as not normal, which is good, just what democracy needs!
It starts off strong, citing Trump’s “I am your retribution” speech and building up to a compelling nut ‘graph:
The trio of comments from 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls — either declared or expected — underscore the dark undertones and apocalyptic rhetoric that have pervaded much of the Republican Party in the era of Trump.
But in the very next ‘graph, immediately undercutting the story’s own premise, comes the first sign that the story is infected with the insidious journalistic trope of bothsidesism:
President Biden and Democrats often engage in their own existential messaging, warning that some Republicans — whom they deride as “extremists” — are out of step with most Americans, eager, for example, to cut programs like Medicare and Social Security.”
Wait, what? Equating the defense of Medicare and Social Security with “I am your retribution”? Putting extremists in quotes was a nice touch, too. [Yep. Using bothsidesism to that extent is the same as promoting disinformation.]
From there, the story’s structure deteriorates into a both-sides dipsy doo of apocalyptic things Republicans have said followed by “to be sure”-style tut-tutting over Democrats just to even things out, culminating in: “Of course, Democrats also deploy hyperbolic and dark language against their Republican foes.” Of course?!?
The peak of the bothsidesism comes when the story hands the baton to a dyed-in-the-wool Trumper who invokes … 85-year-old Jane Fonda … as representative of elected Democrats. What is this, 1972?
[…] Remember this is a story ostensibly about how GOP contenders for president in 2024 are using dark and apocalyptic language, but okay sure Hanoi Jane half a century later as a counterpoint. […].
Russia is sustaining up to 1,500 casualties a day in its current offensive, mostly in the eastern city of Bakhmut, according to a senior Nato official.
Ukraine is taking “an order of magnitude less” in fighting where “several thousand” shells a day have been consumed on both sides, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.
The official added that it was unclear how long the battle for Bakhmut will go on. Grim, intense fighting is taking place at the front line in the city running along the river which has become a “killing zone”, they said.
Although Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure was running ahead of western production, the official said there were no signs that Ukrainian forces were losing the city.
[…] Some have also pointed out that a higher retirement age exposes social inequalities: low-income people tend not to live as long as high-income people, and Social Security benefits make up a greater percentage of income for low-income retirees, meaning cuts would hit that group harder.
Republicans seem more comfortable advocating a higher retirement age as a cut that doesn’t quite read like a cut, a policy change that they can propose while also expressing rage at Democrats’ accusation that they want to roll back benefits. But raising the Social Security retirement age simply is a cut, and one Republicans are going on TV to support even in this hostile environment, when public opposition to cuts is clear.
Increasing the age is always a cut unless there is an equal increase in the average life expectancy.
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People in France are rioting because Government wants to raise their retirement age to 64 from 62
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There is also little to no acknowledgement that nature of employment in the American economy was changed over the past 50 years
– gone are the days of retiring at 65 – with 40+ years of service at the same company.
– gone are the days of lifetime retiree Healthcare benefits.
– gone are the days of substantial company pension plans
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Check the age and wealth of these kind folks who want the cuts.
They don’t know or care what some of us go through in our working lives and in many cases giving our bodies to make their lives easier.
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Yep…the ones most invested in this lie about SS are not in the least dependent on it
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those who retire at 62 do so at a diminished rate, but the GOP plays it like 62 is the retirement age, when for the bulk of today’s workers the retirement age is 67 for full benefits.
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And life expectancy has been going down recently …
Local, state and federal law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for the possibility that former President Donald Trump is indicted as early as next week, according to five senior officials familiar with the preparations.
Law enforcement agencies are conducting preliminary security assessments, the officials said, and are discussing potential security plans in and around the Manhattan Criminal Court, at 100 Centre Street, in case Trump is charged in connection with an alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels and travels to New York to face any charges.
The officials stress that the interagency conversations and planning are precautionary in nature because no charges have been filed.
The agencies involved include the NYPD, New York State Court Officers, the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, the officials said.
NBC News has reached out to all of those agencies for comment, and all have declined to comment.
Oggie: Mathomsays
One other thing that raising the retirement age does is help employers to pay lower wages. If the retirement age is raised, then older employees do not retire, which means fewer jobs for younger workers. And fewer jobs for younger workers means that employees will take lower-paying jobs to survive.
Seeing Russians fortifying occupied Crimea is the chef’s kiss in this totally failed war which Russia launched. This cope Toblerone [hee] is not going to hold Ukrainian troops for even 5 mins.
Photos at the (Twitter) link.
Pierce R. Butlersays
Oggie: Mathom @ # 285: … fewer jobs for younger workers means that employees will take lower-paying jobs …
And by no coincidence at all, we see Republicans across the country spontaneously and simultaneously pushing for more child labor.
This is going to become one of my favourite soundbites from any foreign minister I have interviewed. I asked @DmytroKuleba what was behind the creative diplomacy Ukraine had shown during the war. [video at the link]
For the most part, these updates on the status of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine shy away from domestic politics. That’s not just out of awareness that the audience for this daily update goes beyond the political range of those who might otherwise be considered Daily Kos regulars, but because it seems like a disservice to the people actually risking their lives on the ground to wander too far afield.
However, there are occasions where it can’t be avoided. In the last week, Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson has made support for Vladimir Putin a touchstone for would-be Republican nominees in 2024. Carlson’s all-in support for Russia had seemed like such an out-there position at the start of the war that some even questioned whether Fox might choose to drop his program. Of course, that didn’t happen. Instead, support for Russia only grew within the GOP, thanks to nightly hammering from Carlson and other right-wing media hosts insisting that Ukraine was corrupt, the U.S. is weak, and Russia is the future.
Earlier this week, a Russian propaganda video appeared that shows middle school students in Crimea assembling weapons and drilling in military uniform. The video is inherently ghastly, a scene lifted right from the later days of Hitler Youth with fascist overtones so heavy it only needs a little brass-heavy soundtrack to serve as one of the commercials in the film version of Starship Troopers. But this morning, right-wing media is pushing that video as proof that Russia is superior to the U.S. [OMFG]
Here’s that video. Note that it’s not taking place in Russia, but in occupied Crimea, where trenches are currently being dug across beaches, following reports that Russia may withdraw from occupied regions to the north. [video at the link. JFC]
This isn’t “cute.” It’s not even about creating a “warrior mentality” for the future. This is about grooming children to stand in the front lines of a conflict that’s happening right now at a distance that could be driven in less than an hour—a conflict that the people instructing these children very much expect to come to their door.
I’m not going to link to the sites promoting this video as a good thing. If you want to find them, they’re all too findable. But I will point out that this isn’t the first time. Two years ago, Republicans—including Ted Cruz—lavished praise on a Russian training video and circulated a heavily edited version of a U.S. recruitment video while complaining that America has a “woke, emasculated military.” I’m also not going to answer those charges. Veterans have already done it well enough.
But since this nonsense is still going on, here’s a little reply concerning what really happens when the U.S. military meets the Russian military in a battle where 500 Russian soldiers and their allies, supported by T-72 tanks, went up against 40 Americans.
In the end, 200 to 300 of the attacking fighters were killed. The others retreated under merciless airstrikes from the United States, returning later to retrieve their battlefield dead. None of the Americans at the small outpost in eastern Syria — about 40 by the end of the firefight — were harmed.
Those weren’t just Russian military forces; they were Wagner Group. Right now in Ukraine, Wagner Group is the only force advancing at any point along the whole line[…]
And God protect us from people who think what’s happening in that video is a good thing.
WHAT IF BAKHMUT NEVER FALLS?
The idea that Ukraine might be holding fast to Bakhmut because they believe Russia is about to exhaust its forces in the area seems to have hit some news outlets like a revelation this week. The only possible response is provided in the immortal words of Billy Eilish. [“Duh”]
On Friday morning, there’s a good deal of excitement around claims that Russian forces seem to be culminating, not just in the area around Bakhmut, but essentially everywhere, all it once (Sorry, couldn’t figure a way to get an “everything” in there). Part of this comes from a prediction that seems to have originated with The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which said on Thursday evening that a decrease in Russian operations around Bakhmut supported their Wednesday claims that the Wagner offensive in Bakhmut is “likely nearing culmination.” [Tweet and video at the link]
Meanwhile, at least two Russian attempts to cross that river between the east and west parts of the city, shallow and narrow as it is, appear to have failed. Reports also suggest that Ukraine has pushed back Russian forces west of the city, though it’s unclear if they’ve managed to improve access along that critical road through Khromove.
There’s a reason ISW doesn’t get quoted here a lot, and it’s because they frequently make predictions of this sort. Or the opposite sort. And they are frequently wrong. They also regularly publish claims from Wagner, Russian military, or Ukrainian sources that lack confirmation and make assessments of territory lost or gained that don’t match reports from the ground.
However, in this case, their assessment seems to align with something notable in reports coming from both the Ukrainian general staff and front-line sources: Russia is slowing down.
Over the last week, the pace of Russian attacks being conducted on a daily basis has fallen from over 100 to 70 to around 30. Even the relentless, boneheaded, hideously wasteful daily attempts to drive armor across the field to Vuhledar appear to have stopped in the last two days. So have the wave attacks that were being conducted elsewhere.
That’s not a guarantee of culmination. It could simply be Russia gathering up ammo and men as they prepare to hurl themselves against the rocks again. However, it seems to match some of the chatter that’s been happening in Telegram channels over the last week. The bigger question may be: If Russia is halted and its momentum exhausted, what then? Does Ukraine have the reserves and the equipment necessary to turn a culmination on the part of Russia into an opportunity?
That’s not just the many billions of dollars question at the moment; it’s one that no one outside a few in the upper echelons of the Ukrainian government is likely to understand. There was one helluva lot not to like about The Washington Post’s gloomy assessment of the situation in Ukraine earlier in the week. However, it’s hard to know what to think about the fact that the officer who provided much of the background for that report has since been demoted. [Hmmm. Interesting.]
Is that a sign that Ukraine’s situation is fragile and that leadership in Kyiv is slapping down those who dare speak the truth about a shortage of trained soldiers to continue the fight? Or is it just a signal that military commanders who open their mouths to complain to the media about their wartime leadership generally find that the army still has latrines? I don’t honestly know.
But if Russia’s advance is crumbling, this could be the best time to invert that advance and make significant gains. Hopefully, Ukraine is ready.
EXCELLENT LOOK AT CONDITIONS ON THE FRONT AT BAKMUT
If you want an excellent look at what’s happening right now in Bakhmut, it would be hard to do better than this video released last night by the BBC. It not only gives an overview of the whole tactical situation, but a close-up look at the conditions in which this fight is taking place. It’s impossible not to be reminded of fighting in World War I. [video at the link]
A SEQUENCE OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS … FOR A RUSSIA MLRS
A neat series of video and images showing verification of the destruction of a Russian BM-27 “Uragan” multiple launch rocket system. Start with some counterbattery fire from an M270… [video at the link]
Next move on to confirming the geolocation of the site, and finally check with a FIRMS satellite to see that the hot spot from the weapon’s destruction was still glowing hours later. It’s worth clicking the tweet above and scanning the whole brief thread to see the elements of OSInt at work with this image.
It’s been a long time since we pulled out FIRMS data to show the intensity of fighting in an area. In large part that came because at the end of summer/early fall, both intentional and accidental fires in fields across Ukraine so drowned out any potential signal of fighting that it became nearly impossible to suss out anything worthwhile. But now that we’re in mud season once again, it’s probably time for a FIRMS reunion. Stay tuned.
SEARCHING FOR THE MEANING BEHIND A FAILED UKRAINIAN ASSAULT
Since December, when Russia supposedly opened its “big winter offensive,” Ukraine seems to have been content to sit back and let Russians everywhere struggle with the mud and deal with their inability to coordinate large-scale movements. Over that time, Ukrainian forces have made very few attempts to attack, even on the scale of small probing movements.
However, one Wednesday, Ukraine sent a group of armored transports toward the town of Polohy, about midway across the southern line between Vasylivka and Vuhledar. By all accounts, the effort was a failure — such a failure that Ukraine ended up losing three U.S. donated M113 APCs along with one YPR-765 (which is also an M113, slightly modified by the Dutch). Several Ukrainian soldiers also seem to have been lost in this attempt, and Russian media outlets have been promoting this as the Ukrainian equivalent of the Russian losses at Vuhledar.
See, those sources are essentially saying, Ukraine also makes fruitless runs across open fields, in which they lose half their force with the other half being forced to retreat!
But some Russian chatter suggests that this small assault, and another that happened further to the east, were done with a purpose.
Russian mi. cor. “Svidetely Bayraktara” says that the Ukrainian attack at Polohy was a test run to expose weaknesses in Russian defence. It showed that Ukrainian vehicles were able to move through the mud and even reached Russian positions. The post is a reaction to Vladlen Tatarsky who is puzzled as to why no anti-tank mines were placed in front of Russian positions.
Polohy had a prewar population of 20,000, putting it on par with Lyman or Popasna. It’s a pretty significant target to be assaulted by a single line of vehicles on a muddy road. But apparently those vehicles advanced until they were practically nose to nose with Russian forces before a combination of artillery and anti-tank missiles took out the four vehicles and the rest turned around.
It seems likely that this was more in the nature of a reconnaissance in force designed to test whether the fields were too muddy to be crossed (no) and whether they were mined (also no). But this kind of action seemed wasteful when Russia did it, and it seems just as wasteful on the part of Ukraine. Hopefully, the information they gained was worth it, but that will only be the case if—like any possible culmination around Bakhmut—Ukraine is ready to exploit the opportunity.
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On Wednesday, Poland stepped up to say it was sending jets to the Ukrainian air force. Just as with previous such announcements, this seems to have put a big crack in the dam, and now others are following. Eduard Heger is the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic. [Tweet and image at the link]
The MiGs on their way from the Slovak Republic are reportedly MIG-29 fighters, a plane with which the Ukrainian military is very familiar.
The Capitol Police wanted to review every Jan. 6 footage clip before it reached the public. House Republicans apparently had a different plan in mind.
After House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Tucker Carlson exclusive access to sensitive Jan. 6 footage, the list of problems was not short. After all, this was an instance in which a Republican congressional leader helped a controversial television personality concoct a deceptive counter-narrative about the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Controversial” is not the right word. How about “deceitful,” or “Kremlin-loving,” or “unethical”?
But there was another dimension to this that received less attention: the concerns of law enforcement.
Politico reported last month, for example, that McCarthy apparently chose not to coordinate with Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger and House Sergeant at Arms William McFarland before giving the Fox News host exclusive access. “Capitol Police have been extremely reluctant to share large swaths of their security footage, citing potential risks to lawmakers, aides and officers tasked with protecting the building,” the report added, referring to warnings that the House speaker apparently shrugged off.
Today, Politico moved the ball forward on this story quite a bit.
House Republicans ignored the Capitol Police’s repeated requests to review and approve any Jan. 6 security footage they planned to release publicly, the force’s top lawyer asserted in a sworn affidavit filed Friday.
My MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin spoke last week with Tim Heaphy, who was the lead investigator for the Jan. 6 committee, and who said in reference to the footage, “I’ve read that [Carlson’s team] said they ran some of the footage by Capitol Police and maybe took steps to blur some stuff. But I don’t know that that applies to all of it.”
It certainly did not. In fact, according to Politico’s report, which has been confirmed by NBC News, Carlson and his team were given access to thousands of hours of footage, and they ultimately aired roughly 40 clips, cherry-picked to advance their agenda. Of those 40, according to Capitol Police general counsel Thomas DiBiase, only one was previewed and approved beforehand.
The rest, DiBiase said in a sworn affidavit, “were never shown to me nor anyone else from the Capitol Police.” He’d emphasized that the Capitol Police wanted “to review every footage clip … if it was going to be made public.”
That request was not honored.
The Capitol Police general counsel went on to explain how the process unfolded behind the scenes, starting with a Republican request in early February to access the same footage that the bipartisan Jan. 6 panel was able to see. The Capitol Police quickly complied and installed three terminals in a House office building.
“At no time was I nor anyone else from the Capitol Police informed that anyone other than personnel from [the House Administration Committee] would be reviewing the camera footage,” DiBiase indicated.
Of course, we now know that McCarthy, who turned his Carlson gambit into a political fundraising opportunity, had other ideas.
All of this comes on the heels of U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger slamming Carlson for spreading “offensive and misleading conclusions” about the insurrectionist violence, adding some of the host’s on-air assertions were “outrageous and false.”
Earlier this week, the House speaker boasted that he and his GOP colleagues “back the blue.” What he neglected to mention is that this support is occasionally discarded when a controversial Fox News host asks for a favor.
Prosecutors investigating Jan. 6 obtained a report from Donald Trump’s researchers: He was shown proof of his defeat, but he kept lying anyway.
Donald Trump’s phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is notorious for good reason. On Jan. 2, 2021, as the then-president searched for ways to maintain power despite his election defeat, Trump appealed to the Georgia Republican to “find” votes that would flip the state’s election results. All of this, of course, is the basis for an ongoing criminal investigation.
But as part of the same conversation, Trump, citing research he didn’t identify, said, “So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”
Not surprisingly, the then-president was point to data that he’d just made up. What is surprising is the information that was available to him at the time. The Washington Post reported:
[A] report commissioned by his own campaign dated one day prior told a different story: Researchers paid by Trump’s team had “high confidence” of only nine dead voters in Fulton County, defined as ballots that may have been cast by someone else in the name of a deceased person. They believed there was a “potential statewide exposure” of 23 such votes across the Peach State — or 4,977 fewer than the “minimum” Trump claimed.
A similar story unfolded in Nevada, where the former president’s lawyers claimed there were 1,506 ballots cast in the names of dead people, while Trump’s own researchers concluded there were, in reality, maybe as many as 20 such examples statewide.
[…] Team Trump hired BRG researchers to look for evidence of voter fraud and election irregularities, but when they couldn’t find any evidence — and actually ended up disputing their clients bogus claims and conspiracy theories — the Republican operation quietly buried the Berkeley Research Group’s conclusions.
“They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted. Literally anything you could think of,” an insider familiar with the BRG findings explained. “Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it.”
As my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown recently added, Trump “must have really hated that his campaign spent over $600,000 to be told he was wrong.”
Today’s new reporting adds to the story, with fresh details about the scope of the Republican’s fraudulent claims.
Why is this making headlines again now? It’s not just because there’s fresh evidence of the former president lying about his election defeat, though that’s certainly the sort of detail that should be of interest to his followers who still believe the “Big Lie.” It’s also not just because Trump’s claims were discredited by his own researchers, though that’s of interest, too.
Rather, it’s because of who else has taken an interest in the BRG findings. From the Post’s report:
The “Project 2020” report conducted by the Berkeley Research Group has now been obtained by prosecutors investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. … The Justice Department has sought and obtained multiple reports, emails and interviews from witnesses that show campaign officials analyzing, and often discrediting, claims that Trump was making publicly, according to several people involved in the investigation, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal details. The Berkeley report was provided to the Justice Department earlier this month, one of the people said, after some people involved in its crafting received a subpoena.
[…] in Trump’s Jan. 6 scandal, federal prosecutors apparently have the findings of his own researchers, who found that he was lying about the election results.
If the former president is feeling optimistic about his legal future, he’s not paying close enough attention.
It’s no secret that Rep. Jim Jordan’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is flailing. […]
Some of the more common words and phrases associated with the effort thus far have been “dud“ and “amateur hour.” […]
But it’s not just the right that’s raised concerns. Take Rep. Stacey Plaskett, for example.
The non-voting delegate from the Virgin Islands is the top Democrat on the “weaponization” panel and she told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi this week that she now sees the entire endeavor as a “political stunt.” She elaborated on those concerns with The Washington Post:
“[After being] named ranking member, we reached out on more than one occasion to [Chairman] Jim Jordan to talk with him about having weekly meetings [and] to try and negotiate between ourselves and our staff areas that we could both look at. He came to my office. He listened to me politely and said he would have to talk with the other members and he would get back with me. He didn’t do that. I sent a follow-up letter saying, ‘Look, these are areas I’m interested in. There may be one or two of those that I think that we can work on together, or others that we could work on together that you might suggest.’ No response to that, either.”
[Yeah, right. Jim Jordan is not interested in doing the actual work.]
On the surface, it might be tempting to think her criticisms are simply a matter of partisanship and ideology. After all, Jordan is a far-right Republican and Plaskett is a progressive Democrat. It stands to reason that they won’t see eye to eye.
But in this instance, that’s a little overly simplistic. Plaskett has not only had good working relationships with other GOP committee chairs, she also presented Jordan with constructive ideas that a serious and impartial “weaponization” committee could tackle in a bipartisan way. From her interview with the Post:
“There [were] news reports about the indictment of an FBI special agent who they believe was colluding with the Russian government. I thought, ‘That’s definitely something that we could work on together.’ Another was reporting that the IRS disproportionately audits working-class people, working families, in particular African American families, in comparison to wealthier Americans. I also suggested that we look at the attempted weaponization of the Department of Justice by Bill Barr when he was attorney general. I didn’t think he would have liked that one as much. But the first two I thought would be areas we could agree on.”
Plaskett went on to note that the GOP chairman keeps referencing “whistleblowers” who do not meet the definition of actual whistleblowers.
The fact that Jordan continues to do this “lets me know that he’s not an honest broker,” she concluded. “I’m going to always have to be prepared for the worst, unfortunately.” […]
[…] Even the small number of potentially ineligible ballots that the Trump report claims were cast by dead people may be an overestimation. It is not uncommon for a small number of voters to cast ballots early or by mail and then die before Election Day. Those ballots are typically counted, and considered legally cast […]
Commentary:
[…] The fact that Trump didn’t just lie to state officials, but did so intentionally and in absolute contradiction to the evidence that had been given to him, is another reason why the case in Fulton County, Georgia, is expected to end with charges. In every state, the researchers that Trump hired found no evidence of widespread fraud, and no reason not to support the numbers that the state reported.
Trump knew he was lying from the outset. So did his legal team. But they lied anyway—to the public, to Congress, to state officials, and in court.
On Friday, Trump pumped out a 90-second rant warning his supporters that Democrats are aiming to “steal” the 2024. In addition to repeating all the elements of the Big Lie, Trump warns that “the DOJ should stop” and that “Republicans in Congress are watching closely.”
If watching this is hard to tolerate, just imagine he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit. Trump is certainly thinking about it. […]
Wonkette: “Joe Biden Just Throwing Affordable Insulin At America”
Joe Biden’s woke agenda of reducing the cost of insulin keeps rolling forward, inflicting significant out of pocket savings on Americans with diabetes, who need the drug to stay alive. It all started last summer, when the Inflation Reduction Act reduced the cost of insulin for folks on Medicare to $35, although Senate Republicans voted down a matching price cap for everyone else, just to be big jerks. […]
Then, at the start of this month, after Biden called for a national price cap on insulin in his State of the Union address, Pharma giant Eli Lilly announced it would cap its price for two of its most widely prescribed insulins to $35 per month, for people on insurance and for uninsured folks. Biden called on other manufacturers to follow suit, and now that’s happening, so we’re certain Donald Trump will take credit for it.
[…] Wednesday, the Danish pharma company Novo-Nordisk cut its insulin prices by between 65 and 75 percent, depending on the product, although it didn’t match the $35 per month commitment made by Lilly. Analysts said the price cuts will especially help people with high deductibles and those who don’t have insurance.
Then, yesterday afternoon, after Biden spoke in Las Vegas about his plans to reduce out of pocket medical costs, the French company Sanofi announced it will cap its insulin prices in the US at $35 per month, although the change won’t go into effect until January 1, 2024. Like they couldn’t do it right away like Lilly did, but quoi ever. […]
As NBC News points out, this is a friggin’ huge deal, because between them, Lilly, Novo-Nordisk, and Sanofi supply 90 percent of the insulin in the US market.
In a White House announcement yesterday, Biden took a little victory lap, saying, “As of this afternoon, all three of the leading insulin producers in America have agreed to substantially reduce their prices, following my calls to expand my $35 cap for seniors to all Americans.”
[…] So now, guess it’s time for the last 10 percent of insulin suppliers to get on the bandwagon. And to see how Fox News spins this terrific news for Americans as a “woke” disaster.
[…] we have taken to watching the short videos Trump has been putting out in recent weeks to fire up his base, in the hope that we can build up our tolerance before the campaign really gets going. Via Mediaite:
Former President Donald Trump raged at many of his fellow Americans in a new campaign video that defended Russia as a lesser enemy than the supporters of his domestic political opponents.
Incredibly, this lede manages to undersell the miasma of rage, self-pity, paranoia, xenophobia, psychosis, inanity, delusion, apocalypse, vengefulness and bronzer packed into this three and a half minutes humbly titled “Preventing World War III.” [video at the link]
[…] Ugh, another 20 months or more of living in the Albrecht Dürer exhibit that runs 24-7 through the pile of wet pasteboard and termite spray that passes for Donald Trump’s brain. […]
The ruling found that the government had met the threshold for the crime-fraud exception, which allows prosecutors to get around attorney-client privilege if they believe a crime has been committed.
A federal judge ruled on Friday that prosecutors overseeing the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents can pierce assertions of attorney-client privilege and compel one of his lawyers to answer more questions before a grand jury, two people familiar with the matter said.
In making her ruling, the judge, Beryl A. Howell, found that the government had met the threshold for the so-called crime-fraud exception, which allows prosecutors to work around attorney-client privilege when they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services have been used in furthering a crime.
The New York Times reported last month that the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, had asked Judge Howell to apply the crime-fraud exception to the grand jury testimony of M. Evan Corcoran, a lawyer who has represented Mr. Trump since last spring, as the documents investigation began heating up. Mr. Corcoran appeared before the grand jury in February and asserted attorney-client privilege while declining to answer certain questions. […]
That’s a win for Special Counsel Jack Smith. Good news.
How is it possible that we still haven’t passed this point? Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo told Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) Thursday that ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were effective against COVID-19 ― echoing falsehoods that persisted at the peak of the pandemic.
[…] As Daily Beast reports, Trump’s attorneys are taking this opportunity [multiple ongoing investigations] to subpoena a lot of people. A lot of people. Many of those people have no connection to the case in New York. These people aren’t being brought in to defend Trump, or to ask them anything connected to the case James [New York state attorney general Letitia James] is building. They’re being brought in to ask them about “information about other governmental investigations into the Trump Organization in addition to information about the conduct of the OAG investigation.”
Trump is using the New York state case as a tool to pry into all the cases against him.
According to the Daily Beast, these subpoenas are coming to the state court under seal. That makes it hard to determine the names of those who have been subpoenaed or even the number of such requests from Trump’s team. The greatest visibility comes from James and her team fighting many of these subpoenas as “utterly irrelevant” to the case at hand. The AG’s office is accusing Trump’s legal team of “an improper attempt to seek information on separate criminal and regulatory investigations that is not relevant to this proceeding.”
Trump’s team is doing this in New York mostly because this case is simply ahead of the curve. They won’t get the chance to do discovery related to the criminal cases until actual indictments land at Mar-a-Lago. […]
Trump’s moves are being called a “fishing expedition” […] Any way you spin it, nothing says terrified better than calling in every name you can think of with hopes of asking them, “What has anyone been asking you about me?”
[….] In the meantime, hopefully, the judge in the New York case will do something to keep Trump from using that case as a crowbar to pry open ongoing investigations.
Donald Trump’s White House has failed to report more than 100 gifts from foreign nations worth more than a quarter-million dollars, and federal officials have been unable to find a life-size painting of Trump given by the president of El Salvador as well as golf clubs from the prime minister of Japan, according to a report Friday from House Democrats.
Among the unreported items are 16 gifts from Saudi Arabia worth more than $45,000 in all, including a dagger valued at up to $24,000, and 17 presents from India that include expensive cufflinks, a vase and a $4,600 model of the Taj Mahal, says the report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
Gifts above several hundred dollars that foreign officials give to the president, vice president and their families are required under the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act to be reported to the State Department. The report from House Democrats, citing State Department records, says the number of gifts reported by Trump and his family are lower than the number disclosed by previous presidents.
All told, the report says, though the White House did report some gifts to State between 2017 and 2019, it failed to report more than 100 foreign gifts with a total value of over $250,000.
[…] unaccounted for are thousands of dollars in golf clubs given to Trump in 2018 and 2019 by Shinzo Abe, then the prime minister of Japan.
“Today’s preliminary findings suggest again the Trump Administration’s brazen disregard for the rule of law and its systematic mishandling of large gifts from foreign governments, including many lavish gifts that vastly exceed the statutory limit in value but were never reported — some that are still missing today,” Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.
He also said that the committee would “remain committed to following the facts to determine the extent to which former President Trump broke the law or violated the Constitution when he failed to report gifts and took possession of valuable items without paying the fair market price for them.” […]
Before spring break season is over, beaches across the Gulf Coast will begin to stink.
By mid-April, as businesses in South Florida and across the Gulf Coast juggle an influx of vacationers, the region’s beaches will likely face another unwelcome visitor: enormous mats of rotting sargassum seaweed.
The leading edge of a several-thousand-mile-long train of floating sargassum is already beginning to pile up on the beaches of resorts in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, along Caribbean islands and in Key West, Fla.
But with an estimated 13 million tons of seaweed out there, those early arrivals are just “the tip of the iceberg,” said marine biologist Brian LaPointe. […] He said the bloom isn’t a cause for “panic” — but added that for a bloom to be “that big, that early, just doesn’t bode well.”
[…] Here is a list of things we know about the threats posed by the seaweed bloom — and what we still don’t.
What is washing ashore?
Clumps of seaweed that have broken loose from a far larger belt of floating sargassum that has established itself in the mid-Atlantic over the last decade.
[…] What caused the seaweed crisis?
The acute cause seems to be two years of “unprecedented” wind events — in 2009 and 2010 — which blew record quantities of sargassum out of its home waters.
While clumps of sargassum had always escaped to wash up on Atlantic and Caribbean beaches, there had never been enough before to establish a stable population, said Rick Lumpkin, who runs the physical oceanography division at the NOAA observation lab in Miami
.
Other factors helped the new sargassum colony to establish itself in its new home after 2011, Lumpkin said. Like any plant, sargassum benefits from heat and fertilizer. The heat came from rising ocean temperatures caused by climate change. And the fertilizer came from, well, fertilizer.
Many scientists link the sargassum blooms to the overuse of fertilizers in the watersheds of the great rivers that pour into the Atlantic: the Mississippi, Orinoco, Congo and Amazon.
Those fertilizers — which those rivers’ powerful outflow push far out to sea — are used in industrial agriculture to make up for soil depleted by tropical deforestation or season after season of growing the same crops.
But particularly in the case of agriculture in the Amazon and Orinoco, that nutrient runoff also ended up boosting the population of floating algae in the mid-Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. […]
Fish, crabs and jellyfish that move among the sargassum get washed ashore and rot on the beach.
[…] The drifting mats can block all light from reaching underwater plants beneath, posing a deadly threat to coral reefs.
[…] And as the floating seaweed breaks down among the mangroves that ring the Gulf, hydrogen sulfide and other by-products suck oxygen out of the water column, creating dead zones that suffocate fish and “everything underwater that can’t swim away,” LaPointe said. To make things even worse, those rotting bodies add to the stink. […]
More at the link, including details of how Florida counties deal with sargassum.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@SC #288:
can you get this documentary?
English Title: “The Umbrella Murder – The Story of Agent Picadilly”
Original: “Paraplymordet – Historien om Agent Piccadilly”
If you understand Danish, it’s watchable on the broadcaster’s website here.
Click one of the three episode thumbnails.
* 1 Spionen med de tusinde ansigter (The spy with a thousand faces)
* 2 Drabet på Georgi Markov (The murder of Georgi Markov)
* 3 Jagten på en spion (The hunt for a spy)
In the player, “[=]” toggles Danish subtitles.
If you don’t know Danish, you’ll need to download the show and run its subs through a translator. That will involve a commandline tool (yt-dlp here for Linux/OSX/Windows) and a website.
The tool is self-contained, just put it in the folder where you intend to do downloading. Open a prompt there and edit & run this on one line.
* Edit “TUM_1” and episode 1’s url, “TUM_2” and its url, etc.
* That selects the [b]est stream containing both video and audio at a given height (-F prints all streams). Saving to “TUM_1.mp4” and subtitles to “TUM_1.da.vtt”.
* Filesize for available heights: 360p=280 MB, 480p=560 MB, 540p=980 MB, 720p=1.6 GB, 1080p=2.5 GB.
Visit translatesubtitles.co . Google translate chokes on vtt files, and too big to paste. So this site spoonfeeds sentences to Google.
Drag “TUM_1.da.vtt” onto that webpage.
Select English. Click “Translate” and “Download”. Save as “TUM_1.en.vtt”
Delete “TUM_1.da.vtt” or move it out of the way.
Your desktop video player (e.g., VLC) should now play with English subs.
* Sidenote: If you list streams, you’d see a bunch of video-only/audio-only streams, intended for mix&matched quality. Avoid those for simplicity. yt-dlp would require another optional tool to automatically merge them, ffmpeg. Then telling yt-dlp –ffmpeg-location “…” and -f vstreamId+astreamId.
* You’d also see a bunch of streamIds falsely claiming to be English. Broadcaster goofed.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Addendum to my #301: Blog ate my punctuation. Those should be plain double-quotes in the commands. And there should be two dashes before --write-subs.
Also before --ffmpeg-location.
StevoRsays
Expletives. They’;ve surgically reimplanted the hemorrhoid as one old meme once put it :
PROTEST EVENTS coming up in Adelaide, South Australia
For any other SA locals who see this here and wish to attend. Plus I guess everyone who really wants to and make these from anywhere. All welcome and the more the better.
Tomorrow 1 pm outside State Parliament House.
Call to Peace Rally
20th Anniversary of the USA led invasion of Iraq.
Stop Aukus. Free Julian Assange. No Nuclear Subs. Truth not war. Climate Justice.
Then on April 2nd, Palm Sunday March for Peace, Justice & Climate 2 pm Hindmarsh Square marching through Rundle Mall to Parliament House.
I expect there will be similar events in other Aussie cities esp our state capitals. Info via a friend on fb.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill Friday night prohibiting abortion pills in the state and also allowed a separate measure restricting abortion to become law without his signature.
In a statement, Gordon expressed concern that the latter law, dubbed the Life is a Human Right Act would result in a lawsuit that will “delay any resolution to the constitutionality of the abortion ban in Wyoming.”
He noted that earlier in the day, plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit filed a challenge to the new law in the event he did not issue a veto.
“I believe this question needs to be decided as soon as possible so that the issue of abortion in Wyoming can be finally resolved, and that is best done with a vote of the people,” Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement.
The Wyoming governor’s decision on abortion pills comes after they took center stage this week in Texas, where a federal judge raised questions about a Christian group’s effort to overturn the decades-old U.S. approval of a leading abortion drug, mifepristone.
[…]
Fifteen states already have limited access to abortion pills, including six that require an in-person physician visit. Those laws could withstand court challenges; states have long had authority over how physicians, pharmacists and other providers practice medicine.
States also set the rules for telemedicine consultations used to prescribe medications. Generally that means health providers in states with restrictions on abortion pills could face penalties, such as fines or license suspension, for trying to send pills through the mail.
Women have already been traveling across state lines to places where abortion pill access is easier. That trend is expected to increase.
StevoRsays
@303.
Meta Platforms reinstated Mr Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts earlier this year.
His Twitter account was reinstated in November by the platform’s new owner Elon Musk, but Mr Trump has yet to post on Twitter.
From the linked news story there
Oh the irony. Musk being so keen to woo his kindred spirit Trumplethinskin back & all
Wonder how Elon Mussy brat will take this apparent snubbing?
The silver lining in otherwise very toxic cloud.
PS. That saying always makes me wonder if people know what temperature clouds would have to be at to contain first gaseous then condensing into molten droplets of silver.. or the effect of a rain of molten heavy metals might have on those below.
A North Carolina man, the second youngest defendant in more than 1,000 arrests linked to the deadly riot at U.S. Capitol, will spend the next three years of his early adulthood behind bars.
Aiden Bilyard of Cary was 18 when he sprayed chemical agents at police and broke out a window in the Capitol during the violent mob attack on Jan. 6, 2021, to keep Donald Trump in office.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton sentenced the now-21-year-old to 40 months in prison for assaulting police with a deadly or dangerous weapon…
Don’t you feel so sorry for them? All he tried to do was kill democracy.
That was so thoughtful, CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain, @ #301. I understand Computer as well as I understand Danish – not at all – so unfortunately I’ll have to wait and see if it gets picked up and dubbed/subtitled by any of the services, but thanks for trying to help! I assume other people more technologically advanced than I am (a low bar indeed) will benefit from your suggestions.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
The international criminal court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin obligates the court’s 123 member states to arrest the Russian president and transfer him to The Hague, Netherlands, for trial if he sets foot on their territory.
The court also issued a warrant on Friday for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, on the same charges alleging war crimes.
Agence France-Presse also reported that a US-backed report by Yale University researchers last month said Russia had held at least 6,000 Ukrainian children in at least 43 camps and other facilities as part of a “large-scale systematic network”.
Russia has denied its forces have committed atrocities during the war, while the Kremlin said the arrest warrant against Putin was outrageous and “null and void” for Russia.
ICC sources said they thought it was now “very unlikely” Putin would travel to any country currently supporting Ukraine, and that if he did so he risked arrest.
Another 880 Russian soldiers were reportedly killed on Friday, according to unverified totals published by the Ukrainian army.
Its general staff said that it meant more than 164,000 Russian service personnel had been killed since the outbreak of war in February last year.
In an update posted on Facebook, it said another five tanks, seven armoured combat vehicles and eight artillery systems were disabled by Ukrainian forces.
I think they shot down another plane yesterday as well.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has welcomed the international criminal court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
Scholz told reporters at a news conference in Tokyo that it showed “nobody is above the law”.
“The international criminal court is the right institution to investigate war crimes … The fact is nobody is above the law and that’s what’s becoming clear right now,” Scholz said at a press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, Reuters reports.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has visited the annexed peninsula of Crimea to mark nine years since Russia seized it.
Russian state TV showed a brief clip of a casually dressed Putin [trying to look like Zelenskyy, but he can’t pull it off] walking with a group of officials, and promised further details shortly, Reuters reports….
The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has claimed that the deal allowing grain to be exported by ship through the Black Sea has been extended.
Erdoğan did not say how long the extension had been for. The proposed length has differed between Russia, who called for it to be 60 days and Ukraine who wanted it to be renewed for twice that length.
Ukrainian infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, said the deal had been extended for 120 days.
The current agreement had been due to expire on Saturday….
Some more details here from Associated Press on Vladimir Putin’s visit to Crimea on Saturday…
Russian state news agency RIA Novosti said Putin visited an art school and a children’s centre. The locations appear to have been chosen in response to the international criminal court’s arrest warrant being issued on Friday. The warrant accuses him of being responsible for the abduction of children.
Putin took a plane to travel the 1,821 kilometres (1,132 miles) from Moscow to Sevastopol, the region’s largest city, where he took the wheel of the car that transported him around the city, according to its Moscow-installed governor, Mikhail Razvozhayev.
Along with the art school and children’s centre, Putin also visited the archaeological site at the ruins of the ancient Greek city of Chersonesos, according to Russian state media….
Donald Trump’s White House failed to report more than 100 gifts from foreign nations worth more than a quarter-million dollars, according to a US government report, and several of those gifts – including a lifesize painting of Trump given by the president of El Salvador and golf clubs from the prime minister of Japan – are still unaccounted for….
…The lapse in the additional benefits will reduce Snap allotments for the average recipient by $90 a month, with some households losing $250 a month or more. Older adults at the minimum benefit level will see their monthly Snap benefits drop from $281 a month to $23.
…
The end of the emergency Snap allotments also coincides with a push from Republicans in Congress to cut regular Snap benefits this year, despite the majority of Americans having favorable views of the benefits. A January 2023 survey conducted by Purdue University found that seven out of 10 respondents supported permanent expansions of the Snap program….
Police in Paris have banned gatherings on the central Place de la Concorde as thousands of demonstrators continue to protest across France against Emmanuel Macron’s decision to force through a change to the state pension age without a parliamentary vote.
Protests were under way or planned on Saturday in cities including Bordeaux, Nantes, Marseille, Brest and elsewhere in Paris after unions called for a determined show of resistance ahead of a ninth day of nationwide industrial action planned for Thursday….
Newly released genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan has linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that infected animals sold at the site started the coronavirus pandemic, researchers involved in the work say….
Sounds like a thinly veiled call for violence from Trump.
In a Saturday morning, all-caps screed on Truth Social, Donald Trump said he believes he will be arrested this coming Tuesday, and called on his supporters to protest in response.
“THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK,” he wrote on his Twitter-esque social media site.
[…] It was unclear from Trump’s posts whether he was speculating, or had been informed of a coming criminal indictment by Bragg’s office or his attorneys. He claimed his knowledge came from “ILLEGAL LEAKS” from Bragg’s office.
NBC News reported Friday that state and federal law enforcement agencies were preparing security plans for a Trump indictment as early as this coming week.
In his social media posts, Trump called on his supporters to protest using language similar reminiscent of the days before the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.
“PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!” he wrote Saturday.
The rest of Trump’s Saturday Truth Social posts painted a dark and dystopian picture of America familiar to anyone who has listened to the former president’s remarks as he mounts a 2024 campaign for the White House, including an election supposedly stolen by “RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS,” a border through which criminals and mentally ill people are supposedly flooding, and “AMERICAN PATRIOTS” who are supposedly being “ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION.” [JFC]
An attorney for Trump told the New York Daily News Friday that Trump would not resist arrest. [Oh, no, Trump won’t dirty his hands. He’ll just urge every one of his cult followers to go berserk.]
“There won’t be a standoff at Mar-a-Lago with Secret Service and the Manhattan DA’s office,” Joe Tacopina told the outlet.
This is just the first indictment with possibly more and with more serious charges to come. So he has to weigh whether to call the mob out now or wait for those other shoes to drop.
He only has to go in, get booked, then get released. It might be something to hold a rally or a grifty fundraiser over, but not enough to call up the goons. In any case, I’m glad, this time around, law enforcement will be prepared.
———————-
Trump wants a Bundy-style stand-off with gunhuggers, not the Secret Service, protecting him.
