Hundreds of rioters have been charged, convicted and sentenced for joining the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. Unlike their cases, Samuel Lazar’s appears to have been resolved in secret — kept under seal with no explanation, even after his release from prison.
Lazar, 37, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, was arrested in July 2021 on charges that he came to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, dressed in tactical gear and protective goggles, and used chemical spray on officers who were desperately trying to beat back the angry Donald Trump supporters.
There is no public record of a conviction or a sentence in Lazar’s court docket.
But the Bureau of Prisons told The Associated Press that the man was released from federal custody this week after completing a sentence for assaulting or resisting a federal officer. Lazar was sentenced in Washington’s federal court on March 17 to 30 months in prison, according to the Bureau of Prisons, but there’s no public record of such a hearing. He had been jailed since July 2021.
Questions about Lazar’s case have been swirling for months, but the details of his conviction and sentence have not been previously reported.
The Justice Department has refused to say why the case remains under wraps, and attorneys for Lazar did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Associated Press. The judge overseeing Lazar’s case in May rejected a request from media outlets — including the AP — to release any sealed records that may exist…
Australian CEO of the Gurner Group, a real estate firm, called for governments to cause “pain in the economy” to remind workers that “they work for the employer, not the other way around.”
I think the problem that we’ve had is that we’ve, you know, we have… People decided they didn’t really want to work so much anymore through Covid, and that has had a massive issue on productivity. You know, tradies have definitely pulled back on productivity. You know, they have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years, and we need to see that change.
We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40, 50 per cent in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer not the other way around.
I mean, there is a… there’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. So it’s a dynamic that has to change. We’ve got to kill that attitude, and that has to come through hurting the economy. Which is what the whole global… you know, the world is trying to do. The governments around the world are trying to increase unemployment to get that to some sort of normality.
It is stunning to hear someone say out loud that world governments should institute policies to hurt their economies, and deliberately throw families into economic catastrophe, in order to please one side of the employment-contract relationship.
But throwing people into unemployment seems to be the favorite policy too of the most influential economists. Last summer, former Democratic treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that the U.S. must create unemployment, putting 10 million people out of work, in order to tame inflation. (He was wrong. Inflation has gone down without an increase in unemployment.)
@Reginald #483, @Lynna #486: Speaking of unbelievable, this is from Jul 25, during the trial, over bribery.
Video: Maddow – Unbelievable: Texas A.G.’s PAC makes [$3 million] donation to Lt. Gov. presiding over his impeachment trial
There are now two high-profile lawsuits—now in Minnesota, after last week’s case in Colorado—seeking to bar Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot. Both lawsuits invoke a provision in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that bars people from holding office who engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” against the U.S. government.
This approach is an untested legal theory that could find itself up against the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court.
But, as CNN’s Marshall Cohen noted on Tuesday, “At the very least, these lawsuits have reinvigorated a national debate over whether Trump is an insurrectionist, and refocused attention on his unprecedented attempts to disrupt the lawful transfer of power.” […]
Donald Trump violated his oath of office and incited a violent insurrection that attacked the U.S. Capitol, threatened the assassination of the Vice President and congressional leaders, and disrupted the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history. Our predecessors understood that oath-breaking insurrectionists will do it again, and worse, if allowed back into power, so they enacted the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause to protect the republic from people like Trump. Trump is legally barred from the ballot and election officials must follow this constitutional mandate.
[…] The lawsuit seeks to keep Trump off of Minnesota’s March 5 Republican primary ballot and the general election ballot if he wins the GOP nomination.
Last week, Simon said he doesn’t have the sole authority as Secretary of State to remove Trump from the ballot, but he acknowledged that Minnesota residents have the right under state law to challenge a candidate’s eligibility for office. He said he would honor any court ruling.
Last week, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a national watchdog group, filed a similar lawsuit, asking a Colorado state court to issue an order disqualifying Trump’s candidacy under the 14th Amendment, and barring Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold from taking any action that would allow him to access the ballot, including in the state’s GOP primary, which, like Minnesota’s, is scheduled for Super Tuesday, March 5.
[…] A number of prominent legal scholars on both the right and left have said the 14th Amendment does disqualify Trump.
As a reminder, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, reads as follows:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The New York Times reported last month that two distinguished conservative law professors, William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas, both members of the right-wing Federalist Society, have concluded that Trump is ineligible to be president under the 14th Amendment.
And conservative J. Michael Luttig, a former federal appellate court judge, joined liberal Laurence Tribe, a professor emeritus of constitutional law at at Harvard University, in co-authoring an August article in The Atlantic titled: “The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President Again.” […]
Trump’s ridiculous response:
[…] Like Election Interference, it is just another ‘trick’ being used by the Radical Left Communists, Marxists, and Fascists, to again steal an Election that their candidate, the WORST, MOST INCOMPETENT, & MOST CORRUPT President in U.S. history, is incapable of winning in a Free and Fair Election.
CLAIM: COVID-19 only spikes during election seasons.
THE FACTS: There is no connection between rising COVID-19 cases and the electoral process, epidemiology experts say. Since the first U.S. case was confirmed in January 2020, the virus has spiked near the end of the year, but also during summer, nowhere near major elections. But some on social media are falsely claiming the virus is a tool to control election outcomes. […] “It’s Called Election Interference by Mail In Ballots & the Machines. Wake-Up America.” […] While COVID-19 hospital admissions are currently rising — there were 18,871 for the week ending Sept. 2 — they’re a far cry from past peaks, like the 44,000 weekly hospital admissions in early January, the nearly 45,000 in late July 2022, or the 150,000 admissions during the omicron surge of January 2022. — Associated Press writer Melissa Goldin in New York contributed this report.
CLAIM: The U.S. accidentally sent Ukraine $6 billion in military aid.
THE FACTS: The claim misinterprets an announcement by a Pentagon spokesperson in June that the agency had overestimated the value of weapons it sent to Ukraine over the past two years by $6.2 billion. That meant more could be sent in the future without asking Congress for additional funds, not that billions of dollars had been sent in error. A recent episode of comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast has resurfaced the erroneous claim. […] Sabrina Singh, a spokesperson for the agency, said during the June press conference that the Pentagon had overestimated the value of weapons it sent to Ukraine since the start of the war by $6.2 billion, resulting in a surplus for future security packages. A detailed review of the accounting error found that replacement costs, rather than book value, were used to calculate the value of equipment pulled from Pentagon stocks for Ukraine, according to Singh. […] The Pentagon this month announced a new $600 million package of long-term aid to Ukraine, which will provide funding for an array of weapons and other equipment. The assistance comes from money previously approved by Congress. […] — Melissa Goldin
CLAIM: Bill Gates is backing efforts to cut down 70 million acres of trees in order to fight global warming.
THE FACTS: There is no plan to cut down 70 million acres of trees. The U.S. Forest Service has a ten-year plan to reduce the risk of wildfires across millions of acres of forests in the American West through a combination of controlled burns, selective tree culls and other forest management strategies. Gates, separately, is among the investors in a company proposing to help thin out California’s densely packed forests and bury tree remains in Nevada. But many social media users are sharing a video that features a woman speaking in front of a screenshot of a story on a website known to publish fake or misleading content. “Bill Gates Pushes Plan to Chop Down 70 Million Acres of Trees to ‘Fight Global Warming’,” the story headline reads. […] Gates, through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which invests in companies developing technology and other innovative solutions to global warming, is among a group of funders that have committed $6.6 million to the company, according to a December press release. […] The July article states the U.S. Forest Service aims to “thin” some 70 million acres of densely packed forest in the American West in order to mitigate the risk of severe wildfires. “As written, this does not mean cutting down all trees in those acres and was subsequently misconstrued, likely leading to the narrative that came across your radar,” Sedlak wrote in an email. What the Forest Service and Kodama are actually seeking to do is known as “ ecological forest thinning,” in which certain, at-risk trees are culled from dense patches of forest in order to allow mature ones to thrive, he explained. […] — Associated Press writer Philip Marcelo in New York contributed this report.