——————-
Just to set expectations, I read it as a Class C nonviolent felony, which probably doesn’t result in a prison sentence. But it does result in conditions of pretrial release that Fat Donnie can’t help himself from violating, so it should still be fun.
————————-
He might see the inside of a booking cell for 10 minutes, while they get his fingerprints and mug shots. Then he bonds out and true to form, violates whatever terms they set. His social media posts lead me to believe he will incur more indictments.
[…] If it were up to me would I want to see Trump indicted in Georgia or for the false electors scheme first? Sure. But it’s not. And there’s not all that much more to say about it. When you look at all the facts, it’s more irony than travesty. This is a real crime. It’s just that the other crimes are vastly more grave. That’s not a big point in Trump’s favor.
[…] the whipped up indictments argument will quickly become a dead letter for all the but the truest believers who will believe anything Trump says regardless. Will Trump try to say they’re all the same, paint Georgia with the same New York City colors? Sure. But he’s also still claiming he won the 2020 presidential election by a big margin. You can only go so far chasing what Trump says.
If most of this week had been a story of declining Russian operations—so much so that the question of whether Russia’s offensive had already culminated was seriously being asked—that seemed to change yesterday. Once again, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Ukrainian military repelled more than 100 attempted Russian advances in a single day. With those attacks happening up and down the long front, this seemed a good time to do something the update has been missing — review the maps.
Some of the areas, such as that surrounding Kupyansk, haven’t been looked at in some weeks. Others, such as that just south of Zaporizhzhia, have been missing in action for months. So consider this a snow day when it comes to any sort of meta-analysis or search for broader context.
We’re going to look at maps.
The first portion of the map to discuss is the part we’re not going to be looking at. We’re not looking at the border between Ukraine and Belarus, since there continues to be no sign of anything happening there. Remember when just a few weeks ago there were all these declarations that Russia was sending troops into Belarus for another push on Kyiv? That included this fun January 19 story from Newsweek, that claimed Russia was “using railway tank cars to secretly transport troops to Belarus.”
The idea was silly then, and it looks sillier two months later. Anyway, there’s still no action along the border. Ukrainian officials note that: “The Russian Federation continues to maintain a military presence on the territory of the Republic of Belarus, but without the formation of offensive groups.” They also note that Belarus is doing some “terrain altering.” That is, they’re digging trenches on their side of the border, because they’re more worried about Ukraine coming in that Russia going out.
[map of Kupyansk area at the link] Even more than the area around Bakhmut, a comparison of this map to the last time we were at this end of the line gives the impression that Russia has gained a lot of ground. After all, Ukraine recently held nominal control of almost every area in the “disputed” portion of this map, as well as some villages now back in the red. But the truth is most of these towns were never garrisoned with any significant force. Ukrainian troops passed through. Medical teams checked up on residents in some areas. But most of the action in this area was focused on clearing the P07 highway to the southeast. Ukraine still seems to have control over that highway in this area. You could just about draw the lines of dispute anywhere north of that highway. With the exception of fighting close to Dvorichna, which has been tough, it doesn’t appear that Russia has devoted a lot of effort in this area. There’s been a lot of claims that it was about to retake Kupyansk, but there doesn’t seem to be any threat of that happening soon.
Ukraine actually noted 13 seperate attempts.
[map of Svatove area at the link] This is another one that can look disappointing when compared to the last view. However, for the last two months it’s been Russia making its big winter push and Ukraine on the defensive, and … nothing much has really changed. The biggest difference in the map here is that a larger area has been put into the disputed category based on reported Russian assaults. So little has really changed in this area that Novoselivske and Kuzemivka appear to be still divided along the same rail line where forces were facing off in October.
Ukraine pushed up to that intersection west of Svatove during their push in the late fall. Russia put at lot of that area along the highway back into dispute with their winter offensive. But not much really changed hands. Be prepared to see that same kind of thing when we move south.
[map of Kreminna area at the link] Kreminna was supposed to be the heart of Russia’s efforts to turn things around in the north, but mostly what they’ve done is spin their tires, and treads, fighting General Mud. I’ve ceded those areas along the highway north of the city back to Russian control, mostly because they haven’t shown up in the list of recent repulsed assaults, and the area of dispute has been shifted west, but there’s not a lot of evidence of movement.
On the south, Ukraine remains in the forested areas adjacent to the city, in spite of multiple aborted efforts to flush them out. I’ve put Dibrova in Ukrainian control here, but it likely should be noted as disputed as well, as it appears that Ukrainian forces are actually based just west of Dibrova proper. At the south end of the map, Russia has made almost daily runs at Bilohorivka — likely out of wanting to claim they held every major settlement in Luhansk. It hasn’t worked.
Ukraine reports that Russian forces are still actively trying to break through here, and just as at Svatove it’s disappointing to see some of those small towns around Kreminna back in the yellow or red after they appeared to be stepping stones to Ukraine taking the city. But again, Ukraine has been on the defensive here. That Russia hasn’t really been able to move them away from Kreminna, even though Ukrainian forces were not in any sort of prepared defensive position, is kind of extraordinary.
[Bakhmut area map at the link] I’ve expanded the usual area around Bakhmut both to give something of a larger overview of the area and to keep the scale similar to that of the other maps. Usually, when looking at Bakhmut, the area under consideration is really quite small.
In this larger view, it’s easy to see that the real Russian advance in the area is related to the occupation of Soledar and subsequent movement along the highway north of Bakhmut. That advance is powered by the same thing that brought Russian forces ot Bakhmut in the first place: logistics. So long as Russian can hold the M03, and the smaller highways that feed into it, they have their route laid out for their genuine strategic goal up the road at Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
But what’s happening at Bakhmut itself seems to be a kind of odd stability. The little explosion icons mark areas of conflict in this area over the last day. On both north and south, Ukraine seems to be holding Russian forces from gaining access to the remaining roads into the city, and even pressing Russian troops back in some areas. Wagner Group forces are reportedly still picking their way through buildings in northern Bakhmut, but that effort is moving slowly.
It’s been a week since Russia moved close to cutting off Ukraine’s access, and what seemed like a deathwatch last weekend seems indefinitely delayed now.
[Donetsk area map at the link] The amazing thing about this area is that, in spite of multiple Russian assaults each and every day of the invasion, very little ever seems to change. In areas, Ukrainian troops are still sitting in the defensive works thrown up in 2014.
In general, Russia is throwing a lot of shells across this line, and continuing the same kind of small, disconnected attacks that have characterized its offensive in many areas.
[Velyka area map at the link] Really, this is a “not many towns big enough to be called towns” area. I’ve added it mostly because Vuhledar is in this area, and Vuhledar is now famous. Other villages along this line are likely wishing that Russia would run a few fruitless assaults their way so that they can get in on the tourist dollars Vohledar will enjoy when this is over and everyone goes there to see the Museum of Russian Pigheadedness.
In addition to running their forces up that road right through Vuhledar, Russia has tried going a little bit to the west and a little bit to the right. This week alone, they’ve tried both. Both failed. Again.
If you compare this map to previous maps I made of this area, it looks as if Ukraine has made several advances. That’s not so much the case as it is that I was noting down villages that Russia claimed to have captured, and now that I’ve taken more time to look it turns out, shockingly, that Russian sources lied.
[Hulylapole area map at the link] As with the previous map, the apparent shift of the line south when compared to previous maps is largely just a better understanding and review of recent reported assaults.
There hasn’t been a lot of action on this part of the line in recent weeks, but what could be a significant event happened hear on Wednesday. That’s when a small Ukrainian armored force drove down that road toward Polohy, before being turned back by a combination of artillery and portable anti-tank weapons. Ukraine lost four M113s in the process, along with what looks to be at least a dozen troops.
That event seems to mark the kind of “reconnaissance in force” that has seen both sides waste so many men in this war. However, this place and this time seem odd for Ukraine to be making such a low-key assault. The force sent wasn’t large enough to capture Polohy, though it did get almost to the town before being turned away. It ends up looking like a way to test the waters and determine how good a job Russia has done of mining their roads (spoiler alert: they haven’t). But if that was the purpose, it was an expensive test.
[Orkhiv area map at the link] This area directly south of Zaporizhzhia has been exceptionally stable, with the estuary at Kamyansk pretty much marking the boundary for months now. Things haven’t been silent. There have been a lot of small scale assaults and a lot of slight drifts of that control line. Many of the small villages along that line have been absolutely pummeled by shelling. But considering the forces both sides reportedly have—at Zaporizhzhia on the Ukrainian side and down at Melitopol for the Russians—the level of activity has been remarkably low.
Pretty much every analyst seems to believe that this area will be a focus for the Next Big Offensive. It would certainly be understandable for Ukraine to direct its forces this way to break through to Melitopol and Mariupol. Russia probably finds it a bit embarrassing to claim it owns Zaporizhzhia without being able to put one man in Zaporizhzhia. This area could end up being the real test of which side has spent the winter rebuilding and preparing for spring, and which has spent it exhausting all available resources.
The names of towns in this area are unfamiliar at the moment. Don’t expect it to stay that way.
[…] On Friday, one of Trump’s attorneys told the New York Daily News that, should an indictment be issued, Trump would not refuse to surrender.
“There won’t be a standoff at Mar-a-Lago with Secret Service and the Manhattan DA’s office,” Joe Tacopina said.
However, it’s not clear that statement really speaks for Trump. Considering the tone of his Saturday post, which has language very like that he used in advance of the January 6 insurgency, it’s not at all clear that Trump will board a plane and peacefully go along with law enforcement. What the Secret Service might do should Trump call on them to defend him from law enforcement is a scenario that likely hasn’t seen a lot of previous consideration.
Trump’s statement combines claims of his innocence with a call for protest and a demand to “take back our nation!” It’s clearly designed to stir up his base and generate unrest, if not an outright attempt to prevent his arrest. […]
The AP reports that the district attorney’s office made no comment to confirm or deny Trump’s statement that an indictment is on its way. […]
Let’s get something straight. This is not a call for “Protests”, peaceful or otherwise. This is a call for a violent revolution.
OUR NATION IS NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING. THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD! THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR OUR COUNTRY. AMERICAN PATRIOTS ARE BEING ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION. MILLIONS ARE FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. CRIME & INFLATION ARE DESTROYING OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE…
NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!
[…] “Trump has issued a call for violence. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Republicans need to publicly rebuke this dangerous rhetoric immediately.” [posted by Olivia Troye]
[…] “I don’t give a shit if this “rallies his base.” I don’t care if Ma & Pa Maga fork over their life savings. They would rally behind him if he boiled a baby bunny on live tv. Not charging him would do FAR more damage to this country than indicting him ever could.” [posted by Jo]
[…] The refrain that Biden is “Destroying our country” is something I see a lot. Obviously, it comes directly from Trump himself.
[…] This is the kind of person whom Trump would like to grant a pardon. [The kind of person that Trump labels as a “Patriot.”]
Prosecutors have revealed that convicted Capitol rioter Larry Brock concocted a bloodthirsty plan to seize power on January 6th, 2021 that involved taking hostages, arresting journalists, and cutting off food and water to cities where Democratic voters lived.
As flagged by CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane, prosecutors say that Brock wrote down his plan to overthrow the United States government on Christmas Eve, roughly two weeks before he and his fellow Trump supporters would storm the United States Capitol building.
As part of the plan, Brock outlined a series of “key tasks” that included initiatives to “seize all Democratic politicians and Biden key staff and select Republicans (Thune and McConnell),” at which point they would “begin interrogations using measures we used on Al Queda (sic) to gain evidence on the coup.”
He then called for his fellow Trump supporters to “seize national media assets and key personnel,” and then “eliminate them.
As if this weren’t enough, he then issued a directive to “let the Democratic cities burn” and “cut off power and food to all who oppose us.”
Trump: “WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS”
This is right-wing bullshit. Crime is generally Down, but gun murders in Red States are Up.
The murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump has exceeded the murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in every year from 2000 to 2020.
Over this 21-year span, this Red State murder gap has steadily widened from a low of 9% more per capita red state murders in 2003 and 2004 to 44% more per capita red state murders in 2019, before settling back to 43% in 2020.
Altogether, the per capita Red State murder rate was 23% higher than the Blue State murder rate when all 21 years were combined.
If Blue State murder rates were as high as Red State murder rates, Biden-voting states would have suffered over 45,000 more murders between 2000 and 2020
.
Even when murders in the largest cities in red states are removed, overall murder rates in Trump-voting states were 12% higher than Biden-voting states across this 21-year period and were higher in 18 of the 21 years observed.
[I snipped a lot of point-by-point debunking of Trump’s rant. See the link for those details]
Trump has concocted a typically false narrative of what is actually happening. He is using this phony story to enrage his fans, to get them “Riled Up” once again in order to attack the NYDA, or perhaps the police and/or anyone that gets in their way. […]
THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Stollen is delicious, but the rest of this sentence is Nutty as a fruitcake.
CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS,
Really looking forward to this criminal getting his well deserved perp-walk. Perhaps the feds can search his resort for all the state gifts he has stolen, after arresting him for sedition, criminal conspiracy, and collusion to overthrow the USA? He can join his ‘patriots’ in their well deserved jail cells.
How many of these are we going to get before Russian forces realize that complaining about their conditions is the best way to get on the next convoy to Vuhledar? These guys could save a lot of time by just calling the handy surrender line. No more shooting. Decent food. And they might not even send you back to Russia if you beg hard enough.
But hey, give it a shot. What is Putin known for if not his personal warmth and empathy? [Tweet and video at the link. “Vladimir Vladimirovich can you please help us? We are thrown into the battle unprepared, and already have up to 70% losses in the battles for Avdiivka.” Another group of Russian mobilized that whine about the meatgrinder, provided by DNR commanders]
If a lot of the new blue-check accounts on Twitter are pro-Russian, it’s no surprise. Since they’re Russian. As the AP reports this morning, pro-Putin accounts have been signing up for Elon Musk’s blue check mark so they can post Russian propaganda and do what they’ve always done so well—generate schisms in the U.S.
“Biden offers food, water, medicine, shelter, payouts of pension and social services to Ukraine! Ohio first! Offer and deliver to Ohio!” posted one of the pro-Moscow accounts, which boasts 25,000 followers and features an anonymous location and a profile photo of a dog. Twitter awarded the account a blue check mark in January.
This is certainly good news, and not just for Ukraine.
⚡Minister: Russian-Ukrainian grain deal extended for another 120 days.
Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov announced on March 18 that the grain deal, which has enabled Ukraine to export millions of tonnes of agricultural products via the Black Sea, has been extended.
Another reason that the second part of the drone field guide will never get done. I didn’t even have a category for a thing like this. The text indicates that this is a German-made ground-based kamikaze drone named “Goliath.”
Goliath was the name for a tiny “tracked mine” that Germany built as an anti-tank weapon during World War II. American’s called it a “beetle tank.” The remote-controlled weapon could travel on a wire over 800M long, but it was difficult to steer and not really quick enough to catch vehicles in motion. Still, Germany built over 7,000 of them, making the original Goliath possibly the world’s first military ROV.
This is clearly not one of those old devices, but whether it’s something that came from a defense contractor, or something cobbled together from a lawn mower, DJI controller, and a box of explosives … I really don’t know. [video at the link]
Ukrainian drone reportedly taking out 10 Russian tanks near Donetsk in a single night. Might want to park those things indoors, boys. [video at the link]
Pierce R. Butlersays
Tethys @ # 321: THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Stollen is delicious, but …
From now on, we can legitimately call the Big Lie promoters “STOLLENists”.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@StevoR #306:
The silver lining […] That saying always makes me wonder if people know what temperature clouds would have to be at to contain first gaseous then condensing into molten droplets of silver.. or the effect of a rain of molten heavy metals might have on those below.
Article: Astronomy Magazine – The alien weather of WASP-121 b
tidally locked […] only one side of the world faces its star [(3,000 degrees Celsius)], while the other is cast in perpetual darkness [(1,500 C)].
[…]
clouds of iron, magnesium, chromium, and vanadium fill the night sky—where temperatures are cold enough for metals to condense into clouds.
[…]
WASP-121 b may see liquid [rubies or sapphires] raining on its nightside.
In a private group on Telegram, parents whose children are living with a range of disabilities including autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, and Down Syndrome cheer each other on and provide support when discussing daily struggles.
But the channel’s main function isn’t actually support: It’s to promote the use of veterinary ivermectin as a treatment—and in some cases a cure—for these disabilities.
Hundreds of parents have turned to this conspiracy network, and are recommending a drug to each other that experts have repeatedly said is designed only for large animals and is so concentrated that it can be toxic when ingested by humans. In the channel, parents even share stories about their children experiencing horrific side effects from the drug, including brain fog, severe headaches, nausea, muscle pain, and seizures—and are routinely dismissed by those running the channel, who claim it’s a normal part of the ‘healing’ process.
…
“Bleeding or mucous or vomiting or diarrhea or acne or pealing or aches/pains or hot flashes & sweating are all good signs of clearing out your body,” another member wrote. “This is healing, keep going.”
…
The channel also provides advice on how to explain the ivermectin usage to children:
“Best way to explain it is [the kids] have a cluster of parasites that are in a part of the brain that causes outbursts. When the parasites in that part of the brain get attacked [by ivermectin] the parasites panic and release their toxins as well as get active. Their death dance,” the channel guidelines state. “This will affect the kiddos and their behaviors.”
And when children experience side effects, the channel admins claim that it’s all because the ivermectin is driving out parasites. They call this “herxing,” which is a real term used to describe an adverse response that occurs in people who take antibiotics as a treatment for Lyme disease and a number of other illnesses.
“Herxing can be a big issue with our kids,” the channel admins wrote in a pinned message. “They have so much overloading them already, herxing adds more. Remember things will get worse before they get better. They will have days [when] it looks like their behaviors are getting worse but it is only temporary. This is the herxing.”…
This is abuse.
whheydtsays
Re: SC (Salty Current) @ #325…
It’s also “practicing medicine without a license”.
StevoRsays
19th March 2003. Twenty years ago. The “Coalition of the Willing” launched its attack and invasion and subsequent ocupation of Iraq based on lies about WMDs that weren’t there and war-mongering especially from the Murdoch media. Between eleven thousand and forty-five thousand Iraqis were killed and nearly two hundred Allied soldiers died with nearly 600 wounded many with life changing injuires. This illegal war destroyed a nation and left a bloodstained, horrendous legacy that lingers on now. The war criminals responsible – George “Dubya” Bush, Tony Blair and, Australia’s own disgraceful war criminal, John Howard are yet to face any justice as a result.
Millions of people around the world including in Australia protested against and opposed this horrendous crime which made our world much worse and less safe.
The lack of reflection on this anniversary, the lack of attention it seems to be getting and the repetion of mistakes in war-mongering and following the USA into conflicts based on propaganda is something I think we should be disturbed about.
See :
Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, the BBC’s world affairs editor, John Simpson, recounts the country’s seismic changes, and remembers the aftermath of a bombing he was caught up in. During the past decade I have spent more than a year of my life in Iraq. I saw from close up how the country was scarred by violence, right from the start. During the invasion, a careless US Navy pilot dropped a 1,000lb bomb on a group of American and Kurdish special forces my team and I were travelling with. Eighteen people died, many of them burned to death (‘This is just a scene from hell’). There was no proper inquiry afterwards, and no one was punished.
The terrible outcome was indisputable. Iraq quickly fell prey to chaos, conflict and instability, experienced an uncountable number of deaths and displacements, and the erosion of health, education and basic services. Behind the statistics, there are untold stories of agony and suffering. The structural and political violence would spill into social and domestic violence, affecting women and children. With every life lost, a whole family is shattered. From day one, the conditions were forming for the emergence of terrorist groups and militias.
Liberal MP Moira Deeming spoke at an anti-transgender rally in Melbourne on Saturday, where neo-Nazis performed salutes .. (snip) .. Opposition leader John Pesutto said he met Ms Deeming on Sunday afternoon and discussed her involvement in organising, promoting and participating in a rally that had speakers and others publicly linked with far right-wing extremist groups, including neo-Nazi activists.
Mr Pesutto confirmed he would move a motion at the next party room meeting to expel her as a member of the parliamentary Liberal Party, declaring her position “untenable”. ..(snip) .. She (Deeming -ed) used her inaugural speech last month to call for an inquiry into transition practices and criticised measures to include trans women in female-only change rooms and sports.
Oh & I guess everyone already knows about this but in case not :
Former US president Donald Trump has said he expects to be arrested on Tuesday in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and called on his supporters to protest. .. (snip) ..Law enforcement officials in New York have been making security preparations for the possibility that Mr Trump could be indicted.
There has been no public announcement of any time frame for the grand jury’s secret work in the case, including any potential vote on whether to indict the ex-president.
I’ll believe it when I see it ..but oh please, please let that happen! Trump should have been arrested long ago.
StevoRsays
Oh & I guess everyone already knows about this but in case not :
Former US president Donald Trump has said he expects to be arrested on Tuesday in a case brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, and called on his supporters to protest. .. (snip) ..Law enforcement officials in New York have been making security preparations for the possibility that Mr Trump could be indicted.
There has been no public announcement of any time frame for the grand jury’s secret work in the case, including any potential vote on whether to indict the ex-president.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Russian state media is reporting that Vladimir Putin has today visited a command post in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. Russian state-owned news agency TASS said Putin held a meeting at a military command and control post in the Russian city.
It comes after Putin traveled to Russian-occupied Mariupol by helicopter on March 18, and visited Russian-occupied Crimea.
South Africa has said it is aware of its legal obligations relating to Vladimir Putin’s international arrest warrant ahead of his planned visit to the country in August, Reuters reports.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, said on Sunday: “We are, as the government, cognisant of our legal obligation. However, between now and the summit we will remain engaged with various relevant stakeholders.”
Putin is expected to visit South Africa in August for a Brics summit, when Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa hold talks.
South Africa has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but the ruling by the international court puts them in a tricky spot after the arrest warrant issued by the international criminal court (ICC) on Friday.
“We note the report on the warrant of arrest that the ICC has issued,” Magwenya said. “It remains South Africa’s commitment and very strong desire that the conflict in Ukraine is resolved peacefully through negotiations.”
SMH.
Ukraine’s armed forces have released their latest estimate for war casualties, although we cannot verify them.
Ukraine’s army now claims to have killed 164,910 Russian troops since the start of the war. Of these, they say 710 were killed in the 24 hours to Sunday morning.
They also report destroying eight Russian artillery systems since Saturday.
Violence and censorship rife among citizens and the media, as push to reclaim state land belies Indian government’s claims of peace in disputed region…
…Bragg sent an email to his office, obtained by Politico, that did not mention Trump by name but that did appear to address the case, including widespread security fears around lower Manhattan courts in the wake of any indictment.
“As with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate,” Bragg wrote.
He added: “We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York… Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment.”…
Ben Barnes is 84, but in 1980 he was the youngest speaker of the Texas youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and on his way to becoming lieutenant governor. He was also a close ally of former Texas Gov. John Connally [this is the correct spelling]. At Connolly’s request, Barnes took on a very special role in 1980—travel the Middle East and convince Iran to not release U.S. hostages, so that Ronald Reagan could beat Jimmy Carter.
As The New York Times reports, Barnes has sat on this story for the last 43 years. However, with President Carter currently in hospice care, Barnes has decided to reveal the plot, and the role he played in sabotaging Carter’s campaign.
“History needs to know that this happened,” said Mr. Barnes. “I think it’s so significant and I guess knowing that the end is near for President Carter put it on my mind more and more and more. I just feel like we’ve got to get it down some way.”
The plot was simple enough. Connally and Barnes traveled “to one Middle Eastern capital after another” over the summer of 1980, as U.S. hostages were being held in Tehran. On every one of those stops, they passed along the same message for the new leadership in Iran: Don’t make a deal with Carter. Wait for Reagan. He’ll give you a much better deal.
When they arrived back in the United States, Connolly checked in with Reagan’s campaign chair, and future Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Casey. For his role in “torpedoing” Carter’s chance at reelection, Connolly hoped to be rewarded with the job of Secretary of State. He was not.
Completely ignored in this strategy was that every day of captivity put the lives and health of the hostages in Iran at risk. In addition, the military planned and attempted to execute a rescue operation in which eight U.S. service members died and another four were injured. Prolonging the crisis created a risk every day to the lives of those in Iran, and to members of the U.S. military. It also created ongoing harm to U.S. standing abroad and to national security in general.
Previous investigations into suspicions that Iran has been pressured to wait until after the election to make a deal had focused on the idea that Casey met directly with representatives from Iran. They had not focused on Connally or how messages might have been passed along through other officials in the Middle East. Multiple people confirmed that Barnes had told them all or part of the story at the time, and a check of flight records shows that Connally traveled to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel in July of 1980 on what he called “private business.”
…
The Iranian government announced the release of the hostages after the election. Jimmy Carter was there to welcome them home on what should have been the first day of his second term, but was instead his last day in office.
Ronald Reagan would go on to eight years of deceiving the public, destroying the nation’s infrastructure, and promoting a racist, misogynist, anti-gay agenda that would metastasize into the modern Republican Party. And he got there just the way most people always suspected he did.
A group called Daughters Defend Democracy has put together a fun little reminder for the folks down at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Tucker Carlson hates Donald Trump “passionately.” At least that’s one of the ways Tucker explained his distaste for the leader of the Republican Party in texts that were released during the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox News.
The group put together a billboard truck that has been circling Trump’s Florida resort all day, with Carlson’s face and pull quotes from his many mean texts about Trump. Things like “I hate him passionately,” and “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” emblazon the truck on screens. [video at the link]
Famous law-abiding citizen Randy Quaid is not happy with Donald Trump being in trouble with the law. So on Truth Social, he warned that the “Spring Awakening” over Trump’s arrest will make the January 6th riots at the US Capitol look like a “childrens’ birthday party”.
If Trump is arrested on Tuesday there will be a Spring Awakening in this country that will make J6 look like a childrens’ birthday party.
Nixon and Kissinger spiked the negotiations for the end of the Vietnam war, per Doris Kearns in her biography of LBJ. Kissinger promised the North Vietnamese a better deal if they waited for Nixon to win the election. They did, and Nixon was elected…as thousands of Americans in Vietnam continued to die in that war. Johnson was alerted to their treachery, which he considered treason, but said nothing to avoid further division in the country.
Republican dirty dealing, including costing the lives of Americans, is not new.
———————
When you just ‘move on’ and give the Republicans a pass on their crimes, it only leads to more Republican crimes, and has proven to do so.
That is why TFG MUST BE PROSECUTED for at least some of the crimes he has committed.
——————–
All these offenses were strictly due to the Republicans’ Power Mania. They have committed offenses such as this ever sense 1877, when they agreed to end Reconstruction to obtain the Presidency. There have been multiple instances of this sort of intrigue. Those named above are just the ones that have occurred in relatively recent times, i.e. circa1960.
———————-
I am too angry and disgusted to make a coherent comment.
One of the most well-documented episodes of scientific manipulation and overt fraud was the scandal involving Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) in the 1970s and the chronic toxicity tests it conducted on behalf of Monsanto that ultimately led to the indictment and conviction of employees of IBT and the Monsanto Corporation. IBT, at the time the nation’s largest private laboratory, served a range of industries and government agencies. IBT conducted about 22 000 toxicology studies for scores of corporations, representing between 35% and 40% of all tests conducted in private labs in the country. IBT has been justly condemned for its fraudulent activities in the 1970s, but no one has looked at the relationship between the corporate funders of IBT’s research and its fraudulent practices. We use previously secret corporate documents that detail the role of IBT’s largest customer, Monsanto, which used fraudulent data to influence government. This material, revealed through legal discovery proceedings now under way regarding polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and Roundup, show the long-lasting impact of Monsanto’s behavior on efforts to regulate large corporations as well as on the long-term effects on human health.
In response to president Putin’s surprise visit to Mariupol, an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the visit to the city was tantamount to a perpetrator returning to the scene of the crime.
“The criminal always returns to the crime scene,” Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
“As the civilized [sigh] world announces the arrest of the ‘war director’ (VV Putin) in case of crossing its borders, the murderer of thousands of Mariupol families came to admire the ruins of the city & graves. Cynicism & lack of remorse.”
The tribe says an 1868 treaty means the federal government has a duty to ensure its people have sufficient water on a reservation where thousands do not have running water.
Her hands gripping the steering wheel, Marilyn Help-Hood gingerly drove her rugged Ford pickup truck along rutted unpaved roads, occasionally sliding in the mud, in search of one thing: water.
After a bumpy 4-mile drive in the eastern reaches of the Navajo Nation reservation in Twin Lakes, New Mexico, she arrived at her local well. Helped by her son Shane, 31, Help-Hood attached a hose to a tap at the base of the well and began filling a plastic barrel in the back of her truck with the untreated water. […]
As part of the tribe’s efforts to assert control over its long-term future, it filed a long-shot lawsuit in 2003 arguing that the U.S. government has a duty to assess the nation’s water needs and ensure it has enough. After lengthy litigation, that case is now before the Supreme Court, which hears oral arguments on Monday.
[…] The lack of water and the infrastructure needed to pipe it across the vast reaches of the more than 17 million acre reservation — larger than the state of West Virginia — which straddles parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, remains one of the biggest challenges facing Navajo leaders.
[…] Tribal officials are aware they likely face an uphill battle at the Supreme Court, which is historically not friendly to Native Americans. Just last year the court ruled 5-4 against tribes in Oklahoma in a decision that expanded state authority over their territory. […]
Members of the Putin administration’s political bloc have developed preliminary “ideological narratives” to promote during the president’s 2024 bid, Meduza has learned from two sources who attended a recent “closed seminar” put on by president’s team. At the event, subordinates of Kremlin domestic policy czar Sergey Kiriyenko outlined the basic campaign messaging to other Kremlin employees, regional officials, and political strategists.
Kiriyenko himself spoke at the seminar, as did two of his close associates, Rosatom regional relations head Andrey Polosin and presidential directorate for State Council affairs head Alexander Kharichev, the sources said.
The event’s organizers reportedly said that Putin’s 2024 campaign will be built around an “ideology of conservatism,” with the president casting himself as a “guardian of traditional values.” According to Meduza’s sources, the Kremlin plans to use rhetoric that emphasizes Russia’s “moral superiority” over other countries (Putin has repeatedly accused the “collective West” of starting the war in Ukraine and of pursuing “colonial policies” elsewhere around the globe).
A source close to the Kremlin told Meduza that Russia’s political strategists started working on a “conservative isolationist ideology” for Putin’s 2024 campaign back in late 2021, before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time, according to the source, Kremlin spin doctors intended for the idea of “anti-Western conservatism” to gradually replace that of the “Russian world” in officials’ and propagandists’ rhetoric; voters would be sold an image of Russia as a “self-contained state” that preserves tradition and has relatively little interaction with the outside world. Now, these plans have reportedly been revised somewhat: voters will now be told that the “Russian world,” including many former Soviet countries, should become part of Russia’s “self-contained state.”
According to Meduza’s sources, one of the campaign’s “ideological foundations” will come from the findings of “Russia’s DNA,” a joint project between the Kremlin’s political bloc and the educational organization the Znaniye Society whose goal is to study the “Russian worldview.” Andrey Polosin and Alexander Kharichev are on the team behind the project.
According to a recent article signed by both men, the phrase “Russia’s DNA” refers to certain “constant values” that have been “intrinsic” to Russia throughout its entire history. These values include “communality, a sense of duty and a higher objective, existential resilience, and the prioritization of the immaterial [LOL] over the mercantile.”
The organizers of the “closed seminar” assured attendees that Putin will have no trouble winning the 2024 election because “demand is growing” for conservatism in Russia [or maybe because it won’t be a real election?]. But according to Meduza’s sources, they didn’t explain what data this assertion was based on, and there’s no publicly available survey data indicating that the claim is true.
…
Apart from the 2024 election, the “seminar” focused on the “development” of the annexed Ukrainian regions, including the future operation of Russian businesses and state-owned companies on the occupied territories. According to two of Meduza’s sources, representatives of the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia also attended the event. In May 2022, South Ossetia’s then-President Anatoly Bibilov announced that the unrecognized republic would hold a “referendum” on joining Russia, but he subsequently postponed it indefinitely “due to the risks.” According to two sources close to the Kremlin, the Russian authorities have not abandoned the idea of annexing the Georgian territories.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed a new law that will allow a monument near the state Capitol marking the number of abortions performed in Arkansas before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
Sanders’ office said Friday night that the Republican governor signed the bill that will allow the creation of a privately funded “monument to the unborn” on the Capitol grounds. The bill, approved by lawmakers last week, requires the secretary of state to permit and arrange the placement of the monument.
A law Arkansas approved in 2019 banning nearly all abortions took effect last year when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 1973 Roe decision. Arkansas’ ban only allows abortions to save the life of the mother in a medical emergency.
Proud boys are assembling in New York City, possibly for violence over a possible Trump arrest. But before that unlikely scenario occurs, they decided to protest Attorney General Letitia James when she hosted kids for a Drag Queen story hour. The fascists also apparently disrupted a pro-abortion event nearby.
Anti-drag queen bigots the Proud Boys got a dose of their own medicine while protesting at a family-friendly show in New York City this weekend.
New York Attorney General Letitia James had organized a Drag Queen Story Hour at a Manhattan LGBTQ center this past weekend to show her office’s solidarity with the marginalized group.
Pearls were clutched and panties were bunched as right-wing chaos agents converged on the event, which typically wouldn’t attract much controversy in cosmopolitan New York City.
The Proud Boys, however, got more than they bargained for while trying to intimidate the people attending the event.
Posted by Oliya Scootercaster:
“I came here to help, not get the shit beat out of me” – a member of Proud Boys, with visible blood on his face ushered away from Drag Queen Story Hour event in NYC as protesters chant “Fuck the Proud Boys” [multiple videos and tweets at the link]
(NPR)California Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced a new contract with nonprofit drugmaker Civica Rx, a move that brings the state one step closer to creating its own line of insulin to bring down the cost of the drug.
Once the medicines are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Newsom said at a press conference on Saturday, Civica — under the 10-year agreement with the state worth $50 million — will start making the new CalRx insulins later this year.
The state-label insulins will cost no more than $30 per 10 milliliter vial, and no more than $55 for a box of five pre-filled pen cartridges — for both insured and uninsured patients. The medicines will be available nationwide, the governor’s office said.
A 10 milliliter vial of insulin can cost as much as $300, Newsom said. Under the new contract, patients who pay out of pocket for insulin could save up to $4,000 per year…
According to a report published last year in the journal , Annals of Internal Medicine, 1 in 6 Americans with diabetes who use insulin said the cost of the drug forces them to ration their supply.
“This is an extraordinary move in the pharmaceutical industry, not just for insulin but potentially for all kinds of drugs,” Robin Feldman, a professor at the University of California San Francisco’s College of the Law, told Kaiser Health News. “It’s a very difficult industry to disrupt, but California is poised to do just that.”
[…]
The insulin contract is part of California’s broader CalRx initiative to produce generic drugs under the state’s own label. Newsom says the state is pushing to manufacture generic naloxone next. [Naloxone is a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses.]
March 20 (Reuters) – Russia’s top investigative body said on Monday it had opened a criminal case against the International Criminal Court prosecutor and judges who issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges…
While we don’t yet know for sure whether he’ll be indicted this week, Donald Trump is still planning to hold a campaign rally on Saturday in Waco, Texas. In case this isn’t obvious, as the former president sends inflammatory signals to his base, we’re approaching the 30th anniversary of the Waco standoff, and it seems like a safe bet some of the Republican’s more radical followers will see the location as symbolically significant,
News summarized by Steve Benen from an NBC News article.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
China’s president Xi Jinping has arrived in Moscow in his first visit to Russia for four years. The state visit makes the Chinese leader the first world leader to meet with Vladimir Putin since the international criminal court (ICC) in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s president. The pair held informal talks on Monday, with more formal negotiations to follow. The two leaders are expected to sign joint declarations.
…
EU countries have agreed on a plan to give 1m artillery shells to Ukraine over the next year by digging into their own stockpiles and teaming up to buy more. Not all the details were immediately available but the plan approved by the ministers was based on a proposal from EU foreign policy chief Josep Borell to spend €1bn on shells from stockpiles and €1bn more on joint procurement.
The US will send Ukraine $350m in weapons and equipment, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has announced. The latest aid package includes a large amount of various types of ammunition, such as rockets for the high mobility artillery rocket systems (Himars), Blinken said in a statement.
Putin, speaking today before meeting with China’s President Xi, said deepening ties between Moscow and African countries was a key goal for the Kremlin….
…
Leaders of Ukraine’s Moscow-Patriarch-affiliated Orthodox Church arrived near Ukraine’s presidential administration on Monday in an attempt to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The church has been under pressure since November after Ukraine’s security services began a number of investigations into the church, saying they suspected the church of spreading pro-Kremlin narratives. The church leaders say they want to clarify their pro-Ukrainian position with Zelenskiy….
As Donald Trump faces possible indictment, Republicans are again claiming the Russia scandal was a “hoax.” It really wasn’t.
After the FBI executed a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago last summer, House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik was among the many GOP voices who scrambled to defend Donald Trump. In fact, the New York Republican settled on a specific line of argument that was part of a broader rhetorical push.
“This is Russia hoax 2.0,” Stefanik told Axios last August.
Over the weekend, after the former president predicted that he’ll soon be indicted by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the Republican Conference Chair again turned her attention to the Russia scandal. Stefanik’s tweet on Saturday read:
“The Radical Left is continuing the disgraceful and unconstitutional pattern going back to the illegal Russian collusion hoax to attempt to silence and suppress the will of the voters who support President Trump and the America First Movement.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence was apparently thinking along the same lines, arguing in a radio interview on Saturday that the investigation in New York “reeks of the kind of political prosecution that we endured back in the days of the Russia hoax.”
To be sure, on the surface, this isn’t altogether new. Republicans have spent years trying to dismiss the Russia scandal, largely out of partisan necessity: The truth was a disaster for Trump and his political operation […]
It’s quite possible that for those living in a conservative bubble — folks, for example, who were led to believe former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report “exonerated“ Trump, reality be damned — such a public-relations strategy will prove wildly effective. I have no doubt that a painfully large chunk of the population will reflexively dismiss all allegations related to the former president, precisely because they’ve been conditioned to believe that all news that casts the Republican in an unflattering light is “fake.”
But for everyone else, now seems like a good time to review some core truths about the Russia scandal.
Russia attacked the American elections in 2016
Every U.S. intelligence agency and lawmakers from both parties have long agreed that the Kremlin launched an expansive and expensive covert military intelligence operation that targeted the U.S. political system in 2016. This basic fact is no longer contested — except by Trump, who publicly declared that he found Vladimir Putin more reliable than his own administration’s officials — and its importance is too often overlooked.
Russia’s goal was to put Trump in power
The Kremlin’s operation was not politically neutral: Moscow attacked our elections in the hopes of helping dictate the outcome. According to the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies, the Mueller investigation, and the multi-step investigation from the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee, Russia saw Trump as a prospective ally and believed it would be in its interests if the Republican were in the White House.
Russia and Team Trump were political allies
[…] investigations from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee documented the extent to which Trump and his team welcomed, received, and benefited from Russian campaign assistance. (They also obstructed the investigation into this assistance — by some measures, 10 times.)
The evidence also showed there was coordination and high-level connections between Trump’s political operation and those responsible for the attack on our elections. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report at one point literally described a “direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services.”
Team Trump lied about its communications with Russia
No, really, Team Trump lied about its communications with Russia. A lot. Out loud and on record. Over and over again, Trump and his spokespersons insisted there were absolutely no interactions between the Republican, his political operation, and their Russian benefactors. We now know definitively that they were lying — though they still haven’t been forthcoming about why.
The Russia scandal led to a series of felony convictions and prison sentences
For an alleged “hoax,” the Russia scandal led to an amazing number of federal prosecutions. In fact, the investigation led to the convictions of, among others, Trump’s White House national security advisor, campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, foreign policy advisor, personal lawyer, and to the indictment of 13 Russian nationals who interfered in our elections as part of the larger plot.
[…] these five aforementioned truths are largely uncontested, and have been bolstered, not only by U.S. intelligence agencies, but also by the Mueller probe and the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee’s findings. Russia attacked our elections to help Trump. The Republican’s political operation welcomed, received, benefited from, and lied about Russian campaign assistance. Many key players from Trump’s inner circle were charged, prosecuted, and convicted.
These aren’t opinions. They’re conclusions drawn from multiple, bipartisan investigations, conducted across several years.
The only “hoax” here is the one being perpetrated by those pretending the Russia scandal wasn’t real.
Scientists have delivered a “final warning” on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world’s leading climate scientists, set out the final part of its mammoth sixth assessment report on Monday.
The comprehensive review of human knowledge of the climate crisis took hundreds of scientists eight years to compile and runs to thousands of pages, but boiled down to one message: act now, or it will be too late.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “This report is a clarion call to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe. Our world needs climate action on all fronts: everything, everywhere, all at once.”
In sober language, the IPCC set out the devastation that has already been inflicted on swathes of the world. Extreme weather caused by climate breakdown has led to increased deaths from intensifying heatwaves in all regions, millions of lives and homes destroyed in droughts and floods, millions of people facing hunger, and “increasingly irreversible losses” in vital ecosystems.
Monday’s final instalment, called the synthesis report, is almost certain to be the last such assessment while the world still has a chance of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold beyond which our damage to the climate will rapidly become irreversible.
…
More than 3bn people already live in areas that are “highly vulnerable” to climate breakdown, the IPCC found, and half of the global population now experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year. In many areas, the report warned, we are already reaching the limit to which we can adapt to such severe changes, and weather extremes are “increasingly driving displacement” of people in Africa, Asia, North, Central and South America, and the south Pacific.
All of those impacts are set to increase rapidly, as we have failed to reverse the 200-year trend of rising greenhouse gas emissions, despite more than 30 years of warnings from the IPCC, which published its first report in 1990.
…
Yet there is still hope of staying within 1.5C, according to the report. Hoesung Lee, the chair of the IPCC, said: “This synthesis report underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a livable sustainable future for all.”
…
The final section of AR6 was the “summary for policymakers”, written by IPCC scientists but scrutinised by representatives of governments around the world, who can – and did – push for changes. The Guardian was told that in the final hours of deliberations at the Swiss resort of Interlaken over the weekend, the large Saudi Arabian delegation, of at least 10 representatives, pushed at several points for the weakening of messages on fossil fuels, and the insertion of references to carbon capture and storage, touted by some as a remedy for fossil fuel use but not yet proven to work at scale….
Chinese President Xi Jinping is welcomed by…. the Deputy Prime Minister Chernyshenko. He is the minister for tourism, sport, culture and communication.
The deputy? The tourist minister? Ok..
Putin didn’t want to be in a predetermined place outside. [video at the link]
That is beyond pathetic lol.
————————-
After spending two weeks arguing that Ukraine should abandon Bakhmut, unless Ukraine was able to counterattack and relieve pressure on its supply lines into the city, the defenders seem to have done just that in the last week.
After reports that Ukraine had retaken territory around the T0504 road southwest of Bakhmut, new video confirms the advances. (The video in the second tweet is explicit, exercise proper discretion.) [videos at the link]
That confirmed counterattack is here: [map at the link]
The T0504 road is Ukraine’s lifeline to Bakhmut. Without it, Ukraine has no choice but to retreat. Ukraine’s Bakhmut salient remains tenuous, as Russian forces hold positions all around Bakhmut: [map at the link]
But as you can see in the map below, by a pro-Russian source, this latest push southwest of Ivanivske gives the T0504 some breathing room, allows Ukraine to keep funneling supplies through that route. [map at the link, with blue arrows showing the Ukrainian advance]
With reports that Russian advances north of Bakhmut have ground to a halt, it looks like Bakhmut’s defense is on steadier ground at the moment. I’m no longer predicting culmination, as many analysts suggest. I’ve made that mistake once or twice before, never again. Russia needs its victory, and this is as close to one as they’ll get. I assume they’ll keep feeding their meat into the wood chipper until they don’t, and so far they haven’t.
Here’s more video of a purported Ukrainian counterattack near the T0504: [video at the link]
Meanwhile, shiny new, clean equipment is reportedly headed in the Bakhmut direction. This was reportedly on the T0504 itself: [video at the link]
Another unconfirmed video claiming destination Bakhmut: [video at the link]
That’s all great news for Bakhmut’s defense, but perhaps less so for Ukraine’s future counteroffensive. If those forces are being committed to Bakhmut, where they will inevitably suffer loss and attrition, they can’t be later committed toward Svatove/Starobilsk in the north, or Melitopol in the south.
There is one last possibility—those reinforcements could be creating the conditions for a Bakhmut retreat—protecting that key road and retreating defenders as their backs are turned to the enemy. Russia did the same before their retreat from Kherson, and did so effectively.
Even if Bakhmut holds, the debate will continue to rage. There is, after all, a reason the phrase “pyrrhic victory” exists.
It’s starting to feel a lot like Jan. 5, 2021. Donald Trump doesn’t like the situation he’s in. He’s urging his fans to protest—not just for him, he says, but for the future of the country. And on the Trump fansites like The Donald, users are talking about taking on the government, potentially violently.
Back then, Trump didn’t like that he had lost the election and Congress was about to certify his loss. Now he doesn’t like that he might be indicted for his hush money payments to prevent voters from learning about his (brief) affair with Stormy Daniels. But the rhetoric is the same.
“PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK,” Trump wrote on Truth Social late last week. On Jan. 6, 2021, speaking to the crowd at the Ellipse, he said, “Our country has had enough,” and called on them to give congressional Republicans “the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
He’s getting the response he’s looking for. The Daily Beast reported on posts at The Donald:
“Surround Mar-a-Lago or wherever he currently is and prevent ‘law enforcement’ from entering,” one commenter wrote, receiving hundreds of positive votes.
Another user responded, “What if they use choppers to circumvent the Patriot moat?”
Stop the Steal leader Ali Alexander wants “100,000 patriots” to “shut down all routes to Mar-a-Lago.”
They’re not shying away from full-on civil war language: “Accelerating the civil war to this week. Hold the fuckin line guys. Don[‘]t be afraid to use your constitutional rights. Remember 2a is there incase 1a fails,” Rolling Stone reports another Trump supporter wrote.
It would be easy to dismiss this as posturing if the runup to Jan. 6 hadn’t seen the exact same type of language on right-wing social media. In late 2020 and early 2021, sites like The Donald were seeing posts proposing to “Storm the Capitol.” On a far-right livestream on the eve of Jan. 6, someone said ”Tomorrow—I don’t even like to say it because I’ll be arrested—I’ll say it. Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol.” It shouldn’t have been dismissed then. It can’t be dismissed now.
Steel barricades have arrived outside Manhattan Criminal Court—but they’re the kind of barriers we saw battered down and ultimately used as weapons against police at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sent his staff a memo assuring them that his office is working with law enforcement to investigate “any specific or credible threats against the office.” That can’t just be reassuring language. They need to be taking this very seriously. Deadly seriously.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
…Robert J Costello, a one-time legal adviser to former Trump attorney Cohen, is scheduled to appear before the grand jury on Monday, where he is expected to give testimony “attacking the credibility of Cohen’s statements”, Associated Press reported….
Cohen said yesterday that he has been called to be there if needed as a rebuttal witness.
House Republicans are rushing to the defense of Donald Trump by demanding testimony and documents from Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who is said to be on the verge of indicting the former president for a hush money payment he allegedly arranged before the 2016 election.
In a letter sent today to Bragg, the GOP chairs of the oversight, administration and judiciary committees accuse Bragg of being “about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority: the indictment of a former President of the United States and current declared candidate for that office….”
…
They demand that Bragg sit for an interview by Thursday morning, as well as turn over documents related to his office’s communications with the justice department and federal law enforcement about Trump, its use and receipt of federal funds, and the actions of two former prosecutors.
Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida who is Donald Trump’s closest rival for the Republican presidential nomination, has broken his silence over Trump’s looming indictment in New York.
He did so by mocking the notion that hush money payments to a porn star might be seen as indictable conduct, and repeating an antisemitic dogwhistle.
…
DeSantis mentioned “Soros funded prosecutors” five times in a two-minute answer about Trump’s hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels….
Donald Trump could be indicted as soon as today or Wednesday, Politico reports.
New York law enforcement officials are meeting today at police department headquarters to plan for the possibility that he will be arrested, the report said. “We’ll be discussing how we bring Trump in,” a person involved in planning for his arrest said. “No decisions have been made yet.”
Now, some news from yet another one of the investigations into Donald Trump, this one involving his possession of classified documents.
On Friday, the special federal prosecutor handling that inquiry, Jack Smith, won a court ruling compelling more testimony from Trump’s attorney Evan Corcoran. Corcoran had already appeared before a grand jury convened by Smith to investigate the government secrets found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, but cited attorney-client privilege to avoid answering some questions.
In response to a petition from Smith, a federal judge overruled Corcoran’s privilege claims, finding that some of the advice he gave Trump could have been used to commit a crime.
Today, CNN said they’d spotted Corcoran going into the Washington DC federal courthouse where the grand jury is hearing testimony – indicating that he may be about to tell Smith whatever he tried to avoid saying…
[…] House Speaker Kevin McCarthy followed Trump in denouncing the investigation as politically motivated, but tried to tamp down on the Jan. 6 repeat.
“I don’t think people should protest this, no,” McCarthy said Sunday. Then he went for a hilarious lie: “And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that, either.”
While McCarthy prefers that there not be violence in the streets, he did threaten multiple House investigations of Bragg in a tweet railing against “an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.” Bragg is an independently elected county official, not that that will stop House Republicans from looking for ways to use their committees to “investigate,” aLa attack him.
Mike Pence likewise sprang to Trump’s defense over the weekend. Fresh off of making headlines by saying “history will hold [Trump] accountable for his incitement of the Jan. 6 crowd,” Pence made clear he meant that only history should hold him accountable. Pence strongly disapproves of a prosecutor holding Trump accountable for anything.
[…] Republicans are lining up to decry the possibility that Trump will be charged. But while it would be a political decision to charge a politician for a crime if there was not evidence that they had indeed committed a crime, it would equally be a political decision not to charge a politician for a crime if there was evidence they had committed one. There is a lot of evidence that Donald Trump has committed crimes. […]
[…] Ben Cohen, founder of Ben & Jerry’s, is funding a campaign against US military support for Ukraine through the organisation People’s Power Initiative. Ben Cohen has funded PPI with one million dollars and is the president of the organization. PPI has launched the campaign through a project named Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), which is now pushing a tankie-narrative.
Ben Cohen explains to Daily Beast:
“I think the U.S. should use its power to negotiate an end to the war, not prolong the death and destruction by supplying more weapons.”
[…] some [people] have no problem living in a world where great powers have an intrinsic right to dominate weaker neighbours, to create spheres of influence and security.
Democracy and sovereignty be damned.
It’s of the same ilk as “realist” international relations professor John Mearsheimer who essentially argues that wars break out as a result of great powers being challenged in their spheres of interest. Hence, the US and Nato should be blamed, not Russia.
The fact that a vast majority of Ukrainians want to find peace and prosperity in the EU, want to exclude the possibility of a future Holodomor, want to eliminate Putin’s influence in Ukraine, want Western support to become a more stable and non-corrupt democracy? Not really important to the tankies.
Somehow, somewhere, American imperialism and the military industrial complex must be the problem.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog. From there:
Privileges committee receives submission from Johnson about Partygate inquiry
The Boris Johnson submission, setting out why he thinks he did not commit a contempt of parliament in what he told MPs about Partygate, has now been received by the privileges committee, a source close to the process has revealed.
Nicola Sturgeon is now delivering what is being billed as her last major speech as Scotland’s first minister. Her successor will be announced a week today….
This is what Nicola Sturgeon said in her speech to the RSA about social media being a threat to democracy…. The full speech does not seem to be available online yet, and so I’ll quote it in full.
She is not the first politician to say this, but she sums up the problem particularly well. And the argument is particularly powerful coming from her, because Sturgeon is seen as better at using social media (at least Twitter) than most other people in top jobs in British politics.
She said:
I have not often in my political career agreed with Tony Blair, but I did recently hear him expressed the view that social media is a plague on politics. And while I don’t agree that this is an inevitability, I do think it is the reality right now.
It is distorting debate. The sheer pace of rolling news encourages us to speak first and think later. Minor dramas become crises and then catastrophes in what can often feel like nanoseconds. Algorithms create echo chambers, they obliterate nuance and force us into binary positions that polarise even – sometimes especially – the most complex of of issues. The distinction between objective fact and subjective opinion has all but disappeared. Absolutely everything is contested, which makes finding common ground much, much harder.
And all of this is undermining rational decision making. Decision makers are under enormous pressure to take positions and respond to events at breakneck speed, with next to no time to weigh up complexities or uncertainties. The amplification effects of social media too often leads politicians to think that quite extreme positions are the view of the majority when they are most definitely not.
And then, of course, there is the abuse that is hurdled at anyone who puts their head above the parapet. Politics has always been tough. And I’m a great believer that it should be tough. But social media is creating an environment that, frankly, is harsher and more hostile, particularly for women and those from minority communities, than at any time in my political career. It gives racism, misogyny, sexism, bigotry generally – none of these new phenomena by any means – a platform and a vehicle. And if we’re not careful, it will drive the kinds of people we desperately need to see more of in politics and public life even further away.
Now, to be clear, I know we can’t turn the clock back. I’m not naive about that. Social media in one form or another is here to stay and no doubt it will go on changing and changing rapidly.
But I am firmly of the view that if it continues to dominate and shape, or rather missshape, debate in the way that it does know, if we continue to allow the negatives to outweigh the positives, we do risk destroying our ability to address the massive era-defining issues that the world currently faces.
So we must – and this is a personal view, but one I hold very strongly – we must as a matter of urgency rediscover and recharge one of the basic functions of democracy, to peaceably and civilly resolve our differences …
We cannot shy away from legitimate political, economic, social, or constitutional issues because they divide opinion or involve hard choices. Instead, for the sake of democracy, we must find ways of debating and resolving these issues with respect, reason, civility, and good faith.
Indeed, in my view, and this is based on many years now of experience, this probably is one of the most pressing issues confronting democracies everywhere. And the reason is simple: unless we improve the quality of our debate, discourse and decision making, and underpin it with reason and a degree of social cohesion, we will be increasingly incapable of finding solutions to the massive economic, social, environmental challenges we face. And we will certainly not be able to do so with anything like the consensus needed for implementing some of these solutions.
That is why it is essential to find a peaceful and civil way of resolving differences, she says.
Sturgeon says, when dealing with Covid, and holding press conferences every day, she learnt that the public is much better at dealing with nuance than politicians assume.
She says she thinks leaders should be willing to embrace complexity, and explain it to people.
And she says politicians should be willing to risk doing things that are difficult and controversial.
Après le recours de l’exécutif à l’article 49.3 jeudi et alors que le mouvement de contestation s’est durci ce week-end dans les raffineries françaises pour contester la réforme des retraites, l’Assemblée nationale examine lundi les deux motions de censure contre le gouvernement d’Élisabeth Borne. Leur rejet signifierait une adoption définitive du projet de loi. Suivez les derniers développements sur la situation en France avec notre liveblog.
Nouvelle journée décisive pour la controversée réforme des retraites. Alors que la mobilisation se poursuit en France contre le projet de loi de l’exécutif, l’Assemblée nationale va mettre au vote à partir de 16 h, lundi 20 mars, deux motions de censure. Un scénario du quitte ou double : en cas de rejet de ces motions, le texte serait définitivement adopté et en cas d’adoption, le gouvernement d’Élisabeth Borne serait renversé.
Le déclenchement, jeudi, de l’arme constitutionnelle du 49.3 par la Première ministre pour faire passer sans vote la réforme n’a fait que redoubler la contestation, qui dépasse souvent le sujet du recul de l’âge de la retraite de 62 à 64 ans.
L’intersyndicale a appelé à une neuvième journée de mobilisation pour le jeudi 23 mars, tandis que la grève s’est durcie dans les raffineries et que les éboueurs poursuivent leur mouvement à Paris, Rennes ou encore Nantes….
Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin intensified his attack on Russia’s defence chief Sergei Shoigu, calling the minister’s son-in-law a “scumbag blogger.”
In an audio message published on his social media channels, Prigozhin compared Aik Gasparyan, a Wagner fighter and convicted armed robber who he called a “hero” with Shoigu’s son-in-law, the fitness blogger Alexei Stolaryov.
Which one is better – Hayk, who committed a crime, came out and became a real hero, or a scumbag blogger who remains a vile creature.
Stolaryov is the husband of Ksenia Shoigu, the daughter of the Russian defence minister who is believed to be close with her father.
Prigozhin has previously feuded with Russia’s top brass over military tactics and the right to recruit convicts from Russian prisons for the war in Ukraine. He has also accused the country’s top military leaders of “high treason.”
In a separate letter published on Monday, Prigozhin told Shoigu that the Ukrainian army was planning an imminent offensive aimed at cutting off his Wagner forces from the main body of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.
The letter was the first time Prigozhin has published such correspondence with the defence minister.
Fani Willis, the Georgia district attorney investigating the Trump campaign’s attempts to overturn the state’s 2020 election result, is said to be considering racketeering and conspiracy charges.
Meanwhile, at the White House, Joe Biden just vetoed the first bill of his administration: Republican-backed legislation that overturns a labor department rule allowing retirement fund managers to consider aspects like good corporate governance and climate change risks in their investment strategies.
In a brief video released by the White House, Biden said the legislation was the work of the Republican party’s extreme right flank: [Twitter video at the link]
It passed the Republican-controlled House of Representatives with only one Democratic vote, while in the Senate, it was able to pass only after centrist senators Joe Manchin and Jon Tester, who represent red states and are up for re-election next year, voted for it.
[…] Elon Musk made the prediction, which sounded more like a threat, that if Trump is arrested, he “would be re-elected in a landslide victory.” He was responding to another tweet that made the very same prediction/threat. It’s intended to try to intimidate people, a flaccid way of trying to pre-justify a “Look What You Made Me Do”-type conclusion.
This is obviously bullying abuser behavior. But that’s where we come to the fantasy.
It’s the silliest of fantasies.
The threat is that if Donald Trump is held accountable — for his decades of criminal behavior, for inciting a terrorist attack against America, for trying to overthrow the government to steal an election, and God knows what else — then YOU’LL SEE, HE’LL BE THE BOSS OF YOU NOW, IN A LANDSLIDE!
The fantasy this is predicated on is that there is some silent majority out there in America that would be activated in the event of his arrest. No matter that such a silent majority has yet to show up every other time it’s been threatened. The notion that there are these masses of people who could be convinced to love Trump or care what happens to him or have sympathy for him […]
It is delusional.
There are many examples of this genre, but Marjorie Taylor Greene’s reactions are some of the most ludicrous, for obvious reasons. Here’s an example:
We don’t need to protest about the Communists Democrat’s planning to arrest Pres Trump and the political weaponization of our government and election interference.
These idiots are sealing their own fate in 2024 because the silent majority has two feelings right now about the current regime.
Fear and anger.
That is the most powerful combination when election time comes.
And the Democrats are driving that force with their own corrupt actions.
“[T]he silent majority has two feelings right now about the current regime. Fear and anger.”
Okeydoke, crazy person!
In a statement so illiterate it seems like it was written by Trump himself, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik says Democrats are doing this because they “cannot beat President Trump at the ballot box.” You know, as if we hadn’t already beat the shit out of him in the 2020 election, and kicked most of his candidates’ asses in the midterms […]
Trump himself is babbling that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg should be arrested for “election interference.” As if anybody actually believes this is the only way he could be beaten in 2024.
Greg Sargent makes good points in this tweet, responding to Elon’s threats:
Yet again we’re told holding Trump accountable for corruption/crimes will lead to GOP victories. But this hasn’t happened. People said impeachment would cause backlash, but he lost reelex. People said 1/6 committee would cause backlash, but Rs dramatically underperformed in 2022.
Donald Trump is the most hated and laughed at person in the world, perhaps in human history. Indeed, the only thing he may be the best at is being a sad, unimpressive, world-historical loser. Nobody is coming to save that guy.
Sure, he has his die-hard idiots, the ones he appears to be trying to incite into committing new violence for him. The ones talking about creating a “patriot moat” around Mar-a-Lago to prevent his arrest. We will never stop laughing if that happens, but there’s no guarantee that even that impotent elite strike force will show up. Nothing is coming that’s going to change whatever is on its way for Trump, in the slam-dunk indictment coming from the Manhattan DA or any bigger ones that follow.
Here is the cold, hard truth, at least as far as we reckon:
Most of the world’s reactions to a Trump indictment will fall somewhere on the spectrum between shrugging of the shoulders and outright celebration. That’s the Overton Window right there. […]
But all the same, we are pretty sure a bunch of MAGA people’s sad fantasy bubbles are about to be burst in dramatic and cruel fashion, by all the onlookers who either don’t care or see Trump being held accountable as long-overdue justice.
We’re afraid we’re just going to have to smile and nod at these people who think they can intimidate Americans with threats that if Trump is held accountable, we’ll be sorry, because then Trump will be elected Jesus-For-Life […]
And as reality dawns on them, as they watch their savior being hauled away never to rise again on the third day, we’re afraid we’re going to have to just let them cry it out.
[…] when states started banning abortion, anyone with a lick of sense immediately thought of the fact that there is a major doctor shortage all over the country — an ob-gyn shortage in particular — and this would probably make that a lot worse in these states (where things were already bad to begin with). And guess what? That’s exactly what’s happening.
An Idaho hospital is closing its labor and delivery unit, citing the fact that all of their doctors are leaving and they cannot get more because no ob-gyns want to move to Idaho, which has one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the nation.
Via CBS:
An Idaho hospital will stop labor and delivery services, citing doctor shortages and the “political climate,” the hospital announced Friday.
“Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult,” Bonner General Health, located in the city of Sandpoint, said in a news release.
Pregnant women who utilized Bonner General, a 25-bed hospital, will now have to drive to hospitals or birthing centers in Coeur d’Alene or Spokane to give birth.
In 2022, doctors delivered 265 babies at Bonner General and admitted less than 10 pediatric patients, the hospital said.
[…] Idaho is one of six states where doctors can be prosecuted for performing an abortion, and we can’t exactly blame doctors for not wanting to be in a situation where they have to decide between treating a patient and breaking the law and ending up in prison.
Now, I am not wide-eyed and innocent enough to think that hospitals closing over stupid abortion laws is going to lead to any of these states changing their abortion laws. […] all they care about are other people’s children god forbid going to eat some waffles and watch a man in a sequin gown lip sync to Kylie Minogue.
“What about all of those ladies who gave birth in stuck elevators and taxis on television sitcoms, huh? They seemed fine! Zack Morris delivered Mrs. Belding’s baby, in an elevator, as a high school senior. What do we even need doctors for?” is what they would say, I imagine, if they said anything at all.
Tories could lose more than 1,000 seats in local elections on basis of current polls, experts say
The Conservatives could lose more than 1,000 seats in the English local elections in May, on the basis of current polling, according to psephologists.
In an article for the Local Government Chronicle, Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, two of Britain’s leading local election specialists, say that the Tories will record losses on this scale even if the swing to Labour from the Conservatives is less in the local elections than current national polling suggests it might be.
More than 8,000 seats across 230 councils in England are up for grabs on Thursday 4 May, making this the biggest set of election in the four-year local elections cycle.
But there is one consolation for the Conservatives as they prepare for what could be a dreadful night. With the King’s coronation taking place on Saturday 6 May, by Friday night the local elections are unlikely to be at the top of the news, whatever the result….
It is distorting debate. The sheer pace of rolling news encourages us to speak first and think later. Minor dramas become crises and then catastrophes in what can often feel like nanoseconds. Algorithms create echo chambers, they obliterate nuance and force us into binary positions that polarise even – sometimes especially – the most complex of of issues. The distinction between objective fact and subjective opinion has all but disappeared. Absolutely everything is contested, which makes finding common ground much, much harder.
Nicola Sturgeon analyzed the the situation perfectly.
More from text quoted by SC in comment 359, (I am repeating the text mostly to emphasize it, and to give it a permanent place in my memory):
The amplification effects of social media too often leads politicians to think that quite extreme positions are the view of the majority when they are most definitely not.
[…] social media is creating an environment that, frankly, is harsher and more hostile, particularly for women and those from minority communities […]
Sturgeon says, when dealing with Covid, and holding press conferences every day, she learnt that the public is much better at dealing with nuance than politicians assume.
She says she thinks leaders should be willing to embrace complexity, and explain it to people.
And she says politicians should be willing to risk doing things that are difficult and controversial.
Would that Republicans in the USA would listen to Sturgeon.
A quick update: Pro-Trump influencers are trying to organize anti-indictment rallies tonight, one in NYC and one at Mar-a-Lago, mostly on Telegram.
Trump fans are mostly telling each other not to go, saying it’s a fed trap. This mirrors most pro-Trump protest failures since 1/6.
Part of the problem is that the potential pro-Trump NYC protest is at a heretofore non-public secret location, making it all seem sketchier to people who might want to go.
You have to sign up for an email list to find it and it’s supposed to start in less than 4 hours.
Putin made a midnight trip to Mariupol, where the darkness could mask the destruction around him. But even the most tightly controlled conditions weren’t enough to prevent this from happening:
Putin and Mariupol….
This is the original video, which was deleted immediately after publication in RIA Novosti, and the cropped version was already played on TV.
At 17 seconds, a woman from the window shouts “it’s all not true, it’s all for show” 😔
———————-
These numbers! 21 tanks and 23 APCs in a day? [list at the link]
Well, the Oryx crew pretty much confirmed the tanks: [Oryx list at the link]
You can see 10 of those tanks burn right here: [video at the link]
—————————–
This is funny:
A Ukrainian military man, stationed near Bakhmut, was called by the Military Commissariat and asked why he ‘hide from mobilisation’ 🤭🙃 [video at the link]
That clip is from this much longer video of trench life around Bakhmut. It is translated, and it’s quite informative. I do wish they hadn’t beeped out the guy’s response to the draft commissariat. It seemed joyfully, hilariously profane. [video at the link]
Link, the same link as in comment 354, but all the updates are at the end of the article.
A dangerous climate threshold is near, but ‘it does not mean we are doomed’ if swift action is taken, scientists say.
Human activities have transformed the planet at a pace and scale unmatched in recorded history, causing irreversible damage to communities and ecosystems, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change. Leading scientists warned that the world’s plans to combat these changes are inadequate and that more aggressive actions must be taken to avert catastrophic warming.
The report released Monday from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the world is likely to miss its most ambitious climate target — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — within a decade. Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme that people will not be able to adapt. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by century’s end.
Monday’s assessment synthesizes years of studies on the causes and consequences of rising temperatures, leading U.N. Secretary General António Guterres to demand that developed countries such as the United States eliminate carbon emissions by 2040 — a decade earlier than the rest of the world.
With few nations on track to fulfill their climate commitments and with the developing world already suffering disproportionately from climate disasters, he said, rich countries have a responsibility to act faster than their low-income counterparts.
The IPCC report shows humanity has reached a “critical moment in history,” IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee said. The world has all the knowledge, tools and financial resources needed to achieve its climate goals, but after decades of disregarding scientific warnings and delaying climate efforts, the window for action is rapidly closing.
Calling the report a “how-to guide to defuse the climate time-bomb,” Guterres announced on Monday an “acceleration agenda” that would speed up global actions on climate.
Emerging economies including China and India — which plan to reach net zero in 2060 and 2070, respectively — must hasten their emissions-cutting efforts alongside developed nations, Guterres said.
Both the U.N. chief and the IPCC also called for the world to phase out coal, oil and gas, which are responsible for more than three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“This report offers hope, and it provides a warning,” Lee told reporters Monday. “The choices we make now and in the next few years will reverberate around the world for hundreds, even thousands, of years.” […]
Three House Republican committee chairmen sent Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg a letter Monday requesting he testify before Congress “about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision” in any potential indictment of former President Donald Trump in the prosecutor’s hush money probe.
[JFC]
The joint letter — which is a request, not a subpoena — was signed by three powerful GOP chairs: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan o Ohio, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil of Wisconsin.
“In light of the serious consequences of your actions, we expect that you will testify about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision,” the letter read.
On Twitter, Jordan added that Bragg “owes” the Republicans answers.
[…] nothing about this is normal. We’re dealing with a situation in which a local elected prosecutor has convened a grand jury, which is currently hearing evidence. In fact, it’s scheduled to hear from an important witness today.
It’s against this backdrop that three powerful House committee chairman have formally requested that the prosecutor respond to their conspiracy theories — about, among other things, a possible Justice Department role in the local case.
Note, as of this afternoon, Bragg hasn’t even brought charges against Trump or anyone else involved in the hush money scandal. Jordan, Comer, and Steil are demanding answers anyway.
[…] Committee chairs from both parties have long understood that seeking testimony from a prosecutor about an ongoing case is plainly ridiculous.
And yet, here we are.
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, published a tweet along these lines this morning, which hopefully got his colleagues’ attention. “Dear [Jordan]: Local prosecutors, including DA Bragg, owe you nothing,” the Californian wrote. “In fact, it is illegal for you and [Judiciary Committee Republicans] to interfere in an ongoing criminal investigation, or a criminal trial (if there is one).”
It’s a safe bet that Bragg will not volunteer to answer the GOP chairs’ questions about an ongoing criminal investigation, which raises the prospect of a possible subpoena in the near future.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has a rare skill that he exercises at every available opportunity: The Kentucky Republican can connect Hunter Biden to just about anything. In fact, Comer appeared on Fox News yesterday morning, suggesting Donald Trump’s possible indictment in New York is intended to distract from the congressman’s Biden-related theories. [video at the link]
Watching this, I was reminded that Comer also appeared on Fox News a few days earlier, peddling thoroughly discredited claims related to Hunter Biden. A day later, there the Oversight Committee chairman was again, making another Fox appearance, pushing the same false allegations.
[…] it’s certainly discouraging to see a powerful member of Congress so preoccupied with strange ideas regarding the president’s family. But watching these clips, a related question came to mind: Just how often is this guy on Fox?
I didn’t have the answer to that question, so I reached out this morning to Media Matters, which was kind enough to pull together a list of Comer’s Fox appearances from last week:
March 12: an appearance on Fox News in the morning
March 13: an appearance on Fox Business in the late afternoon, then Fox News in the evening
March 14: an appearance on Fox News midday and then again in the evening
March 15: an appearance on Fox News in the evening
March 16: an appearance on Fox Business in the morning, then Fox News in the evening
March 17: an appearance on Fox News midday and then again in the evening
March 19: an appearance on Fox News in the morning
I suppose the obvious joke here is to think someone dropped the ball on March 18, but in all seriousness, this is an astonishing number of Fox hits. Eleven on-air appearances over the course of eight days isn’t just a lot, it means the Oversight Committee chairman was on Fox programming more last week than many of the network’s own hosts. [Funny if not so bad for our democracy]
This does not include, by the way, three other on-air appearances Comer made on Newsmax, a rival conservative network. [!!]
A cynic might wonder whether the Republican-led Oversight Committee is focused more on reaching the GOP’s conservative base than doing legitimate work.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy spent much of the weekend doing yard work at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s house, several eyewitnesses report.
The Speaker of the House was seen mowing Greene’s lawn, as well as gathering leaves, twigs, and other yard detritus into a bag.
While McCarthy was mowing, Greene emerged from her house and appeared to tell him that he “missed a spot,” according to one onlooker.
At his Capitol office, McCarthy downplayed the scope of his weekend duties at Greene’s property.
“I was driving by Marjorie’s house and noticed that her front yard could use a little sprucing up,” he said. “This was a hundred per cent my idea and something I wanted to do.”
The Speaker refused to confirm or deny reports that he had also cleaned Greene’s gutters and oven.
Idaho wants to bring back execution by firing squad, the Associated Press reports, with the Republican-dominated legislature passing a bill to employ the method in instances where they can’t get the drugs for lethal injection.
If signed into law by GOP governor Brad Little, the northwestern state would join South Carolina, Mississippi, Utah and Oklahoma in allowing the method to be used. However, there is a divide within the Idaho GOP over whether shooting prisoners to death is a good idea, the AP reports:
Sen. Doug Ricks, a Republican who co-sponsored the bill, told his fellow senators on Monday that the state’s difficulty in finding lethal injection drugs could continue “indefinitely” and that he believes death by firing squad is “humane.”
“This is a rule of law issue — our criminal system should work and penalties should be exacted,” Ricks said.
But Sen. Dan Foreman, also a Republican, said firing-squad executions would traumatize the people who who carry them out, the people who witness them and the people who clean up afterward.
“I’ve seen the aftermath of shootings, and it’s psychologically damaging to anybody who witnesses it,” Foreman said. “The use of the firing squad is, in my opinion, beneath the dignity of the state of Idaho.”
The bill originated with Republican Rep. Bruce Skaug, prompted in part by the state’s inability to execute Gerald Pizzuto Jr. late last year. Pizzuto, who now has terminal cancer and other debilitating illnesses, has spent more than three decades on death row for his role in the 1985 slayings of two gold prospectors.
The Idaho Department of Correction estimates that it will cost around $750,000 to build or retrofit a death chamber for firing squad executions.
Philadelphia officials announced a $9.25 million settlement Monday with hundreds of people over several lawsuits challenging the police response to the protests and civil disorder in 2020 after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Officials said the money will be distributed among 343 plaintiffs in connection with police actions during the protests that erupted in west Philadelphia and along Interstate 676 in the city center that spring. In addition, a grant will provide $500,000 to $600,000 for mental health counseling for west Philadelphia residents, the Associated Press reports.
Videos of Philadelphia police firing tear gas on June 1, 2020, at dozens of protesters trapped on I-676 by SWAT team officers on both sides — many unable to retreat to an on-ramp and clambering to get up a steep embankment and over a concrete wall and fence — were spread widely on social media.
Attorneys suing over events the day before in and around a west Philadelphia business corridor that is the heart of a predominantly Black neighborhood said witnesses reported residential communities turned into a war zone, with tanks traveling on side streets “chasing residents into their homes and indiscriminately firing canisters of tear gas at them.”
Mayor Jim Kenney and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw faced harsh criticism in two audits of the planning and response to the protests, which included multiple clashes, the burning of police cars and instances of opportunistic thefts and vandalism in business districts. One review cited failures in planning that researchers said led to short staffing, emotional responses from officers and sometimes excessive uses of force.
The tendency to dwell in the land of batshit bonkers conspiracy theories is biting Team Trump in the ass … this time, at least:
[…] NBC News’ Ben Collins reports that protests against Trump’s indictment being organized in New York City and Mar-a-Lago have been hampered by Trumpers discouraging each other from going because they think it’s a “fed trap,” or what right-wingers call a “false flag” operation designed to pin responsibility for the protest on someone else. Most of the organizing has been on the pro-Trump platform Telegram.
“Part of the problem is that the potential pro-Trump NYC protest is at a heretofore non-public secret location,” writes Collins, “making it all seem sketchier to people who might want to go.”
MAGA enthusiast Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted Monday, “How many Feds/Fed assets are in place to turn protest against the political arrest of Pres Trump into violence?” [bullshit]
One key organizer of the 2020 “Stop the Steal” rallies, Ali Alexander, warned Trump supporters they could be “jailed or worse” if they protested in New York City.
“You have no liberty or rights there,” Alexander tweeted, according to the Associated Press.
Early on Monday morning, New York City law enforcement officials began hastily erecting barricades around the Manhattan Criminal Court. [video at the link]
Someone also might want to alert a perhaps unsuspecting In-n-Out Burger in Orange County Southern California, where Roger Stone has publicized a protest, according to USA Today correspondent Will Carless.
Four were convicted on all counts which included felony charges:
Six people affiliated with the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia, were convicted Monday of various charges related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection.
Four of the defendants were found guilty on all of the charges they faced. Defendants Sandra Parker, Laura Steele, Connie Meggs and William Isaacs were accused of entering the Capitol during the riot and attempting to make their way to the Senate chamber before being deterred by pepper spray and police officers in the building.
Two defendants were convicted of a lesser charge of entering and remaining on restricted grounds but acquitted of the most serious charges alleging the group conspired to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
The jury remains deadlocked on two counts for those two defendants and will continue to deliberate.
District Judge Amit Mehta denied their motion for a mistrial:
Sandra Parker, Laura Steele, Connie Meggs and William Isaacs were found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. The jury found Michael Greene, another member of the Oath Keepers, not guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, but was still debating whether he was guilty of aiding or abetting the obstruction of an official proceeding. Bennie Parker was found not guilty of aiding or abetting, but the jury was still deliberating the conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding charge.
All six members of the far-right group were found guilty of the charge of entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds. Both Parker and Greene may only ultimately be convicted of that charge.
This was the third group of Oath Keepers members to go to trial for their actions on Jan. 6, but these defendants did not face the more serious and seldom-used charge of seditious conspiracy that those in the first two groups faced.
Two more are still on the hook, the jury is still deliberating:
The verdict marks the end of the third major trial against members of the extremist group, who were among the thousands of Donald Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s November 2020 election win. […]
In this latest case, prosecutors said that Sandra Parker, Laura Steele, William Isaacs and Connie Meggs, who is married to Kelly Meggs, forcibly entered the Capitol in a “stack” formation, with some of them trying to push their way toward the Senate Chamber.
Greene and Bennie Parker did not physically enter the building, but prosecutors said they were part of the conspiracy.
The jury on Monday was deadlocked over whether to convict Bennie Parker for conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, and remained deadlocked over whether to convict Greene for obstructing an official proceeding.
Defendant Steele was once a cop:
Laura Steele, the former High Point police officer who helped leaders of the Oath Keepers plan their assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was found guilty on all charges on Friday.
Steele was found guilty by a jury in U.S. District Court in Washington along with four of her codefendants in a trial of six members of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militia group, who entered the Capitol in a violent attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. […]
Steele was guilty of six counts listed in an eighth superseding indictment for her role in helping Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, in planning to disrupt that lawful transfer of power in Washington. […]
Steele is named in seven of nine counts in a 35-page indictment against the group. Those charges describe how Rhodes and certain regional leaders recruited members, including Steele, to travel to Washington. They are alleged to have worn paramilitary clothing and Oath Keepers identification as they overpowered guards and invaded the Capitol through the doors to the rotunda, court documents say.
The FBI continues to seek the public’s assistance in identifying individuals who participated in unlawful conduct during the Capitol Insurrection. New images are added frequently […]
[…] When 19 very young children and two adults were murdered by a piece of shit wielding an AR-15 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022, in the days and weeks after this horrific event, it became clear that the law enforcement apparatus failed in myriad ways that day. A new report with previously unreleased interviews of the police and other responders that day makes it pretty clear that the reason “nearly 400 law enforcement officers” couldn’t do jack shit for over an hour was because of the AR-15 the murderer was carrying.
The Texas Tribune reports that very early on in law enforcement’s engagement with the Uvalde shooter, they were warning one another that he was in possession of “an AR.” In an interview with investigators after the mass murder, Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Donald Page said that once they realized the suspect was handling an AR rifle, “We had no choice but to wait and try to get something that had better coverage where we could actually stand up to him.”
[…] Meanwhile, gun groups from trying to sanitize online information around mass shootings to try and reframe the AR-15’s legality as an issue of personal safety, and not the public health crisis that it is. They are not alone. Many gun fetishists try and take issue with technicalities. Calling an AR an “assault rifle” will send a gun nut off on a big tirade about knowing the differences between the two classifications. But the fact remains: Arguing that there are even worse and more powerful guns than the AR-15 is not the argument you think it is.
[…] After the mass murder in Uvalde, Texas, the conservatives in Uvalde and across the country have: come up with a plan to spend tens of millions on bulletproof shields for police officers; spent money on trying to fight the release of public shooting records connected to the failures of Texas law enforcement that terrible day in Uvalde; placed more AR-15 rifles into schools—but in safes; and have vowed to ban kids from attending drag shows to protect kids.
“Ukrainian Military Intelligence claims that the mysterious unexplained ‘pops’ near railway in Crimea tonight led to the destruction of ‘Kalibr’ missiles that were being transported to the peninsula on the Russian rolling stock….”
They ‘continue the process of Russia’s demilitarisation and prepare the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea for deoccupation’. Screenshot at the (Twitter) link.
Des stations-service à sec pour la première fois depuis le début des grèves
La grève se durcit dans les raffineries et de nombreuses stations françaises sont à sec pour la première fois depuis le début du conflit, principalement dans le sud-est où les préfectures du Vaucluse et du Gard ont décidé de contingenter les ventes.
“Il n’y a plus aucun produit qui sort à cette heure” de l’ensemble des raffineries de France, que ce soit des six raffineries conventionnelles ou de la bioraffinerie de La Mède (Bouches-du-Rhône), a affirmé lundi à l’AFP Eric Sellini, élu national de la CGT Chimie.
Les expéditions de carburants vers les dépôts qui alimentent les stations-service étaient déjà bloquées ce weekend dans la plupart des raffineries.
Depuis lundi, la raffinerie TotalEnergies à Feyzin (Rhône) et celle d’Esso-ExxonMobil à Fos-sur-Mer ont de nouveau cessé les expéditions, selon la CGT, ce que confirment les directions des deux groupes.
“Jusqu’à jeudi soir, il n’y aura aucune sortie de carburant, que ce soit par wagon ou par camion”, a indiqué Lionel Arbiol, délégué CGT à la raffinerie Esso-ExxonMobil de Fos-sur-Mer.
StevoRsays
@ ^ SC (Salty Current) : Je parlez Francais mais un per. En Anglais sil vous plait?
Joyeaux equinox aussi!
StevoRsays
HAPPY EQUINOX EVERYONE!
At least by some measures marking the start of Autumn in the Southern hemisphere and Spring in the Northern hemisphere with our Daytime Star crossing the celestial equator today. Not quite the same as the equilux (equal day & night) as its often confused with.
Good PBS newshour article on the latest IPCC here including interview with Dr Katherine Heyhoe :
One-and-a-half degrees is not a magic threshold or a tipping point. Rather, it is a goal that we have set ourselves, knowing that the science is very clear. Every bit of warming matters.
Every little bit that the planet warms carries additional cost with it. So, how much do we need to do? As much as possible. When? As soon as possible. Why? Because we will all benefit from that action.
– Dr Katherine Heyhoe
“If we continue to accumulate only power and not wisdom, we will surely destroy ourselves. Our very existence in that distant time requires that we will have changed our institutions and ourselves. How can I dare to guess about humans in the far future? It is, I think, only a matter of natural selection. If we become even slightly more violent, shortsighted, ignorant, and selfish than we are now, almost certainly we will have no future.”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot : A Visionof the Human Future in Space.
(Any typos mine.)
Not my original source but another via google image search here :
Quote and meme seen today on fb. Seems apropos ’bout now. I wonder what the longtermist Techbros among others would make of that.. & keep wishing and hoping our political leaders finally heed that warning before it is too late . Assuming it isn’t already.
StevoR @ #385, I use the English when it’s available and give short translations for key stories/updates like @ #369. For other things, just run it through Google translate or translate the page at the link.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Ukraine’s defence ministry has said an explosion in the Crimean city of Dzhankoi destroyed Russian cruise missiles intended for use by Moscow’s Black Sea fleet. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, circulated footage he said reportedly showed the train station area in the city. The claims have not been independently verified.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are holding a second set of talks on Tuesday.…
Xi met Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin on Tuesday morning, and invited both Mishustin and Putin to visit China later this year.
China’s state media has extensively and positively covered the visit. Most coverage has focused on Xi’s comments and talking about how strong the relationship is. None of the pieces mentioned the recent ICC arrest warrant for the Russian president over alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine.
Iryna Vereshchuk, who is one of Ukraine’s deputy prime ministers and is the minister of reintegration of temporarily occupied territories, has said there is no confirmed time agreed for a mooted call between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Xi.
In his nightly address, Zelenskiy thanked Europe and the US for their latest aid packages, saying “Our European partners have agreed on a joint plan to accelerate the supply of shells for our artillery … This is a strategic step. It gives us confidence in our unity, in the immutability of the movement towards victory over the terrorist state.”
Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida is en route to Kyiv for talks with Zelenskiy. Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed Kishida riding a train from Poland heading to Kyiv early Tuesday…. [He’s arrived now.]
Russia’s defence ministry said on Tuesday that two of its Tu-95MS strategic missile carriers made a routine flight over the Sea of Japan. The defence ministry said the flights were carried out in compliance with international law and were made over neutral waters….