CLAIM: A new study by Australian researchers shows that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine caused vaccine acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or “VAIDS.”
THE FACTS: VAIDS is not a real condition, experts say. The co-authors of the study say their work is being misrepresented and doesn’t show that the vaccine is harmful to the immune system. The false claim is spreading as U.S. health officials recommend most Americans receive an updated COVID-19 vaccine. […] A post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, sharing the blog post relayed a quote from it, claiming: “‘Finally, we have scientific confirmation that vaccination against COVID-19 causes a marked decrease in immunity to heterologous pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi.’ A condition known as ‘VAIDS’ vaccine-induced AIDS.” The blog post references a study published in August in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, “BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccination in children alters cytokine responses to heterologous pathogens and Toll-like receptor agonists.” But that study’s findings are being misrepresented. Dr. Andrés Noé, a co-author of the study and researcher at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia, pointed to a statement the authors published responding to such claims. “It has been brought to our attention that our recently published study is being misinterpreted and misused to claim that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous,” the statement reads. “Our research does not provide any evidence to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines are harmful to the immune system of children or adults. In particular, it is incorrect to suggest that our study results show that COVID-19 vaccines ‘suppress the immune system.’” […] “On the contrary, they suggest that vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 may provide protection against other infectious diseases, something that would have to be examined in another study,” he said in an email. “These ‘off-target’ effects of vaccination are viewed as beneficial, not as a risk.”
[…] Trump made a spate of false and misleading comments about immigration, foreign policy, abortion and more in a wide-ranging interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker that aired Sunday morning.
“I have all the facts,” he said at one point, falsely claiming that the 2020 election was rigged and there was broad evidence of it.
[…] Trump claimed there were “millions of illegal immigrants coming into our country, flooding our cities, flooding the countryside. I think the number is going to be 15 million people by the time you end this, by the end of this year. I think the real number is going to be 15 million people.”
Border crossings are up significantly in the last two years. In fiscal year 2023 so far, U.S. border patrol apprehended or turned away more than 2.5 million people. In fiscal year 2022, border crossings topped 2.7 million, breaking the previous record by more than a million. Because some migrants make multiple border crossings, these numbers are slightly higher than the true total of immigrants at the southern border.
Still, there’s no evidence that 15 million people will cross the border this year. […]
Speaking about immigration, Trump also said there was a surge in terrorists crossing the border […]
“I saw some statistics and it said in 2019, there were no terrorists. They caught no terrorists,” he said. “And now this year, it’s a record number like they’ve never seen before.”
Trump is right that border patrol is seeing an uptick of encounters with people on the terrorist watchlist at the southern border, but there were more such encounters in 2019, when he was president.
The number of all people, including U.S. citizens, on the terrorist watchlist who were stopped at the southern border as of July of this fiscal year was 216, compared with 165 in all of fiscal year 2022.
But the number of border crossers on the watchlist was higher in fiscal year 2019 — during the Trump administration — at 280 individuals.
[…] There is extensive proof that the 2020 election was not marred by fraud, but Trump nonetheless said more than a dozen times in his interview that the election was “rigged.”
“If this were ever before a court, we would win so easy. There is so much evidence that the election was rigged,” he said at one point.
Trump and his supporters brought more than 50 lawsuits aimed at overturning the results of the election; none were successful in overturning the results.
Trump said said there was proof of fraud in “2000 Mules” and tapes of “ballot stuffing,” referring by name to the widely debunked film by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, which showed people depositing multiple ballots into drop boxes in Atlanta’s suburbs. According to the Associated Press, a Georgia State Election Board investigation determined that they were following the law and submitting ballots for themselves and family members who lived with them.
[…]“Things are not going right now very well for the consumer. Bacon is up five times. Food is up horribly — worse than energy,” Trump said.
[…] In U.S. cities on average, the cost of sliced bacon is up by about 12% from the end of Trump’s term in office
[…] Trump’s claim linking his tax cuts to higher revenue is belied by independent studies. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the law would raise the deficit by $1.4 trillion in its first decade, even after factoring its boost to economic growth. When debt service costs are included, that deficit figure grows to $1.9 trillion. And those numbers will continue to grow if the temporary tax cut in Trump’s tax law are extended.
[…] His argument that the national debt rose only because of Covid-19 pressures is false. The national debt rose each year during the Trump presidency — in 2017, 2018 and 2019 — before the pandemic hit in 2020 […] Trump never seriously pursued a deficit-reduction deal over his four years.
[…] “They don’t report about the war anymore,” he continued. “You don’t find much reporting. That means that Ukraine’s losing. Okay? I see very little reporting from NBC, your network. I see very little reporting from NBC, ABC, from CBS, from anyone about the war.”
This is demonstrably false. In the last two weeks alone, NBC News has published dozens of stories and broadcasts on all platforms about the Ukraine war, including Richard Engel’s exclusive interview with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Yahidne, Ukraine, which aired on NBC News’ Nightly News, and a 60-minute NBC News NOW documentary following the lives of five Ukrainian mothers.
CBS News and ABC News have had dozens of articles and videos on their websites, too.
Doesn’t matter how much Trump is fact-checked, even in real time by Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” he still has a platform on which to bloviate and lie his ass off. His base believes him. His base does not hear or see fact-checking. They tune it out. I am amazed that Trump is still getting away with this shit. I think that, for many people, it must be easier to believe him than it is to check the facts.
The Texas attorney general was acquitted of corruption charges, but the trial further damaged the Republican brand.
In 2018, when Ken Paxton ran for reëlection as Texas’s attorney general, he was under state and federal indictments for securities fraud, and he also had a reputation for pettier malfeasance. Justin Nelson, his Democratic opponent, decided to make Paxton’s questionable ethical judgment central to his campaign. “I really just tried to ridicule the dude, and highlight the base venality of the corruption,” Nelson told me recently. Not long before the election, Nelson’s campaign obtained security-camera footage from 2013 of the entrance to the courthouse in Collin County, where Paxton lives. In the grainy video, Paxton, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, spies a Montblanc pen that someone has left behind at a metal detector. Paxton slips the thousand-dollar pen into his pocket, then walks away. (After a sheriff’s deputy contacted him a few days later, Paxton returned the pen, saying he took it by mistake.) The video was widely viewed; Paxton won the election anyway, by three points.
Paxton has long been dogged by allegations of fraud, corruption, and general impropriety—his state securities-fraud charges date from 2015—but, until recently, he seemed impervious to them. (He pleaded not guilty to the state charges, and no trial date has been set.) In October, 2020, eight of Paxton’s ex-employees, all high-level staffers in the Texas attorney general’s office, accused their former boss of bribery, abuse of office, and other federal and state crimes. Last fall, Paxton was reëlected again, this time by a margin of nearly ten points.