Kreator Psays
Catholic fanaticism strikes in Argentina: a group of over fifty people vandalized an art exhibition organized by the National University of Cuyo, which was dedicated to Intenational Woman’s Day, because the church claimed that it inflicted symbolic violence on Christian religious symbols. Which means that inflicting physical damage on it is OK, somehow. The group held a prayer session led by a deacon before irrupting in the building with chants of “long live King Christ” and “long live the Virgin”. Source: TÉLAM. You can check out the “scandalous” art pieces at the link.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog. From there:
Commons privileges committee publishes Johnson’s 52-page response to claims he misled MPs over Partygate
The Commons privileges committee has just published the submission it received from Boris Johnson setting out why he thinks did not deliberately mislead MPs about Partygate, and did not commit contempt of parliament….
The Commons privileges committee has put out a statement about the publication of Boris Johnson’s evidence. Here are the main points.
– The committee says Johnson’s submission “contains no new documentary evidence”.
– The committeee says it could not publish Johnson’s evidence yesterday because the document contained errors. Yesterday afternoon some of his allies suggested to journalists that the committee was deliberately holding it back to weaken his case. But the committee says:
The committee initially received the written evidence from Mr Johnson on Monday afternoon at 2.32pm in unredacted form. The evidence submitted had a number of errors and typos, and, a final corrected version was not submitted to the privileges committee until 8.02am this morning. Redactions have been made in the published version to protect the identity of some witnesses, in consultation with Mr Johnson, particularly junior-ranking civil servants.
Editors who worked with Johnson as a journalist will tell you that his copy never arrived on time.
– The committee says futher documents are being published tomorrow. It says:
Ahead of the oral evidence session on Wednesday, the committee will be publishing, again by agreement with Mr Johnson, a “core bundle” of documents to which the committee and Mr Johnson may refer in the course of the questioning. These documents will be published on the committee website at 9.00 am on Wednesday.
This may include statements from the No 10 officials who gave evidence to the committee, as well as emails or WhatsApp messages. The committee quoted some of this in its report earlier this month, but did not publish the statements in full.
– The committee says it is confident its process is fair. It says:
Throughout this inquiry the committee has received and followed the advice of its legal adviser, former senior president of tribunals and Lord Justice of Appeal Rt Hon Sir Ernest Ryder, as well as the impartial clerks of the house. The committee remains confident in the fairness of its processes and in its compliance at all times with the rules and practice of the House of Commons.
This is what Boris Johnson says about accepting the assurance that the Christmas drinks event organised by this press office on 18 December 2020, involving wine and presents, was not actually a party.
I asked Jack Doyle [his communications director] about the event, which he confirmed he had attended. He explained to me that the media team held a regular Friday evening team meeting, where they would discuss what had occurred during the week, and have a drink. As this was the last Friday of the year, there was also cheese and a Secret Santa. He reminded me that this had been a “nightmare” evening, as the country was about to go back into lockdown at a time when I was desperate to protect Christmas. He informed me that to call it a party was a great exaggeration. I asked him: “Was it within the rules?”. He told me: “It was within the rules”.
I had no basis to disbelieve Jack’s account of the event….
LOL, that totally sounds like a real conversation Johnson had.
The Metropolitan police is broken and rotten, suffering collapsing public trust and is guilty of institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, an official report has said.
The report by Louise Casey, commissioned by the Met after one of its officers abducted Sarah Everard, taking her from from a London street in March 2021, before raping and murdering her, is one of the most damning of a major British institution .
The 363-page report details disturbing stories of sexual assaults, usually covered up or downplayed, with 12% of women in the Met saying they had been harassed or attacked at work, and one-third experiencing sexism.
Lady Casey said that the lifeblood of British policing was haemorrhaging and her report warned that “public consent is broken” with just 50% of the public expressing confidence, even before revelations about the force’s worst recent scandals.
She pinned the primary blame on its past leadership and said: “Public respect has fallen to a low point. Londoners who do not have confidence in the Met outnumber those who do, and these measures have been lower amongst black Londoners for years.
“The Met has yet to free itself of institutional racism. Public consent is broken. The Met has become unanchored from the Peelian principle of policing by consent set out when it was established.”
The report found a bullying culture, frontline officers demoralised and feeling let down by their leaders, and discrimination “baked into the system”.
Casey revealed that one Muslim officer had bacon stuffed in his boots, a Sikh officer had his beard cut, minority ethnic officers were much more likely to be disciplined or leave, and Britain’s biggest force remains disproportionately white, in a capital that is increasingly diverse.
Stop and search and use of force on powers against black people was excessive, found the report for the Met – which stops more people per head of population than any other force.
A catalogue of suffering by women included frequent abuses by senior officers, including one subjecting a female junior to repeated harassment and an indecent act. She complained and told the inquiry: “It would have probably been better to suffer in silence, but I couldn’t do that. He got away with everything, I was made to look like the liar.”
Casey said the Met was failing on so many levels the crisis is existential, and if not fixed could end in its dismemberment: “If sufficient progress is not being made at the points of further review, more radical, structural options, such as dividing up the Met into national, specialist and London responsibilities, should be considered to ensure the service to Londoners is prioritised.”
Casey said austerity had deprived the Met of £700m but the cuts made by the force left its protection of children and women as inadequate.
Already crushingly low convictions of rapists were made worse by fridges that housed rape kits being broken, or being so full that evidence was lost, and cases dropped with rapists going free because of police bungles. Casey claimed in one instance someone ruined a fridge full of evidence by leaving their lunchbox in it.
Casey said the Met had blown repeated chances to reform by official inquiries over the decades and warned the force must not cherrypick the reforms it likes. It should implement her recommendations as a whole, she said.
But a gap and potential high level clash was emerging after Casey’s report was published, with those who oversee and run the Met having had the report for days.
Sir Mark Rowley, the force’s commissioner since September, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic that Casey insisted Britain’s biggest force deserved.
But one of the two people who hired him – and thus can fire him – made clear he agreed with Casey’s damning verdicts.
Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, has not previously used the term “institutional” about prejudice in the force he oversees since coming to office. He will be chairing a new oversight board for the Met, in effect placing it in a form of special measures for the foreseeable future.
Khan said: “The evidence is damning. Baroness Casey has found institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia, which I accept.
“I’ll be unflinching in my resolve to support and hold the new commissioner to account as he works to overhaul the force.”
Rowley said he wanted more time to study Casey’s recommendations, but said he accepts the findings. He said he accepted Casey’s factual findings about racism, misogyny and homophobia in his organisation and they were systemic, but neither he nor the Met would accept they were “institutional”, claiming it was a political term.
Rowley, battling to avoid being the last commissioner of the Met in its current shape and form, said: “I have to use practical, unambiguous, apolitical language … I don’t think it fits those criteria.
“It’s simply a term I’m not going to use myself.”
Asked if he was not accepting the finding, Rowley said: “I’m accepting we have racists, misogynists. I’m accepting, we’ve got systemic failings, management failings, cultural failings.
“This is about an organisation that needs to become determinedly anti-racist, anti-misogynist, anti-homophobic.
“I’m not going to use a label myself that is both ambiguous and politicised.”
The current Home Office is opposed to the idea of institutional racism.
[This is idiotic.]
Until now, Rowley has generated a small degree of hope with his vows to reform, but Andy George, the chair of the National Black Police Association, said: “The commissioner is wrong to once again fail to accept the Met is institutionally racist. We risk repeating history and cannot let this moment pass as another missed opportunity.”
…
Casey’s 363-page report details how both Wayne Couzens, who murdered Everard, and the serial rapist David Carrick were spawned by Met errors and toxic cultures in the force.
Despite clues to their danger both were given a gun, passed vetting and served in the parliamentary and diplomatic protection command, which Casey said should be “effectively disbanded”.
…
Meanwhile, the Met was so elitist and hierarchical that frontline officers – most likely to be the point of contact for the public – were run ragged and neighbourhood policing had been decimated.
Casey also said the Met should accept it is institutionally corrupt, as branded in 2021 by the official inquiry into the murder of the private eye Daniel Morgan, which the Met rejected.
The report said cultures of “blindness, arrogance and prejudice” are prevalent, and Casey added: “The Met can now no longer presume that it has the permission of the people of London to police them. The loss of this crucial principle of policing by consent would be catastrophic. We must make sure it is not irreversible.”
…
Harriet Wistrich, of the Centre for Women’s Justice, said Casey’s findings were “without precedent in its unswerving criticism of a corrupt, institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic police force”.
She said the two government inquiries after the Couzens scandal should be given greater powers and placed on statutory footing.
A bill requiring the release of intelligence materials on potential links between the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and a laboratory in the Chinese city of Wuhan has been signed into law by US president Joe Biden.
“We need to get to the bottom of Covid-19’s origins … including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Biden said in a statement. “In implementing this legislation, my administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible.
“I share the Congress’s goal of releasing as much information as possible about the origin” of Covid, he said.
Biden said that in 2021, after taking office, he had “directed the intelligence community to use every tool at its disposal” to investigate the origins of the virus. [This is…a bit silly.]
That work is “ongoing,” but as much as possible will be released without causing “harm to national security”, he said….
The US is spending up its delivery of Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine by sending a refurbished older model that can be ready faster, according to US officials.
The original plan was to send 31 of the newer M1A2 Abrams tanks, which could have taken a year or two to build and ship. A decision has been taken to send the older M1A1 version, which can be taken from army stocks and will be easier for Ukrainian forces to learn to use and maintain, sources told Associated Press.
The aim is to get the 70-tonne tanks to the frontline in eight to 10 months, they said. The plan will be announced by the Pentagon soon, AP reports.
CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly boosted a QAnon influencer on Twitter, doing so at least two dozen times since he took over the platform and reinstated the influencer’s account, a Media Matters analysis has found.
The QAnon influencer, known online as “Kanekoa,” is a member of a QAnon influencer collective known as We The Media. Kanekoa is also a member of an online anti-vaccine influencer channel that includes both anti-vaccine and QAnon-supporting figures, and had partnered with election denial organization True the Vote to target an election software company. The account was previously banned on the platform, but was seemingly reinstated in December, while also gaining reach in right-wing circles by being promoted by figures like Steve Bannon, Dan Bongino, Mike Lindell, and Michael Flynn (then-President Donald Trump also amplified the account multiple times on Twitter in December 2020).
Since Kanekoa’s reinstatement, Musk has repeatedly interacted with the account, replying at least 24 times to the QAnon influencer’s tweets, according to a Media Matters review. The replies have featured Musk making positive remarks about Kanekoa’s tweets, calling them an “interesting thread” and a “very important thread” and responding with a bullseye emoji. Musk also entertained a conspiracy theory from Kanekoa about voting and seemed to agree with Kanekoa’s baseless claim that “Anthony Fauci funded the development of COVID-19.”
Musk also tagged Twitter’s community notes multiple times in Kanekoa’s replies — referring to the platform’s crowdsourced, volunteer-driven fact-checking system which asks users to add context to a tweet and then vote on the most helpful additions. Notably, this feature is not actually a stand-in for rigorous, in-house content moderators — many of whom Musk has fired.
The Twitter CEO’s interactions with Kanekoa’s tweets have been correlated with a boost in the QAnon influencer’s engagement, as the tweets that Musk has replied to have gotten far more engagement than is typical for the account….
Kanekoa has even hyped Musk’s interactions with their tweets, calling it “the Elon Musk stamp of approval,” and other supporters in the QAnon community have also praised and hyped Musk as an ally.
Musk interacting with Kanekoa, a QAnon influencer who was reinstated on the platform under his management, is part of a larger pattern of the new CEO boosting right-wing content and extremism. Since taking over the platform, Musk has reinstated dozens of extremist and misinformation-peddling accounts on the platform and interacted with far-right accounts hundreds of times, while also firing content moderation staff and weakening content moderation policies. The platform has subsequently lost hundreds of millions in advertising revenue.
StevoRsays
@389. SC (Salty Current) : Ok.
.***
Via ABC news :
London’s Metropolitan Police is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic and unable to police itself, according to an independent review, adding pressure on the Met’s new chief to reform Britain’s biggest police force. ..(snip)..”This report is rigorous, stark and unsparing” Louise Casey, who led the review, said in its foreword.
“Its findings are tough and for many will be difficult to take. But it should leave no one in any doubt about the scale of the challenge.”
Ms Casey, a member of parliament’s upper house, found severe failings across the Met that required “radical” reform.
“We have found widespread bullying, discrimination, institutional homophobia, misogyny and racism, and other unacceptable behaviours,” the report said.
“Women and children do not get the protection and support they deserve”.
Labor backbencher Josh Wilson used a speech in the parliament to speak out against the AUKUS pact with the United Kingdom and the United States, fearing it might undermine Australia’s commitment to nuclear non-proliferation.
“I’m not yet convinced that we can adequately deal with the non-proliferation risks involved in what is a novel arrangement, by which a non-nuclear weapons state under the NPT (Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty) comes to acquire weapons-grade material,” he told the parliament.
None of the politicians to whom the ABC has spoken have called for AUKUS to be abandoned. They universally say while they have accepted it, they see it as their role to raise questions about the deal.
Furore over the presence of neo-Nazi protesters at a Melbourne anti-trans rights rally has spilled over into federal parliament, with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton rebuffing a fiery tirade from Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. The clash comes after an ongoing push by Victorian Liberals leader John Pesutto to expel MP Moira Deeming from the parliamentary party following her attendance at the anti-trans rights rally on Saturday.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus launched an attack on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton during question time over what he alleged was a failure to condemn the neo-Nazi protesters.
A one House Republican said the possible case against Donald Trump would “blow over” because he wouldn’t show up in court. That’s not how this works.
Rep. Claudia Tenney is a conservative Republican, so it was hardly a surprise when the New York congresswoman was dismissive of Donald Trump’s hush money scandal yesterday, telling Newsmax that the case against the former president is “garbage.”
But as The Daily Beast noted, in the same on-air interview with the conservative outlet, Tenney went just a little further when sharing her expectations.
“It’s really the worst of our system on display here and it’s unfortunate,” Tenney declared. “But I think this is all going to blow over because I don’t see any way that they’re actually going to get Donald Trump to appear in a court for sentencing — or I mean for indictment, or any type of charge.”
It was a curious claim, but that really is what she said. [video at the link]
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California published a tweet soon after, explaining: “Dear @RepTenney: As a former prosecutor, I wanted you to know that it doesn’t work like that.”
I don’t know if the congresswoman — who practiced law before her political career — lost her train of thought and ended up saying something she didn’t really mean, but in case anyone heard Tenney’s comments and believed them, it’s worth noting just how very wrong she was — and how correct Lieu was.
For one thing, the former president’s defense attorney in this case has already said Trump would follow normal procedures and surrender to authorities in New York in the event of an indictment.
For another, criminal charges don’t simply “blow over” when a defendant fails to show up. If that were the case, suspected criminals would take full advantage of the opportunity and our judicial system would soon be rendered meaningless.
Let’s make this plain: I don’t know if Trump will be indicted, but if he is, the former president will have some options. Ignoring the charge or charges will not be among them, and hiding in Florida in the hopes that the case will “blow over” will not be an effective strategy.
Just a few hours after Donald Trump saw some media reports and predicted his arrest, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy went to work on the former president’s behalf. The California Republican not only scrambled to defend Trump, the speaker also lashed out at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and directed House committee chairs to investigate the work of the local prosecutor. (The chairs complied yesterday.)
But McCarthy has also responded to the hush money scandal by pointing to an ostensibly principled position about the justice system in general.
“We’re not coming here to defend President Trump, we’re coming to defend equal justice,” the GOP leader told reporters this morning. After complaining about — who else? — Hillary Clinton and a campaign finance fine from the 2016 cycle, McCarthy again said: “We live in America and it should be equal justice.”
The House speaker pushed a similar line on Twitter yesterday:
“It doesn’t matter if it’s President Trump or a Democrat. Our justice system should not be used to target political opponents. Period.”
On the surface, none of what the Republican leader said seemed especially controversial. The number of prominent political voices willing to champion unequal justice is quite small. The same is true of those who espouse turning the criminal justice system into a political weapon.
But just below the surface, McCarthy’s comments lead to some unavoidable follow-up questions.
1. Where was he in the Trump era? Donald Trump didn’t even try to hide his efforts to use the justice system to target his political opponents. As president, he literally published tweets in the hopes of lobbying prosecutors to go after his perceived foes in the hopes of advancing his political interests. Trump’s own White House chief of staff freely admitted, on the record, that Trump repeatedly tried to use the Justice Department to go after those who’d wronged him in some way.
McCarthy never said a word about any of this, and he has never explained why not.
2. What happens if there’s evidence of wrongdoing? Our justice system shouldn’t be used to “target” political opponents, but there is no politician exception to the rule of law. In fact, all kinds of American politicians — including current and former officeholders — have faced charges of varying degrees of seriousness in recent years.
Were they all “targeted” as part of some kind of partisan crusade? Of course not. Prosecutors had evidence of wrongdoing, so they filed charges and took the issues to court.
[…] what would the House speaker have these officials do? If they have evidence of possible wrongdoing, would the Republican leader have them put that evidence aside simply because of Trump’s political influence?
When three House Republican committee chairs wrote to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg yesterday, they seemed quite animated about a Donald Trump indictment that does not yet exist. The GOP lawmakers even argued that Bragg shouldn’t bring charges because federal prosecutors looked at the same evidence and passed on the case.
From the letter signed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil:
“By July 2019 … federal prosecutors determined that no additional people would be charged alongside [Michael] Cohen. … [Y]our apparent decision to pursue criminal charges where federal authorities declined to do so requires oversight….”
[…] Federal prosecutors examined the same fact, the GOP argument goes, and decided not to pursue an indictment. With this in mind, Jordan, Comer and Steil effectively asked why the Manhattan district attorney’s office would disregard the Justice Department’s conclusion and consider going in the opposite direction. In fact, to hear the committee chairs tell it, the fact that Bragg is moving forward after federal prosecutors passed on the case is necessarily evidence of the local prosecutor going too far.
There is, however, a highly relevant detail that Republicans are conveniently overlooking.
As Rachel explained on last night’s show, it’s true that this case was initially a federal case, initiated by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. In fact, they’re the ones who prosecuted Michael Cohen, who paid Stormy Daniels in the hush money scandal.
At that point, did federal prosecutors conclude that the case was simply over and walk away? Not exactly.
What they actually found was that Cohen acted at Trump’s direction and to Trump’s benefit. Why didn’t prosecutors pursue the matter further? According to Geoffrey Berman — the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, who wrote a book about his experiences — it’s because there was political interference from other Trump appointees who ordered prosecutors to end their investigation.
Indeed, according to Berman’s book, then-Attorney General Bill Barr not only intervened in the case, he tried to kill the ongoing investigation and even suggested that Cohen’s conviction should be reversed.
The GOP committee chairs wrote yesterday that federal prosecutors “determined that no additional people would be charged alongside Cohen,” but they conveniently overlooked why they made that determination.
It wasn’t because of a thorough review of the law; it was because Trump’s attorney general told them to stop — because in the previous administration, the brazen politicization of federal law enforcement was the norm.
Were Jordan, Comer, and Steil unaware of these details, or did they simply choose not to care?
Hmmm. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Josh Marshall posted this tidbit:
A Fox News Producer, Abby Grossberg, is suing Fox News, essentially arguing that the network plotted to make her and Maria Bartiromo the fall guys for the Dominion lawsuit.
Fox News trying to save Tucker Carlson’s ass and Sean Hannity’s ass?
Trump is circulating an email asking his supporters to sign a petition that denounces his potential upcoming arrest in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. But — as there usually is with anything connected to Trumpworld — there is one catch. Signing this petition leads people straight to a webpage where individuals are asked to give $3,300 or other suggested amounts of cash to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
“They’re trying to intimidate YOU and cancel out YOUR vote!” Trump team wrote in a Monday email to subscribers. “Which is why the Trump for President 2024 campaign is compiling millions and millions of petition signatures from Americans like you CONDEMNING these threats of a possible arrest.” […]
The email sent by the Trump team of course does not specify how the signatures and the petition would be used to help fight Trump’s indictment. But Trump is known for these kinds of shady calls to action as campaign fundraisers.
The petition link takes signee’s to a page asking for donations to “help DEFEND our America First movement during these dark times.” The message shows supporters can donate any amount, but suggests large sums like $500, $1,000, and $3,300. […]
Trump tried to raise funds for his campaign when the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago residence and when the Jan. 6 House select committee voted to subpoena him.
Near Avdiivka, Russia has reportedly lost hundreds of troops. I’m including a link to the scene, with a big caution that the level of carnage here is daunting.
On Monday evening, a series of explosions took place near the city of Dzhankoi in occupied Crimea. According to the Ukrainian military, these explosions represent an attack on a supply of Russian Kalibr cruise missiles that were being transported by rail. If this is accurate, then Dzhankoi was certainly a good place to strike. [map at the link]
Not only is the city at crossroads of major highways, it’s also a railway hub, with a large switching yard and train sheds for directing materials in all directions. Even if the rail bridge at Kersh is still largely out of operation, shortly after they get across that bridge Russia certainly moves much of the material coming in from truck to rail. And when they do, everything they’re directing to Kherson or Zaporizhzhia Oblast comes through Dzhankoi.
Russia certainly felt safe in doing this, because at 150 kilometers from the nearest Ukrainian-held position, Dzhankoi was theoretically “safe.” Except this is just one of several locations that have recently been hit. Other explosions have struck the area around Mariupol, and even a Russian base on the other side of the Sea of Azov. That’s led to speculation about Ukraine getting longer-range missiles from the U.S., or developing long-range missiles of its own.
But the answer to the explosions at Dzhankoi and elsewhere is likely the same: drones.
Russia is claiming that all drones sent to Dzhankoi were shot down. You can see how accurate that statement is in the video below. [video at the link]
Open that video full screen. Pause at about the four-second mark: You can actually see what appears to be a drone diving toward a target just above one of the buildings.
Not only is Dzhankoi a rail hub, it has reportedly become one of Russia’s largest military bases in occupied Crimea. Some of the forces there were relocated from Kherson Oblast after Russia was forced to leave the area west of the Dnipro River. Some of the strikes appear to have been directed at the military airbase in this location.
Hours later, more strikes are being reported both at Dzhankoi and at other locations in Crimea. It seems like Ukraine is engaged in a more extensive operation, perhaps designed to take down Russian missiles before they can be launched in another wave against civilian targets. Weirdly enough, there is also gunfire on the ground at Dzhankoi and a power outage in the city. No idea what’s behind all that.
[…] A single Kalibr cruise missile sells for about $6.5 million on the international arms market. It’s a complex machine, with both multiple solid rocket booster stages and a turbojet engine for cruising at speed. It’s 8 meters long. It weighs around a ton.
Odds are that a whole group of those missiles were taken out last night by one or more devices that were a fraction of the Kalibr’s speed, a fraction of its mass, a fraction of its size, and a tiny fraction of its cost.
How cheap may they have been? Before I answer, I want you to watch this video. Even if you think you have no interest in drones for package delivery, even if you find the whole idea obnoxious, watch it. This is a fascinating and uplifting story about just how amazing drones can be when they’re being used for something other than warfare. [video at the link]
It’s not just that the use of drones here is innovative and lifesaving. It’s that the whole system was rapidly built up by people with little past experience beyond using consumer drones. They reengineered everything, tested it all, refined it, and developed a system that is reliably delivering medical supplies thousands of times a day, with drones coming and going every 90 seconds at two different launch facilities. If you want to know more, visit Zipline’s page and you can get details, including watching the drones in transit.
If you look closely, you’ll see that the gliding drones in this video were built from polystyrene shells. It’s a good choice—light and strong enough to do the job. Only the wings are built from a more rigid plastic. Zipline doesn’t give a price for individual drones, but estimates put them between $1,000 and $3,000 each, depending on how you value the interchangeable components. That’s astoundingly cheap for something that can deliver lifesaving packages precisely where they’re needed at a range up to 240 km.
But wait. When it comes to getting something delivered to the exact spot, we can go cheaper. Much cheaper. Take a look at the Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System (PPDS) from Australian company Sypaq. [video showing cardboard drones]
The Corvo was developed for the Australian military under a contract to develop systems that could bring military or medical supplies to a precise location near the front line. The total cost of that contract was around $11 million. However, the portion of that devoted to the development and manufacturing of this drone was $1 million. The whole program cost a fraction of the cost of a single Kalibr missile. One article refers to them as “pizza box drones,” another as “killer origami.”
This is a purposefully disposable, waxed cardboard and rubber bands drone that can carry supplies, a camera, or a bomb. Sypaq is clearly aware it’s being used to do all three, and they’re sending 100 of them each month to Ukraine as flat-packs that can be assembled in the field.
Was it the Corvo that hit Dzhankoi on Monday night? Unlikely. The specs on the system give it a range of 120 km, either under the control of an operator or going to a precise GPS location. They are also unlikely to carry sufficient payload to match the explosion seen in the video from that first video. It can reportedly carry up to 5 kilograms, but maxing out the load cuts the range in half.
Over the course of the last year in Ukraine, it has become intensely obvious that low-cost drones meant for other purposes can become incredibly potent weapons. You don’t need some jet-powered military drone to take out enemy systems worth millions. You can do it with a consumer drone and a a kid with some experience in FPV racing. You can even do it with cardboard and rubber bands. […]
Over the last week, it’s not just Russian tanks that have been experiencing “rapid unplanned disassembly” at a record pace. Russian artillery has also come under intense directed fire. Over the last week, Russia has been losing about eight artillery systems a day. That’s about four times the daily average over the previous year. A big part of that is coming from systems that were either taken out directly by drones, or by counterbattery fire directed by observation drones.
Drones have been important since the invasion began. That importance is still growing. Every military in the world has to be rethinking how these devices fit into their overall strategy. And every law enforcement agency in the world had better be thinking about where this technology goes next. […]
If you worried the Switchblade drones the U.S. was sending to Ukraine were just gathering dust somewhere, that’s not the case. [video at the link]
Okay, let’s do one more … [video at the link]
A quick run-through of events on the front. Refer to maps from Saturday if you want to see these locations in context.
Kupyansk: What at first appears to be the bad news is that Ukraine has reportedly moved out of the towns north of Kupyansk without a fight, relocating those forces to the west bank of the Oskil River. However, the actual news is that Russian forces in the area, which were never that great to begin with, have reportedly been so depleted by precision artillery strikes that most of the towns that are now theoretically in the area of Russian occupation are actually not occupied. The military doesn’t believe there is currently any risk to Kupyansk or to Ukraine’s control of the highway to the east.
Svatove: Fighting in the area currently appears limited to the back and forth between Novoselivske and neighboring Kuzemivka. Nothing really seems to be changing.
Kreminna: Russia reportedly massed forces just north of Dibrova on Sunday and Monday and achieved a momentary breakthrough. However, that attack has now been reportedly stopped. The whole movement is small enough that it’s hard to detect without taking the map to microscopic levels. Fighting is going on in the forest south of the city again, with Russia apparently sending forces both south from Kreminna and west from Shypylivka. No word on the outcome of these fights. North of the city, there is fighting near Chervonopopivka, so apparently Ukraine is still there even though I gave this area back to Russia on my maps last week. Oops.
Bakhmut: The only real movement appears to be in the area west of Dubovo-Vasylivka. If you look on the Saturday map, there’s a small patch of woods just west of what had been disputed area. Russia now appears to have forces among those trees.
Donetsk: Russia has made small advances north of Avdiivka near Krasnohorivka. However, Kamianka, which had been under Russian control, does not appear to be disputed. (Both of these towns are off the edge of the Saturday map. Sorry about that.)
Velyka: Ukraine reportedly moved south from Vuhledar and actually took control of an area where Russia has been launching all those attacks. Whether it’s the start of a counteroffensive or just a slight shift in positions, I don’t know.
Hulyaipole: I’ve got nothing.
Orikhiv: Ukraine reportedly has run several small units south of the city, where they’ve suffered losses and been repulsed. These appear similar to the small-scale attack toward Polohy last week. What’s going on with these, I can’t say. They look similar to the many “reconnaissance in force” actions undertaken by Russia, but you’d certainly like to think that Ukraine has good enough intelligence to not trade blood for information on Russian positions.
[Tweet, with graph, showing natural gas prices in Europe. “[…] the price is under 40 EUR/MWh […] consumers can benefit”]
[Tweet, with graph, showing “Russian Ural crude oil dow to 48 USD/Barrel. Throw in the discount of up to 35 USD/Barrel for China and India and you can guess the real price.”]
Fox News producer Abby Grossberg has sued the network, alleging gender discrimination and harassment, antisemitism, and retaliation in addition to charges that she was made a scapegoat in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against her employer. The Dominion part is complicated—Grossberg was definitely no innocent when it came to dealing with Donald Trump’s election lies. But her allegations about the gross sexism and misogyny that pervade the company are worth attention on their own, because yikes. This place is a cesspool.
As Grossberg’s lawsuit notes, she’s far from the first to sue Fox News on similar grounds. It offers close to 10 pages of lawsuits, complaints, settlements, and continued promotion of the people implicated in those events. It also offers a series of vivid accounts of what Grossberg says she experienced.
A significant part of Grossberg’s legal complaint is that her advancement was blocked because she is a woman. Her desire to officially get a job that she was already doing—that of executive producer on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo—was explicitly blocked because higher-ups wanted a man in that role. When a listing was posted for that job, “To Ms. Grossberg’s dismay, Fox News executives then began sending prospective candidates, all of whom were male, to Ms. Bartiromo’s personal assistants to vet.”
Throughout this time, Grossberg heard executives disparaging Bartiromo in explicitly gendered terms: She was “crazy,” “menopausal,” “hysterical,” needed to be “controlled,” and was a “crazy bitch.” This is how Fox News treats one of its hosts.
That’s bad enough. But when Grossberg transferred to Tucker Carlson’s show—where she was hired at a salary that senior executive producer Justin Wells admitted was lower than men in comparable roles—things got worse.
On “Ms. Grossberg’s first full day on the TCT team, she was shocked to be greeted by many large and blown-up photographs of Nancy Pelosi in a plunging bathing suit revealing her cleavage.” The next day, in the presence of senior producer Alexander McCaskill, Wells asked her, “Is Maria Bartiromo fucking Kevin McCarthy?” That’s of a piece with an environment in which the male producers on Tucker Carlson’s show regularly referred to women as “[C-word].”
Twice when Tudor Dixon, then the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Michigan, appeared on the show, “crass and sexist discussion in the newsroom ensued regarding whether Ms. Dixon or her opponent, Governor Gretchen Whitmer, was ‘hotter and more fuckable.’” Similarly, a producer at one point said Republican Rep. Kat Cammack was “fat like Kelly Clarkson,” with another male staffer chiming in that “she only became a Congresswoman because she fucked the person who had the job before her.”
This way of talking about women extended to women in the office.
Mr. Wells and Mr. McCaskill often remarked that Lexi Ciccone, a TCT Booker who reported to Ms. Grossberg, should use her sex appeal to the TCT team’s advantage, such as by sleep[ing] with Elon Musk to get [an] interview and that she could be his next wife. Ms. Ciccone herself, likely feeling as if she needed to fit in and add commentary matching her misogynist work environment, would respond that men masturbated to her.
Grossberg and another Jewish staffer were regularly harassed on that basis, with McCaskill putting a Christmas tree near Grossberg’s desk and hanging a sign on it reading “Hannukah Bush.”
In late 2022, booking producer Eldad Yaron “bought a babka (a historically Jewish sweet bread) for the office. When Mr. McCaskill learned that there was babka in the office, he began to loudly and obnoxiously demand that the TCT booking team have ‘the bread made by the Jews.’ Thereafter, anytime Mr. Yaron purchased his lunch from the Jewish bakery known as Breads Bakery, Mr. McCaskill loudly proclaimed to the TCT booking team that Mr. Yaron went to the ‘Jew bakery,’ and that he had gone ‘to see his people.’”
When Grossberg complained about the environment and how she was being treated, she alleges she experienced retaliation. Ultimately, she was put on forced administrative leave and Fox News sued her. She is suing Fox News and a series of its executives over violations of equal pay laws, gender discrimination, religious discrimination, retaliation, failure to accommodate disability, and aiding and abetting unlawful discrimination and retaliation.
Someone wants the Bible removed from libraries in the Davis School District.
On Dec. 11, 2022, a challenge was filed with district officials asking that the Bible be pulled from the shelves of the district’s schools…
Since the passage of Utah’s “sensitive materials” law in 2022, Utah school districts such as Alpine, Granite and Davis have received dozens of other requests for book reviews, some spurred by parents rights organizations such as Utah Parents United and others from concerned individuals.
HB374, sponsored by Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, defines “sensitive material” as instructional materials that are pornographic or indecent, colloquially referred to as the “bright line” rule in state code.
Ivory said the challenge of the Bible is “a backhanded slap to parents that are simply trying to keep a healthy learning environment for all students in the schools. I have every confidence that no school district is going to consider the Bible as violating 76-10-1227,” which addresses descriptions and depictions of illicit sex or sexual immorality…
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is warning that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg arresting former President Trump would “blow up our country.”
Senator Rand Paul tweeted that the New York District Attorney “should be put in jail.”
“They can do what they want,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said of the possible indictment in an interview with former Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle on Monday. “At that point, this is an all-out war.”
A bomb threat was called into a lower Manhattan court on Tuesday just before a judge was set to hear a $250 million lawsuit against Trump. The threat was investigated by police and the courthouse was closed and searched, with authorities finding that the threat was unfounded.
Wonkette: “Fox Producer Sues For Allll The Discrimination”
Would it shock you to learn that Fox News is still a raging dumpster fire of sexism even six years after Roger Ailes found out if he won his bet that there is no hell? Would you faint dead to find out that putting Suzanne Scott in charge of the place and installing a handful of women in the C-suite didn’t change the corporate culture? Would it shake you to your core to discover that the company was still underpaying female employees and subjecting them to routine harassment at work?
[…] a newly filed gender discrimination suit by former Fox producer Abby Grossberg is making Rupert Murdoch’s machine for turning white rage into green money look like a house of horrors. It’s also going to be pretty darn interesting to the lawyers representing Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox.
The New York Times, which was first to break the news of Grossberg’s multiple lawsuits last night, reports that the longtime TV veteran has filed claims in federal court in New York, where she worked, and state court in Delaware, where Fox Corp is registered. We haven’t yet seen the state complaint, but the federal one is brutal.
In it, Grossberg claims she was denied a promotion to executive producer for Maria Bartiromo’s “Sunday Morning Futures” program because the male executives around her believed only a man could manage the host, whom they described as “crazy,” “menopausal,” and often “hysterical.” Grossberg herself depicts Bartiromo as something of a dotty aunt figure, but also claims that her show was systematically starved of resources as compared to programs by her male counterparts. In frustration, Grossberg moved to Tucker Carlson’s show, after which she claims she was replaced at “Sunday Morning Futures” with three staffers.
Why Grossberg thought things would be better working for Tucker freakin’ Carlson is unclear. But she describes walking into the office the first day to find screensavers of Nancy Pelosi in a swimsuit, because hawhaw. The second day, she was summoned by her direct report, who demanded to know “Is Maria Bartiromo fucking Kevin McCarthy?” And things went downhill from there.
Office discussion about women’s bodies was constant. Before hosting a Republican gubernatorial candidate, there was a lively debate in the newsroom about whether she was more sexually desirable than her Democratic rival. One of Grossberg’s male colleagues mocked a Republican congresswoman as being “fat like Kelly Clarkson,” to which another male employee responded that “she only became a congresswoman because she fucked the person who had the job before her.”
Then there’s this bizarre colloquy:
During yet another offensive discussion on or about December 12, 2022, at TCT, Mr. Kass and Mr. Neret declared that women with tattoos, nose piercings, or rainbow-colored hair were “disgusting,” should be shunned, and mused that such personal appearance choices reflected on their “character.” Mr. McCaskill agreed.
Ironically, Mr. McCaskill himself has tattoos, and most tellingly, did not speak degradingly of men with body art. Ms. Grossberg interjected to her male colleagues that they should still respect these women, even if they did not find them attractive. Ms. Grossberg added that she herself had three small tattoos, so she found the comments particularly offensive.
To add insult to injury, Mr. McCaskill invasively asked Ms. Grossberg where her tattoos were, and Mr. Carmichael stated he thought it was illegal for “Jews” to have tattoos.
In fact, Grossberg says that there was rampant inappropriate discussion of Jews, despite the presence of multiple Jews in the office. Here’s a fun little snippet to make an HR official’s head spin:
As the year came to an end, Ms. Grossberg bought each of her team members a gift to thank them for their diligent work. In turn, Mr. Yaron bought a babka (a historically Jewish sweet bread) for the office. When Mr. McCaskill learned that there was babka in the office, he began to loudly and obnoxiously demand that the TCT booking team have “the bread made by the Jews.” Thereafter, anytime Mr. Yaron purchased his lunch from the Jewish bakery known as Breads Bakery, Mr. McCaskill loudly proclaimed to the TCT booking team that Mr. Yaron went to the “Jew bakery,” and that he had gone “to see his people.”
And to top it all off, Grossberg was paid significantly less than her male colleagues for performing the same work.
[…] Grossberg claims that she was directed by Fox’s lawyers to minimize the extent to which Bartiromo’s show was drastically understaffed, taking the blame on herself and deflecting it from male stars and executives.
The day after her deposition, on September 14, 2023, [Grossberg’s supervisor] Mr. McCaskill asked Ms. Grossberg about what she covered in her testimony, and she revealed that Mr. Carlson’s name had come up, but that she protected him. Mr. McCaskill said he was happy with the answers she had given and suggested they order the staff lunch to celebrate her defense of Mr. Carlson’s misogynistic-laden text. Later that day, an email was sent to the whole TCT team in recognition of “Abby Day.”
None of it is good, and Fox tried desperately to keep it from coming out by filing a motion to enjoin her revealing supposedly attorney-client privileged materials about her interactions with its lawyers. That appears to have had zero effect, with Grossberg docketing the 12-count New York claim, encompassing a claim under the federal Equal Pay Act, as well as multiple violations of New York state employment law. She also filed the Delaware case as well as an EEOC claim, and she plans to amend the New York complaint to add Title VII and the ADA counts once the administrative case is resolved.
All of which is bad news for Fox, particularly coming just a month before the Dominion trial. And you can bet your bottom dollar Dominion is going to want to revisit its depositions with Grossberg now that she’s changing her story. [Yep.]
And, yeah, Grossberg participated in some gross, horrible shit. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t abused at work! Two things can be true, and in this case, apparently are.
New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a state judge to force the accounting firm Whitley Penn LLP to produce documents and testimony in her $250 million lawsuit against Donald Trump.
Trump hired the firm after cutting ties with longtime accountant Mazars USA LLP, which disavowed nearly a decade of financial statements for the Trump Organization based on findings from James’s investigation.
James on Monday filed a letter in New York State Supreme Court requesting an order enforcing subpoenas she sent to Texas-based Whitley Penn last month. The subpoenas seek documents and communications related to the suit as well as the deposition of a Whitley Penn partner who was “involved in transactions and occurrences relevant to this litigation.” …
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #411…
Hmmmm…. Did Trump cut off ties with Mazars…or did Mazars cut ties with Trump?
Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has given an order to rename a river that runs through the historically indigenous Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the largest oil-and-gas producer in the country.
According to the local media, the river formerly called Shaitanka is being renamed after it drew the attention of Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. The patriarch reportedly didn’t like the fact that the Orthodox Church of Transfiguration stood over a river whose name smacked of Satan. The river is to be renamed Preobrazhenka, after the local church itself.
The river’s “Satanic” name was itself a colonial response to the local indigenous religion. Shaitanka’s traditional indigenous name used to be Lunhaut-Yuhan, which means “divine waters.” Russian Orthodox Christians who came to the region in the course of imperial expansion renamed the river in accordance with their views of indigenous beliefs.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Turkey had already threatened to derail Sweden’s NATO aspirations when a far-right extremist set fire to a Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. On Friday, Ankara issued its verdict on Sweden and Finland’s joint NATO bid: For now, Turkey would only start ratifying Finland’s application. Several reports have since emerged, meanwhile, pointing to suspected Russia ties among the organisers of the damaging Koran-burning protest….
It’s entirely possible that Dima Nova, the pop star whose song “Aqua Disco” about Vladimir Putin’s palace became an anthem of Russian anti-war protests, died in a tragic accident.
Dmitry Svirgunov, known as Dima Nova, is reported to have fallen through the ice on the Volga River along with friends.
Could have been an accident. It’s possible all those people really did fall out of windows. Then again, there aren’t many coincidences in Russia, especially for critics of Putin.
During a night walk over the springtime ice on the Volga River, music producer Dmitry Svirgunov (best known as Dima Nova, one of the artists behind the popular synth-pop group Cream Soda) fell through the ice crust, together with four friends.
The tragic incident occurred in the village of Dievo-Gorodishche, in Russia’s Yaroslavl region.
The 35-year old musician, his 25-year-old brother Roman Svirgunov, and their 28-year-old friend Georgy Kiselev were all drawn under the ice by the powerful current, and were considered missing. Although two other people had been rescued, one of them died later, in the ambulance.
MPs in Uganda have passed a controversial anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which would make homosexual acts punishable by death, attracting strong condemnation from rights campaigners.
All but two of the 389 legislators voted late on Tuesday for the hardline anti-homosexuality bill, which introduces capital and life imprisonment sentences for gay sex and “recruitment, promotion and funding” of same-sex “activities”.
“A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality and is liable, on conviction to suffer death,” reads the bill presented by Robina Rwakoojo, the chairperson for legal and parliamentary affairs.
Just two MPs from the ruling party, Fox Odoi-Oywelowo and Paul Kwizera Bucyana, opposed the new legislation.
“The bill is ill-conceived, it contains provisions that are unconstitutional, reverses the gains registered in the fight against gender-based violence and criminalises individuals instead of conduct that contravenes all known legal norms,” said Odoi-Oywelowo.
“The bill doesn’t introduce any value addition to the statute book and available legislative framework,” he said.
An earlier version of the bill prompted widespread international criticism and was later nullified by Uganda’s constitutional court on procedural grounds. The bill will now go to President Yoweri Museveni, who can veto or sign it into law. In a recent speech he appeared to express support for the bill.