In the past six months, though, it seemed as though there might be a remarkable turn in Paxton’s political standing. In May, after a secret investigation into the allegations laid out by the whistle-blowers, the Republican-controlled Texas House overwhelmingly voted to impeach him. More than seventy per cent of the Republicans voted in favor of impeachment, including every House member from Paxton’s home county. […]
For two weeks, Paxton was on trial in the Texas Senate […] In the lead-up to the vote, Paxton’s supporters attempted to link his fate to that of Donald Trump. “This feels a lot like what they’ve tried to do to President Trump,” Jonathan Stickland, the head of Defend Texas Liberty, a pac that supports far-right candidates, said on Steve Bannon’s show. Paxton denied wrongdoing and one of his lawyers called the impeachment a “political witch hunt.”
[…] the case against Paxton was both tawdry and consequential, spanning everything from illicit Uber rides to bribery—in the form of a home renovation—and accusations about Paxton’s “bizarre, obsessive” focus on using the power of the state to help a friend, the prominent real-estate developer Nate Paul. […] (One of the most-anticipated witnesses, a woman with whom Paxton was reportedly having an affair, did not end up testifying.) […]
The trial was presided over by the state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, a political ally of Paxton’s. (Patrick, a former talk-show host with no formal legal training, seemed occasionally befuddled by the lawyerly jargon.) The two attorneys leading the prosecution, Dick DeGuerin and Rusty Hardin, had never worked together before, […] DeGuerin and Hardin, who are both in their early eighties, have played a role in many of Texas’s most scandalous events, […] As prosecutors, both men affected the role of fond but stern country grandfathers. […]
The testimony was at times dramatic, and the prosecution emphasized that the witnesses testifying against Paxton were not motivated by partisanship. […] On Saturday, Paxton was acquitted of the sixteen charges against him, in a largely party-line vote. [snipped history that included Paxton’s upbringing and education]
[…] While in office, Paxton aligned himself with an increasingly reactionary evangelical faction. As that cohort came to dominate Republican politics in Texas and across the nation, Paxton “rode that wave impeccably,” Henson said.
[…] Under Paxton, the attorney general’s office has issued guidance classifying gender-affirming care for minors as child abuse and supported legislation that incentivizes private citizens to sue anyone who helped someone get an abortion. Paxton has said that he would back Texas’s anti-sodomy law if the Supreme Court revisited Lawrence v. Texas. He has also been a key defender of Donald Trump. On January 6, 2021, Paxton spoke at the pro-Trump rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol, with Angela by his side. “Because we’re here today, the message goes on: We will not quit fighting,” he said. “We’re Texans. We’re Americans. And we’re not quitting.” He would go on to blame that afternoon’s violence on Antifa, and to spearhead a failed lawsuit that sought to overturn the election.
[…] Soon after taking over as attorney general, Paxton fired high-ranking employees and replaced them with aides with far-right pedigrees.
[…] The impeachment charges stemmed from Paxton’s relationship with Nate Paul, the developer. […] In 2018, Paul’s businesses began to default on reportedly hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of loans. The next year, his office and home were raided by the F.B.I. (In June, Paul was indicted on eight counts of lying to financial institutions in order to get loans. According to the indictment, he provided crudely doctored financial statements indicating, for example, that an account held $18.5 million when it actually held only twelve thousand dollars. Paul had previously denied wrongdoing in the case.)
[…] To explain why Paxton would go to such lengths to support Paul, the prosecution offered two theories: First, that Paul had hired a woman whom Paxton allegedly was involved with, and was helping to enable the affair. […] Second, that Paul paid for renovations to the Paxtons’ home […]
Whatever the motivation, during the spring and summer of 2020, Paxton allegedly went to unusual lengths to assist Paul, according to the House investigation and witness testimony. He arranged meetings between Paul and top officials in his office, and sought to help Paul obtain documents that laid out the evidence against him, including the names of confidential sources.
[…] By September, Paxton had concluded that his employees were not giving Paul’s complaints the attention that they merited. He hired an outside counsel, without informing his deputies […] Even after some of the whistle-blowers made the broad outline of their complaints public, in a wrongful-termination lawsuit, in 2020, the fallout was limited. In the last two years, Paxton’s job approval among Republicans remained reasonably high; his alliance with Trump seemed to overshadow the scandals playing out in his office. In February, 2023, Paxton agreed to a three-million-dollar settlement in the wrongful-termination case. “I have chosen this path to save taxpayer dollars and ensure my third term as Attorney General is unburdened by unnecessary distractions,” he said in a statement.
[…] Paxton’s alliance with Trump, and with the maga wing of the party, remained strong. This summer, Paxton’s supporters poured money into a fund dedicated to defending him.
[…] Although Paxton will resume his position as attorney general (he had been suspended since the vote to impeach in May), his legal troubles are not over. He still faces state securities-fraud charges, and there may be further fallout from his association with Nate Paul.
Paxton’s acquittal is further evidence that the Republican Party is captive to its most extreme voters. […]
“From a very narrow partisan perspective, it’s almost better for the Democrats if he’s acquitted,” Justin Nelson, the former Democratic candidate, told me before the vote. “Then the entire Republican Party is tarred with this corruption, and you can’t separate it out.” ♦
More at the link. I snipped lot, and I just presented excerpts.
The United States has announced individual aid packages as they are formulated and shipped, leading to weekly or twice-monthly announcements. This has allowed the U.S. to send whatever it is that Ukraine needs in that particular moment—heavy on anti-tank and anti-air missiles early on, sophisticated air defenses over the winter, to mostly artillery shells and rocket ammunition today.
Every once in a while, a major new weapons system makes an appearance, be it HIMARS rocket artillery, Patriot air defenses, M2 infantry fighting vehicles, or M1 Abrams tanks. Maybe F16 fighter jets will make that list someday.
Thing is, while the total amount of aid is set in advance by congressional authorization, the piecemeal announcements are becoming a political and practical problem. It’s time to promise it all, to give Ukraine the certainty it needs to plan its future operations, to shut up the pro-Putin MAGA seditionists who are trying to make Ukraine aid a political rallying cry, and to let Russia know that waiting for the 2024 presidential election isn’t a viable strategy. Donald Trump won’t bail him out.
The Freedom Caucus is making Ukraine a key tenet of their government shutdown efforts. At a Family Research Council gathering a few days ago, arch-conservative Rep. Chip Roy got the biggest applause when he said, “We cannot continue to have a blank check going to Ukraine without dealing with what we need to do here at home first.” That got a bigger audience reaction than complaints about the deficit, crying about the “woke” military, anti-immigrant nonsense, b.s. about “weaponizing” the Department of Justice against Donald Trump, and anti-vaccine rhetoric.
Reiterating: of all the current MAGA issues, including Donald Trump, anti-Ukraine sentiment got the biggest applause line.
We cannot underestimate how quickly that will spread among the GOP faithful, and it won’t be long before it’s the mainstream party position. There’s a reason the Mitt Romneys are dropping like flies from the Republican Party. The Freedom Caucus has vowed to oppose any new government funding that includes Ukraine aid.
But there’s a more pressing consideration—winning the war.
Absent a coup or unexpected death, this war won’t end until Russian strongman Vladimir Putin decides to end it. As of now, he clearly hopes to fatigue Ukraine’s allies, outlasting Western resolve. And no country is more important in that calculation than the United States.
To Putin’s clear delight, Republicans appear set on re-nominating virulent Ukraine-hating Trump. It’s easy to forget that Trump was initially impeached over his efforts to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, offering Javelin anti-tank guided missiles in exchange for a fake investigation into Hunter Biden. Trump wants the U.S. out of NATO. His re-ascension to the presidency would single-handedly pull Putin’s balls out of the fire, giving him a victory that he hasn’t earned.
As such, Putin has no incentive to end the war until after the 2024 presidential election. And trickling out aid packages further underscores the transient nature of the aid.
That’s why it’s time to go big, now, when there are still enough Republicans in the House and Senate willing to do the right thing on Ukraine. Pass the big aid package, yes, but then announce everything. Announce a delivery package so big, that Putin can’t count on Trump to bail him out. A package so big, that Putin understands the futility of his war. A package so big, that Ukraine’s Western allies are emboldened to follow suit.
So what would that look like? Congress is currently debating a $24 billion aid package. Imagine if its passage was followed by this announcement:
– 500 M1 Abrams tanks ($5 billion if new, including maintenance equipment).
– 1,000 M2 Bradleys ($5.5 billion if new, but less since they’re surplus).
– 1,000 M113 armored personnel carriers (Ancient, cost is near-zero).
– 2,000 Mine-resistant armored vehicles (US has tens of thousands in service, many older variants being phased out).
– 10,000 Humvees (US has around 160,000 of them, and plans to keep 50,000 after replacing most with the new JLTV. Surplus Hummers are cost-negligible. Send them all to Ukraine).
– 100 F16s ($6.3 billion if new. I don’t know how many surplus F16s the U.S. has, but with over 2,200 F16s in service, and the U.S. awaiting deliveries of another 1,400 latest-generation F35s, there are plenty of them available to gift to Ukraine).
Add all that up, even using new-equipment prices, and we’re still well under the $24 billion, leaving plenty for air defenses, ammunition, spare parts, and other combat support equipment and vehicles. And that doesn’t even take into consideration unspent money from the existing authorization, reportedly still in the billions […]
Furthermore, execute contracts with industry for continued deliveries of HIMARS rockets, artillery shells, anti-tank and anti-air missiles, and all the other logistical needs for Ukraine’s armed forces. Lock it all in so Trump can’t undo anything if the worst-case scenario happens.
Lock all of this in, and Putin will have a clearer picture of the gravity of his situation. Even now, Russia is barely hanging on to its ill-gotten territories. Its navy is being chased out of the Black Sea by a nation without a real navy. It is losing the artillery war. Ukraine has better drones, and it has proven the ability to strike Russian cities, including Moscow, in the inevitable winter missile war. It won’t be a one-sided affair this year.
If we signal that Ukraine will have the tools it needs to continue retaking territory, Putin’s tone might suddenly change. Make this announcement now, and pro-Putin MAGA a-holes will have less material to work with over the coming year, as they continuously seek to undermine support for Ukraine. And for Ukraine, a concrete list of incoming equipment will allow it to better plan the equipping, training, and deployment of forces in the year ahead.
Heck, we could easily double those amounts above using more realistic pricing for the surplus gear, getting Ukraine that much closer to victory (understanding it would take years to train enough crews to operate all that equipment and establish the logistical chains). But first things first. It’s time for President Joe Biden to signal that the U.S. is serious about helping Ukraine win the war, and stop with this piecemeal approach that has served no one’s interests, including Biden’s.
Biden and Zelenskyy will meet at the White House on Thursday. For some reason, news reports continue to insist that the U.S. won’t announce the possible shipment of ATACMS long-range missiles until after the visit, which seems utterly idiotic. Freakin’ announce those things already.
It’s been distressing seeing Biden go from one of the most aggressive supporters of Ukraine, early in the war last year, to one of the most timid today. “The U.S. official told Axios there is still a debate within the Biden administration about the supply of ATACMS,” reported Axios, which makes one wonder … who the heck is advising Biden against this, and why hasn’t Biden shut that down already.
The weaker Russia gets, the more Biden’s advisors urge increasing restraint, rather than push the advantage and aim for a pre-election victory (imagine the TV optics of that!). What are they so afraid of? A fragmented Russia? A desperate Putin with nothing to lose? Someone taking power that might be worse than Putin?
Meanwhile, once-timid European allies like France and Germany are now among Ukraine’s most aggressive supporters (not counting the Baltic nations and Poland, which understand Russia’s dangers more than anyone else).
It sucks when freakin’ Sen. Tom Cotton is right on an issue, and Biden is wrong. [Tweet at the link]
To be clear, most Democratic senators are also aboard. We actually have mostly bipartisan agreement on Ukraine, and yet here is Biden, refusing to embrace it all.
Aaron Rodgers, the American football guy who is famous for opposing vaccines and saying other dumb shit, made a real splash this week when he announced that he was in the process of repairing his Achilles tendon with some fairly unusual methods.
In an interview on The Pat McAfee Show on Friday, Rodgers explained that he was exploring a variety of “modalities” — including the sweet, soothing sounds of dolphins fucking.
“There’s ideas that some of the noises from the dolphins when they’re love-making, the frequency of that is actually healing to the body,” Rodgers said.
Well, there are a lot of ideas about a lot of things.
Modalities, for the unfamiliar, is one of those naturopathy/homeopathy terms meant to make nonsense seem very scientific and serious and real. Basically it just means trying a variety of expensive sugar pills and (I guess) dolphin sex noises until one of them does something to you in some way.
This doesn’t seem to be a common belief, even among the Dolphin Woo faithful. There are a lot of “dolphin healing songs” available on YouTube, but none of them actually specify that they are dolphin “love-making” noises. [video at the link]
Still, it’s not surprising, given the number of people who think dolphins are magic and the less supernatural fact that dolphins are known to enjoy recreational sex.
There have, in fact, been a not-insignificant number of people who have been into sex with dolphins, notably Margaret Howe Lovatt, a linguist who worked with the Godfather of Dolphin Woo himself, John C. Lilly, trying to teach dolphins how to communicate with humans. There was also another guy, Malcolm Brenner, author of the book Wet Goddess, who had a sexual relationship with a dolphin named Dolly back in the ‘70s.
However, it seems pretty messed up to listen to the sounds of dolphin sex to heal yourself in light of the fact that dolphins are notoriously vicious rapists with prehensile penises like monkey tails that they can use to drag you down to their dolphin rape caves. […]
Incidentally, dolphins are (for real) very good at quickly healing themselves and scientists are studying the way that certain proteins they produce could help humans heal as well. This is very different, of course, from thinking that listening to them banging is going to heal your Achilles tendon or do any other kind of magic to you whatsoever.
Tens of thousands of protestors kicked off a march Sunday in New York City, advocating for an end to fossil fuels while calling on President Biden to declare a climate emergency.
Hundreds of organizations, climate advocates, actors and political leaders attended the March to End Fossil Fuels ahead of New York’s Climate Week, which coincides with a special United Nations summit Wednesday focused on the climate crisis.
[…] Organizers estimated around 75,000 individuals participated in Sunday’s march, including actors like Ethan Hawke, Kevin Bacon and Susan Sarandon and political leaders including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Youth protest group Fridays for Future said thousands of youth participated in the march, aiming their message directly at Biden.
“We are watching you approve pipelines, and we are watching as you delay declaring a climate emergency,” […] “We are watching as the Weather Channel repeats the same terrifying message, that this year, this week, this day, is the hottest ever recorded. We are watching our futures disappear, because how can we be the next president or author or scientist on a dying planet?”