One MP in the chamber, John Musila, wore a gown reading: “Say No To Homosexual, Lesbianism, Gay.”
The bill marks the latest in a string of setbacks for LGBTQ+rights in Africa, where homosexuality is illegal in most countries. In Uganda, a largely conservative Christian country, homosexual sex was already punishable by life imprisonment.
Human rights campaigners have condemned the new move to enact the harsh law, describing it as “hate legislation”.
“Today marks a tragic day in Uganda’s history. @Parliament_Ug has passed legislation that promotes hatred and seeks to strip LGBTIQ individuals of their fundamental rights!” tweeted Sarah Kasande, a Kampala-based lawyer and human rights activist.
“The provisions of the anti-homosexuality bill are barbaric [FFS], discriminatory and unconstitutional,” she said.
She added: “To the LGBTIQ community, I know this is a difficult day, but please don’t lose hope. The battle is not over; this repugnant bill will ultimately be struck down.”
Gay activist Eric Ndawula tweeted: “Today’s events in parliament are not just immoral, but a complete assault on humanity. It’s frightening that our MPs’ judgment is clouded by hate & homophobia. Who benefits from this draconian law?”
More than 110 LGBTQ+ people in Uganda reported incidents including arrests, sexual violence, evictions and public undressing to advocacy group Sexual Minorities Uganda (Smug) in February alone. Transgender people were disproportionately affected, said the group.
Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, a lesbian activist in Kampala, said efforts to overturn the legislation would continue.
“We shall continue to fight this injustice. This lesbian woman is Ugandan even this piece of paper will [not] stop me from enjoying my country. Struggle just begun,” said Nabagesera in a tweet.
Kasande said: “We will fight until all individuals in Uganda can enjoy the rights guaranteed to them by the constitution.”
President Museveni last month said Uganda will not embrace homosexuality, claiming that the west was seeking to compel other countries to “normalise” what he called “deviations”.
“The western countries should stop wasting the time of humanity by trying to impose their practices on other people,” said Museveni in a televised address to parliament on 16 March.
“Homosexuals are deviations from the normal. Why? Is it by nature or by nurture? We need to answer those questions. We need a medical opinion on that,” he said….
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
The RIA news agency reports on its Telegram news channel:
Several radio stations have been hacked in Crimea, reports of a possible evacuation from the peninsula are false, authorities say.
Three people were killed and another seven wounded in overnight Russian drone strikes on the Kyiv region, Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday morning….
Four people are now reported to have been killed.
Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, has tweeted that Zaporizhzhia is under attack.
[He tweeted: “Russians are barraging Zaporizhzhia.
Residential buildings and Khortytsia island are under enemy fire.”]
Khortytsia island is the largest island on the Dnieper River, and it lies within the boundaries of the city of Zaporizhzhia, through which the Dnieper River flows.
Zaporizhzhia is one of the partially occupied regions of Ukraine which the Russian Federation claimed to have annexed last year.
British military intelligence said on Wednesday there is a possibility that the Russian assault on the town of Bakhmut is losing the limited momentum it had obtained.
This could be happening because “some Russian MoD units have been reallocated to other sectors”, the Ministry of Defence tweeted in a regular bulletin. Ukrainian forces on Tuesday had repelled Russian attempts to advance into the centre of the small eastern city of Bakhmut.
The Commons privileges committee has now published a bundle of evidence that Boris Johnson and the MPs questioning him may refer to during today’s session. It runs to 110 pages [link at the link].
In a statement the committee says:
The documents comprise the evidence and materials that will be referred to in the course of oral questioning by MPs. Much of the material has already been previously published, including in the committee’s fourth report.
All evidence has already been shared with the witness two weeks ago, in unredacted form. The documents published this morning are materials that the committee and Mr Johnson have selected, that will be referred to in the course of the oral evidence session later today. The committee is now publishing these materials for the benefit of those following the oral evidence session so that they’re able to follow proceedings accordingly.
Johnson urges Sunak to revive confrontational approach to EU as he confirms he will vote against protocol deal
We knew that Boris Johnson would not be voting for Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal. He said so in a speech earlier this month. But to vote against, as he has said he will do today, makes his rebellion much more serious.
What is even more provocative is the reason he has given for voting against. In a statement given overnight to Daily Telegraph, he said:
The proposed arrangements would mean either that Northern Ireland remained captured by the EU legal order – and was increasingly divergent from the rest of the UK – or they would mean that the whole of the UK was unable properly to diverge and take advantage of Brexit.
That is not acceptable. I will be voting against the proposed arrangements today. Instead, the best course of action is to proceed with the Northern Ireland protocol bill, and make sure that we take back control.
The Northern Ireland protocol bill is the legislation that would allow the UK government to ignore parts of the protocol unilaterally. Many lawyers argued that it was illegal under international law, because it would involve the UK breaking a treaty it has signed.
Johnson introduced the bill when he was prime minister, and he has argued that the threat of British unilateral action made the EU more inclined to negotiate. Sunak has now abandoned the bill.
But proposing bringing it back, Johnson is not just arguing for tweaks to the deal that has been negotiated. He is in effect saying that it should be ripped up, and that Britain should revive the threat to just ignore the treaty with the EU that it agreed in 2019 (when he himself was PM).
This goes much further than what most other Tory or DUP critics of the deal have said, and, if it were ever implemented, would ignite diplomatic war with Brussels.
The bundle of evidence published by the privileges committee this morning is full of interesting material. Here is a passage showing an exchange between Jack Doyle, the director of communications at the time, and an official when they were discussing how to respond to the first media inquiry, from Pippa Crerar (then at the Mirror, now the Guardian’s political editor) about Partygate.
“I don’t know what we say about the flat,” Doyle said….
Johnson ignored advice from senior official not to tell MPs all Covid guidance was followed, evidence shows
In his evidence yesterday Boris Johnson revealed that his principal private secretary, advised him to take out a reference to all the Covid guidance being followed in No 10 from a script he was going to use at PMQs on 8 December 2021….
Turning back to the Northern Ireland protocol deal vote for a moment, Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister, has said that Boris Johnson risks being remembered as a “pound shop Nigel Farage” for his stance on the Windsor framework.
Baker said that reviving the Northern Ireland protocol bill, Johnson’s declared alternative to Rishi Sunak’s deal…, would “wreck our relations with the European Union and damage our standing internationally”….
According to Tom Larkin at Sky, who is keeping a tally, at least 10 Tories will vote against the government today….
…The French president is facing his biggest ever domestic political crisis, less than a year after his re-election to a second term. A protest movement and on-off strikes against his unpopular pensions changes – at one point getting 1.28 million people out to protest in the street have persisted for two months but, last week, unable to garner enough support in parliament, the government used controversial executive powers to push the reforms through. On Monday, the government survived a no-confidence vote, but only by nine votes – sparking more demonstrators to take to the streets amid hundreds of arrests and clashes with police.
Some fear a new round of protests could echo the gilets-jaunes anti-government movement of four years ago [seems more like the 2016 Nuit debout movement]. It is uncertain what Macron will propose to calm the storm on the streets. He will appear in a TV interview on Wednesday, but Elysée insiders have already ruled out a cabinet reshuffle or a referendum. Nor will Macron dissolve parliament and call a snap general election: Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, currently the biggest single opposition party, could stand to benefit the most.
Meanwhile, Macron will press on, including by this weekend welcoming the UK’s King Charles for his first state visit and a banquet at the Palace of Versailles while protesters condemn him as haughty and monarchical. [OMG]
“Anger is growing,” said Akli, 48, an Ivry council worker on the refuse barricades. “This has gone far beyond pensions, it is about our political system. The president has executive powers that need to be rethought. It’s about protecting France’s whole postwar system of social protection. It’s about hanging on to our welfare state, as Macron tries to unpick it – from housing benefits to the unemployment system. French people are well informed and politicised, they won’t let this pass.”
Outside the refuse centre, Ariane, a law student had arrived from the Paris university’s Tolbiac campus, which had been blockaded and barricaded before being evacuated by police. A member of an anti-capitalist revolutionary group, she was handing out flags to other students. “At the student meeting to vote on the university barricade, so many young people were talking about their experiences of police violence,” she said. “Young people are angry, more are joining in since the pension changes were pushed through. The government is afraid of a new youth movement taking part.”
…
Outside the Duperré art school in Paris, students piled up a barricade of bins. Signs said raising the pension age to 64 would be met with a new May 1968, a reference to France’s famous students and workers’ strikes.
“Don’t underestimate people’s power to mobilise,” said Amina, 19, a textiles student from the Paris banlieue. “I’m afraid of police violence and terrified to demonstrate at night, but I’ll join in during the day.”
She was on the left, but had voted in for Macron in the final round of last spring’s presidential election in order to keep out Le Pen. “That doesn’t mean I agree with Macron’s ideas,” she said. “The working-class will bear the brunt of these pension changes, we see that in our families – there’s inequality and it’s unfair.” She lived with her single mother who was a maintenance worker at a hospital.
Another 19-year-old student, Bahia, who came from the countryside outside Lyon, had seen her mother suffer unemployment and burn-out. “This is about the whole democratic system – how many more laws could be passed using executive powers and without a parliament vote? It feels to us like the system is broken.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has posted a video clip which he said shows a Russian missile hitting an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine.
Residential areas “where ordinary people and children live are being fired at”, Zelenskiy writes, adding that this situation cannot become “just another day” in Ukraine or anywhere in the world.
Zelenskiy adds:
The world needs greater unity and determination to defeat Russian terror faster and protect lives.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zekenskiy, has visited frontline military position near the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut, according to a statement by his office.
During his visit, Zelenskiy “heard “reports on the operational situation and the course of hostilities on the frontline”, the statement said.
He also met with Ukrainian servicemen and held a moment of silence in memory of those who had fallen in the war. Zelenskiy was quoted as saying:
I am honoured to be here today, in the east of our country, in Donbas, and to award our heroes, to thank you, to shake hands. Thank you for protecting the state, sovereignty, the east of Ukraine.
Iuliia Mendel, a former spokesperson for Zelenskiy, shared a video which she said showed the president near Bahkmut:
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, has written to all MPs telling them not to say anything that could be seen as interference with the work of the privileges committee, Dan Bloom from Politico reports. This follows attacks on the committee from some of Boris Johnson’s supporters. Hoyle says interference in this manner could be seen as a contempt of parliament.
Former President Donald Trump is fighting a federal judge’s determination that his communications with attorney Evan Corcoran — amid a grand jury probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents — likely contain evidence of a crime.
Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign issued a statement Tuesday attacking special counsel Jack Smith and the judge who issued the sealed ruling, Beryl Howell. The statement followed increasingly detailed news reports about Howell’s determination that Corcoran could be forced to testify and turn over related documents because prosecutors had shown sufficient evidence of an alleged effort to mislead investigators.
…
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Howell’s order temporarily on Tuesday night, ordering an extraordinarily rapid series of filings in a matter of hours — including one from Trump’s team by midnight Tuesday.
The appeals court’s order — from Judges Cornelia Pillard, J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, all Democratic appointees — doesn’t identify Corcoran or the case at issue but makes clear that the government was on the winning side of the case in Howell’s court.
The three-judge panel is asking Trump’s attorneys to specify the precise set of documents at issue by midnight and for Smith’s team to respond by 6 a.m. Wednesday to the Trump team’s demand for a longer stay of Howell’s ruling.
…
The appeals court order followed the filing by Trump-linked attorneys of a pair of appeals and stay requests tied to Howell’s decision, which came on the final day of her seven-year tenure as chief judge of the federal District Court in Washington.
…
Howell’s secret order on Friday required Corcoran to testify about matters he and Trump had claimed were subject to attorney-client privilege. Her order relied on the “crime-fraud exception,” which permits investigators to pursue evidence that would ordinarily be privileged but contains evidence of likely criminal conduct.
As chief judge, Howell supervised all disputes arising from grand jury proceedings happening in Washington. That responsibility passed Friday to U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who succeeded Howell as chief, but only after Howell issued the potentially momentous privilege ruling in the Trump-related legal fight.
…
Even after handing off the chief’s position, however, Howell continues to hold significant sway over matters connected to Trump’s inner circle. On Tuesday, she held a hearing in a lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers against Rudy Giuliani, chiding the longtime Trump ally and his lawyer for what she described as an inadequate approach to required exchanges of evidence in the matter.
…
The grand jury probe of Trump, helmed by Smith, is an outgrowth of a monthslong battle between the National Archives and Trump to obtain hundreds of government records stashed at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office….
…
Corcoran, who was Trump’s primary point of contact with the Archives and the Justice Department, has faced scrutiny for his involvement in efforts to certify that Trump had returned all potentially classified materials [when he had in fact…not]….
Kyle Cheney reported on Twitter that both deadlines were met and that the appeals court could rule as early as 9 AM or noon ET and Corcoran potentially testify today.
The European Research Group, the caucus which represents hardline Tory Brexiters, has said it is advising its members to vote against Rishi Sunak’s Northern Ireland protocol deal today, Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt reports.
The ERG does not publish a list of its members, and does not say how many there are, but several dozen Tories are closely associated with it.
Andriy Yermak, head of the office of the Ukrainian presidency, has tweeted that he also visited frontline positions in Bakhmut along with President Zelenskiy.
Yermak writes that it was a “great honour” for him to be there “next to our heroic warriors”. He added:
Bakhmut is standing. Defence forces hold the city.
Important & revealing. The committee is not an independent political entity. It was asked to investigate by the Commons. Its rules are laid down by the Commons, in resolution and precedent. When Johnson challenges its legitimacy, he is challenging the legitimacy of parliament.
Johnson’s attack on the investigation into him is therefore identical in spirit to the behaviour he is being investigated for.
…Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, is opening the debate on the Windsor framework, the deal to revise the Northern Ireland framework. The vote should come at 2.21pm.
Technically MPs will just be voting on one aspect of the deal, a statutory instrument relating to the Stormont brake, but the result will widely be interpreted as a verdict on the deal as a whole.
The Commons privileges committee will be taking evidence from Boris Johnson when the division takes place. When a select committee hearing gets interrupted by a vote, the normal procedure is for the chair to call a 15-minute adjournment to allow MPs to vote.
Right, with all the enthusiasm of a man being dragged to the gallows, I’m going to live tweet the shenanigans this afternoon. Please mute this thread now if it’s not your thing.
The 90 minute debate on the Northern Ireland Protocol solution has just kicked off. I’ll cover it until Boris Johnson faces the privileges committee at 2pm, then switch to that, then switch back to the vote at around 2:30pm, and then back to Johnson fuck my life….
Rishi Sunak will publish his tax return later today, ITV’s Robert Peston reports.
Sunak has been promising to publish this ever since he became PM. If he has to choose a day like today to publish it (“burying bad news”, in spin terminology), presumably there is something in it he will find embarrassing.
The spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians said on Wednesday that Russia’s powerful Orthodox Church shared responsibility for the conflict in Ukraine but that he stood ready to help in Russia’s postwar “spiritual regeneration”.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s comments are a rebuke for Russian Patriarch Kirill, whose vocal support for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has splintered the worldwide Orthodox Church.
Bartholomew, who in 2019 infuriated Moscow by recognising the newly established Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said Russian authorities were using the Church as an “instrument for their strategic objectives”.
“The church and the state leadership in Russia cooperated in the crime of aggression and shared the responsibility for the resulting crimes, like the shocking abduction of the Ukrainian children,” Reuters report he told a conference held in Lithuania’s parliament.
After the 65 Ukrainian men and women arrived at an Oklahoma Army base for Patriot training, they made a special request: to add more soup options to the menu.
“They like soup. They’re very, you know, soup-centric. So we added some soup.”
Elise Stefanik seems like one of those high-energy climbers who works relentlessly to achieve whatever goal she chooses. She could have become a lawyer or a teacher or a master chef. Instead she chose to become a fascist.
Sunak wins vote on Northern Ireland protocol deal, with only 29 MPs voting against
Back in the Commons, the result of the Northern Ireland protocol vote has been announced. The government won by 515 votes to 29 – a majority of 486.
Assuming all or most of the eight DUP MPs voted against the government, as they said they would, that implies that just over 20 Tories voted against the government. That amounts to a moderate-sized rebellion, but not one that would wipe out the government’s majority.
Bali’s typical soundtrack of construction sites and car horns has been replaced for 24 hours with birdsong and the lapping of waves as the island celebrates its annual day of silence.
To celebrate the Balinese New Year, known as Nyepi, the island’s usually busy streets have fallen quiet with residents and tourists expected to remain indoors for a day of quiet self-reflection.
Reminiscent of recent lockdowns around the globe, and unlike any other New Year celebrations, the traditional start of the Balinese Saka calendar is welcomed with several days of island-wide rituals which centre around a day of silence.
To mark Nyepi, everything from the Ngurah Rai International Airport to local supermarkets and ATMs are closed. Lasting 24 hours from 6am on 22 March, island residents and visitors are expected to shun entertainment, work, travel and even artificial light. The pecalang, a type of traditional Balinese security, patrol the streets to ensure that everyone – including tourists – complies. [That part sounds pretty menacing.]
Balinese see Nyepi as a way to deter any returning evil spirits. To avoid attracting negative energy and embrace a purified start to the year, stay-at-home orders are put in place.
Tourists and digital nomads that rely on good wifi tend to leave for Bali’s neighbouring islands during this time. However, many among those that remain embrace the festival.
“I feel really lucky that I get to experience this because it’s a really beautiful day,” said Lotus Vrijma, 29, a Dutch traveller in Ubud. “It’s special to know that you’re doing it with so many other people on this island.”…
The article features a photo of a beautiful beach, captioned “A Balinese man takes part in the Melasti ritual prior to Nyepi.”
Young Wayan Badra, the thirteen-year-old son of the Hindu priest in the Seminyak neighborhood,…heard what was happening on the beaches. They were bringing people from the city to the east to kill them on the sand. It was public property there, and empty at night. The bodies were abandoned there….
…
In total, at least 5 percent of the population of Bali was killed – that is, eighty thousand people, probably the highest proportion in the country.
The Balinese had been especially strong supporters of Sukarno’s multifaith political project, because it gave Hindus more freedom in a Muslim-majority country. A severe economic crisis in the early 1960s made the communists’ promises of redistribution more attractive to some – and more threatening to others…. They were executed, murdered one by one, over just a few months, for affiliation with an unarmed political party that had been entirely legal and mainstream just weeks earlier.
A little bit later, the first tourist hotel went up on the very beach, Seminyak, that had been used as a killing field….
Today,
Seminyak has become one of the more expensive places to stay on the island, where the tourism usually revolves around wellness, and spa treatment, or “mindfulness,” and meditation and massages, or, of course, sun and surfing.
…
…Compared to the rest of Indonesia, Bali has done OK for itself economically as a result of the tourism,…
…In contrast to Cambodia, where Western backpackers faithfully (or morbidly) visit the Killing Fields Museum outside Phnom Pen, few people who come to Bali are aware that a huge part of the local population was slaughtered right underneath their beach chairs.
…
The government has buried that history deep, even deeper than it was buried on the island of Java. The tourism boom, which started in the late 1960s, required that. “They needed to kill the communists so that foreign investors could bring their capital here,” said Ngurah Termana.
“Now, all visitors here see is our famous smile,” he continued. “They have no idea the darkness and fire that lurks underneath.”
The luxury beach club a few steps away from Wayan Badra’s home has a name that is almost comically on the nose. It’s called Ku De Ta, Bahasa Indonesia for “coup d’état.” I asked the staff there if they knew why that might be ironic. They did not.
Over the years, Wayan Badra and his neighbors have found bones and skulls in the sand around Ku De Ta. As the elder priest for this village, he takes it upon himself to give the bodies a proper Hindu funeral….
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
Grand jury that could indict Trump will not meet today
The Manhattan grand jury considering whether to indict Donald Trump for allegedly facilitating a hush money payment ahead of the 2016 election has been told not to meet today, according to media reports.
Insider and the New York Times cited two unnamed sources saying today’s meeting has been called off. The grand jurors are debating whether to recommend charges for the former president over his payment to adult film actor and director Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Trump.
Insider reports that it appears unlikely the grand jury will meet at all this week, potentially delaying the indictment till next week. It was unclear why today’s meeting had been called off.
KGsays
Bartholomew, who in 2019 infuriated Moscow by recognising the newly established Orthodox Church of Ukraine, said Russian authorities were using the Church as an “instrument for their strategic objectives”. – SC@430, quoting the Guardian
[…] relevant to the Dominion case is Grossberg’s allegation that Fox News lawyers “coerced, intimidated, and misinformed” her as they prepared her to testify in the defamation suit.
“Ms. Grossberg left the deposition preparation sessions without knowing that by giving such false/misleading and evasive answers like the ones Fox’s legal team reacted to positively to during the prep sessions, she not only opened herself up to civil and criminal liability for perjury, but was subtly shifting all responsibility for the alleged defamation against Dominion onto her shoulders, and by implication, those of her trusted female colleague, Ms. Bartiromo, rather than the mostly male higher ups at Fox News who endorsed the repeated coverage of the lies against the Dominion,” the lawsuit filed in New York said. […]
Meanwhile, Macron will press on, including by this weekend welcoming the UK’s King Charles for his first state visit and a banquet at the Palace of Versailles while protesters condemn him as haughty and monarchical. – SC@420, quoting the Guardian
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin emerged from two days of talks on Tuesday with warm words of friendship between China and Russia and joint criticism of the West but no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough over Ukraine.
Washington Post:
Is Russia now a client state of China, a reporter asked National Security Council spokesman John Kirby at the daily White House briefing. ‘They certainly are the junior partner,’ Kirby replied, a line sure to echo inside the Kremlin and at Chinese Communist Party headquarters.
China has been supplying Russia with drones.
New York Times:
China has shipped more than $12 million in drones to Russia since it invaded Ukraine, in an indication of quiet collaboration between the two.
[…] While drone sales have slowed, American policies put in place after Russia’s invasion have failed to stanch exports of the unmanned aerial vehicles that work as eyes in the sky for frontline fighters. In the year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has sold more than $12 million in drones and drone parts to the country, according to official Russian customs data from a third-party data provider.
It is hard to determine whether the Chinese drones contain American technologies that would violate the U.S. rules or whether they are legal. The shipments, a mix of products from DJI, the world’s best-known drone maker, and an array of smaller companies, often came through small-time middlemen and exporters.
[…]
The result is a steady supply of new drones to Russia that make their way to the front lines of its war with Ukraine. On the battlefield, the hovering quadcopters often last only a few flights before they are blown out of the skies.
[…] DJI’s industry’s products made up nearly half of the Chinese drone shipments to Russia, according to the customs data.
[…] In total, nearly 70 Chinese exporters sold 26 distinct brands of Chinese drones to Russia since the invasion. The second-largest brand sold was Autel, a Chinese drone maker with subsidiaries in the United States, Germany and Italy; exporters sold nearly $2 million of its drones, with the latest batch shipping in February. On its website, the company advertises sales to U.S. police forces.
[…] Some experts note that the flow of Chinese drones should be considered in the same way as more deadly weapons. Even the meager $12 million in shipments “will move the needle for what is happening on the front line,” said Cole Rosentreter, chief executive of the Canadian drone maker Pegasus, who has advised Ukrainians on the use of drones during the war.
“We’ve returned to warfare at industrial scale; both sides are treating drones the same as artillery shells now, because whoever has the logistical base to outproduce the other has a clear advantage on the battlefield,” he added.
[…] “What we’ve seen from the Chinese is high-level statements about wanting an end to the war, but behind the scenes they’ve used the opportunity to take over trade channels that once went through Europe and the United States,” said James Hodson, a member of the Yermak-McFaul International Expert Group on Russian Sanctions and chief executive of the A.I. for Good Foundation.
Often, he said, the goal of sanctions is not to wipe out shipments, but to cut off “90 percent of the blood flow.”
“It’s going to be very difficult to completely amputate the flow. But it is worrying that in some instances, it’s like nothing is being blocked,” he said.
A drug-resistant and potentially deadly fungus has been spreading rapidly through U.S. health care facilities, a new government study finds. The fungus, a type of yeast called Candida auris, or C. auris, can cause severe illness in people with weakened immune systems.
[…] The CDC’s new warning, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, comes as the Mississippi Department of Health is fighting a growing outbreak of the fungus. Since November, at least 12 people have been infected with C. auris with four “potentially associated deaths,” the state’s epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers, said in an email.
There has been ongoing transmission at two long-term care facilities, although cases have been identified at several other facilities in the state.
“Unfortunately, multi-drug resistant organisms such as C. auris have become more prevalent among our highest risk individuals, such as residents in long-term care facilities,” Byers said.
The fungus can be found on the skin and throughout the body, according to the CDC. It’s not a threat to healthy people, but about one-third of people who become sick with C. auris die.
In the CDC report, researchers analyzed state and local health department data on people sickened by the fungus from 2016 through Dec. 31, 2021, as well as those who were “colonized,” meaning they were not ill but were carrying it on their bodies with the potential of transmitting it to others who might be more vulnerable to it.
The number of infections increased by 59%, to 756, from 2019 to 2020 and then by an additional 95%, to 1,471, in 2021. […]
The main problem is preventing the fungus from spreading to patients in hospital intensive care units, Javaid said. Unfortunately C. auris can colonize not only people who come in contact with the fungus, but also patient rooms.
“By its nature it has an extreme ability to survive on surfaces,” he said. “It can colonize walls, cables, bedding, chairs. We clean everything with bleach and UV light.”
As someone with permanent tinnitus following a year working as a blaster in the mines, I sure hope those guys on the howitzer above have better hearing protection than sticking their fingers in their ears. I can’t imagine how loud that must be. [Photo at the link]
[…] In Russia, a train loaded with more than a dozen tanks appears to be rolling toward Ukraine. That’s certainly not unusual. Since the start of the invasion, Oryx has documented 1871 Russian tanks destroyed or captured by Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian general staff sets the total number of Russian tanks lost at 3,557. Depending on which number you take, that’s a required input of five to nine tanks a day, just to keep even. Spoiler: Russia is not keeping even.
But it’s not just the number of Russian tanks in Ukraine declining. At the outset of the fight, most tanks sent into Ukraine were variants of the T-72. However, out of the 1,871 documented losses, an astonishing 1,025 were T-72s of one sort or another. If the Ukrainian military numbers are correct, Russia has likely lost right at 2,000 T-72 tanks in Ukraine.
The second largest group of tanks lost by Russia are somewhat more modern T-80s. Right now, documented losses of this tank stand at 448. That’s 850 when adjusted for the difference between documented losses and Ukraine’s projection of Russian losses.
Now Russia is trying to fill the gap—with T-54 tanks that started rolling off the lines in 1946. […]
Russia, or more accurately, the Soviet Union, certainly built a good number of tanks: more than 5,000 for the T-80, roughly 25,000 when it comes to all the different forms of T-72. However, many of these tanks were exported and are in service elsewhere. At the outset of the war, it was estimated that Russia had around 2,000 “active” T-72 tanks and about 450 active T-80 tanks.
Yesterday, the Ukrainian army (UA) reported the destruction of 36 armored vehicles, including six tanks. Over the last week, that number has topped 370 vehicles and 40 tanks. Those are, amazingly enough, pretty average numbers for a week in Ukraine. […]
Russia has almost certainly lost more than the documented losses at Oryx. Those numbers, which are only hardware identified from images clearly enough that they can’t be confused with any previously reported loss, are a bare minimum. Real values are likely between the Oryx number and the UA numbers.
But wherever you draw the line, the best estimate at this point is that Russia has lost more T-72 and T-80 tanks than it had active, anywhere in its military, at the start of the war. The tanks of these designs that are now rolling around Ukraine are the scraps of that original stock supplemented by others pulled from the pile of reserve tanks.
Russia was thought to have something like 10,000 reserve tanks between the T-72 and T-80 models, but many, if not most, of these have proven to have been poorly stored, inadequately maintained, and subject to decades of being picked apart by corrupt soldiers and officers out to net a quick buck by selling off everything from ammo to engines. Reports from inside Russia suggest that getting these tanks back together from the various bits found rusting in fields and moldering in warehouses is resulting in a trickle of about a dozen tanks a month—far less than what Russia needs to fill the thinning ranks. So where does it turn?
From the outset of the invasion, there have been a few other tanks involved. Russia has brought in various versions of the newer T-90 tank, but it has lost at least 57—probably something more like 100—and it never had many of these tanks to begin with. Russia has also threatened to bring in the T-14 Armata, its newest tank design, but no more than a few dozen prototypes of this tank exist, all of which are said to have issues. None of them has yet appeared in Ukraine. [Image of one captured T-90 tank now in service in the Ukrainian Army.]
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the T-90 models that have been destroyed in Ukraine are that at least 6 were of the T-90S design. This is an export build. Russia is dipping into tanks that it already sold to some other country to find a few more modern tanks to send to Ukraine—that’s not a great signal that they’re doing great when it comes to hardware.
Everything seems to indicate that Russia has likely exhausted its supply of T-90s. The T-80s that it’s able to add to the fray are those that are being slowly refitted from its mistreated reserves. The same applies to the thin stream of T-72s still coming in. There are no actual T-14s to bring.
Russia can’t go newer. So it has to go older.
There have been T-64 tanks, first rolled out in 1963, involved in the invasion from the outset. Most of these were tanks that Russia had gifted to the DPR and LPR militias. The first dead T-64 turned up just two weeks into the war. At this point, 53 of these old tanks have been destroyed.
Then last June, Ukrainian forces knocked off a T-62 tank—first produced in 1961—in Zaporizhzhia oblast. [video at the link]
Since that day, 73 more T-62 tanks, at various levels of modernization, have been destroyed. At the beginning of March, another trainload of these old tanks was spotted being rolled into Ukraine. Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin took time away from complaining about other things to complain about being sent T-62s to replace the T-72s and T-80s his mercenaries had turned to scrap around Bakhmut.
But wait. It gets better. Or worse, if you’re supporting Russia. Because the train that everyone seems to be watching this morning is this one. [tweet and image at the link, showing that Russia is moving its T-54/55 tanks to the front line.]
[…] See that little gap between the first drive wheel and the rest? That’s the mark of a T-54/T-55 tank, first produced in 1946. Just how surprising is it to see these tanks preparing to roll into conflict? About this surprising. [tweet from Oryx: "Fuck."]
Honestly, these aren’t the first of these old tanks to appear in this conflict. That’s because Slovenia sent Ukraine 28 heavily upgraded M-55S tanks last fall that started life as Soviet T-55s. At the time, tankies thought this was hilarious. The M-55S wasn’t “a real tank” and was seen as proof NATO was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Since December, when these tanks were reportedly in service on the front lines, Ukraine has actually lost none of these tanks, which is pretty remarkable. Either Ukraine is being very careful with this kit, or the upgrades to the M-55S (which include a new gun, new armor, new turret, new electronics, new scope, etc.) are making this a more potent weapon than was expected.
Maybe the Russian tanks have been similarly upgraded. Let’s take a peek. [Tweet and images at the link]
Errr … no. These are old tanks, in old configurations, with old guns, old armor, old turrets, and presumably old equipment. Hey Prigozhin, you didn’t like those T-62s? Fine, have a few of these.
There are also some very significant logistical differences between this tank and even a T-64. If the guns have not been upgraded, that means this is a 100mm rifled barrel rather than the 125mm smoothbore on the T-64 and newer. Naturally the engine, as well as every other component, is considerably different. So prepare to get another lesson in Russian logistics.
Also, this is the first tank Russia has fielded which does not have an autoloader. Rather than a three-person crew, it requires a four-person crew with one person acting as the loader. Manual loading is commonplace on Western tanks, but just how much experience does Russia have with loaded tanks manually? Is there anyone in their military today who knows how to handle this task?
Fun side notes: To make room for extra shells, the T-54 stores them in “wet tanks” inside the fuel tank. And to make room for extra fuel, some T-54s have fuel tanks right behind the front armor—armor that can absolutely be obliterated by just about any modern shell. Also, the floor of the tank is just 20mm thick so … welcome to the wonderful world of mines. [Holy fuck … disasters just waiting to happen … expect explosions]
Maybe Russia will keep the T-54s well back from the front and use them to fill some other role. On the other hand, maybe they’ll put them at the head of the next charge on Vuhledar. After all, why not? [video of Ukrainian defenders in Bakhmut]
[…]
The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a federal court ruling upholding the right for a minor to go to court to get permission to undergo an abortion, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penning a solo dissent in the case.
The ruling from the court on Monday vacated a lower court ruling that a state court clerk could be sued for telling a pregnant teenager that the court must notify her parents of her attempt to get a court order to allow her to obtain an abortion without the consent of her parents.
[…] The case stems from a lawsuit in Missouri that court clerk Michelle Chapman violated a 17-year-old pregnant teenager’s rights. A minor is required under state law in Missouri to obtain parental permission to receive an abortion, but it also allows a minor to seek a court order bypassing that requirement. When the teenager went to the courthouse in 2018 to secure such a bypass, Chapman said she would have to let the teenager’s parents know about the hearing.
The teenager eventually went to Illinois and received such a judicial bypass and obtained an abortion. Two federal courts rejected Chapman’s claim that she was immune from the lawsuit.
But the Supreme Court on Monday rejected the lower court ruling that Chapman was not immune from the suit, sending it back to an appeals court to dismiss the lawsuit as moot, accepting the clerk’s argument that the mootness was due to the Supreme Court decision striking down Roe v. Wade.
But Jackson argued in her brief dissent that the case became moot because Chapman and the teenager agreed to have the original case in a district court in Missouri dismissed, arguing that meant it was not unfair for Chapman to lose her right to appeal. […]
[…] The Republican-controlled Legislature now wants to restrict the use of peoples’ personal pronouns to those aligned with the sex assigned on their birth certificate, and they’re starting with public schools. No, it doesn’t matter if parents have approved their kids’ preferred pronouns. Laughably, this proposed law builds off their so-called “Parental Rights in Education Act,” so we guess when Republicans were yakking about “parental rights,” they meant …. other parents or even childless adults who really hate trans kids.
[…] Trans students were required to provide parental permission to use their preferred pronouns at school. You can’t put too fine a point on this: Clearly Republicans were surprised to learn that not every parent was as hateful and cruel as they are. So now Republican state Sen. Clay Yarborough of Jacksonville hopes to correct their mistake with SB1320, perversely named “Child Protection In Public Schools,” which would […] erase trans identity in schools.
“While the scenario could be brought up about a particular student’s mom and dad being OK with them using a pronoun,” Yarborough said, “you might have 19, 20 or 24 other kids in a classroom whose parents may not be OK with them being introduced to that.”
Here’s the notable, chilling language:
Defining the term “sex”; prohibiting an employee, contractor, or student of a public school from being required to refer to a person using personal titles or pronouns that do not correspond with that person’s sex
This is a pro-bullying, American Asshole First bill. It would also prohibit school employees from “(providing) students his or her preferred personal title or pronouns.” So, if you’re trans, you must submit to being misgendered all day. Polite society would classify this as a hostile work environment. […]
[…] Studies have shown that gender-affirming language reduces depression and suicide risk among trans kids. (It wasn’t a complicated study.) I think we can treat trans kids humanely and still compete with China.
This bill is the latest in the Republican onslaught against queer people. A proposed state Board of Education rule, scheduled for a vote next month, would extend “Don’t Say Gay” to 12th grade, and any teacher caught providing “classroom instruction” on sexual orientation or gender identity could face suspension of the loss of their licenses (in the latter event, they could always go work at a charter school). These grotesque laws are written as if teachers are leading discussions about butt plugs and strap-ons, but in reality, “Don’t Say Gay” prohibits teachers from assigning students any book with queer themes or characters.
There’s also HB1421, which would ban health insurance coverage for all trans procedures. […]
As promised, Joe Biden did his first veto Monday, giving the boot to a GOP bill that would have prevented pension fund managers from considering environmental and social justice factors when they invest. The bill would have rolled back a Labor Department rule allowing such investments; that rule was itself a reversal of Donald Trump’s ban on so-called “environmental, social, and corporate governance” (ESG) investing.
As we said when the bill passed in the Senate, it’s pretty much a quadruple negative, since Biden vetoed a rollback of a reversal of a ban. And that’s a positive!
The bill was part of what Republicans claim is an absolutely vital movement to ban “woke” investing [eyeroll], because if fund managers consider anything but the highest short-term gains, that’s supposedly a betrayal of their fiduciary duty to investors.
In reality, of course, it’s less about “wokeness” than about protecting fossil fuel companies from disinvestment. You see, kids, money is free speech when corporations are making political contributions, or lobbying Republicans to ban ESG investing. But don’t you dare use your money-speech to try to make the world a better place — or even protect your investment in the longer term — by choosing to invest in green companies instead of fossil fuels […]
There is extensive evidence showing that environmental, social, and governance factors can have a material impact on markets, industries, and businesses. But the Republican-led resolution would force retirement managers to ignore these relevant risk factors, disregarding the principles of free markets and jeopardizing the life savings of working families and retirees. In fact, this resolution would prevent retirement plan fiduciaries from taking into account factors, such as the physical risks of climate change and poor corporate governance, that could affect investment returns.
In response, woke Wall Street investors sang “The Internationale” while burning themselves in effigy, and then they all carpooled in a Prius motorcade to the nearest abortionplex to read banned library books to drag queens.
Financial groups supported the veto, because ESG accounts are popular.
Republicans don’t support fiduciary rules so it’s rich (sorry) that they say they’re against ESG because they think it’s a betrayal of fiduciary responsibilities.
——————–
As far as I understand it, designating shareholders as the sole stakeholders is an idea that I believe was coughed up like a particularly putrid hairball by conservative economists. It’s a point of view that has become gospel.
———————
Friedman introduced the theory in a 1970 essay for The New York Times titled “A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits”. In it, he argued that a company has no social responsibility to the public or society; its only responsibility is to its shareholders.
Republicans elevated it to gospel status.
———————–
[book recommendation] The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms Investors, Corporations, and the Public
DirecTV said Wednesday it reached a deal with Newsmax Media to once again carry the right wing network in its satellite-TV and streaming packages. DirecTV had not carried Newsmax on its services since late January, when carriage negotiations broke down between the two companies. Newsmax had earlier alleged at the core of the dispute was “political discrimination,” with some politicians getting involved along the way, while DirecTV said it came down to economic differences.
At this point, it’s not altogether clear how the two companies resolved their differences — the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed — but the relevant players are saying nice things about one another.
“Newsmax recognizes and appreciates that DirecTV clearly supports diverse voices, including conservative ones,” Christopher Ruddy, Newsmax chief executive, said in a statement. “DirecTV helped give Newsmax its start nearly a decade ago as it continues to do with upcoming news networks, which is why we are pleased to reach a mutually beneficial agreement.”
DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow added, “This resolution with Newsmax, resolving an all-too-common carriage dispute, underscores our dedication to delivering a wide array of programming and perspectives to our customers.”
The reference to an “all-too-common carriage dispute” was unsubtle: In the telecommunications industry, these financial disagreements are not unusual. Just as importantly, such corporate conflicts are not evidence of an elaborate conspiracy to silence conservative voices.
But in recent months, too many Republicans nevertheless characterized this business dispute as a matter of great national significance.
As we discussed a couple of months ago, Republican Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois characterized DirecTV’s decision as “an attack on members of Congress,” and she didn’t appear to be kidding. There were related complaints from Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York.
Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey went so far as to suggest such business disputes are generally only found in “authoritarian regimes,” which was every bit as odd as it seemed.
[…] From his Mar-a-Lago perch, Donald Trump condemned the move as a “big blow to the Republican Party” — he apparently didn’t feel the need to maintain the pretense that Newsmax is an independent journalistic entity — “and to America itself.” He concluded that the “REPUBLICAN PARTY DEMANDS” Newsmax’s return to DirecTV’s lineup.
The apoplexy was absurd. The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal explained that the GOP hysteria was misplaced, and DirecTV went into considerable detail while debunking to Republican conspiracy theories. The partisan hysteria continued anyway.
That is, until today, when the businesses reached a deal, leaving Republicans more free time to focus on Hunter Biden and their ongoing threats to crash the economy on purpose unless their undefined debt ceiling demands are met.
Just minutes ago, we learned that Senate Bill 1161 is dead.
The bill was pulled from the House Education Committee agenda this morning because there were not enough votes to pass it, and there is no alternative path for the bill to advance.
It is difficult to overstate how big a victory this is for Idaho. A long list of school-voucher bills have been drawn up in recent months, but Senate Bill 1161 was always the one most likely to become law.
This is a bill that would’ve opened the door in Idaho to a universal school voucher program–a program that would’ve drained millions from our public schools.
We are not entirely out of the woods yet. There’s still a small chance that we see another attempt to ram through voucher legislation during these final hours of the 2023 session. But the failure of SB 1161 means that voucher legislation is highly unlikely to pass this year. Here’s how Idaho Education News put it moments ago:
“With SB 1161 off the table, it appears unlikely that any school choice legislation will pass in the waning days of the 2023 session.”
Consider this: During the past year, powerful special interest groups have descended on state legislatures across the country and rammed through universal voucher programs in Arizona, Iowa, Utah, and elsewhere. In each and every one of these states, vouchers were imposed in the face of overwhelming opposition from the public.
But here in Idaho, we held the line. As hard as they tried, the special interest groups could not drown out the voices of thousands of citizens in every region of the state. For now, at least, Idaho will keep public dollars invested in public schools. […]
Score another T-62. [video at the link: "South of Kardashynka, #Kherson Oblast, a Russian T-62 tank was destroyed by the Ukrainian Army using PTAB-2.5KO HEAT submunitions and RKG-3 anti-tank grenades adapted to be dropped from a drone."]
A quick run around the battlefields. […]
Kupyansk—Russia apparently made a small assault on a Ukrainian garrison at Masyutivka, which was repulsed. Not much more to report as this area seemed pretty inactive on Tuesday.
Savatove—Continued back and forth exchange between neighboring forces at Novoselivske and Kuzemivka. It’s incredible that neither side has been able to dislodge the other from this location. No other significant action along the line in this area.
Kreminna—Russia reportedly tried again to push Ukrainian forces out of the woods south of Kreminna and away from the town of Dibrova. Both attacks were unsuccessful. Russia also reportedly staged another run at Bilohorivka—though exactly what route they took to get there is unclear. In any case, that also failed.