“We hold the power of the people, the power you need to win this election,” Emma Buretta, 17, of Brooklyn with Fridays for Future, told The Associated Press. “If you want to win in 2024, if you do not want the blood of my generation to be on your hands. End fossil fuels.”
[…] The march comes days before United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres will host a special Climate Ambition Summit in New York City Wednesday, with the criteria that attending countries present their plans for phasing out fossil fuels and committing to no new oil, gas and coal.
The White House said Biden and leaders of China, the United Kingdom, Russia or France — all major developers and users of fossil fuels — will not be attending the summit, according to the AP.
Last month, Biden said he has “in practice” declared a national climate emergency, though he has not actually announced such a declaration. A national emergency declaration would allow other powers related to climate change, including potentially using the Defense Production Act to provide loans to bolster climate-energy sources and prevent oil exports. […]
[Tweet and images at the link: An unusual update on the Kakhovka Reservoir. Against expectations of it remaining deserted, recent on-site observations and satellite imagery have revealed an interesting development – nature is recovering rapidly as vegetation transforms the area into a flourishing reedbed]
Not sure why this is “against expectations,” but it’s natural that this rich soil (full of fish poop and, well, dead fish) would prove such fertile ground. As of now, this is terrain is reportedly bog-like, not passable by vehicles, but as vegetation takes root and the ground continues to dry out, that might change. The winter freeze certainly will open up possibilities.
The current narrative is that nothing can cross there because advancing Ukrainian troops would be too exposed. But that is predicated on Russia’s continued ability to lay down artillery. Given Ukraine’s aggressive counter-battery efforts, I wouldn’t consider that a given.
Drones, on the other hand, would be a real challenge, though that’s the case whether it happens on the outskirts of Verbove or Robotyne, or across this open space. Drones give both sides full view of their enemy’s advances. No one is getting surprised along the contact line.
So the actual question is, can Ukraine bypass some of the fortifications on the way to Tokmak and Melitopol by cutting across this new terrain using small unit tactics and crossing at night. Who the heck knows.
—————————–
Speaking of drones, this is a one-day snapshot of confirmed destroyed equipment on both sides. [Google Docs spreadsheet at the link]
Almost all of that equipment has been destroyed by drones, on both sides. And it’s like that every single day.
Whoever figures out how to best disable enemy drones will have a ginormous advantage.
Also, if I’m Taiwan, I’m investing in a million drones and anti-air and anti-ship missiles. China has to be looking at this drone carnage and wondering how it would get through a Taiwanese drone and missile screen.
——————————–
Goddam it: [Tweet and video at the link: A Ukrainian soldier made his comrades promise that if he were to die in battle, they would gather at his grave and sing to him one last time. Today, his brothers in arms kept that promise… Rest easy soldier, your sacrifice is not in vain! 🇺🇦]
Out of curiosity, I decided to approximate how badly the Black Sea Fleet is getting mauled by Ukraine, a country without a Navy, in percentage terms in order to get some perspective on how such losses would go over in the US. I could be over or under counting by a ship or two depending upon who you believe, but here are the numbers I used.
In 2014, the Black Sea Fleet had roughly 89 vessels. It consisted of 71 surface combat ships, 7 submarines, and 11 support and auxiliary ships.
From what I can gather, it has since lost 14 surface combat ships and 1 sub. In terms of percentages that’s 19.2% of total combat vessels, 19.7% of its surface ships and 14.2% of its subs.
Could you imagine how well that would have gone over in the US if the Fifth Fleet suffered 20% losses during the Iraq War?
As Darth Putin put it the other day, the Black Sea Fleet is now the definition of a sunk cost fallacy. So long as this war goes on, it will continue to suffer losses that cannot be replaced.
As Ukraine’s capabilities improve, no where, including ports, will be safe on the Black Sea for the Fleet. Its ships currently operating in the Mediterranean will have to think twice about returning home.
Putin is fighting to retain a naval base that is pretty much unusable so long as he keeps fighting for it. It’s just another disaster for the Master Strategist.
[…] Somehow, in his deranged brain, Trump figured now was a good time to admit to being the person behind what ultimately became an insurrection attempt.
“It was my decision, but I listened to some people,” [TFG] told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday.
…
“You know who I listen to? Myself. I saw what happened,” [TFG] said.
…
“You hire them, you’ve never met these people, you get a recommendation, they turn out to be RINOs, or they turn out to be not so good. In many cases, I didn’t respect them,” [TFG] said. “But I did respect others. I respected many others that said the election was rigged.”
[…] They are the ones that are indicted right along with him, including Cheseboro, Eastman, and Powell, to name a few. Those people, in his eyes, were “respectable”.
[…] I can only imagine his current crop of soon-to-be-previous lawyers love this admission on a national stage, on TV no less. Even better, this is one of the many things he has pleaded “not guilty” to in court. Nothing quite says, “I’m innocent!” than admitting the exact opposite in an interview.
He prefaced what he said so that it amounts to nothing new that can be used in court, in my opinion. What he did do that limits his options is to say that he didn’t listen to his attorneys who told him that he lost the election.
I don’t think that this interview changes anything that Jack Smith will do. He already has the goods.
—————————
Whether he did it on his own or under the advice of others who he “respected” (i.e. who agreed with him), he did it. “Under the advice of counsel” doesn’t even have the pretense of authority that “I vass only followink orders” has […]
——————————-
“Many people are telling me, ‘Sir, the election was rigged.’”
That follows the standard Trump format indicating that what follows is a lie.
———————————
I believe it’s been said before: “I’m innocent because I chose not to believe my attorney general, the FBI, multiple courts, multiple lawyers, multiple advisors, multiple secretaries of state, even Fox News, and instead chose to believe this other handful of people whose opinion I liked a lot better”—ain’t gonna fly as a defense.
Reginald Selkirksays
@15:
“But I did respect others. I respected many others thatbecause they said the election was rigged.”
textbook confirmation bias.
StevoRsays
The federal government has released figures to try to shut down growing calls from the opposition to consider nuclear power as part of Australia’s future energy mix. Energy Minister Chris Bowen said new analysis showed that using nuclear power to replace retiring coal-fired power stations would cost $387 billion. “When you put the most expensive form of energy into the system, there is a massive cost to pay,” he told RN breakfast.”It’s a unicorn and a fantasy and someone has to pay for them if they are really serious about this plan.”
The government’s current plan is to invest in clean energy projects through what is known as “Rewiring the Nation” at a cost of $20 billion.The release of the data follows Opposition Leader Peter Dutton describing nuclear power as the “most credible” pathway to reduce emissions. Mr Dutton has suggested small modular reactors (SMR) should be considered but Mr Bowen insists that is not a viable option. “[It is] an idea which is unproven, with only two [SMRs] operating anywhere in the world, neither of them commercially — one in Russia, one in China,” he said.”It strikes me as utterly bizarre that the opposition is hanging its hat on this unproven technology as the answer to our admittedly challenging task of reducing emissions and keeping reliability, but I can’t think of a worse fit for Australia than nuclear power.”
One of the taxpayers helped by Australian Taxation Office (ATO) whistleblower Richard Boyle has spoken out for the first time, describing the pursuit of the person who gave him a lifeline as “insanity”…(snip).. Mr Boyle became an internal whistleblower in October 2017 but when his complaints were ignored, he went public and told Four Corners about a disturbing culture at the ATO which included his area being instructed to use more heavy-handed tactics on taxpayers who owed the tax office money. Mr Boyle’s wife, Louise Beaston, has also spoken to 7.30 about the couple’s “nightmare”, which began in April 2018 when their home was raided in the early hours of the morning by ATO and Australian Federal Police officers.