Bakhmut—The biggest news out of Bakhmut is how big the news isn’t. Not only did Russia reportedly fail in attempts to move west toward Orihovo-Vasylivka and in multiple moves toward that road through Khromove, things were actually calm enough in Bakhmut today that this happened. Again.
[video at the link] That’s President Zelenskyy once again appearing in Bakhmut to give his thanks to the troops stationed there and reassure them of the importance of their continued presence. He handed out some awards, shook a lot of hands, and toured some locations near the front.
In addition to the Russian attacks on the north, Ukraine continued to hold Russia back from the highway south of Ivaniske. The Ukrainian military also reports fights at Klishchiivka and Mayorsk. Both of those locations seem to indicate potential Ukrainian advances.
Donetsk—The Ukrainian army reported a long, long list of shelled locations and repulsed attacks. This includes at least 13 towns and villages attacked and another dozen shelled. It certainly seems like this was the core of Russian efforts on Tuesday, but it’s not clear anything actually moved. I’ll try to get a new map of this later in the day to show the level of activity.
To the south, it looks like only shelling merited a mention.
On Tuesday, Russia also launched missiles into apartment buildings in Zaporizhzhia and Iranian-made drones into the town of Rzhyshchiv, southeast of Kyiv. At least seven people are known to have been killed, and more than two dozen were wounded. Neither location was near any possible military target or even significant infrastructure. They were just places where people live. Used to live. [tweet and image at the link]
There were multiple reports of explosions at Sevastopol on Tuesday night, but the source of those blasts remains unclear. [Tweet regarding unconfirmed Ukrainian maritime drone (USV) attack]
Link. Same link as was given for text quoted in comment 441. I just added the updates.
Boris Johnson’s evidence to privileges committee – snap verdict
In its report earlier this month the privileges committee said that it would consider whether Boris Johnson misled the house and, if so, it would consider “whether that was inadvertent, reckless or intentional”. On the basis of that evidence session, and all the written evidence that has been released, it seems likely that Johnson will go down on recklessness.
That will be enough to trigger a sanction. But it does not have to be a suspension of 10-days or more, and it is not hard to see why the committee might opt for a lesser punishment. There has been little or no evidence to back up claims there was a conspiracy to lie to MPs. The committee will want to produce a report and recommendation acceptable to as much as the Commons as possible. And any sanction at all on a former PM like this would be unprecedented. That would serve as warning to ministers in future that they need to take their obligations to parliament a lot more seriously than Johnson.
On the whole, the committee did a good job. It is still not clear why the committee did not ask about the Abba party, but it ran to time, the questions were robust, it never became partisan and the Conservatives on the committee gave the impression that they are not minded to be intimidated by a write-in campaign organised by grassroots Johnsonite extremists.
We did not learn any great new facts. But the MPs were good at testing the robustness of Johnson’s arguments, and two exchanges were particularly revealing. First, Sir Bernard Jenkin established quite effectively that Johnson’s understanding of what the guidance actually meant was so elastic as to cover not taking any notice of the guidance at all. (See 3.08pm.) And his question about what Johnson would have said if asked at a press conference if a crowded drinks do was allowed in a workplace under the Covid guidance was one of the best of the day. Johnson’s reply was wholly unconvincing. (See 3.33pm.)
The other key exchange came when Harriet Harman expressed dismay at Johnson telling MPs all rules and guidance were followed on the basis of such “flimsy” evidence. (See 4.54pm.) If you want to locate the gravamen of the committee’s final report, it is probably in that exchange.
Johnson was curt and abrupt. He did not quite lose his temper, but it was probably a mistake to take a swipe at Harman’s integrity and it should not have taken him as long as it did to disown the “kangaroo court” smears cast out by his supporters. Normally, in circumstances like this, unabashed humility goes down best. And honesty. One of the revealing lines from him came when he said that perhaps he should have been a bit more candid with the Commons last December when asked to explain to what extent guidance was followed in Number 10. (See 4.28pm.)
Even commentators well disposed towards Johnson (like the Telegraph’s Christopher Hope) are finding it hard to pretend that was a triumph. Johnson lost his job partly as a result of partygate, and the Brexiter Tory faction he now leads has, on the basis of today’s vote (see 3.20pm), been reduced to oddball rump of 22. When the committee has to decide what punishment is appropriate, it will take into account mitigating factors, and one reason not to trigger the recall process might be that a return to frontline politics for him seems increasingly unlikely anyway.
The part about how “Johnson’s understanding of what the guidance actually meant was so elastic as to cover not taking any notice of the guidance at all” is significant. What it meant for him, that is. And if he did have this expansive understanding of how the guidance applied to his office, then why wasn’t he upfront about that – he was asked – in the Commons when he claimed the guidance was followed?
From Ian Dunt’s highly entertaining and informative thread (link @ #428):
…Carter devastating. Johnson’s submission quoted from workplace guidance, saying that where guidelines could not be followed in full, businesses should consider whether that activity needed to continue “for the business to operate”.
“Are you saying you thought these gatherings were so critical to the functioning of government that it was permissible to hold them even if they couldn’t be socially distanced?” Johnson: “The short answer is yes.”
That really must be considered utterly preposterous. I mean, one of them is his birthday.
Carter asks what mitigations were put in place as required by the guidance. Johnson says they didn’t touch each other’s pens.
This is a thing that is really happening. He really said that.
Harman says presumably they were passing drinks to each other. Johnson: “Of course. This is guidance. This is guidance. I’m not going to pretend it was enforced rigidly, but that’s what the guidance provides for.”…
Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, has said Nato countries should be “prepared for a long confrontation” in Ukraine.
Posting to Twitter, she urged Nato countries to increase defence spending beyond the 2% threshold, arguing that 2% “must be the floor, not the ceiling”.
Her tweet came after the Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, yesterday said only seven of the alliance’s 30 member countries met the current goal of spending 2% of GDP on defence in 2022.
Stoltenberg’s 2022 report showed Greece, the US, Lithuania, Poland, Britain, Estonia and Latvia met that target.
“Just in: DC Circuit orders Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to hand over documents in special counsel’s classified records investigation.
The appeals court denied Trump’s efforts to stay a lower court’s order from Friday compelling the handover of documents”
Brad speaks to Dr. Andrew Whitehead (IUPUI) and Dr. Sam Perry (U. of Oklahoma) who discuss their written testimony to the J6 Select Committee on how Christian nationalism was a motivating force behind the J6 insurrection. They discuss the elements that tie J6 and Christian nationalism together – from the Big Lie to authoritarian violence to conspiracies like QAnon. They also discuss the long lasting ramifications leaving Christian nationalism out of the J6 report may have on the present and future of our public square.
The cable news pundits have been on for days speculating, on the basis of nothing, on what the charges will be if Trump gets indicted in New York. On the basis of this speculation and having seen no documents or evidence or anything, they’re speculating on the strength of this hypothetical case and how it compares to the strength of the other charges Trump might face in other venues, about which they also have limited knowledge. On the basis of all this speculation, they’re speculating on how the public will respond and how it will affect an election 20 months away.
Brutal statistics, [as summarized by Steve Benen], from the U.N. World Water Development Report: “A report issued on the eve of the first major U.N. conference on water in over 45 years says 26% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water and 46% lacks access to basic sanitation.”
Former President Donald Trump is quickly capitalizing — and cashing in — on his escalating legal predicaments. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign confirmed to Fox News that they hauled in $1.5 million in grassroots fundraising in the three days following the former president’s warning on Saturday that he may face imminent indictment and potential arrest in connection with looming criminal charges from a district attorney in New York City.
Commentary:
[…] To put these numbers in context, in the six weeks following his 2024 campaign kickoff event, Trump raised roughly $9.5 million, for an average of roughly $224,000 per day. Since Saturday morning, if today’s reporting is accurate, the Republican has raised roughly $500,000 per day.
In other words, saying he’d be arrested gave Trump a significant boost — which might help explain why he made the false prediction in the first place.
[…] Trump is the first modern American politician to turn an election defeat into a lucrative opportunity.
[…] After Trump left the White House, things got worse: The former president kept lying about the election, causing his followers to keep donating. One appeal in 2021 told prospective donors, “We need you to join the fight to SECURE OUR ELECTIONS!” but none of the millions of dollars raised by Save America went toward any such efforts.
[…] the bulk of the money simply went to the former president’s super PAC.
Common sense might suggest that the public would see these developments, learn about the former president’s underhanded tactics, and his fundraising would dry up. After all, his schemes have been exposed. His willingness to exploit his supporters has been well documented, which should start closing wallets.
But Trump’s hold on his followers is strong — so the grift continues.
Offering a vehement defense of Donald J. Trump, Representative Kevin McCarthy told reporters that the former President should not be indicted because “most if not almost all Americans” pay porn stars.
“What you use your personal money for is your own personal business,” the Speaker of the House said during a break at a G.O.P. retreat. “If you want to pay for a haircut, fine. If you want to pay for a car wash, also fine. And, if you want to pay a porn star, well, that’s fine, too, and pretty much every American does it.”
Asked if he had ever paid a porn star, McCarthy said, “You know what? I don’t think I have. But, because of the way George Soros has weaponized this prosecution against Donald Trump, I think I’m going to start paying porn stars to show my solidarity with an innocent man.”
Although McCarthy’s words drew support from many within the G.O.P., he received pushback from one prominent House Republican. “Only an idiot pays for porn,” said Representative Matt Gaetz.
Lynna @ #457, today was a swirl of conspiracy theories about the grand-jury delay in Manhattan, and in the middle of it was Trump Jr. telling people they couldn’t trust any institutions and needed to get in at the grassroots of the anti-corporate, anti-woke “parallel economy.” Of course, there’s no such thing, and he’s just inviting Trump’s followers to play their role – the role of marks – in the grifter/hate economy. Trash “coins”; bullshit supplements, protocols, and miracle cures; NFTs; “freedom” phones and other useless gadgets; rightwing banks; schools; legal scams; conferences, retreats, and revivals; guns; flags, t-shirts, caps,…
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
A months-long ground assault on the eastern town of Bakhmut could be stalling in the face of fierce resistance, according to US, Ukrainian and British military experts.
Russian forces unleashed a wave of air strikes in the north and south of Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin bid farewell on Wednesday to Chinese leader Xi Jinping following a two day visit to Moscow by his fellow autocrat and “dear friend”.
Bakhmut is the site of Europe’s deadliest infantry battle since World War Two. The Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, said in its most recent update that the pace of Russian operations around Bakhmut “appears to be slowing amid Western reporting that Russian forces may be attempting to launch offensives in other directions.”
The update goes on to say:
Russian forces are currently increasing the tempo of their offensive operations around Avdiivka aiming to encircle the settlement, and it is possible that Russian forces are doing so at the expense of their operations around Bakhmut and the stalled offensive around Vuhledar.
British military intelligence believes Russia’s assault on the town could be running out of steam. There was still a danger, however, that the Ukrainian garrison in Bakhmut could be surrounded, Britain’s defence ministry said in its intelligence update on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s military General Staff agreed that Russia’s offensive potential in Bakhmut was declining.
Bakhmut has become a key objective for Moscow, which sees the town as a stepping stone toward completing its conquest of the eastern Donbas region.
The UN nuclear agency’s chief said Wednesday that the situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant “remains perilous” following a Russian missile strike this month that disconnected the plant from the grid….
As I understand it, they’re going to try again to reconnect it today.
A former New Zealand soldier who drew an online following with his dispatches from the frontline of the Ukraine war has been killed in fighting there.
The death of Kane Te Tai, 38, was confirmed by New Zealand’s foreign ministry Thursday, citing Ukrainian government sources. Te Tai, who fought with the International Legion, is the third New Zealander known to have died in Ukraine.
For many in New Zealand, Te Tai was the face of the country’s unofficial involvement in Ukraine’s war. He fundraised for equipment and undertook news interviews before he left New Zealand in May 2022, and documented his friendships, battles and daily life on Instagram and Facebook.
A video he posted earlier this month captured a moment when he was unexpectedly reunited with a Ukrainian friend who had been held hostage for months by Russian troops, and whom Te Tai recognised when the man began to call out: “New Zealand! New Zealand!”
“My brother!” Te Tai replied.
Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, has posted to Telegram to say: “The aggressor does not give up hope of taking Bakhmut at any cost, despite the losses in manpower and equipment.”
He goes on to write that the enemy is losing “considerable strength” and that “very soon we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we once did near Kyiv, Kharkiv, [Balakliia] and Kupiansk”, all areas that Ukraine has previously liberated from Russian occupation.
He praised his troops for “superhuman resilience, courage and bravery” under “the continuous fire of the enemy’s artillery and aircraft”.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, offers this news roundup this morning on its official Telegram channel:
As a result of an attack by Russian drones [yesterday] on a hostel in Rzhyshchiv, Kyiv region, nine people were killed, the state emergency service reported. Rescue operations are completed.
In the middle of the night, the Russian military shelled Kramatorsk in Donetsk region: residential buildings, a boiler house and garages were damaged. On 22 March, shelling in the region killed two people and injured four others.
At night, the Russian army shelled the Kherson regional cardio centre; there were no casualties. Fifty-four times during the day, the Russian Federation fired heavy artillery and “Grad missiles” in the Kherson region; one person was killed, two were wounded.
The claims have not been independently verified.
A video is circulating on social media, reported by Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, of the Ukrainian national flag flying from a tall mast in Crimea… It appears to have been filmed near the village of Hrushivka.
Asylum seekers who complain about poor conditions in Home Office hotels have been threatened with being sent to Rwanda, according to a new report.
The report from the charity Refugee Action, entitled Hostile Accommodation: How the Asylum System Is Cruel By Design, is based on 100 in-depth interviews with asylum seekers in hotels in London, Manchester, West Midlands and Bradford.
It includes interviews with single adults and families, detailed casework records relating to problems in hotels and other asylum accommodation, and freedom of information requests to council environmental health departments.
The report says that on top of being told not to complain about poor conditions or face removal to Rwanda, asylum seekers were also told that if they complained about the quality of food served to them the police would be called. They were also told they were forbidden from taking photos of the food to provide evidence of its quality, the report says.
The report calls the system of accommodating asylum seekers – with more than 50,000 currently in hotels – “a nationwide system of racialised segregation and de facto detention”.
Asylum seekers are being housed in hotels for increasingly long periods. One in three adults and more than one in four families with children are in hotels for more than a year. In one case a family of six lived in one room for more than a year. The report warns that if the new immigration bill now going through parliament is implemented, the situation will worsen.
…
Refugee Action is calling on government to fund councils and NGOs to provide accommodation and support instead of the current group of private contractors who make millions of pounds in profit out of Home Office contracts.
Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive of Refugee Action, said: “The government is running a system of de facto detention – holding and segregating people seeking asylum in accommodation that is harming their mental and physical health. This demoralising and brutal system costs the taxpayer millions per day but creates huge profits for contractors who are too often failing to make their housing habitable.”…
It’s like they watched Years and Years and saw it as a planning manual.
Trump administration appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) meddled in agency science to weaken the toxicity assessment of a dangerous chemical, a new report by the US body’s internal watchdog has found.
In response to what it labeled “political interference”, the Biden administration in February 2021 pulled the assessment, republished it months later using what it said is sound science, and declared it had resolved the issue.
But EPA scientists who spoke to the Guardian say several employees willingly worked with the Trump appointees to weaken the assessment, and they were never reprimanded or fired.
The scientists say the controversy is part of a deeper problem afflicting the EPA: industry influence on career staff, and an unwillingness from the EPA to address it.
…
The controversy centered around a 2021 toxicity report for PFBS, a type of PFAS compound that is toxic at low levels. Research has linked the chemical to kidney disease, reproductive problems and thyroid damage, and it has been found throughout the environment, including in an estimated 860,000 Americans’ drinking water.
PFAS are known as “forever chemicals” due to their longevity in the environment, and are a growing health hazard.
In its recent report, the EPA’s office of inspector general described “unprecedented” interference by former Trump-appointed EPA chief Andrew Wheeler and other political appointees, who ordered the alteration of the PFBS toxicity value just as the assessment was about to be published in late 2020. The revised assessment went live just four days before Trump left office in 2021.
The assessment would have been used by regulators to establish drinking-water quality standards and other environmental cleanup targets that companies must meet when addressing pollution….
…
The changes were “something that industry has always wanted”, former EPA scientist Betsy Southerland previously told the Guardian.
…
“People know what happened, and they know there were no consequences, so there’s no deterrent,” said an employee familiar with the situation. “It’s only going to make people more brazen about doing this kind of thing in the future.”
Hundreds of thousands of people were set to strike and demonstrate in France on Thursday after President Emmanuel Macron vowed to push on with a deeply unpopular pension reform despite escalating anger across the country.
Protests against the legislation — which lifts the retirement age by two years to 64 — have drawn huge crowds in rallies organised by unions since January.
Labour unions said Thursday’s ninth nationwide day of action would draw huge crowds against what they described as Macron’s “scorn” and “lies.”
Macron drew an angry response from unions and opposition parties on Wednesday when he rejected their calls for him to heed growing popular anger.
“The best response we can give the president is that there are millions of people on strike and in the streets,” said Philippe Martinez, who leads the hardline CGT union.
Thursday’s strike will see train traffic seriously disrupted, with airports also affected, and teachers among many professions walking off the job, while rolling strikes continue at oil depots and amid garbage collectors.
Most protests have been peaceful, but anger has mounted since the government pushed the bill through parliament without a vote last week….
Trains were disrupted and a new day of nationwide protests got underway in France on Thursday after a defiant President Emmanuel Macron pledged to implement his contentious pensions overhaul by year’s end in a televised interview on Wednesday. Read our live blog for all the latest developments….
From there:
10:06am: Dunkirk LNG terminal blocked by strike until Friday morning, union says
The Dunkirk liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in northern France was blocked early on Thursday after workers voted to renew strike action against the government’s planned changes to pensions, a union source said.
It will be blocked until Friday morning with a general meeting to be held with workers around noon that day to decide if the strike will be renewed again, the source said.
11:03am: Nationwide disruption as protests get underway across France
The streets of Paris continue to smell strongly as approximately 7,000 tonnes of rubbish remain uncollected. Although the French government has ordered some bin collectors to gather the rubbish for health reasons, this process is a challenge as many incinerator sites have been blocked by protesters.
Public transport, including regional trains, flights and metro services, has been heavily impacted. Many schools have also shut down as teachers joined the strike action.
Public anger has not faded, with many reacting strongly to French President Macron’s live television interview yesterday. Trade union leaders said he made a “mockery” of the French public and called on people to continue striking, including at oil refineries.
11:34am: Police to be deployed throughout the country
Some 12,000 police, including 5,000 in Paris, will be deployed during the day, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Thursday.
Spontaneous protests have broken out on a daily basis in recent days, leading to hundreds of arrests and accusations of heavy-handed tactics by police.
Amnesty International has expressed alarm “about the widespread use of excessive force and arbitrary arrests reported in several media outlets”.
Paris police chief Laurent Nunez on Thursday denied this, saying the security forces only detained people from “gatherings […] committing violence”.
Catherine Norris Trent in the 11:03 video report says (update to #384) that an estimated 15% of gas stations in the country are now either out of gas or having difficulties obtaining supply.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has visited the southern region of Kherson, where he toured local infrastructure he promised to restore following Russia’s invasion.
The visit, to a region where Ukraine staged a successful counteroffensive against Russian occupying forces late last year, was his second outside Kyiv this week, Reuters reports. On Wednesday, he visited troops near the eastern frontline city of Bakhmut.
On Thursday, under footage of his visit to Kherson region posted on the Telegram messaging app, Zelenskiy wrote:
I spoke with local residents about their current issues and needs. We will restore everything, we will rebuild everything. Just like with every city and village that suffered because of the occupiers.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive last year pushed Russian troops out of the regional capital after months of occupation. Workers in the region are now busy restoring power and the water supply. In a separate post showing him inspecting energy infrastructure, the Ukrainian president wrote:
We have to ensure full restoration and protection of our energy sector. I am grateful to everyone who works for this and returns the light to our people.
1:25pm : French national rail provider SNCF warns of widespread disruption
National rail provider SNCF has said it will only run half of its Inoui and Ouigo TGV trains and a third of its TER on Thursday.
According to several union sources, 35% of SNCF workers officially declared their intention to join strikes.
1:33pm: Hundreds of protesters invade tracks at Paris’s Gare de Lyon train station
In Paris, hundreds of protesters on Thursday morning flooded onto train tracks in the Gare de Lyon, interrupting traffic and causing a delay of at least half an hour, according to national railway operator SNCF.
“And we will go on, we will go on, we will go on till revocation” of the reform, they chanted.
Deputy mayor of Paris, Ian Brossart, tweeted a video of the blockade.
1:43pm: More than a quarter of public sector electricity workers join strikes
More than a quarter of employees (25.3%) at national electricity provider EDF stopped work at midday on Thursday for the ninth day of strikes against the pension reform, management has said.
Striking school district employees and teachers continued striking for the third day of their declared three-day strike Thursday as talks between SEIU Local 99 and LAUSD resumed with assistance from the mayor’s office. Classes are expected to resume Friday morning.
Los Angeles Unified School District administrators and Service Employees International Union Local 99 representatives resumed negotiations Wednesday with the support of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’s office.
Some workers say they’re hopeful.
“I’m glad that she got involved, bringing both sides together, and we can work something out, that something could be worked out for all of us,” George Enriquez, a district bus driver, said Thursday morning. “It’s for everybody, it’s not only for bus drivers or anything, it’s for all of us. We all want to go back to work. We all want to be doing our job, providing service for these kids.”
LAUSD employees with SEIU Local 99 began walking picket lines Tuesday morning after negotiations with the district failed. Teachers with United Teachers Los Angeles joined the support staff strike in solidarity.
More than 1,000 LAUSD campuses were closed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, affecting more than 400,000 students in the nation’s second largest school district.
SEIU/UTLA previously declared their intention to strike on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, returning to classes Friday.
SEIU employees, including custodians, bus drivers, teachers aides, special education assistants and other support staff, are seeking a 30-percent raise, more staffing and more hours for part-time workers.
The district has countered with a 23-percent raise and a 3-percent cash bonus and says it’s open to further negotiations.
…
LAUSD announced Wednesday night that campuses would remain closed for the third day Thursday. Resources would continue to be available.
A union rally was planned for Thursday afternoon at L.A. State Historic State Park at 1245 North Spring Street.
2:49pm: Unions in Marseille claim record turnout for anti-reform march
Demonstrations in Marseille on Thursday against pension reform had a record number of participants according to figures from unions, who said 280,000 people joined street protests.
Local authorities estimated there were 16,000 attendees. [Quite a difference!]
The previous record for protests in the city was 240,000 people joining a protest departing from the old port, according to unions.
The Marseille prefecture puts the record at 40,000 people joining protests against pension reforms on January 31.
Bloomberg: Wagner may scale back Ukraine operations, shift to Africa.
After facing multiple setbacks on the Ukrainian frontline, Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin might be turning his focus to Africa, Bloomberg reported on March 23.
The Manhattan grand jury investigating Trump’s alleged role in scheme to pay hush money to an adult film star will NOT hear that case when it convenes today, two sources tell @KaraScannell
, pushing DA’s probe into next week.
Grand juries typically hear multiple cases at a time.
“The first four MiG-29 fighter jets have been safely handed over to the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Slovakia’s Defense Ministry announces. “The transfer was carried out by Ukrainian pilots, with the help of the Slovak Air Force…”
All that’s left is to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, and Michigan, powered by its shiny new Democratic trifecta, will repeal its right-to-work law.
Union members cheered and clapped from the galleries as Democrats in both chambers passed the bills this month. Union leaders blasted out triumphant press releases, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) made clear her intent to sign the bill.
It’s a far cry from 2012, when the right-to-work law was wending its way through the statehouse. Republicans controlled both chambers and the governor’s mansion. Pro-union protesters were arrested in the state capitol in December of that year, and then-Senate Minority Leader Whitmer was forced to call for recess, pending a lawsuit from the Michigan Democratic Party trying to push police to reopen the building.
“When it passed, if you’d asked me then whether there’s a pathway to repealing it, I’d have said no way,” Shaun Richman, who teaches labor history at Empire State University, told TPM, laughing. “It’s gone forever, man.”
Michigan’s right-to-work law hit particularly hard, given the state’s status as one of the iconic, storied union strongholds. But it wasn’t particularly unique. Around that time, in 2010 and 2011, a flurry of these laws passed across the country, propelled by a right-wing resurgence amid the rise of the Tea Party that fueled a brutal midterm “shellacking” two years after Barack Obama’s historic election.
Despite the name, these laws have nothing to do with a guarantee of employment. They allow those in unionized jobs to opt out of paying union dues — while the unions are still required to provide services, like representation in disputes with management, even to those non-paying workers. In some states they proved a fatal blow to unions, creating a “free rider” problem that undermined unions’ ability to finance their operations and organize….
Much more at the link. Kate Riga is doing outstanding work at TPM.
SC @459: “Trump Jr. telling people they couldn’t trust any institutions and needed to get in at the grassroots of the anti-corporate, anti-woke “parallel economy.” Of course, there’s no such thing, and he’s just inviting Trump’s followers to play their role – the role of marks – in the grifter/hate economy.”
Yep. Very apt description. It’s disheartening. Like his father, Trump Junior is always looking for an opportunity to run another scam. And, yes, it is the Trump supporters who get sucked into most of the scams. You would think that they would be tired of it by now.
Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan thought it’d be a good idea to interfere in an ongoing local criminal investigation. Amid reports that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg might indict Donald Trump, the Ohio Republican joined two other GOP committee chairs to ask Bragg to testify before Congress.
The prosecutor, Jordan insisted, “owes” Republicans answers.
Has Bragg brought charges against the former president? No. Is there any evidence that the district attorney has engaged in any wrongdoing? No. Does the U.S. House have jurisdiction over a local prosecutor’s office? Probably not. But the far-right Judiciary Committee chairman pounced anyway.
Rep. Jamie Raskin was not pleased. “The Republicans’ letter to the Manhattan District Attorney represents an astonishing and unprecedented abuse of power as they attempt to use Congressional resources to interfere in an ongoing criminal investigation at another level of government and obstruct a possible criminal indictment,” the Maryland Democrat said in a statement. [Yes. That is the intent of House Republicans: to obstruct the indictment of Donald Trump.]
Yesterday, as The Hill reported, Jordan went even further.
Jordan on Wednesday sent letters to Mark Pomerantz, former New York County Special Assistant District Attorney, and Carey Dunne, former Manhattan Special Assistant District Attorney, both of whom resigned from Bragg’s Trump investigation in February 2022 because they disagreed with the district attorney’s reluctance to try and indict Trump on the second grand jury that had been empaneled in the case.
Note, the Judiciary Committee chairman didn’t just request the prosecutors’ testimony, he also asked that Pomerantz and Dunne “hand over documents and communications.”
A variety of adjectives come to mind to describe such a dynamic, but for now, let’s go with “bonkers.”
Jordan has presented literally no evidence of prosecutorial misconduct. Bragg hasn’t even indicted the former president yet, and it’s open question as to whether such charges will ever materialize. For a congressional committee chair to demand private materials from a local prosecutor and former members of his team, about an ongoing case, isn’t just ridiculous, it’s also a rather obvious abuse.
[…] Pomerantz is on record saying that, based on the evidence he saw, Trump is “guilty of numerous felony violations.”
But stepping back, as Jordan and too many of his GOP colleagues on Capitol Hill become increasingly agitated about an indictment that hasn’t happened yet, I have some modest advice for Republicans: Pace yourselves.
In recent days, hysterical elements within the party have condemned charges they haven’t seen. They’ve decried prosecutorial overreach that hasn’t occurred. One senator went so far as to call for the Manhattan district attorney to be locked up for reasons the Republican could not explain.
NBC News’ First Read team added yesterday, “Can we take a deep breath? Exercise some caution? And let the justice system work its course? After all, it was just a few months ago when Republicans attacked the FBI for searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. But those criticisms quickly died down after it got reported what the ex-president had at his Florida home (like classified documents on Iran and China).”
If Trump is indicted — and as of today, that remains an “if” — there will be a lengthy adjudication process. He will have ample opportunity to present a defense. There might also be other criminal charges filed in entirely different jurisdictions about entirely separate scandals.
It would be to everyone’s benefit, including the former president’s sycophantic GOP allies, to at least try to approach these issues with some degree of caution and maturity. Right now, Jordan is choosing an altogether less constructive path.
<a href=”https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/affordable-care-act-turns-13-law-never-stronger-rcna76303As the Affordable Care Act turns 13, the law has never been stronger
Exactly 13 years after Joe Biden whispered to Barack Obama that the Affordable Care Act was a big bleeping deal, there’s little doubt that he was right.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to travel to Canada today, but as The Washington Post noted, before the Democrat heads to Air Force One, he has an anniversary to celebrate.
Today, before heading to Ottawa to meet with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Biden will host an event celebrating the 13th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, the signature domestic achievement of President Barack Obama. The event provides Biden a chance to warn that the now-popular program could be jeopardized by proposed Republican spending cuts.
After the Affordable Care Act became law 13 years ago today, there were plenty of points at which its future appeared to be in doubt. The website didn’t work. […] Legal challenges put the ACA in jeopardy — including three separate cases that went to the U.S. Supreme Court. After Donald Trump’s 2016 election, the fate of “Obamacare” appeared sealed.
All the while, Republicans made all kinds of predictions about the ACA’s imminent failure and disastrous consequences. The reform law would make the United States go “bankrupt,” they said. There’d be an outrageous “government takeover” that would destroy Americans’ way of life. There would be “death panels” and “death spirals” from which there would be no escape.
“Obamacare,” the GOP insisted, would create “Armageddon.”
Thirteen years later, it’s now obvious that Republicans were wrong, and the ACA’s proponents were right. In fact, thanks entirely to the reform law, the nation’s uninsured rate has never been lower.
[…] Republicans failed spectacularly to come up with a credible plan of their own […]
Or put another way, after more than a decade of intense political, legal, and legislative fights, the Affordable Care Act and its champions are getting the last laugh. […]
The ACA is working; it’s popular; it’s affordable; it’s advancing; it’s withstood far too many legal challenges […] to the benefit of tens of millions of American families, it’s the truth.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) called demands from House GOP leaders to force his testimony an “unlawful incursion” on his ongoing probe into former President Trump’s role in a hush money scandal. [Yes. “unlawful incursion” is a good description.]
The Thursday response from Bragg comes as lawmakers, led by House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), demanded the DA turn over all documents and communications about the case.
The move “is an unprecedent[ed] inquiry into a pending local prosecution. The letter only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene,” Bragg wrote.
Bragg is really good at this. He pointed out Trump’s lie and the fact that House Republicans are bending the knee to Trump and his lawyers. This makes Jim Jordan look really bad.
“Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.”
The letter does not rule out the possibility of meeting with GOP lawmakers, instead offering to “meet and confer to understand whether the Committee has any legitimate legislative purpose in the requested materials that could be accommodated.” [LOL. Bragg will educate them if he has to do so.]
The five-page letter from Bragg offers a point-by-point breakdown of the GOP’s Monday letter, saying it would interfere with ongoing law enforcement duties, violate state sovereignty, and would be an inappropriate use of congressional power, dangling limited use of federal funds as a backing for intervention.
[…] The confidentiality of such processes, Bragg said, is designed to protect the confidentiality of all involved, including potential defendants such as Trump. […]
Bragg pushed back on arguments that such a prosecution would be a political matter. “If charges are brought at the conclusion, it will be because the rule of law and faithful execution of the District Attorney’s duty require it,” he wrote.
“The Letter’s allegation that the DA’s Office is pursuing a prosecution for political purposes is unfounded, and regardless, the proper forum for such a challenge is the Courts of New York, which are equipped to consider and review such objections.” [More basic education regarding how this works. One gets the feeling that Bragg is also trying to school Trump’s lawyers.]
The letter cites a number of laws and more than a dozen cases in pushing back on the congressional request.
Bragg’s investigation is a “quintessential police power,” and therefore a matter left to the states rather than Congress.
“Your letter treads into territory very clearly reserved to the states. It suggests that Congress’s investigation is being ‘conducted solely for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to “punish” those investigated,’ and is, therefore, ‘indefensible,’” he writes, pointing to a 1957 Supreme Court ruling limiting congressional investigations.
The GOP’s letter called Bragg’s investigation political and warned prosecution would “erode confidence in the evenhanded application of justice and unalterably interfere in the course of the 2024 presidential election.”
House Judiciary’s response Thursday again raised that specter, while rehashing earlier claims that New York City is facing an increase in crime.
“Alvin Bragg should focus on prosecuting actual criminals in New York City rather than harassing a political opponent in another state,” the committee wrote on Twitter. “Make Manhattan Safe Again!”
Bragg’s office fought that claim Monday, noting a decline in homicides and shootings both this year and last year while pointing to statistics in the home states of the three chairman that authored the letter.
“New York remains one of the safest big cities in the U.S. with a far lower murder rate than the most populous cities where the Committee Chairmen hail from – Ohio, Wisconsin, and Kentucky,” a spokeswoman for Bragg said. […]
Alvin Bragg is trying to educate House Republicans. A thankless task.
7:00pm: Union says 800,000 protesters have joined Paris march
The CGT union says 800,000 people have joined demonstrations in Paris on Thursday for the ninth day of national strikes against pension reform.
This is the largest attendance figure put forward by unions since protests began in January.
According to the union, the previous record for attendance in the capital was 700,000 demonstrators on March 7. Estimated attendance figures put forward by local authorities for the same day were significantly lower, at 81,000.
Authorities have not yet released an official estimation of how many protesters attended Thursday’s march.
[…] Here is a clip of him yelping every 1.57 seconds in his high-pitched voice about “dumb, desperate people in middle age hoping to keep on to their stupid TV jobs, you add scripts and some hairspray, and they just repeat the lies FOR you!” He says he’s talking about China, but everybody on the internet is looking at him funny and saying words like “projection” in Russian. And “Tucker just roasted himself live on air.” And “a rare glimpse of self-awareness from Tucker.”
China has approved a Covid-19 vaccine utilizing MRNA technology for the first time ever, as government health officials roll back the country’s strict pandemic-era restrictions.
The new vaccine, which was developed by the CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd in the northern city of Shijiazhuang, was approved by Chinese regulators on Wednesday (March 22), according to a statement by the company. MRNA vaccines for Covid-19 are already widely available in most parts of the world, including the widely administered iterations developed by Modern and Pfizer…
This is a story that PBS ran at the beginning of August 2022.
Russian forces began an assault Saturday on two key cities in the eastern Donetsk region and kept up rocket and shelling attacks on other Ukrainian cities, including one close to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s military and local officials said. …
Both cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been considered key targets of Russia’s ongoing offensive across Ukraine’s east, with analysts saying Moscow needs to take Bakhmut if it is to advance on the regional hubs of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.
Almost eight months later, Russia has not taken either Bakhmut or Avdiivka. In fact, the most remarkable thing about Bakhmut these days may be how little we’re talking about Bakhmut. There’s not just one road bringing supplies and reserves in and out of Bakhmut right now, there are several. Russian forces aren’t just moving slowly in their efforts to occupy the remainder of the city—in many areas, they have stopped. Or are even going in reverse. [Tweet and video of The 1st separate mechanized battalion “Da Vinci Wolves” capturing Wagner positions close to Khromove and knocking them away from the O0506 road.]
Perversely enough, because the situation at Bakhmut has somewhat stabilized, it’s possible to get very detailed about where Russian forces are still advancing, where Ukrainian forces are pushing them back, and where forces from both sides are currently located. Thanks to dedicated work by hundreds if not thousands of online OSINT folks exchanging videos and picking out details from exchanged text messages.
If you want to see some of the most detailed work in putting together a sequence of events through geolocating buildings and landmarks in videos and images, check out this thread from @Danspiun. To understand what’s happening in the last week, start with post number 255. Just to give you a sense of just how detailed the information is in this thread and others like it, here’s a single post on Russian positions at the southwest corner of Bakhmut.
Based on UAF shelling in twt 264, the nearest RuAF position to Korsunskoho St within these 7 blocks is at 48.57609, 37.96937 h/t @JagdBandera . By lack of damage to north side, block #59 is likely still in🇺🇦control For info @GeoConfirmed @UAControlMap @DefMon3 @georgewbarros
This puts together video from Ukrainian soldiers running up a road, Wagner Group videos of sniping from a building, drone video of buildings being hit by artillery, another video of a single soldier walking inside that building, reports from the Ukrainian Army General Staff, and a lot of careful plotting of positions. And this is just one of several such threads.
For guys like me, who are shoving around control points in a bunch of yellow and red polygons on a map, it’s a godsend. It’s also little short of amazing, both in terms of the volume of information that’s out there and the hours of work being put into contextualizing that stream of images. There are always things I can’t figure out or pieces that don’t snap together […] but what can be put together is pretty darned good.
Maybe even more importantly, the stream of videos and still photos captured in many of these threads gives an insight into the soldiers and situations that is never quite captured in the headlines, or even by the best photographers. [Tweet and video at the link]
Of course, when things are in serious motion, the quality of the information can begin to break down. That’s what happens when you see one of those days where I shrug about the fog of war […]
Anyway, here’s what Bakhmut looks like at the moment, as best I can assemble it. [map at the link]
Roughly half the city itself is either under Russian control or has some presence of Russian forces. That’s up from about 30% a week ago. Wagner Group forces continue to pick away at blocks at the north end of town near a series of warehouses, and at the south end of town in a residential area.
Ukraine has apparently repelled Russian attempts to take control of the road through Khromove and the road through Ivaniske to the southwest, but Russia is able to direct artillery and anti-tank weapons at vehicles on both these routes. Recently constructed dirt roads in between are taking the bulk of the traffic, even in mud season.
It’s worth noting that the area of genuine Ukrainian control along that Khromove road, from about the location of Khromove itself to the big bend in the road to the west, is actually right at the road line. The area north of the road is not so much in dispute as it is a no man’s land that both sides have difficulty crossing. It’s not impossible, though, as that first video above shows. You could draw the yellow line right along the north side of the road, and it would be accurate in a way, except that Russian troops aren’t actually able to reach this line at this point.
Maybe the most worrisome thing is that the one area where Russia does seem able to advance is along the M03 to the northwest toward Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. These are the genuine strategic targets mentioned back in that PBS article last August, and that’s the direction Russia has been able to make the most progress.
At this point, it’s hard to say whether Russia is extending a salient along this road by bypassing Bakhmut, or whether Bakhmut has essentially become a salient through near encirclement. But no positions appear vulnerable. Anyway, before we go, one more view of Zelenskyy visiting Bakhmut on Wednesday. [video at the link]
Now, what about that other city that got mentioned in the PBS article almost eight months ago? What’s happening at Avdiivka?
Avdiivka is a smaller city than Bakhmut, with a pre-war population of around 30,000. But at this point it looks a lot like its bigger sister thanks to the remodeling efforts of Russian artillery. In some ways, it also looks surprisingly like Bakhmut on a map. [map at the link]
Just as with Bakhmut, Russia spent months hammering Avdiivka head on, attempting and failing to take the city. Just like with Bakhmut, Russian efforts in the last couple of months have switched to pressing forward both north and south of Avdiivka. There is almost no town or village on the border with Russian forces in this area for which multiple assaults were not reported in the last day.
Unlike Bakhmut, Russian forces don’t seem to be trying to worm their way into the city even though they now surround Avdiivka on three sides. Instead, they are pressing forward toward the rail line on the north and toward a series of villages on the south that would gain them access to the road through Orlivka, which is the equivalent of that “road of life” for Avdiivka.
As with Bakhmut, the concern is that Russia has finally rubbed two brain cells together and determined that the way to deal with Avdiivka is to keep hammering it with artillery while moving most of the forces around the city. They can always come back for it when it’s buried in red.
However, there’s one other way in which Avdiivka is like Bakhmut: In the last week, there has been a lot of talk about both of them being the centers of a new Ukrainian counteroffensive.
On the surface, this makes no sense. Why direct a counteroffensive at the area where Russia has most of its forces concentrated? There are hundreds of kilometers of front line out there, including areas where Ukraine knows that Russia has stripped forces to bolster the attacks and Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Why not go for those weaker areas? Why go right into the place with the greatest concentration of Russian forces of all types?
This appears to be why. [Tweet and image at the link: “The Wagner fighters are being exhausted in Bakhmut, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) want to use this for a counteroffensive. This follows from a statement by Commander of the Ground Forces of the AFU Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Ukrainian News agency reports.”]
It may be that Ukraine is not just seeking a battle, they are seeking a decisive battle. Maybe they don’t want to take some piece of Zaporizhzhia, or a chuck out of Luhansk, only to see Russian forces reposition behind some of the defensive lines they’ve been building for months.
If they can engage the Russian forces at Bakhmut and Avdiivka, if they can crush them there before they can retreat, then it matters little how many miles of trench Russia has put in the beaches of Crimea. Maybe Ukraine doesn’t want to be Hannibal, wandering around their own country for years, but never coming to that final confrontation. […]
Russia has no second army. It is all in. Its forces are fully engaged, and both the bulk and the best of those forces are in a small area of the eastern front, from Avdiivka to Bakhmut. Hit them there, take them out, and what happens next is a foregone conclusion.
General Sirskyi is right to note that the only Russian forces fighting well along this line are Wagner forces. He’s also right in saying that “they are losing significant strength and are exhausted.” Still, this is a very high risk, high reward strategy.
Maybe this will happen. Maybe maintaining Bakhmut and Avdiivka at all costs against months of bombardment and assault is one fantastic feint to distract from the real direction of the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
From Simes (“of the Mueller Report,” as Julia Davis describes him):
America is being ruled by a coalition of minorities: national, ethnic[,] and, of course, sexual. This is a coalition of minorities against a white majority.
As Sen. Kyrsten Sinema tries to raise a ton of money ahead of the 2024 election cycle, Politico reports that the Arizona independent has “used a series of Republican-dominated receptions and retreats this year to belittle her Democratic colleagues, shower her GOP allies with praise and, in one case, quite literally give the middle finger to President Biden’s White House.”