Descendants of Pinjarra massacre survivors hope Voice to Parliament brings healing, truth-telling
Ms Martin said her support for constitutional change was dependent on one condition as Australia edges closer to the historic Voice to Parliament referendum. She said a successful Yes campaign must lead the country to truth-telling and healing. “They tried to commit genocide and dehumanise us,” she said. “In our family, we tell the truth, and we pass down the truth from generation to generation.” With referendum day less than a month away, Ms Martin said she was undecided about the Voice but insisted it would need to help Australians understand the country’s history and heal old wounds.”If we’re going to have a Voice with truth-telling, I think it’s a good thing,” she said.
In 1834, a band of soldiers, police and colonists led by Governor James Stirling, the leader of the Swan River Colony, attacked a group of Bindjareb Noongar people on the banks of the Murray River, killing many of them.
[A very rich guy ] who owns a social media company accuses [ a famous Jew] of wanting to destroy western civilisation.
I leave it to you to figure out which people I am writing about.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has quietly changed the Senate’s informal dress code to allow senators to wear whatever they want on the floor, a person with direct knowledge said.
A notice went out to the Senate sergeant-at-arms and relevant staff members late Friday, and the change will go into effect starting Monday, the source said.
The change would let Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who is often seen wearing a hoodie and baseball shorts, wear his casual attire on the Senate floor whenever he wants. Fetterman, who was elected in last year’s midterm elections, wore a suit and a tie at his swearing-in in January.
However, he has worn his casual clothes after he returned to the Senate following treatment for clinical depression this year…
Hunter Biden has filed a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, arguing that two agents violated his right to privacy when they publicly aired his tax information as they pressed claims that a federal investigation of him had been improperly handled.
The lawsuit filed Monday says that his personal tax details shared during congressional hearings and interviews was not allowed by federal whistleblower protections…
Republicans who control the North Carolina legislature with veto-proof majorities are close to wresting supervision of elections from the governor and the governor’s party — almost always the Democrats for over a century.
A bill that could reach Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk this week would, among other changes, take away from him and future governors the power to appoint members of the State Board of Elections. It would give that authority to legislative leaders instead.
The legislation also could lead to the ouster of the top elections administrator ahead of the next presidential election in a state where former President Donald Trump squeezed out a razor-thin win over Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. North Carolina was Trump’s narrowest victory that year, raising hopes among Democrats that Biden could win there in 2024.
GOP attempts since 2016 to erode Cooper’s election board power have been struck down by courts or defeated by voters in a statewide referendum.
Cooper plans to veto the bill. But Republican majorities are large enough to override his veto, and Republican justices now have a majority on the state Supreme Court. Here is what the Republican legislation would do:…
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
The Russian state news agency RIA reported on Monday that a series of blasts had been heard at the headquarters of the Russian-installed local authorities in the Russian-held city of Donetsk, in east Ukraine.
The city’s Russian-installed mayor said in a statement on Telegram that central Donetsk was under fire, Reuters reports. These claims are yet to be independently verified.
…The oligarchs will be cowards, oriented to fantasies of escape to New Zealand or Mars or immortality or whatever, disinvested from the hard choices the rest of us have to make amid the crises they are making worse. Among other awful things, Putin’s war in Ukraine was oligarchical whimsy, based on the fantasy that Ukraine does not exist and its people wish to be Russian. There are things so stupid that you must be a multibillionaire to believe them; but when it all goes wrong, another multibillionaire will offer even more stupid succour, as Musk has done for Putin.
It is hard to think of a more dangerous idea than the one that people like Musk and Putin are heroes saving the rest of us from our own limitations. The plotline about the oligarchical supermen is indeed fictional, but it does real harm in the real world.
People’s rights in Russia have substantially worsened since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year, a top UN expert said on Monday.
The UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in Russia, Mariana Katzarova, said Moscow had launched a systematic crackdown on critics since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“The situation of human rights in the Russian Federation has significantly deteriorated since its invasion of Ukraine,” Katzarova said in her first report.
The dramatic degradation came after “the situation had already been on a steady decline over the past two decades,” she added.
Last April, Katzarovabecame the first monitor appointed by the UN human rights council to examine the rights situation in Russia or any permanent member of the UN security council.
She said Russian authorities had “severely curtailed the freedoms of association, peaceful assembly and expression” and undermined the independence of the judiciary and the guarantees of fair trial.
According to AFP, Katzarova said sanctions were “being applied arbitrarily against dissenters and force used against peaceful protesters”. She also decried the “persistent use of torture” and sexual violence.
The report read:
Both the harshness of recent criminal sentences and the number of people sentenced on politically motivated charges has increased.
Katzarova said she had been granted no access to Russia, adding that Moscow tried to “obstruct” her work.
Her findings were based on consultations with more than 60 Russian and international rights groups and individuals, in person, by phone or online, and nearly 100 written submissions.
Donald Trump decided to take time during Rosh Hashanah — the start of the Jewish High Holy days and the celebration of the New Year — to blame “liberal Jews” for voting to destroy America and Israel.
“Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed in false narratives!,” he wrote on Truth Social on Sunday, presumably referring to the American Jewish support for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. “Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward!”
The leading Republican presidential candidate then shared what appeared to be a flyer boasting of Trump’s record on Israel and pro-Jewish causes. “Wake Up Sheep. What Nazi / Anti Semite ever did this for the Jewish people or Israel?” the flyer reads. The flyer goes on to crow about moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (“no other president had the balls to do it”) and endorsing “Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights” and “over settlements in Judea & Samaria” — also known as the West Bank. The flyer also mentions Trump’s signing the “Never Again” Education Bill into law, which funds Holocaust awareness — which was praised by organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League. “Clearly, one of the Greatest Anti Semites of our time!” the flyer jokes…
First, Donald Trump celebrated Vladimir Putin’s embrace of his election messaging. Now the two have linked arms on Trump’s rhetoric about Ukraine, too.
Given the circumstances, it’s tempting to think Donald Trump would at least try to maintain some rhetorical distance from Russia’s Vladimir Putin. After all, the former American president has been dogged by serious allegations for many years about his benefactor in Moscow, including the fact that the Republican sought, received, benefited from, and lied about Russian assistance that helped elevate him to the White House.
And yet, for reasons he hasn’t explained, Trump just can’t seem to help himself.
Last week, for example, the former American president celebrated the fact that Putin was echoing his talking points about the 2024 election and Trump’s multiple criminal indictments. As we discussed soon after, given the atrocities and alleged war crimes Russia is committing in Ukraine, Trump might’ve even considered a stay-off-my-side posture. But Trump instead thought the smart move would be to highlight Putin’s condemnations of the United States and willingness to endorse his conspiratorial nonsense.
As part of Trump’s “Meet the Press” interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker, Trump went even further down the same road.
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that he appreciated recent praise from Russian leader Vladimir Putin. In an exclusive interview with NBC “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, Trump said it meant “what I’m saying is right,” referring to his positions on the war in Ukraine.
In case anyone’s forgotten, in February 2022, as Putin faced international condemnations, the former American president offered rather enthusiastic praise for the Russian leader, touting Putin’s aggressive moves against Ukraine as “genius” and “very savvy.”
In the months that followed, Trump repeatedly claimed he had a secret plan to negotiate a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine “within 24 hours,” going so far as to boast that it’d be “easy” to end the crisis.
It was against this backdrop that the former president told Welker that he still won’t divulge the details of his secret plan — which almost certainly does not exist in reality — except to say that there are “certain things” he would tell Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
[…] Russia’s authoritarian leader recently said, “We surely hear that Mr. Trump says he will resolve all burning issues within several days, including the Ukrainian crisis. We cannot help but feel happy about it.” Evidently, Trump was delighted by the comments.
“Well, I like that he said that,” he said on “Meet the Press,” adding, “Because that means what I’m saying is right.”
No, actually it doesn’t. Putin’s validation of Trump’s absurd boasts does not mean Trump is “right”; what it means is that he and his Russian ally have linked arms — yet again. To see an endorsement from the Kremlin as evidence of merit is to abandon any sense of propriety.
“If you are on the same side as Putin, you might want to rethink your position,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said last week. He wasn’t referring to U.S. policy in Ukraine, but it’s an observation with broad applicability.
Perhaps many of you simply assume this at this point. But it’s worth saying out loud before we get too much further into the election season. The government of Saudi Arabia is ecstatic about the possible return to power of Donald Trump. And there’s every reason to believe they will use their disproportionate power over oil prices to smooth his return to the White House. Indeed, it’s not just Saudi Arabia. It’s Russia too. The two countries are in a production alliance Bloomberg aptly calls a “crude, inflationary alliance.”
[…] In this article John Authers notes that over the last decade the big moves in oil prices have been driven not by supply and demand but by geopolitics.
The Saudi Kingdom’s de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salman’s coziness with the Trump family is notorious. Meanwhile, if Trump defeats Biden next year that would allow Vladimir Putin to escape the most monumental mistake of his two plus decades in power. We don’t even have to assume a new Trump administration would immediately switch sides or cut off support to Ukraine. Opposition from Congress would probably (maybe?) prevent anything quite so sudden and drastic. But both Ukraine and Russia would know that the clock was ticking on US support for Ukraine. That would greatly increase the odds of some stalemated, frozen conflict like the ones we see around the former Soviet periphery and indeed saw in Ukraine itself from 2014 to 2022.
Of course, the Saudis put their finger on the scale in 2022 as well. It failed to produce quite the effect they likely wanted. But we can’t ignore the fact that both these governments have huge interests in Joe Biden being defeated next year. Together they can have an immense impact on the price of oil which drives both politically sensitive gas prices as well as complicates the fight against inflation.
Jack Smith Is Going Hard After Trump, Part I
In a redacted motion unsealed Friday by order of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, Special Counsel Jack Smith is seeking to impose additional restrictions on Donald Trump’s out-of-court statements to prevent him from continuing to attack the legitimacy of the criminal proceedings against him and from tainting the jury pool in DC.
Of the various filings referred to in today’s Morning Memo, this is probably the one worth reading yourself. It’s a blistering takedown of Trump’s conduct since his indictment, comparing it to his efforts to spread anger and misinformation in the aftermath of the 2020 election (editor’s note: citations removed):
As set forth in the indictment, after election day in 2020, the defendant launched a disinformation campaign in which he publicly and widely broadcast knowingly false claims that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the presidential election, and that he had actually won. In service of his criminal conspiracies, through false public statements, the defendant sought to erode public faith in the administration of the election and intimidate individuals who refuted his lies. The defendant is now attempting to do the same thing in this criminal case—to undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and prejudice the jury pool through disparaging and inflammatory attacks on the citizens of this District, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.
Stay tuned for rulings as early as this week from Judge Chutkan on this motion from Smith and on Trump’s motion for her to recuse herself.
Jack Smith Is Going Hard After Trump, Part II
A series of court documents were unsealed Friday in the effort by Elon Musk’s Twitter to alert Donald Trump that Special Counsel Jack Smith had a search warrant for his account. In pushing to keep Twitter from tipping off Trump, Smith argued that the disclosure could “could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago.” In that instance, a man tried to launch an attack on the FBI field office in Cincinnati before he was later shot and killed while fleeing law enforcement. […]
[…] NBC News may have already launched internal investigations into whether Meet The Press staffers including Kristen Welker and executive producer David Gelles have violated NBC News’s own written guidelines in two serious ways by airing Welker’s ‘interview’ with Trump without significant fact-checking or warnings.
The rules are contained on what is called “The NBC News Employee Handbook” and it prohibits the broadcasting (or if online, the publishing) of provable falsehoods by anyone, on NBC News in any format in which there is insufficient time to confirm those falsehoods and prepare fact-checking, caveats, etc. Obviously a pre-taped interview that provided NBC News three full days to document those falsehoods would constitute circumstances providing that sufficient time.
There is a second, more remote issue: a fear among some at NBC that the lack of an on-TV fact-check was not mere dereliction but may have been part of the arrangement by which NBC got Trump to appear on their air for the first time in four years.
[…] I still cannot confirm with certainty that these investigations have begun or that they are going to. My sources conflict and I’m not confident I’m going to resolve their disagreements before the story fades behind the next Trump-related journalistic atrocity, so I saw no sense in holding this. What’s new is that the possibility of a deal with Trump to limit fact-checking to almost exclusively online stuff is directly tied to the possibility of an arrangement with the Trump campaign. There were contacts between Welker and senior Trump campaign officials last month in Milwaukee but even those might not be a violation of the NBC News Employee Handbook. Editorial agreements are made all the time (what the interview will be about, who will conduct it, where it will be recorded). The issue only becomes problematic if the agreements themselves (like sabotaging fact-checking) violate the Handbook.
[…] Did NBC News make a deal with Trump’s campaign to make sure that didn’t happen – to NOT materially fact-check him on-the-air during the disastrous Kristen Welker interview? Is NBC News conducting internal investigations, or does it plan to? I do not know for certain the answers to these questions today. I do know they are among many questions being asked inside NBC today, in part because of ONE tweet, and in part because of the awful realization that some sort of illicit pre-arrangement is an almost better explanation […]
I also know veterans within NBC News are pushing for investigations based on the following timeline: Welker and NBC News reporter Dasha Burns were among a dozen Washington insiders who were quote “wining and dining” with Trump thugs Jason Miller, Steven Cheung and Chris LaCivita at a steakhouse called “Rare” the night before the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee. The dinner was August 22nd, Welker had been named the host-in-waiting for Meet The Press on June 5th, the interview was suddenly announced late in the day last Wednesday, the 13th, conducted on Thursday the 14th. The NBC News Employee handbook would have discouraged the Welker-Burns-Trump Staff dinner but if the reporting on it by Politico is correct – that the news employees who attended paid their own expenses – they would not be guilty of violating the code precluding accepting meals or other gifts or other items of value from a political campaign, politician, or officeholder.
The more pressing problem is: at exactly 10 AM Eastern yesterday, NBC News posted on its website, a fact check of Welker’s interview. At 10:13 A-M its “Meet The Press” account tweeted this, verbatim: “Former President Trump made a spate of false and misleading comments about immigration, foreign policy, abortion and more in a wide-ranging interview with Meet The Press moderator Kristen Welker.”