[…] Ron DeSantis has got his first big fumble in his presidential roll out. He staked out an aggressively anti-Ukraine position on the conflict and American involvement in that conflict, going as far as to label it a “territorial dispute” and suggest no real U.S. interests at stake. This is in line with most Republicans in the Trump wing of the party and not surprising. But he got major pushback from a number of Senate Republicans and GOP foreign policy hands. So he shifted gears, now saying that the Russian invasion is really pretty bad after all, identifying Putin as a “war criminal” who must be “held accountable.” [I saw that, all parts of it, and it was painful to watch the dunderhead squirm as he tried to walk back previous comments.]
[…] this is grist for Trump’s virtuoso taunting and pillorying. He commits the ultimate sin in the Trump GOP — admitting error, retreating rather than going on the offensive. […]
There’s another dimension to this which, again, points to a key DeSantis weakness. It’s basically a box-checking candidacy. He’s methodically aligned himself with the core Trump GOP positions and done Trump better by making law and policy on key Trumpian issues like “parental rights,” hostility to LGBTQ communities, and hostility to COVID-era mitigation efforts. That’s a strong argument for the nomination. He didn’t just talk. He changed policy and law and then got reelected by a genuinely overwhelming margin.
But it’s not really DeSantis’ agenda. It’s the composite GOP agenda circa 2021/2022. He’s not the one defining any of it. He’s following rather than leading. […] “Tell me what position you want me to have and I’ll enforce it” is basically DeSantis’s pitch to the GOP. Not having any actual positions himself, especially on something like Ukraine where he’s just followed the GOP flavor of the moment, leaves him vulnerable […]
Don’t get me wrong. A cookie-cutter campaign can work. Lots of campaigns are like that. But he’s in a battle with a rival who decides his positions by instinct and in a party that largely defines correct policy by whatever Donald Trump decides the policy should be. That’s a vulnerability.
HONOLULU (CN) — Hawaii, the first state in the U.S. to decriminalize abortion three years before the establishment of Roe v. Wade in 1973, reinforced its commitment for an individual’s right to choose Wednesday as Governor Josh Green signed a law beefing up abortion protections for both the state residents and out-of-state travelers….
Senate Bill 1 clarifies the right of a pregnant person to obtain an abortion or terminate a pregnancy and responds to action from other states that have sought to impose heavy abortion restrictions after last summer’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision.
Green, who is a medical doctor, said during the signing, “Women have a right to chose to have an abortion. Doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants, health care providers, have a right to care for their patients in the way that they think is the best for them in a private way for those in need. That’s what’s at stake here.”
SB 1 specifically prohibits disclosing information about reproductive health care services or workers to civil or criminal action from other states. It also prevents subpoenas and demands of surrenders issued from out of state for investigation into reproductive health care services performed in Hawaii…
The bill also allows licensed physician’s assistants to perform abortion procedures, where only physician or surgeons were permitted before, and repeals the requirement procedures only be performed at certain facilities.
Maui Senator Gilbert Keith-Agaran, one of initial introducers of the bill, said that this element of the bill was especially important for expanding reproductive health care services to patients that may not have immediate access.
“That was the acknowledgement that in rural areas, especially in neighbor islands, physician assistants might be the primary care medical provider for a lot of people,” Senator Keith-Agaran said in a phone interview.
5:26pm: Attendance at protest marches high in cities around France
Figures from unions and authorities suggest that turnout on Thursday for demonstrations against pension reforms has been among the highest since strikes began in January.
In Rouen, authorities said 14,800 protesters joined marches – a record since the beginning of the year – compared with 23,000, according to the CGT union.
Participation was also up sharply in Lyon (where 22,000-55,000 attended), Brest (where 20,000-40,000 attended) and Montpellier (where 18,000-40,000 attended), although numbers did not reach the same highs as on previous strike days, January 31 and March 7.
Differences in figures from unions and authorities are routine, yet especially large contrasts have been noted in some cities. In Nice, the CGT puts the number of demonstrators present on Thursday at 40,000 and the authorities just 5,200. In Marseille the prefecture counted 16,000 demonstrators, or seventeen times less than the 280,000 suggested by the CGT.
The reporting suggests that a lot of young people/students are participating in demonstrations for the first time.
While Biden speaks about the benefits of the ACA, Trump continues (between putts, apparently) his fascistic attacks on the justice system, as covered at the NBC liveblog:
The former president lashed out against the Manhattan district attorney on his Truth Social account, calling Bragg a “A SOROS BACKED ANIMAL [grrrr] WHO JUST DOESN’T CARE ABOUT RIGHT OR WRONG NO MATTER HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HURT,” a reference to liberal megadonor George Soros, who supported Bragg’s campaign for DA through the Color of Change PAC.
“WHY WON’T BRAGG DROP THIS CASE? EVERYBODY SAYS THERE IS NO CRIME HERE. I DID NOTHING WRONG! IT WAS ALL MADE UP BY A CONVICTED NUT JOB WITH ZERO CREDIBILITY, WHO HAS BEEN DISPUTED BY HIGHLY RESPECTED PROFESSIONALS AT EVERY TURN,” Trump said, referring to Cohen, his former attorney.
Trump added, “THIS IS NO LEGAL SYSTEM, THIS IS THE GESTAPO, THIS IS RUSSIA AND CHINA, BUT WORSE. DISGRACEFUL!”
In a post to his social media platform Truth Social, Trump leveled a new round of insults and called for the removal of the officials behind the various criminal cases facing him, including Bragg, Fulton County DA Fani Willis, New York Attorney General Letitia James and special counsel Jack Smith.
He called Bragg “a danger to our Country,’ described Smith as a “Radical Lunatic Bombthrower,” and said Willis is trying to make his 2020 phone calls to Georgia officials into a “plot to destroy America.”
In a separate post, he said Bragg is “doing the work of Anarchists and the Devil, who want our Country to fail.”
A federal judge set to hear a defamation trial against former President Trump next month has decided to use an anonymous jury — noting Trump’s history of “attack[ing] courts, judges, various law enforcement officials and other public officials, and even individual jurors in other matters.”
“If jurors’ identities were disclosed, there would be a strong likelihood of unwanted media attention to the jurors, influence attempts, and/or of harassment or worse of jurors by supporters of Mr. Trump,” Judge Lewis Kaplan writes.
Kaplan also mentions in passing (though he doesn’t express a view about) Trump’s recent call for “protest” given the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation and possible indictment in the hush money case.
Russian forces have left the town of Nova Kakhovka in the southern Kherson region, the Ukrainian military’s general staff has said. Reuters quotes its evening report outlining conditions on the front lines as saying:
As of 22 March 2023, all units of the occupying army that had been deployed in the town of Nova Kakhovka in Kherson region, have left the city.
The town is located on the east bank of the Dnipro River, where Russian forces redeployed last November after abandoning positions on the west bank in the face of a counter-offensive by Ukrainian troops.
The report said Russian troops had stolen appliances, valuables, clothing and mobile telephones from nearby houses as they departed.
Manuel and Patricia Oliver were just kicked out of this committee hearing on gun violence. Patricia said one thing and the chair escalated the entire situation. Then, Police arrested Manuel Oliver who lost his son in the Parkland shooting.
His son was shot to death.
The Chair should’ve given a warning. He completely escalated the situation.
DETROIT — The parents of a teenager who killed four students at a Michigan high school can face trial for involuntary manslaughter, the state appeals court said Thursday in a groundbreaking case of criminal responsibility for the acts of a child.
The murders would not have happened if the parents hadn’t purchased a gun for Ethan Crumbley or if they had taken him home from Oxford High School on the day of the shooting, when staff became alarmed about his extreme drawings, the appeals court said.
James and Jennifer Crumbley are accused of failing to secure a gun and ignoring the mental health needs of their son before the shootings. Besides the deaths of four students, seven people were wounded.
Judge Michael Riordan said parents shouldn’t be hauled to court for “subpar, odd or eccentric” care of their kids. But the evidence against the Crumbleys, he added, is much more serious.
“The morning of the shooting, EC drew a picture of a body that appeared to have two bullet holes in the torso, apparently with blood streaming out of them, which was near another drawing of a handgun that resembled the gun his parents … had very recently gifted to him,” Riordan said.
It was “visual evidence” that Ethan was contemplating gunshot wounds on someone, the judge said.
The Crumbleys were summoned to school for a meeting about the drawing, but didn’t take Ethan home.
The parents’ lawyers declined to comment Thursday, citing a gag order. They’ll likely ask the Michigan Supreme Court to review the case, particularly because that court had ordered the appeals court to hear arguments.
Williams, who was accused of directing the mob and making violent statements about former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was convicted by a jury on six federal charges in November. During a lengthy sentencing hearing Thursday, prosecutors accused Williams of obstructing the investigation into her case and of denying responsibility for her actions.
A federal prosecutor argued Williams “bemoaned the fact that the siege hadn’t gone further. There was nothing patriotic about what she did on Jan. 6.”
The prosecutor said, “Riley Williams used commercial grade software to wipe her computer six times” and removed computer hardware to hide evidence.” …
“She might be incapable of remorse. She remains openly proud of her actions,” the prosecutor argued.
In their prior arguments, the Justice Department alleged Williams moved inside Pelosi’s office; directed other rioters; pushed against officers and took video, audio, and photo recordings of her activities. Prosecutors said Williams also threw a water bottle at police officers and called them traitors.
While inside the Speaker’s Office, according to the government, Williams encouraged other rioters to steal an office laptop, and took a video of the theft, telling one of them, “Dude, put on gloves!” and yelling, among other things, “Take that f—– laptop.” …
In a statement to the judge, Williams apologized to police and Capitol employees. She said, “I barely recognize the young and stupid girl who yelled at police that day. I’m now a responsible woman.” …
Terrific! Just imagine how mature and responsible she will be in 3 years when she gets out of the slammer.
Hannity edits Trump’s Ukraine ramblings to make him seem slightly less weak and treason-y
Re: #490
NYT:
Walgreens Loses Contract With California Over Stance on Abortion Pill
Katie Robertson / March 8, 2023
[“only where state laws allowed pharmacists to do so,” yet Kansas, Iowa, Montana and Alaska, where abortion remains legal, are included.]
Ukraine update:
Link
More Ukraine updates were posted earlier in comments 479 and 481.
Saw this Shackleton movie with Tim Jarvis & including powerful glacier melting Global Overheating sections last night & would very highly recommend.
Lynna @494 (last page)
You’re lucky. My optometrist plays Newsmax. Luckily there are inner and outer waiting rooms, Unfortunately, all of the waiting rooms play Newsmax. But he requires Covid vaccinations (saw a note on the wall through an open door into a staff area) and required masking more than anyone except my Geisinger (which still requires masks (BRAVO!!!)) and has a note on the door saying that masks are perfectly acceptable if you are vulnerable or you are sick,
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (Newspaper of the Year at the Press Awards) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
KINBURN SPIT NEWS:
Aussie – & US o A – possible war with PRC news :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-09/kevin-rudd-warns-risk-of-accidental-war-with-china/102074010
Is it just me or does talking about a possible war between the PRC & USA seem like a self-fulfilling escalating “prophecy” to anyone else? Also whilst war with China sadly isn’t “unthinkable” – clearly – it would be World War III and utterly horrendously catastrophic for everyone on this planet.
Hear here also :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-09/kevin-rudd-speaks-of-the-dangers-of-the-tense/102076792
Meanwhile another former PM’s* toxic abusive nasty cult seems to be getting exposed for what it is a bit more here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-10/federal-mp-accuses-hillsong-money-laundering-tax-evasion/102077080
I hope this is the beginning of the end and some actual action being taken against the Hellsong cultists.
.* No, not Abbott, the other even worse recent LNP one.
Paul K @ #456, I know! It’s terrible and has been getting progressively worse for the past few weeks. A while back, I saw someone responding to some troll/jerk with damning quotes from I think the Fox filings. I’d love to see simple graphic memes quoting these people and catching them out on their many lies.
Tucker Carlson on Trump: “I hate him passionately.”
Tucker Carlson, January 4, 2021: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.”
Oggie @497 in the previous chapter of this thread. I definitely feel some empathy for you. Newsmax is even worse than Fox News. (Hard to imagine, but true.) Yes, we should not be subjected to that propaganda in public spaces.
For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of comments in this thread:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/01/11/infinite-thread-xxvi/comment-page-4/#comment-2170394
Ukraine update
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/01/11/infinite-thread-xxvi/comment-page-4/#comment-2170391
Walgreens Loses Contract With California Over Stance on Abortion Pill
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/01/11/infinite-thread-xxvi/comment-page-4/#comment-2170373
Congratulations to Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who joins the ranks of so many Republican leaders in protecting children from burdensome regulations which prevent them from being chewed up by the rapacious maw of capitalism before they’re old enough to drive a car. Priorities!
Link
Link
Link
Guardian – “Georgia drops bill on ‘foreign agents’ after two nights of violent protests”:
Aaron Rupar:
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1633645385746120705
Video at the link.
Judge: Wohl And Burkman Violated Three Federal Civil Rights Laws With Racist Robocalls
Well, the courts are punishing the bad guys, so at least parts of the USA justice system still work. Certainly seems like it take a looong time for the wheels of justice to turn.
From the Guardian UK liveblog:
Funny, I was just reading quotes from top British officials a century ago praising Mussolini’s economic policy…
How proud they must be.
SC @5: “Georgia drops bill on ‘foreign agents’ after two nights of violent protests”
Sorry to see that it took that much public protest to get the bill dropped, but that is still good news.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell hospitalized after fall
Followup to SC in comment 5.
Defeat for Putin and victory for pro-European forces in Georgia
Michigan Legislature Adds LGBTQ Protections to State Civil Rights Act
Thursday, March 09, 2023
Religion Clause
Guardian liveblog:
From the Kyiv Independent’s news feed:
Ukraine update: Bakhmut wasn’t of strategic importance, but it is now
Court records show Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch directing hosts to ‘help’ Trump and McConnell
Wonkette: “Repro Rights Roundup: Things At Least Going Well In California, Michigan, And France!”
More re the first story @ Lynna’s #17 above from All In (YT link) – “She was denied an abortion despite the risk to her life, now she’s suing Texas”:
France 24 – “Tunisia’s Saied to dissolve municipal councils ahead of local elections”:
As Biden unveils his budget plan, where’s McCarthy’s alternative?
The White House’s budget plan is now available in writing, subject to scrutiny. Do House Republicans have the courage to follow suit?
Mykhailo Podolyak:
Subtitled video at the (Twitter) link. Several hours after it was tweeted, the comments are normal and overwhelmingly supportive. We’ll have to see what it looks like in 12 hours or a day.
Followup to comment 20.
McCarthy plots default, tries make Treasury do an impossible thing, but calls Biden ‘unserious’
Ukraine update:
Leave Tucker Carlson alone [Not really.]
Jim Jordan makes another desperate move … and he flops again.
Link
From the other day: “Police using water cannon against peaceful demonstrator waving EU flag outside the Georgian Parliament protesting the adoption of the Russian-style anti-NGO law.”
Video at the (Twitter) link.
Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/alex-jones-hiding-assets-unpossible
SC @26, I noticed that some media coverage insists on characterizing the protestors as “violent.” It is the response to the protest that is violent.
VegNews:
“How Hershey’s Made Its First Vegan Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Chocolate Bars”:
“Long an American School Lunch Staple, Cow’s Milk May Be On Its Way Out”:
West Virginia Republicans Will Not Be Denied Their Child Brides
Kyiv Independent – “Georgian opposition demands resignation of government, early elections”:
Is it me or have we not heard much about this record-breaking cyclone in the media which ahs intensified 4 separate times and holds the record for accumulated cyclone energy? Its now heading twoards Mozambique about tto slam that nation for a second time :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-09/cyclone-freddy-to-slam-mozambique-friday-in-rare-second-hit/102075800
A short but IMHON good Parody project song about Monkeys ona spinning blue ball here not sure about the hint of bothsiderism but still.
Stephen Colbert on Tucker Carlson hating Trump – plus more ten mins.
Tweet o’ the day.
Update to Lynna’s #10: McConnell has a concussion.
NBC News:
Yes, that is yet another derailment.
Cartoon: Fox lies
So, remember back in 2004, during the Presidential election, when questions came up regarding George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard? Remember how, during the investigation by ABC news, information was found suggesting some irregularities and some questions regarding how he got into the Alabama ANG during the Vietnam conflict? And then faked documents were introduced by a conservative ‘whistle-blower’ which claimed that Bush had faked attendance records and that this was the PROOF!? And then Dan Rather went with what seemed the strongest evidence on 60 minutes? And then the evidence, supplied by someone who wanted Bush to stay in office, was exposed as false? And then the right wing noise machine went into overdrive and hounded Dan Rather out of his job? So Dan Rather used planted evidence and was wrong, though he thought he was right, and he lost his job.
So why do all of the Fox ‘News’ personalities, who knew they were lying, who complained about lying, get to keep their jobs? I thought that conservatives were all about taking responsibility for your actions (or is that just for teen girls who get pregnant because their school only taught ‘abstinence-only’ sex-ed and never realized that what he was doing was baby-making sex and now have to carry the fetus to term because that is taking responsibility for your actions?)?
As a Pluto (& ice dwraf and smaller planets generally) fan I agree with most of this :
Source : https://www.lpi.usra.edu/planetary_news/2023/02/28/what-is-a-planet-planetary-scientists-respond-to-the-international-astronomical-unions-definition/?fbclid=IwAR3TMUAaqJSkH40wVm8yPkfJse1V-pA8vnjamybjFco71ODiz2xwzwnkpuM
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. Their latest summary:
Also from there:
Also in the Guardian:
“Republicans push wave of bills that would bring homicide charges for abortion”: “Proliferation of bills in Texas, Kentucky and elsewhere ‘exposes fundamental lie of anti-abortion movement’, experts say…”
(What a ludicrous belief: “‘[We] oppose penalties for mothers [sic], who are a second victim of a predatory abortion industry,” said Kristi Hamrick, the chief media and policy strategist for Students for Life of America. “We want to see a billion-dollar industry set up to profit by preying on women and the preborn held accountable. The pro-life movement as a whole has been very clear on this’.”)
“The drag show bans sweeping the US are a chilling attack on free speech”: “The breadth of these bills is staggering, and many go beyond their purported goals of protecting children from obscenity…”
“Ron DeSantis is just getting started with his rightwing agenda. That should worry us all”: “It’s appalling to see the media lavish DeSantis with so much fawning coverage. Especially after all he has done…”
“I once admired Russell Brand. But his grim trajectory shows us where politics is heading”: “In an age of distortion, public figures have powerful tools and a responsibility. This is an object lesson in how that can go wrong…”
“Russia ally Belarus brings in death penalty for high treason”: “Alexander Lukashenko signs bill allowing execution of officials and military personnel for harming national security…”
France 24 – “Présidentielle en Turquie : l’opposition unie face à un Erdogan ‘plus fragilisé que jamais'”:
As they note, the elections will be held on May 14.
Guardian liveblog:
Kyiv Independent – “ISW: Russia unlikely to make significant gains launching new counteroffensive in Vuhledar”:
The opinion piece about Russell Brand by George Monbiot @ #40 linked to this interesting 2020 Intercept article by Naomi Klein:
“The Great Reset Conspiracy Smoothie”:
That article alerted me to the existence of a recent sequel to the 2003 movie The Corporation, The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel:
It also reminded me of this 2019 tweet:
I suspect its more to do with his background: as you’ll be well aware, a lot of Latin Americans, particularly but not only from the left, have a deep-rooted and well-grounded suspicion of US foreign policy. The fact that in this case the US is assisting a victim of imperialism is hard for them to conceive or admit. And of course if and when Ukraine actually wins, we can expect its “helpers” to team up with Ukranian oligarchs to rob the general population blind. Anti-union laws are already being pushed through. That’s why I’m supporting the Ukrainian Solidarity Campaign in the UK, which is closely linked to the KVPU (Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine), not the neoliberal dominated Zelenskyy government (I’d say I have much the same view of Zelenskyy as I would have had of Churchill in WW2 – applauding his resistance to fascist aggression while deploring his domestic policies). Incidentally, Allan Armstrong, who’s authored one of the articles on the USC front page, is a personal friend.
KG @ #45, are there examples of him expressing such views about these “empires” prior to this invasion? I don’t recall any, but admittedly I don’t follow his utterances very closely.
Guardian liveblog:
Sort of good news from Iowa, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Iowa City Press-Citizen link
Previous posts in this thread discussed the fact that Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation into law that eliminated age verification requirements for children younger than 16 years old who were being employed in sometimes dangerous jobs.
Now we see this trend spreading in Republican circles:
Seema Nanda, the Labor Department’s top attorney, called efforts to weaken child-worker protections “irresponsible.”
Some of the jobs where children are employed, or where Republicans want them to be employed, include meatpacking plants. In Minnesota, a proposed bill would allow 16- and 17-year olds to work construction jobs.
Not a good idea.
The thugs at the “Ministry of Foreign Affairs” of the Russians temporarily occupying Crimea (so aptly named, as they are indeed foreign) tweeted:
From the responses:
Robust job growth exceeded expectations again in February
Good news: The U.S. economy has created over 12.8 million jobs since January 2021 — roughly double the combined total of Donald Trump’s first three years in office.
“Just the editor of Russia Today casually threatening a nuclear strike on Tbilisi, which she says isn’t worth sparing because unlike Kyiv it doesn’t contain Orthodox religious shrines….”
Screenshot (no translation) at the (Twitter) link.
Ukraine update: A small Ukrainian advance shows that there are more important positions than Bakhmut
More updates coming soon.
Lauren Boebert, 36, Is Going to Be a Grandmother
Kevin McCarthy’s limited foresight gets him into trouble (again)
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has earned a reputation as a chess player who can’t think more than one move at a time.
Of course, Elon Musk is building a fiefdom in Texas where he can rule over his residents/employees
Utopia Trailer Park.
Comments posted by readers of the article:
BBC refuses to air new David Attenborough nature program because of possible right-wing backlash
More at the link.
Federal regulators seize the number one bank used by startups after it collapses
@ 61
Just like the Palins, it’s nice to see the Boeberts embrace the Christian values of Chasity and “purity” that they expect us all to follow.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #61…
Buried down in the article in Boebert’s son’s defense that she (Lauren) did the same to her mother. One might wonder how far that goes back in that family… At 73, I might be older than Lauren Boebert’s grandmother.
Is Andy Ogles’ exaggerated résumé as scandalous as George Santos’? No, but the Tennessee Republican’s embarrassing troubles are clearly getting worse.
It’s hard to be worse than George Santos. You’d have to lie about every single thing, and then you’d have to scam a few people out of their money as well.
House Freedom Caucus Says It’ll ‘Consider’ Helping Raise Debt Limit If Each And Every One Of Its Demands Are Met
Ha! Well, a least they put their whackadoodle plan on paper. It’s not really a “plan.” It is more a threat to kill the hostage.
Followup to comment 60.
More Ukraine updates:
Link
House GOP, which can’t even accomplish Congress stuff, grills Yellen over fact Biden has a budget
I conclude that House Republicans will not make any concessions to reality.
NBC News:
Somewhat related news, also from NBC:
NBC News:
Hypocrisy.
Show Me Missouri:
Link
“Life Imitates the Oscars.”
Reach out and slap someone.
New Yorker link to the cartoon.
Lady Liberty slaps Tucker Carlson. President Zelensky slaps Putin. Etc.
Regarding comment 75: I do not recommend slapping anyone. I should not have posted a link to that cartoon.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #74, 75 & 76…
Beats what would likely happen in Missouri.
whheydt @77, True.
Related news: Arizona Board of Education creates hotline for citizens to report all that ‘CRT’ being taught
This comment here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/03/10/glinner-evokes-the-mob/comment-page-1/#comment-2170604
but again here about liars – including one with links to failed far reich wing extremist fringe candidate Deves – inciting baseless fear and hate towards trans people and hurting many cis people in the process.
SC@53,
Good question. I can’t find any quotes from Pope Francis directly criticising (non-Russian) “empires”, but he tends to be rather oblique in his comments. The sections on “International policy” and “International diplomatic role” in the Wikipedia article on him suggest implicit criticisms of US policy, particularly over Venezuela and Israel/Palestine (the Vatican recognises the state of Palestine).
SC@54,
Neither the Guardian nor other pro-Ukranian sources I’ve seen mention that Dmytro Kotsiubailo was a member of the far-right “Right Sector”. That doesn’t detract from his courage, but I don’t think mention of the disturbing aspects of Ukranian political culture should be suppressed by supporters of Ukranian resistance to the invaders.
KG @ #80, the WP page you link to no longer contains that claim. It could change again by the time I post this, but the latest edit reads “Removed incorrect allusion to association with nationalist organisation.” View the history for more.
Re Francis, meh. That page has this (incomplete) description of his responses to the Russian full invasion of Ukraine:
His pattern on this appears to be more just uninformed and ill-informed, and often frankly stupid, than drawing from a larger worldview that’s unsuited to this particular situation.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
SC@81,
The Kiev Independent says Kotsiobailo “took part in the EuroMaidan in 2014, soon after joining the Right Sector Ukrainian Volunteer Corps and fighting off Russia in Ukraine’s Donbas region.”. Yahoo news also says he was a member of Right Sector.
Kyiv Independent.
OK, the volunteer battalion he joined at 18 was Right Sector.
Speaking of the Kyiv Independent, Here’s Illia Ponomarenko’s recent interview with Michael Kofman and Rob Lee (YT link):
I don’t understand why people don’t seem to be taking the possibilities for resistance among the civil population into account.
Also, from their news feed:
In the Guardian:
“Texas youth organizers take aim at the biggest oil field in the US”:
“Record deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest shows challenge facing Lula”:
“Artificial turf potentially linked to cancer deaths of six Phillies ball players – report”:
“Around 700 military personnel, 26 aircraft and helicopters, from 8 #NATO countries take part in annual exercise in Portugal…”
Sharing this tweet for the photo.
Thanks for the correction!
Hunter Walker re SVB (see Lynna’s #65 above):
There’s a fascinating and bizarre brouhaha going on in the UK around a former footballer, Gary Lineker, now a very highly paid BBC sports presenter. Lineker tweeted about the vile anti-migrant rhetoric of the government, comparing it to Nazi rhetoric of the 1930s. The home secretary, Cruella Braverman, complained, and the BBC suspended Lineker from his role – despite the fact that their “impartiality” guidelines do not apply to sports, arts, etc. presenters, only to news and political staff and presenters (there are previous and current examples illustrating this, e.g. the presenter of a popular programme showcasing “entrepreneurs”, Sir Alan Sugar, openly backed the Tories at the last general election). Multiple BBC sports presenters have now announced that they will not appear in protest at Lineker’s suspension, and the corporation’s weekend football (i.e. soccer) coverage has almost entirely collapsed. There have been renewed calls for Richard Sharp, the chair of the BBC, to resign – he is under investigation for failing to tell Parliament of his role in getting Johnson a big loan when he was interviewed prior to his appointment. It’s blindingly clear that the requirement for “impartiality” is not being applied impartially!
KG @ #90, thank you for the explanation of what’s happening. I keep seeing tweets and comments about it, but had only gathered bits and pieces of what was going on.
Meduza – “Russian Ministry of Justice declares World Wildlife Fund, economist Sergey Guriev ‘foreign agents’”:
The Professional Footballers’ Association, the Sports Journalists’ Association of Great Britain, and some football fans at the Leicester City/Chelsea match (Lineker was born in Leicester and first played professionally for Leicester City) have all expressed support for him.
Meanwhile the BBC have said they are “working hard to resolve the situation”. This “working hard to…” guff has become standard in the UK when an organization has made a complete mess, and wants to pretend it has some idea what to do about it.
Ukraine update: Russians are ‘massively’ ratting each other out over claims of supporting Ukraine
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Followup to comments 65 and 89.
Josh Marshall:
As reported by Alexandria Gonzalez-Ramirez, for New York Magazine:
Commentary:
As reported by Eleanor Klibanoff for the Texas Tribune:
More commentary:
Link
Re: Pope Francis vis-à-vis Ukraine
Id’ say that KG’s analysis @#52 is pretty much on point. I don’t feel like diving into a deep analysis, but as someone born in the same country as Mr. F, at the very least I can tell you that his stance aligns pretty well with the overall sentiment that I find within my country’s ruling center-left party, of which the Pope is a sympathizer. A large majority seems to be of the opinion that both Russia and NATO are equally to blame for the war and prefer to be neutral in the conflict, while a vocal minority is fully pro-Putin and only a tiny portion fully supports Ukraine.
The following are polls conducted in Argentina a month after the war started, I don’t have newer ones at hand.
Do you think that the war in Ukraine is justified or an unilateral aggression on Russia’s part?
Overall sentiment: 64% unilateral Russian aggression, 18% a justified war, 18% unsure.
Frente de Todos (current ruling party, left to center, Pope’s favorite, president had praised Putin shortly before the war): 27% unilateral Russian aggression, 35% a justified war, 38% unsure.
Juntos por el Cambio (former ruling party, solidly right-wing, former president was ironically friends with Donald Trump): 90% unilateral Russian aggression, 5% a justified war, 5% unsure.
The rest: 62% unilateral Russian aggression, 21% a justified war, 17% unsure.
What should Argentina’s attitude be?
Overall sentiment: 52% back Ukraine, 6% back Russia, 41% remain neutral, 1% unsure.
Frente de Todos (Pope’s most favored party): 13% back Ukraine, 17% back Russia, 70% remain neutral.
Juntos por el Cambio: 75% back Ukraine, 2% back Russia, 21% remain neutral, 2% unsure.
The rest: 56% back Ukraine, 44% remain neutral.
What should be the reaction of the US and its NATO allies?
Overall sentiment: 46% Keep sending weapons, resources and humanitary aid, 31% leave Ukraine on its own, 11% intervene directly, even at risk of starting a nuclear WWIII, 12% unsure.
Frente de Todos (Pope’s most favored party): 16% Keep sending weapons, resources and humanitary aid, 59% leave Ukraine on its own, 4% intervene directly, even at risk of starting a nuclear WWIII, 21% unsure.
Juntos por el Cambio: 71% Keep sending weapons, resources and humanitary aid, 8% leave Ukraine on its own, 16% intervene directly, even at risk of starting a nuclear WWIII, 5% unsure.
The rest: 37% Keep sending weapons, resources and humanitary aid, 37% leave Ukraine on its own, 12% intervene directly, even at risk of starting a nuclear WWIII, 14% unsure.
Followup to comment 95.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down at the link to view these updates.
https://twitter.com/SteveGoffman/status/1634358622774861824
Images at the link. Nicely done.
Commentary regarding the snowflake featured in comment 100:
Link
Throw some dirt on it.
Apparently that’s the fire-suppression system in this Russian BMP.
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1633588890580779021
Rare footage of a fire from inside Russian BMP, as well as attempts to extinguish the fire with dirt. Filmed by Russians themselves.
The Russians finally get the vehicle stopped. Then one climbs out, scoops up dirt with his hands and gives that dirt to a fellow soldier who then tosses it on the fire. Kinda scary.
Florida To Make Rape Victims Show ‘Proof’ Before They Can Get An Abortion
Link
StevoR @ # 45, quoting I’m-not-sure-whom: … the definition of a planet should be based on its geologic or atmospheric complexity.
Sounds interesting in principle, but in practice wouldn’t that rule out almost all extrasolar “planets” of which we can barely make out approximate mass and orbital vector?
@ ^ Pierce R. Butler : Well, not necessarily given modelling and transits and the information they can provide. We can determine at least minimum masses and then model from there in most cases.
.***
18 mins long youtube clip here on the Enzmann Echolance Relativistic starship idea which is SF at least for now but still pretty awesome in my view.
Too little. Too late.
Link
Wonkette: “What Caused The SVB Collapse?”
Link
Ukraine Update: The battle over Bakhmut rages, and I’m not talking the military one
This update article is accompanied by an image of a female Ukrainian soldier: “Ukraine has the largest number of women in its combat forces in the world, as a percentage of the overall force.”
Followup to comment 107:
Link
The apocalyptic version of Trumpism:
Link
I think Trump has played around with an apocalyptic worldview before, but I agree that he is now leaning heavily into that view. Yes, his rhetoric condones even more violence. And Trump has pumped up his persona to represent more clearly the dispenser of “retribution.”
Years before the police beating of Tyre Nichols, Memphis relaxed academic, disciplinary and fitness standards for recruits, nine current and former officers said.
Washington Post link
Wasting the taxpayer’s money in Texas: Texas Has Massive Wall-Building Contracts. But It Doesn’t Have Anywhere To Put A Wall.
Boondoggle.
Followup to comment 114.
Posted by readers of the article:
Followup to comments 65, 89, 96, and 108.
Josh Marshall: How to Think about the Silicon Valley Bank Collapse
Texts show how Fox News blocked journalists from disproving the hoaxes that led to Jan. 6 violence
AP News:
Thousands of pro-Trump bots are attacking DeSantis, Haley
By DAVID KLEPPER / March 6, 2023
The BBC has always been a tool of the British establishment, particularly the news department, but the way in which the Tory party has infiltrated the Corporation has become increasingly blatant over the last few years. That influence has now spread beyond the news department to the sports department with the Tory-sympathising management now trying to shut up their leading sports presenter, Gary Lineker, because he dared to make a Twitter post critical of he Conservative government’s disgusting immigration policy and rhetoric.
It’s encouraging to see so many of Lineker’s colleagues coming out in support of him. There’s effectively been a strike at BBC Sport which has shut down much of their programming.
Great video by the excellent Owen Jones giving an account of what’s going on along with the historical context here:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also from there:
The Guardian has a Gary Lineker liveblog. It appears the BBC has backed down, and Lineker is returning without restrictions while they review their social media policies.
Lineker tweeted
From the liveblog:
Twitter thread:
That won’t go down well.
Guardian – “Moldova police arrest members of Russian-backed network over unrest plot”:
Guardian – “Saudi Aramco’s $161bn profit is largest recorded by an oil and gas firm”:
New Decoding the Gurus – “Interview with Worobey, Andersen & Holmes: The Lab Leak”:
From the Guardian liveblog: “BBC News now note that the corporation has no way of removing Richard Sharp – its chair – as he was appointed by the government. They also suggest a difference between Lineker’s original tweet, comparing UK immigration policy to 1930s Germany, and this one below [the third tweet in Lineker’s thread @ #121], which is reckoned to be a humanitarian comment, not a political one.”
OMG, stop talking.
SWAJ – “White Christian Nationalism and the FBI”:
For those in the vast majority of countries where DTC drug advertising rightly isn’t allowed, here’s an example from the US: Pfizer is currently running TV ads hawking a drug for eczema whose possible side effects include cancer.
Guardian liveblog:
Kyiv Post:
Guardian liveblog:
More podcast episodes:
SWAJ – “Weekly Roundup: Tuck’s Clucks”:
Her discussion of Trump and De Santis is especially useful.
Incidentally, they’ve been advertising for the Summit for Religious Freedom, which will be held April 22-24 in DC and virtually:
If Books Could Kill – “The New York Times’s War On Trans Kids [TEASER]”:
(It’s a teaser but it’s 28 minutes long.)
If Books Could Kill – “The Coddling Of The American Mind”:
These are not by any means the only possibilities. It could be a naturalvirus that escaped from the WIV. It could be a zoonotic spillover that first occurred elsewhere in China. It could be a natural virus contracted by a sample collector for the WIV but which was never held in the WIV. It could be a virus that escaped from another lab, such as the Wuhan Center for Disease Control. It could have been imported to China during the 2019 Military World Games, held in Wuhan. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO, says that all possible hypotheses on the origins of COVID-19 “remain on the table”.
Brockschmidt’s piece about CPAC at Religion Dispatches – “2023 CPAC Lived Down to Expectations, But Don’t Buy the Narrative: The GOP is Not as Divided as You Might Think”:
Also at Religion Dispatches, an analysis of Trump’s wildly dishonest CPAC speech – “Don’t Sleep on Trump’s CPAC Speech Calling For ‘The Final Battle’: This was Southern Strategy as Apocalyptic Promise.”
KG @ #132, yes, as we’ve discussed here several times, so I’m not sure why you’re presenting that as something new to consider. I think you would find the podcast episode of interest.
Guardian liveblog:
SC@134,
I’m presenting it here because the blurb for the podcast presents a false dichotomy.
Despite recent election results, state Republican parties keep choosing far-right election deniers to serve as state GOP chairs.
Associated Press:
Commentary:
Link
Elon Musk and other MAGA celebrities jump on board with Tucker Carlson’s lies about the QAnon Shaman
KG @ #136, it works to the benefit of people suggesting that the virus didn’t have a natural origin (and especially those suggesting that it was developed as a bioweapon or accidentally released after being created by gain-of-function research) to leave the definition of “lab leak” vague and unspecified, which is why I’ve pressed people claiming some version of a “lab leak” here in the past to specify which specific scenario they’re advocating. But it’s tiresome to have to keep reiterating and running through all of the different variants of “lab leak” (including those consistent with a natural origin), particularly when people are responding primarily to one or another variant in particular (in this case, an origin in GoF research).
It’s also tiresome that people seem to expect those arguing for a natural origin to provide evidence while not shouldering that evidentiary burden themselves because they refuse to land on any one concrete and specified hypothesis. I don’t think I’ve heard the claim that the virus was “imported to China during the 2019 Military World Games” before, but I think someone making that claim should provide evidence for it taking into account all of the existing scientific evidence to date. This suggesting it could have been this, that, and the other without coming down anywhere doesn’t provide any legitimate alternative to the natural-origin hypothesis centered on the wet market.
All of that said, the podcast discusses a number of different claims.
Pathetic.
SC@139,
The “natural-origin hypothesis centered on the wet market” is as vague as any other. Where did the virus originate, what species did it arrive at the market in, how did a member of that species acquire it from a bat, did it undergo significant evolution in the intermediate species (which could be singlular or plural)…? It’s quite possible these questions, or some of them, will be answered, as happened for SARS and MERS. OTOH, it’s quite possible that this hypothesis is correct, but will never be proved. The “military games” notion is one advanced by some spox for the Chinese authorities, without AFAIK any evidence except the coincidence of timing (the games took place in Wuhan in October 2019). The evidence for some involvement of the WIV is circumstantial, but that doesn’t mean it’s not evidence. The WIV is one of very few centres globally, and as far as I can discover one of just two in China (the other is in Hong Kong), that does a lot of work on bat coronaviruses (and it does seem to have emerged since the start of the pandemic that it was doing more than was originally admitted in the way of modifying them). If you put the terms “China”, “bat” and “coronavirus” into the search engine of a database of academic papers such as Scopus or Web of Science, practically every paper returned will have at least one author from WIV. Wet markets, on the other hand, are numerous. What I’m advocating is that we keep an open mind, as the DG of WHO says WHO is doing. That is an entirely legitimate stance in the current state of knowledge.
KG @ #141:
It most certainly is not. The link to the podcast provides links to articles in the scientific literature offering evidence for that hypothesis (and I’ve posted some in the past), including genetic and epidemiological findings. This is, once again, discussed in great detail in the podcast.
The people they interview are the ones who’ve studied these questions for previous viruses, and work (as they discuss, once again, in the podcast) is of course being done to drill down on the specific questions. It’s entirely possible and probably likely that we’ll never have all of the answers or that any origin hypothesis will be conclusively proved, but there is such a thing as providing evidence to support one or another hypothesis (which at the same time makes other hypotheses less likely) (of course, this requires clearly articulating an actual hypothesis, showing its plausibility, and testing it in light of existing evidence).
Good grief, then why are you putting that out? This just seems irresponsible to me.
OK, if you’re not interested in listening to the podcast, fine; but I’m done responding to these arguments which are covered therein.
We’re all doing that. I’m doing that, the podcast hosts are doing that, the scientists they interview are doing that.
Russian Media Monitor (YT links):
“State TV propagandists claim that Russia is saving the world.”
Truly delusional.
“Russian state TV discusses US politics.”
Yeah, those Republican leaders … they’ve still got nothing.
McCarthy’s House AWOL again, while he goes on Fox to declare Biden’s budget ‘not serious’
Link
Link
Jean-Pierre calls for Pence to apologize for Buttigieg, postpartum depression jokes
Dmitri:
Subtitled video at the (Twitter) link.
SC@142,
Yes, the “natural origin hypothesis centered on the wet market” is vague. I don’t doubt, and AFAIK almost no-one doubts, that the wet market played an important part in spreading SARS-CoV-2. I’ve read Worobey’s papers, and they provide good evidence for this, and from what I could see none for how the virus got into the wet market at all. We know this virus can pass from people to other animals and then spread among the latter (as happened in Danish mink farms) as well as the converse, so it remains quite possible it was brought into the wet market by an infected human being. I rarely listen to podcasts, particularly about complex and controversial issues – I find it a lot easier to follow and analyse arguments presented in writing. If the podcast hosts are maintaining open minds, the blurb you quoted does them a disservice.
eyeroll
Wonkette: ‘Fox & Friends’ Idiot Ainsley Earhardt Just Saying Maybe It Is Time For BANK RUN!11!1!1!
New Mexico May End Life Without Parole Sentences For Children … If They Can Find Them
https://www.wonkette.com/new-mexico-life-without-parole
Sheesh.
Ukraine update: Swiss ‘neutrality’ is nothing but a gift to Russian aggression
More updates coming soon.
Josh Marshall: “What Counts As a Bailout?
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-counts-as-a-bailout
Fox gives Ron DeSantis a literal softball interview and the results are just plain bizarre
Followup to comment 153.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down at the link to view these updates.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Washington Post:
Vice – “An Ivermectin Influencer Died. Now His Followers Are Worried About Their Own ‘Severe’ Symptoms.”:
More at the link.
Surprise, non-surprise, Turns out we have plenty of money ($ 368 Billion -yes with a B) for military submarines we don’t need to threaten China with and make a war (WWIII) more likely and ourselves a target in it but NOT for social welfare or the enivronment where we do need to spend much more money – but don’t. See :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-14/aukus-nuclear-submarine-deal-announced/102087614
Global Overheating is far more of a threat to us than China ever will be.
There are going to be anti-subs snap rallies in some capital cities here -Sydney &Melbourne notably
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Kyiv Independent – “Southern Command: Russia’s proxies in occupied parts of Kherson Oblast preparing to leave”:
Guardian liveblog:
Guardian liveblog:
Is that 14 words in Russian?
LOL at “copium cones.” (Twitter link)
Zelenskyy’s office – “President held a meeting of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief’s Staff “:
WarMonitor:
War on the Rocks – “How to Think About Bakhmut and a Ukrainian Spring Offensive”:
SC @159, sounds to me like Danny Lemoi
iswas the parasite.It’s so disturbing that Lemoi was promoting dosing children with Ivermectin. The damage he caused continues, even after his death.
This is wild – Aric Toler:
They asked an AI tool questions, and left links to the questions and answers from the AI in the article; also, rather than finding links to sources, the AI invented them. Screenshots at the (Twitter) link.
Ron DeSantis is now aligned with the growing contingent of his party that would abandon Ukraine and allow Putin to take control of our allied democracy.
Natasha Bertrand:
Re Lynna’s #171 – Andrew Kaczynski:
Audio and video at the (Twitter) link.
More re #167 – (((Tendar))):
Keep it up!
France 24 – “Polish court convicts activist for providing abortion pills to pregnant women”:
60 Minutes (US) (YT link) – “Cancer treatments for dogs could also lead to breakthroughs for humans”:
The French version of #175 has more information – “Une militante polonaise écope de travaux d’intérêt général pour assistance à l’IVG.”
New Mexico Is Making It Easier to Vote
Alex Burness / March 13, 2023
From Bolts
Still classy (not): Trump says everyone who sent him letters in new book ‘kissed my a–‘
Wonkette: “South Carolina So ‘Pro-Life’ It’s Gonna Murderize Everyone Who So Much As Thinks About Having An Abortion”
SC @173, thanks for the additional information.
As Wonkette notes, Ron DeSantis has changed his tune: “Ron DeSantis Can March His Little White Boots In Lockstep With Putin, Just Like Trump And Tucker!”
https://www.wonkette.com/ron-desantis-statement-russia-ukraine
Re: Lynna, OM @ #180…
They’re going to have to prosecute God for all those “spontaneous” miscarriages. And if they can’t catch God to put him in the dock, they can grab the nearest member of the clergy as a representative.
Elizabeth Warren:
Elizabeth Warren in 2018, during Trump’s extra-awful administration:
Commentary:
Link
More from Elizabeth Warren:
On Rachel Maddow’s show, Warren noted that she had voted against retaining Jerome Powell as Chair of the Federal Reserve, and that Powell had taken the weakened regulations and pushed them into more dangerous territory during the Trump administration. https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
Choose the segment titled “Senator Warren on how to fix what Trump broke in banking rules.”
whheydt @182, good idea!
Ukraine Invasion Day 384: are Wagner forces expended to derail Prigozhin’s political aspirations
Cartoon: A Real Drag
NBC News:
Wall Street Journal:
Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 coverage hasn’t just drawn fire from lawmakers, journalists, and the Capitol Police. Federal prosecutors aren’t pleased, either.
Josh Marshall discusses why the GOP House hearings have been so lame:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/cold-open
Wonkette:
Link
Former Australian treasurer and Prime Minister Paul Keating has slammed the AUKUS subs deal :
Keating’s full National Press Club address here 1 hr 5 min long.
News item here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-15/paul-keating-anthony-albanese-penny-wong-aukus-nuclear-china/102098142
With excerpt.
Plus via 7.30 Reprot here : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-15/former-prime-minister-paul-keating-slams-aukus/102102778
Just seen & sorry for the short notice but on the off chance anyone else in Adelaide sees this in time there is a protest tomorrow at Parliament House 12 noon, Adelaide against the visit by British anti-trans and anti-choice bigot “Posie Parker” – see :
https://redflag.org.au/article/why-we-need-protest-posie-parker
Plus : https://redflag.org.au/article/sydney-and-brisbane-say-no-transphobia
In addition to her wikipage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellie-Jay_Keen-Minshull
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Also in today’s Guardian:
“South Korea U-turns on 69-hour working week after youth backlash”:
“Federal investigators examined Trump Media for possible money laundering, sources say”:
“Honduras to switch ties from Taiwan to China, says president”:
Dan Friedman, MoJo:
Cole Stangler in the Guardian – “France’s unions have put up one hell of a fight – and sent a message to the rest of Europe”:
France 24 has a liveblog – “Live: France faces another day of strikes over pension reform plans”:
Yahoo! – “Exclusive: Russia’s secret document for destabilizing Moldova”:
(Would be nice if they could find someone to interview who wasn’t a “Western intelligence official” or rightwing thinktanker.)
Colossal – “Through Incisive Paintings, Toni Hamel Highlights Futile and Inadequate Responses to Global Issues”:
Paintings and links at the link.
Kyiv Independent:
“Poland says several countries willing to send MiG-29 jets to Ukraine”:
“Ukraine’s military says it downed Russian Su-24 aircraft near Bakhmut”:
“Russia, China, Iran holding joint naval drills in Gulf of Oman”:
One of our news sources is having technical trouble:
Bad News, as summarized from a Politico article:
North Carolina’s high court seems inclined to toss past redistricting rulings
The move could moot the U.S. Supreme Court’s showdown over powers of state legislatures
The Kremlin was reportedly “elated” with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ rhetoric about the war in Ukraine.
Donald Trump allies file ethics complaint against GOP rival Ron DeSantis
Next they will be complaining the DeSantis hasn’t paid off his mistress.
As House Republican leaders pursue a wildly unrealistic budget plan, the Congressional Budget Office has produced some inconvenient truths for the GOP.
JFC.
“I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry,” a Minnesota Republican said while explaining his opposition to free meals for school children.
Good news. The dunderheaded Republican’s perspective (or lack of perspective) did not prevail.
And Republicans are always complaining that Democrats are elitists with no understanding of the common people. Sheesh. Sen. Steve Drazkowski proves the opposite is often true.
Another far rightwing doofus is arrested: Bannon Associate Guo Nabbed Over Alleged $1 Billion Fraud Conspiracy
Update to #196 – MoJo – “MAGA Mogul Guo Wengui Charged in $1 Billion Fraud Scheme”:
Followup to comment 207.
Prosecutors said in a letter to the judge that they are seeking Guo Wengui’s detention, arguing he poses a serious risk of flight.
Posted by readers of the article:
Link
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov tweeted:
France 24 liveblog (link @ #197 above):
Guardian liveblog:
Just what Ukraine needs – IMF-imposed conditions.
WaPo:
Abortion pill fight may have broader implications for FDA drug approval
Rachel Roubein, Laurie McGinley and David Ovalle / March 15, 2023
The Trump legacy in action.
Sec. Austin and Gen. Milley are doing a press briefing at the Pentagon right now.
Guardian – “‘Positive change has ceased’ for workers in Qatar since World Cup, unions say”:
Ukraine Update: It was the worst of times … but only in one place
More updates coming soon.
Donald Trump’s lawyer tried to brush off the fact that his client lied in his hush money scandal. Joe Tacopina’s explanation was … a little confusing.
Trump didn’t have to lie. He could have just said, “No comment.” Instead, he said that, “No,” he didn’t know about the payment to Stormy Daniels. Trump did that weird squirrel-like thing with his darting eyes when he lied. He looked like he knew he was lying and then he went ahead and did it anyway, following up by trying to blame Cohen.
See also: https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber
A Quick Look at the Lying Trumpist Liars Behind that Database on Corprate Giving to “BLM”, by Josh Marshall.
Lies, lies and even more incompetent lies from a Republican “think tank.”
There’s no way that they can make that claim stick about “woke” culture causing the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.
Followup to comment 217.
More Ukraine updates:
Even if the Russians recover the wreckage, they won’t learn much. The U.S. destroyed electronics and software before the drone hit the water.
Followup to comment 219.
Posted by Ben Collins. Video at the link.
https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1634955931690889221
Tucker Carlson is turning support of Putin into a shibboleth for the 2024 Republican nomination
Trump Media Company Taking Money From Russian Cutouts?
Satire written by Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Cartoon: Deregulation
Steve Benen:
Okla. lawmaker says Bible endorses corporal punishment of disabled children.
Washington Post link
Mark Sumner quoted @ Lynna’s #217:
He doesn’t give links for these, but I’m confused. Today is Wednesday. The Zelenskyy/military meeting was Tuesday (yesterday) – noted @ #166 above. Does he mean Monday and Tuesday? Did both things happen on Tuesday?
Tweet o’ the day.
Kyiv Independent:
“Media: Military enlistment summons handed out in 6 Russian regions”:
“Canada to transfer artillery, air defense ammunition to Ukraine”:
Zelenskyy introduces tonight’s video message to the Ukrainian people (Twitter link) with one part of the message: “Now we feel that the Russian aggression is approaching the point where it can break.”
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Guardian – “‘We deserve to know’: autopsy of ‘Cop City’ activist shot by police incomplete two months on”:
Guardian liveblog:
Also in today’s Guardian:
“Rural populist party emerges as big winner in Dutch elections”:
They note at the end: “The election also showed how fickle the fortunes of populist parties can be. The vote share of the far-right Forum for Democracy (FvD), led by Thierry Baudet, which won nearly 15% of the vote in 2019 provincial elections, plunged to 3%.”
“Don’t ‘quench your thirst with poison’, Taiwan tells Honduras after switch to China”:
“Russia disinformation looks to US far right to weaken Ukraine support”:
Guardian liveblog:
Kyiv Post:
France 24 unfortunately doesn’t seem to have a liveblog in English today, but they do have a French one, and hoooooooly shit:
In English:
France 24 – “‘Nous n’attendons qu’une étincelle’: quand la désobéissance civile s’installe en Iran”:
Much more at the link.
Elisabeth Borne speaking in the National Assembly. (YT link)
LOL – more re #170 – Vice – “AI Injected Misinformation Into Article Claiming Misinformation in ‘Navalny’ Doc”:
SC @227, I don’t know. The text does not really answer your questions. If I can find clarification somewhere, I’ll post it.
“Ukraine Update: Russia is trying to erase Popasna, scene of a heroic stand and a ghastly war crime
More updates coming soon.
Link
Link
Deadly explosion rips through spy agency building in Russia
Followup to comment 242.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Same link as in comment 242, scroll around to view these additional updates.
New polling: Recent revelations have affected Fox News’ standing
Most Americans agree: Fox News should be punished over its post-election controversy. That majority includes a surprising number of Republican voters.
I have been wondering when Mike Lindell would run out of money.
MyPillow CEO Says His Company Is Going Broke Defending The Big Lie…Then Takes It Back
My guess is that he will not stop until all his money is gone, and/or until he loses all of the lawsuits.
One wonders where he is getting these loans. Surely he is not a good risk for any bank.
Lynna @248:
My guess would be ‘loans’ from certain banks in Russia, routed through multiple shell corporations and offshore banks located in nations with extreme banking privacy acts. Not that any conservative company (Trump Media?) would actually do this, but just a possibility. After all, a few tens of millions of dollars to keep the US on the verge of absolute chaos? A deal at ten times that amount. Luckily for the FSB, conservatives can be bought really cheaply.
Reporter Describes Being Fired By Axios After Being Targeted By Ron DeSantis’ Media ‘Machine’
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ben-montgomery-ron-desantis
Followup to comment 250.
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/goes-to-the-heart-of-the-matter
And publications like Axios get the message—see comments 250 and 251.
Link. More details at the link.
Wonkette: “Florida Republicans Ban Icky, Divisive Pride Flag, OK With Loving, Inclusive Confederate Flag”
Link
Followup to comment 254.
Posted by readers of the article:
Some podcast episodes:
Our Hen House – “A Cat Rescuer You Need to Hear From w/ Sterling “TrapKing” Davis”:
“Episode 177: Popular Anti-Union Talking Points and How to Combat Them”:
Hoy en El País – “Por qué Rusia está ganando aliados en África?”:
NBC – “Los Angeles school district workers to go on a 3-day strike”:
Lynna @ #250, that’s appalling. I was thinking they need a union, but even before I saw the next post by Josh Marshall I was thinking that prior to the union at TPM I couldn’t see him having treated a reporter like that.
It’s the stupidest format I’ve ever seen.
When you start getting criticism from Iceland….
https://grapevine.is/news/2023/03/16/sjon-criticises-j-k-rowling-on-twitter/
Ukraine Update:
Link
Link
Wonkette: “What Can Gettr Do To Get You Into A Brand New Set Of Deluxe Unvaccinated Sperms Today?”
Banking executives sold millions in stock before crash: WSJ
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also from there:
Guardian – “French anger spreads after Macron forces pension age rise”:
Here’s a link to today’s France 24 liveblog:
Guardian liveblog:
Also in today’s Guardian:
“Death of ‘world’s loneliest orca’ sparks calls for change”:
“‘I’m not a doctor just FYI’: the influencers paid to hawk drugs on TikTok”:
France 24 – “Israeli ‘handmaids’ march against government’s judiciary overhaul”:
Wow – Guardian liveblog:
ICC:
Video at the (Twitter) link.
ICC statement – “Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova”:
Re 266
It’s hilarious that Erdogan invited Niinistö for a snap-schedule meeting (of the sort you couldn’t refuse) in Turkey just so they could stage a theatrical press conference together, just for him to announce “OK, OK, we’ll start working on it”.
Finnish media is super excited about this, and Hungary’s hot new announcement that they plan to ratify on 27 March after all. I’ll believe both of these plans when they’ve happened.
I saw this yesterday! (Twitter link)
Associated Press: Rep. George Santos told the Associated Press that he’s a “maybe” on seeking a second term next year. The New York Republican, apparently indifferent to his reputation, also told the AP, “I think truth still matters very much.”
Well, that’s laughable.
Not good news: In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, YouTube suspended Donald Trump’s account, concluding that the then-president’s videos might lead to additional violence. This morning, Axios reported that YouTube has decided to lift its restrictions on the former president’s channel.
WTF? Trump continues to spout the same lies that prompted the January 6 attack.
VoteVets, a progressive veterans organization, launched a new television ad this week calling for military facilities to stop airing Fox News’ primetime hosts.
https://twitter.com/votevets/status/1636397709505490945
Video at the link.
Luke Harding at the Guardian liveblog:
The New York Times:
Commentary:
As if Donald Trump didn’t have enough troubles, at least two dozen people have reportedly received subpoenas as part of the Mar-a-Lago investigation.
Team Trump may be preparing for “a political war” with a New York prosecutor, but the former president appears to be sorely lacking in ammunition.
Sigh. Bothsidesism is still rampant:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/bothesidesism-journalism-false-balance
Dan Sabbagh at the Guardian liveblog:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/social-security-republican-retirement
Posted by readers of the article:
NBC News
Law enforcement agencies are prepping for a possible Trump indictment as early as next week
By Jonathan Dienst / March 17, 2023
One other thing that raising the retirement age does is help employers to pay lower wages. If the retirement age is raised, then older employees do not retire, which means fewer jobs for younger workers. And fewer jobs for younger workers means that employees will take lower-paying jobs to survive.
(((Tendar))):
Photos at the (Twitter) link.
Oggie: Mathom @ # 285: … fewer jobs for younger workers means that employees will take lower-paying jobs …
And by no coincidence at all, we see Republicans across the country spontaneously and simultaneously pushing for more child labor.
Shaun Walker in the Guardian – “The poison umbrella: film sheds new light on infamous cold war killing”: “Documentary questions why prime suspect was never arrested over 1978 murder in London…”
Netflix, can you get this documentary? Thanks.
Sort of a followup to SC in comment 286.
Ukraine Update: What if Bakhmut … doesn’t fall?
Capitol Police: GOP ignored requests to review Jan. 6 footage
The Capitol Police wanted to review every Jan. 6 footage clip before it reached the public. House Republicans apparently had a different plan in mind.
“Controversial” is not the right word. How about “deceitful,” or “Kremlin-loving,” or “unethical”?
Trump’s claims about dead voters undercut by his own researchers
Prosecutors investigating Jan. 6 obtained a report from Donald Trump’s researchers: He was shown proof of his defeat, but he kept lying anyway.
Jim Jordan’s Democratic counterpart: ‘He’s not an honest broker’
Followup to comment 291.
Washington Post:
Commentary:
Link
Wonkette: “Joe Biden Just Throwing Affordable Insulin At America”
https://www.wonkette.com/insane-donald-trump-video
Judge Rules Trump Lawyer Must Testify in Documents Inquiry
New York Times link
The ruling found that the government had met the threshold for the crime-fraud exception, which allows prosecutors to get around attorney-client privilege if they believe a crime has been committed.
That’s a win for Special Counsel Jack Smith. Good news.
Steve Benen is right, how is this possible?
More details at HuffPost.
Trump engages in ‘paranoid’ tactics in effort to get a sneak peek into ongoing investigations
Paintings, vases, golf clubs, and more: foreign gifts to Trump remain unaccounted for
Link
More at the link, including details of how Florida counties deal with sargassum.
@SC #288:
English Title: “The Umbrella Murder – The Story of Agent Picadilly”
Original: “Paraplymordet – Historien om Agent Piccadilly”
If you understand Danish, it’s watchable on the broadcaster’s website here.
Click one of the three episode thumbnails.
* 1 Spionen med de tusinde ansigter (The spy with a thousand faces)
* 2 Drabet på Georgi Markov (The murder of Georgi Markov)
* 3 Jagten på en spion (The hunt for a spy)
In the player, “[=]” toggles Danish subtitles.
If you don’t know Danish, you’ll need to download the show and run its subs through a translator. That will involve a commandline tool (yt-dlp here for Linux/OSX/Windows) and a website.
The tool is self-contained, just put it in the folder where you intend to do downloading. Open a prompt there and edit & run this on one line.
* Edit “TUM_1” and episode 1’s url, “TUM_2” and its url, etc.
* That selects the [b]est stream containing both video and audio at a given height (-F prints all streams). Saving to “TUM_1.mp4” and subtitles to “TUM_1.da.vtt”.
* Filesize for available heights: 360p=280 MB, 480p=560 MB, 540p=980 MB, 720p=1.6 GB, 1080p=2.5 GB.
Visit translatesubtitles.co . Google translate chokes on vtt files, and too big to paste. So this site spoonfeeds sentences to Google.
Drag “TUM_1.da.vtt” onto that webpage.
Select English. Click “Translate” and “Download”. Save as “TUM_1.en.vtt”
Delete “TUM_1.da.vtt” or move it out of the way.
Your desktop video player (e.g., VLC) should now play with English subs.
* Sidenote: If you list streams, you’d see a bunch of video-only/audio-only streams, intended for mix&matched quality. Avoid those for simplicity. yt-dlp would require another optional tool to automatically merge them, ffmpeg. Then telling yt-dlp –ffmpeg-location “…” and -f vstreamId+astreamId.
* You’d also see a bunch of streamIds falsely claiming to be English. Broadcaster goofed.
Addendum to my #301: Blog ate my punctuation. Those should be plain double-quotes in the commands. And there should be two dashes before --write-subs.
Also before --ffmpeg-location.
Expletives. They’;ve surgically reimplanted the hemorrhoid as one old meme once put it :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-18/donald-trump-returns-to-youtube-and-facebook-after-two-year-ban/102115386
PROTEST EVENTS coming up in Adelaide, South Australia
For any other SA locals who see this here and wish to attend. Plus I guess everyone who really wants to and make these from anywhere. All welcome and the more the better.
Tomorrow 1 pm outside State Parliament House.
Then on April 2nd, Palm Sunday March for Peace, Justice & Climate 2 pm Hindmarsh Square marching through Rundle Mall to Parliament House.
I expect there will be similar events in other Aussie cities esp our state capitals. Info via a friend on fb.
NPR:
Wyoming’s governor has signed a law prohibiting abortion pills
By The Associated Press / March 18, 2023
@303.
From the linked news story there
Oh the irony. Musk being so keen to woo his kindred spirit Trumplethinskin back & all
Wonder how Elon Mussy brat will take this apparent snubbing?
The silver lining in otherwise very toxic cloud.
PS. That saying always makes me wonder if people know what temperature clouds would have to be at to contain first gaseous then condensing into molten droplets of silver.. or the effect of a rain of molten heavy metals might have on those below.
Mother cries out in court after youngest NC defendant in Jan. 6 riot gets 3 1/2 years
Don’t you feel so sorry for them? All he tried to do was kill democracy.
That was so thoughtful, CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain, @ #301. I understand Computer as well as I understand Danish – not at all – so unfortunately I’ll have to wait and see if it gets picked up and dubbed/subtitled by any of the services, but thanks for trying to help! I assume other people more technologically advanced than I am (a low bar indeed) will benefit from your suggestions.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
I think they shot down another plane yesterday as well.
Also in the Guardian:
“Golf clubs and a $24K dagger: Trump failed to report dozens of foreign gifts”:
“Low-income Americans face a ‘hunger cliff’ as Snap benefits are cut”:
“Paris police ban gatherings on key sites as French pension protests grow”:
“New data links Covid-19’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market”:
Trump Says He Believes He Will Be Arrested On Tuesday, Calls On Supporters To Protest
Sounds like a thinly veiled call for violence from Trump.
Followup to comment 311.
Posted by readers of the article:
Followup to comments 311 and 312.
Josh Marshall:
Link
Steven Seagal Slams U.S. Media for ‘Lies’ Over Vladimir Putin: ‘I Am One Million Percent Russian’
@180, 243
9 Republicans pull support from South Carolina bill allowing the death penalty for abortion
So they are just now realizing how horrible their bill is? Maybe they should stop trying to make statements, and make good law instead.
Ukraine Update: All along the front line, Russia’s big offensive looks like a big fizzle
More updates coming soon.
Followup to comments 311, 312 and 313.
Link
Me @ #309: “I think they shot down another plane yesterday as well.”
Strike that. No planes.
“One of the largest Russian chemical plants is on fire near Moscow. One person was injured.”
Video at the (Twitter) link.
THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Stollen is delicious, but the rest of this sentence is Nutty as a fruitcake.
CRIMINALS &
LEFTISTTHUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS,Really looking forward to this criminal getting his well deserved perp-walk. Perhaps the feds can search his resort for all the state gifts he has stolen, after arresting him for sedition, criminal conspiracy, and collusion to overthrow the USA? He can join his ‘patriots’ in their well deserved jail cells.
Followup to comment 316.
Tethys @ # 321: THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Stollen is delicious, but …
From now on, we can legitimately call the Big Lie promoters “STOLLENists”.
@StevoR #306:
Article: Astronomy Magazine – The alien weather of WASP-121 b
Vice – “Inside the Private Group Where Parents Give Ivermectin to Kids With Autism”:
This is abuse.
Re: SC (Salty Current) @ #325…
It’s also “practicing medicine without a license”.
19th March 2003. Twenty years ago. The “Coalition of the Willing” launched its attack and invasion and subsequent ocupation of Iraq based on lies about WMDs that weren’t there and war-mongering especially from the Murdoch media. Between eleven thousand and forty-five thousand Iraqis were killed and nearly two hundred Allied soldiers died with nearly 600 wounded many with life changing injuires. This illegal war destroyed a nation and left a bloodstained, horrendous legacy that lingers on now. The war criminals responsible – George “Dubya” Bush, Tony Blair and, Australia’s own disgraceful war criminal, John Howard are yet to face any justice as a result.
Millions of people around the world including in Australia protested against and opposed this horrendous crime which made our world much worse and less safe.
The lack of reflection on this anniversary, the lack of attention it seems to be getting and the repetion of mistakes in war-mongering and following the USA into conflicts based on propaganda is something I think we should be disturbed about.
See :
Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-21829269
Plus :
Source : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/17/iraqis-saddam-hussein-us-invasion-country
Ina ddition to : https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/12/leadup-iraq-war-timeline/
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-19/victorian-liberals-move-to-expel-mp-who-attended-rally/102117788
Oh & I guess everyone already knows about this but in case not :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-19/former-us-president-donald-trump-says-he-will-get-arrested/102116006
For the Stormy Daniels hush money scandal.
I’ll believe it when I see it ..but oh please, please let that happen! Trump should have been arrested long ago.
Oh & I guess everyone already knows about this but in case not :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-19/former-us-president-donald-trump-says-he-will-get-arrested/102116006
For the Stormy Daniels hush money scandal.
I’ll believe it when I see it ..but oh please, please let that happen! Trump should have been arrested long ago.
Officials Prep for Protests as MAGA Sycophants Push ‘Patriot Moat’ Around Mar-a-Lago
@324. CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain : Cheers for that! Much appreciated.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
SMH.
+21 tanks, +23 APVs.
Also in today’s Guardian:
“‘Bulldozer politics’: Modi’s demolition drive fuels Muslims’ fears in Kashmir”:
“Manhattan district attorney warns of ‘attempts to intimidate’ after Trump calls for protest”:
“Body of teenager found dead near Murdaugh property to be exhumed”:
Mark Sumner at DKos – “Former Texas governor led effort to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s reelection, urged Iran to keep hostages”:
Tweet o’ the day.
SC @335, JFC.
In more recent politics: A billboard truck is driving around Mar-a-Lago showing Tucker Carlson’s text about Trump
Sigh. Yes, this is bad … and getting worse.
Link
More at the link.
Followup to SC’s comment 335.
Posted by readers of the article:
American Journal of Public Health (paywalled) – “‘Ashamed to Put My Name to It’: Monsanto, Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories, and the Use of Fraudulent Science, 1969–1985”:
Guardian liveblog:
MMFA – “With contradictory defamation lawsuits, the Murdochs attempt to have it both ways on free speech”: “The Murdochs cry free speech as a defense in the Dominion lawsuit while simultaneously attempting to suppress an Australian media company…”
Navajo Nation’s long quest for water — and for the federal government to keep its promises — ends up at Supreme Court
The tribe says an 1868 treaty means the federal government has a duty to ensure its people have sufficient water on a reservation where thousands do not have running water.
More art the link.
I would laugh if it weren’t all so terrible – Meduza – “Russia’s ‘guardian of traditional values’ How the Kremlin plans to sell Putin to voters in his fifth presidential campaign”:
“Hitler in Mariupol, 1941”
Photo and book excerpt at the (Twitter) link.
NPR:
A new Arkansas law allows an anti-abortion monument at the state Capitol
By The Associated Press / March 19, 2023
Link
California enters a contract to make its own affordable insulin
Emma Bowman / March 19, 20232:16 PM ET
Russia defies Putin arrest warrant by opening its own case against ICC
News summarized by Steve Benen from an NBC News article.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
To defend Trump, GOP pretends the Russia scandal wasn’t real
As Donald Trump faces possible indictment, Republicans are again claiming the Russia scandal was a “hoax.” It really wasn’t.
Guardian – “Scientists deliver ‘final warning’ on climate crisis: act now or it’s too late”:
More at the link.
Ukraine Update: Ukraine retakes some ground around Bakhmut, but end goal is unclear
More updates coming soon.
Trump is trying to incite another Jan. 6, and his supporters are responding
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
Cohen said yesterday that he has been called to be there if needed as a rebuttal witness.
Oh, FFS.
Alas, it’s Ben&Jerry’s as tankie supporters:
Link
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog. From there:
That is why it is essential to find a peaceful and civil way of resolving differences, she says.
Here’s a link to today’s France 24 liveblog.
Right now they’re covering the speeches in the assembly. Here’s one from the Communist Pierre Dharréville (Twitter link, but also at the liveblog).
Guardian liveblog:
Guardian liveblog:
Let’s All Smile And Nod At MAGA Threats That Prosecuting Trump Will Make Him Boss Of Us Forever
https://www.wonkette.com/trump-arrest-re-election-2024
Gee, Wonder Why This Idaho Hospital Had To Quit Delivering Babies!
https://www.wonkette.com/idaho-maternity-ward-closed-abortion
“Vladislav Schevchuk from Bakhmut – the city is holding, don’t believe fakes about withdrawal of the army from the city.”
Subtitled video at the (Twitter) link. Seems pretty confident.
Guardian liveblog:
Text quoted by SC in comment 359:
Nicola Sturgeon analyzed the the situation perfectly.
More from text quoted by SC in comment 359, (I am repeating the text mostly to emphasize it, and to give it a permanent place in my memory):
Would that Republicans in the USA would listen to Sturgeon.
France 24 liveblog:
The censure motion failed by only 9 votes.
Ben Collins (on Twitter):
Followup to comment 354.
More Ukraine updates:
Link, the same link as in comment 354, but all the updates are at the end of the article.
World is on brink of catastrophic warming, U.N. climate change report says.
Washington Post link
A dangerous climate threshold is near, but ‘it does not mean we are doomed’ if swift action is taken, scientists say.
More at the link.
In GOP politics, investigating the investigators has become a go-to move, but pressing a district attorney for answers about an ongoing case is ridiculous.
When the chairman of the House Oversight Committee is on Fox more than Fox’s own hosts, there’s a problem.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Guardian liveblog:
“Explosions near Dzhankoy airport on temporarily occupied Crimea…”
Twitter thread with videos follows.
Paris tonight.
(Twitter link, but more at the liveblog @ #360)
Guardian liveblog:
The tendency to dwell in the land of batshit bonkers conspiracy theories is biting Team Trump in the ass … this time, at least:
Link
Six More Oath Keepers Were Convicted Today For Their Participation In The Capitol Insurrection
Link
“Ukrainian Military Intelligence claims that the mysterious unexplained ‘pops’ near railway in Crimea tonight led to the destruction of ‘Kalibr’ missiles that were being transported to the peninsula on the Russian rolling stock….”
They ‘continue the process of Russia’s demilitarisation and prepare the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea for deoccupation’. Screenshot at the (Twitter) link.
France 24 liveblog:
@ ^ SC (Salty Current) : Je parlez Francais mais un per. En Anglais sil vous plait?
Joyeaux equinox aussi!
HAPPY EQUINOX EVERYONE!
At least by some measures marking the start of Autumn in the Southern hemisphere and Spring in the Northern hemisphere with our Daytime Star crossing the celestial equator today. Not quite the same as the equilux (equal day & night) as its often confused with.
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/march-equinox.html
Good PBS newshour article on the latest IPCC here including interview with Dr Katherine Heyhoe :
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/un-scientists-warn-drastic-steps-needed-to-prevent-climate-change-catastrophe
(Any typos mine.)
Not my original source but another via google image search here :
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/11wfalg/if_we_continue_to_accumulate_only_power_and_not/
Quote and meme seen today on fb. Seems apropos ’bout now. I wonder what the longtermist Techbros among others would make of that.. & keep wishing and hoping our political leaders finally heed that warning before it is too late . Assuming it isn’t already.
StevoR @ #385, I use the English when it’s available and give short translations for key stories/updates like @ #369. For other things, just run it through Google translate or translate the page at the link.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Catholic fanaticism strikes in Argentina: a group of over fifty people vandalized an art exhibition organized by the National University of Cuyo, which was dedicated to Intenational Woman’s Day, because the church claimed that it inflicted . Which means that inflicting physical damage on it is OK, somehow. The group held a prayer session led by a deacon before irrupting in the building with chants of “long live King Christ” and “long live the Virgin”.
Source: TÉLAM. You can check out the “scandalous” art pieces at the link.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog. From there:
They have a link.
LOL, that totally sounds like a real conversation Johnson had.
Guardian – “Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic”:
Guardian – “Biden orders release of intelligence on potential links between Covid and Wuhan lab”:
Subtitled Twitter video:
Guardian liveblog:
MMFA – “Elon Musk has boosted a QAnon influencer at least two dozen times since he took over Twitter and reinstated the account”:
@389. SC (Salty Current) : Ok.
.***
Via ABC news :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-22/london-police-review-finds-racism-misogany/102127200
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-21/aukus-nuclear-submarines-josh-wilson-anthony-albanese/102124862
&
GOP rep suggests hush money scandal will ‘blow over’ for odd reason
A one House Republican said the possible case against Donald Trump would “blow over” because he wouldn’t show up in court. That’s not how this works.
The more the House speaker tries to defend Trump with talk about “equal justice,” the more Kevin McCarthy invites some uncomfortable follow-up questions.
Three powerful House Republican committee chairs are ignoring the fact that Team Trump derailed the federal investigation into the hush money scandal.
Hmmm. It will be interesting to see where this goes.
Josh Marshall posted this tidbit:
Fox News trying to save Tucker Carlson’s ass and Sean Hannity’s ass?
Trump’s fundraising gimmick:
Link
Michael Cohen recently pointed out that, with Trump, it’s always about the grift.
Ukraine Update: Explosions in Crimea are another indication of how this war continues to change
More updates coming soon.
Followup to comment 404.
More updates from Ukraine:
AI-faked images of Donald Trump’s imagined arrest swirl on Twitter
Followup to comment 402.
Tucker Carlson’s staff regularly debate which women in politics are ‘more f–kable,’ lawsuit claims
Tucker Carlson’s staff regularly debate which women in politics are ‘more f–kable,’ lawsuit claims
And that’s not all. I’m not posting the text of the article because some of the language triggers PZ’s filters.
Somebody wants the Bible removed from Davis County school libraries
Sigh. As expected.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is warning that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg arresting former President Trump would “blow up our country.”
Senator Rand Paul tweeted that the New York District Attorney “should be put in jail.”
“They can do what they want,” Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina said of the possible indictment in an interview with former Trump adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle on Monday. “At that point, this is an all-out war.”
A bomb threat was called into a lower Manhattan court on Tuesday just before a judge was set to hear a $250 million lawsuit against Trump. The threat was investigated by police and the courthouse was closed and searched, with authorities finding that the threat was unfounded.
Followup to comment 407.
Wonkette: “Fox Producer Sues For Allll The Discrimination”
New Trump Accountants Are Withholding Records, New York AG Says
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #411…
Hmmmm…. Did Trump cut off ties with Mazars…or did Mazars cut ties with Trump?
Meduza – “Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin gives Christian name to river in historically indigenous Yamalia”:
France 24 – “Did Russian ties to Koran-burning outside Turkish embassy derail Sweden’s NATO bid?”:
Tweet o’ the day.
Well, that different.
Russian pop star critic of Putin drowns in icy river
Does sound more like a tragic accident.
Guardian – “Ugandan MPs pass bill imposing death penalty for homosexuality”:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Four people are now reported to have been killed.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog, which is being updated frequently – difficult to keep up.:
He’s keeping a spreadsheet.
Guardian – “‘Anger is growing’: protests and strikes spread across France over pensions reform”:
Guardian liveblog:
Guardian liveblog:
Politico – “Trump denounces ‘crime-fraud’ ruling forcing attorney to testify in documents probe”:
Kyle Cheney reported on Twitter that both deadlines were met and that the appeals court could rule as early as 9 AM or noon ET and Corcoran potentially testify today.
Sunak is taking PMQs.
Guardian liveblog:
Guardian liveblog:
He actually said “great honor” and “Defense forces”. :)
Ian Dunt re the report @ #422:
Guardian liveblog:
Ian Dunt:
Ongoing livetweeted thread follows.
Guardian liveblog:
Guardian liveblog:
Lara Seligman on Twitter:
Politico link at the link.
Rep. Stefanik tweeted: “Alvin Bragg must testify under OATH.”
This is a perfect characterization:
Guardian liveblog:
Guardian – “‘I’m happy to have this slow day’: Bali marks new year with day of silence”:
The article features a photo of a beautiful beach, captioned “A Balinese man takes part in the Melasti ritual prior to Nyepi.”
To provide some historical context, this is from Vincent Bevins’ 2020 The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World (pp. 150 and 245-246):
Today,
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
And vice versa, he could have added.
Followup to comments 402 and 410.
Link
But enough about King Charles… :-p
NBC News:
Washington Post:
China has been supplying Russia with drones.
New York Times:
NBC News:
Link
Map and charts showing the spread of the fungus are available at the link.
Ukraine Update: Welcome to 1946. Russia is sending in tanks designed for World War II
More updates coming soon.
Sigh. More anti-abortion news:
Florida legislature being dunderheads … again:
Wonkette link
Woke Joe Biden’s Woke Veto Saves Woke Capitalists! Let The Woke Investment Rumpus Begin!
Followup to comment 444.
Posted by readers of the article:
Bad news: A conservative cable network will once again be included a prominent content provider’s lineup.
Nice. Some good news from Idaho for a change:
Update is from Reclaim Idaho.
Followup to comment 441.
More updates from Ukraine:
Link. Same link as was given for text quoted in comment 441. I just added the updates.
Guardian liveblog:
The part about how “Johnson’s understanding of what the guidance actually meant was so elastic as to cover not taking any notice of the guidance at all” is significant. What it meant for him, that is. And if he did have this expansive understanding of how the guidance applied to his office, then why wasn’t he upfront about that – he was asked – in the Commons when he claimed the guidance was followed?
From Ian Dunt’s highly entertaining and informative thread (link @ #428):
Guardian liveblog:
“Just in: DC Circuit orders Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to hand over documents in special counsel’s classified records investigation.
The appeals court denied Trump’s efforts to stay a lower court’s order from Friday compelling the handover of documents”
SWAJ – “The J6 Select Committee Didn’t Mention Christian Nationalism – Despite Their Expert Testimony”:
Tweet o’ the day.
I love how the guy flexes his arm muscle.
The cable news pundits have been on for days speculating, on the basis of nothing, on what the charges will be if Trump gets indicted in New York. On the basis of this speculation and having seen no documents or evidence or anything, they’re speculating on the strength of this hypothetical case and how it compares to the strength of the other charges Trump might face in other venues, about which they also have limited knowledge. On the basis of all this speculation, they’re speculating on how the public will respond and how it will affect an election 20 months away.
“It’s back on.
‘The Manhattan DA plans to convene the grand jury again Thursday, according to two sources familiar with the matter’.”
Brutal statistics, [as summarized by Steve Benen], from the U.N. World Water Development Report: “A report issued on the eve of the first major U.N. conference on water in over 45 years says 26% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water and 46% lacks access to basic sanitation.”
Source is the Associated Press.
Fox News:
Commentary:
Link
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Lynna @ #457, today was a swirl of conspiracy theories about the grand-jury delay in Manhattan, and in the middle of it was Trump Jr. telling people they couldn’t trust any institutions and needed to get in at the grassroots of the anti-corporate, anti-woke “parallel economy.” Of course, there’s no such thing, and he’s just inviting Trump’s followers to play their role – the role of marks – in the grifter/hate economy. Trash “coins”; bullshit supplements, protocols, and miracle cures; NFTs; “freedom” phones and other useless gadgets; rightwing banks; schools; legal scams; conferences, retreats, and revivals; guns; flags, t-shirts, caps,…
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
As I understand it, they’re going to try again to reconnect it today.
“UK asylum seekers who complain about conditions ‘threatened with Rwanda’”:
It’s like they watched Years and Years and saw it as a planning manual.
Guardian – “Trump appointees interfered to weaken EPA assessment of toxic chemical”:
Much more at the link.
(((Tendar))):
Video at the (Twitter) link.
France 24 – “Mass protests in France after Macron vows to continue with pension reform”:
Happily, they also have an English-language liveblog today:
From there:
France 24 liveblog:
Catherine Norris Trent in the 11:03 video report says (update to #384) that an estimated 15% of gas stations in the country are now either out of gas or having difficulties obtaining supply.
Guardian liveblog:
France 24 liveblog:
CBS – “LAUSD strike continues for 3rd day as talks resume”:
France 24 liveblog:
Kyiv Independent:
Zachary Cohen, CNN:
Christopher Miller, FT:
Scientology Apparently Dictates Which of Tom Cruise’s Kids He Can See, & Suri Didn’t Make the Cut
TPM – “Michigan Is Poised To Repeal Right-To-Work, Getting Back To Its Union Roots. Will Other States Follow?”:
Much more at the link. Kate Riga is doing outstanding work at TPM.
SC @459: “Trump Jr. telling people they couldn’t trust any institutions and needed to get in at the grassroots of the anti-corporate, anti-woke “parallel economy.” Of course, there’s no such thing, and he’s just inviting Trump’s followers to play their role – the role of marks – in the grifter/hate economy.”
Yep. Very apt description. It’s disheartening. Like his father, Trump Junior is always looking for an opportunity to run another scam. And, yes, it is the Trump supporters who get sucked into most of the scams. You would think that they would be tired of it by now.
Jim Jordan’s hysterical intervention in Donald Trump’s hush money scandal
<a href=”https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/affordable-care-act-turns-13-law-never-stronger-rcna76303As the Affordable Care Act turns 13, the law has never been stronger
Exactly 13 years after Joe Biden whispered to Barack Obama that the Affordable Care Act was a big bleeping deal, there’s little doubt that he was right.
Bragg fights GOP effort to force his testimony on Trump probe
Bragg is really good at this. He pointed out Trump’s lie and the fact that House Republicans are bending the knee to Trump and his lawyers. This makes Jim Jordan look really bad.
Alvin Bragg is trying to educate House Republicans. A thankless task.
France 24 liveblog:
Tucker Carlson shooting himself in the foot:
Video at the Wonkette link.
Tucker Is SOOOOO SURE
China is changing its tune on the mRNA vaccine
Sinema Trashes Dems: ‘Old Dudes Eating Jell-O’
Ukraine Update: Russia only has one army, Bakhmut may be the place where they lose it
More updates coming soon.
Russian Media Monitor (YT link) – “Dimitri Simes says racism is to blame for Trump’s prosecution.”
From Simes (“of the Mueller Report,” as Julia Davis describes him):
Followup to Reginald @482.
A Politico report summarized by Steve Benen:
Police violently charging at protesters in Paris.
This is a Twitter link, but these videos are available at France 24’s French-language liveblog.
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-box-checker-fumbles
Hawaii governor signs bill to strengthen abortion protections
Candace Cheung / March 22, 2023
Courthouse News Service
France 24 liveblog:
The reporting suggests that a lot of young people/students are participating in demonstrations for the first time.
While Biden speaks about the benefits of the ACA, Trump continues (between putts, apparently) his fascistic attacks on the justice system, as covered at the NBC liveblog:
Guardian liveblog:
Tweet o’ the day.
Rep. Frost:
Will Steakin, ABC:
Video at the second (Twitter) link.
NPR:
Michigan school shooter’s parents can face trial for manslaughter, court rules
By The Associated Press / March 23, 2023
Update to #491: apparently it was said in error (or for some unknown reason…), and the Russians haven’t left. Yet.
I’m not quoting it because it might fall outside the Thread rules, but this is quite a tweet.
It is, evidently, peak bloom. (Twitter link)
Riley Williams, convicted of entering Nancy Pelosi’s office on Jan. 6, sentenced to 3 years in prison
Terrific! Just imagine how mature and responsible she will be in 3 years when she gets out of the slammer.