The complication here is that the NBC News Employee handbook requires […] that if NBC knowingly broadcast or publish lies false or misleading comments or information by anyone in any non-live format without a disclaimer or caveat or… a fact-check – they have violated the NBC News Employee codes and are potentially subject to punishment up to and including suspension and termination.
[…] The Meet The Press telecast, of course, skipped anything resembling the online fact-check, and instead had Peter Baker of The New York Times on for a self-rationalizing interview about why NBC News wasn’t committing journalistic suicide by platforming a skilled, practiced, professional, psychopathic liar. The Baker segment amounted to several minutes of the Shrug Emoji, only in a suit.
Again: I cannot CONFIRM that NBC News is investigating Kristen Welker or Meet The Press Executive Producer David Gelles or anybody else within that unit or the news division as a whole for violating the written NBC News journalistic guidelines. I do know there is reason to believe those internal NBC News guidelines HAVE been violated.
Amazingly, that is the GOOD news for NBC and Meet The Press and Welker. […] The NBC disasters sat there for nearly 72 hours after the interview was recorded and they were STILL put on the air. THAT is an extinction-level event. Reviewing the interview is like reaching for a book on the top shelf and two dozen of them falling on your head, one by one. Followed by the shelf. Trump lies and says Biden “told the justice department to indict me” and instead of pushing back in any way, and without NBC putting up any graphic warning they are transmitting provably false statements, and without NBC coming back to the studio for. Live fact-check, Welker instead then says quote “Let me ask you this, Mr. President. I just want to hear from YOU on this. I want to know what’s in your head. When you go to bed at night, do you worry about going to jail?”
[…] As an aside she called him “Mr. President” at least twice and that appellation is, journalistically, reserved for the sitting president. “President Trump” is maddening – but acceptable. She didn’t call him that.
[…] Trump lies again about Biden and says “Everything he says is like a lie, it’s terrible” and instead of pushing back against in any way, and again without any NBC caveat, Welker inanely says “I want to stay focused on you… because it’s important to hear from you. Mr. President? Tell me what you see when you look at your mugshot.” I mean they wouldn’t have run this tripe on Dateline.
Trump lied about immigrants flooding this country. There was no factcheck on Meet The Press. Trump lied about a record number of terrorists among them. There was no factcheck on Meet The Press. Trump lied about the U-S giving the Taliban 85 billion dollars worth of equipment. There was no factcheck on Meet The Press. Trump lied about January 6th insurrectionists getting record sentences. There was no factcheck on Meet The Press. Trump lied about his tax cuts producing revenue. There was no factcheck on Meet The Press. Trump lied that the media is no longer covering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There was no factcheck on Meet The Press. Trump lied that Covid and not HE drove up the defecit. There was no factcheck on Meet The Press. Trump lied more than a dozen times that the 2020 election was quote “rigged.” There was no factcheck on Meet The Press. […]
All of those lies are fact checked in the NBC News digital piece — but weren’t on television. […] Why not more live in-studio interruptions of Trump’s lies? Or a longer item-by-item list of them after the taped interview instead of the Baker self-perpetuating Media-Political Industrial Complex auto-fluff segment? […]
As my own caveat: a lot of coverage of the Welker-Trump disaster insisted that she got Trump to admit he had lost the 2020 election. In fact he said he needed more votes because the election was rigged. She then replied “Are you acknowledging you didn’t win?” He then replies “They rigged the election. I’m not acknowledging, no. I say we won the election.” Also: The Vice President of NBC News digital boasted that Welker got Trump to say he ignored legal advice from the attorneys who told him he lost and to continue to lie that he won, in 2020, “It was my decision,” he said. This has been presented in some quarters as excellent evidence for Special Counsel Jack Smith and while it can’t hurt, it merely echoes the evidence a Grand Jury has been hearing – quotes from Trump; testimony from others – for months.
[…] CNN’s new masters made no secret of their intent: to curry favor with Trump and to afford him an avenue to spread the corporate fascism they have openly endorsed. NBC’s motives may be more obscure and opaque but they are no less evil. They are either, like CNN, positioning themselves to survive in a world in which the Trumpists prevail and this nation goes FULLY fascist in the years to come, or – perhaps even more disgustingly – they are too greedy and too blind to see that Trump has exploited them and manipulated them into pimping for him and for evil. […]
I think there is too much vengeance-against-NBC from Keith Olbermann in this essay. There are also too many unanswered, fundamental questions for this to count as good journalism. However, the point that NBC may have agreed to online-factchecking-only for the most part is a question that should be asked and answered. I do think that NBC gave Trump too cushy a platform for spewing lies, and I agree that the Peter Baker interview was not a good followup. I do also agree that even the online factchecking was not done in a timely manner.
On Friday, Donald Trump was in Washington, D.C., to appear at something called the “Pray Vote Stand Summit.” In a relatively brief speech, Trump repeatedly fumbled basic facts, made mistakes about his own elections, and devolved into what some observers accurately called a “word salad.”
In the middle of this, Trump attacked President Joe Biden, using the same hot button the media can’t stop pressing: Biden’s age. “We have a man who is totally corrupt and the worst president in the history of our country, who is cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead, and is now in charge of dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war,” said Trump.
He added, “Just think of it. We would be in World War Two very quickly if we’re going to be relying on this man, and far more devastating than any war.”
To many in the tight-knit deep-sea exploration community, OceanGate’s submersible dives were reckless and often dangerous, writes best-selling author Susan Casey….
(They have an article limit, but I’m not sure how many it is…)
Près de cinquante ans après la mort de Franco, une magistrate espagnole a entendu pour la première fois le témoignage d’une victime de tortures sous la la dictature. Un fait historique, car jusqu’à présent les tribunaux espagnols avaient toujours rejeté les plaintes contre les crimes du régime de Franco, en s’appuyant sur une loi d’amnistie approuvée après le rétablissement de la démocratie….
TikTok is the next generation of information, for better or (usually) for worse. A new report reveals that some major TikTok dietitians are being paid off by the food industry to shape viewers eating habits.
The report comes from the Washington Post, which partnered with nonprofit newsroom The Examination to, well, examine popular TikTok dietitians and found that dozens of these influencers were peddling messages from the food, beverage, and supplement industries….
…
…This phenomenon illustrates a major problem with self-produced content that offers advice or conducts journalism: payola. Self-proclaimed dietitians, movie critics, and journalists, for example, on platforms like TikTok are able to freely accept payouts from organizations and companies they may report on. The creators also face little to no recourse, allowing misinformation and guided opinions to run rampant amongst their millions of followers.
Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will meet his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy in New York on Wednesday, two sources from the Brazilian government said on Monday.
Lula has irked western leaders who support Ukraine’s fight against Russia with his refusal to take a clear side in the war or supply Kyiv with weapons.
Lula has attempted to position himself as a potential peace broker between Moscow and Kyiv, arguing some countries must remain “neutral” if peace is to be achieved.
Colonel Andrey Kondrashkin (call sign “Dunay”), who commanded the 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade, has been killed in Ukraine, according to Alexander Khodakovsky, the Putin-appointed deputy commander of the National Guard in the Russian-annexed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR).
No further information was provided about the circumstances of his death.
Ukrainian journalist Yurii Butusov said that the 31st brigade participated in all major battles, starting with the Battle of Hostomel Airport near Kyiv. According to him, the unit is now located near Bakhmut. Kondrashkin was in charge of repelling attacks by Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade near the village of Andriivka. Butusov says that Ukraine’s Armed Forces were able to enter the village through Kondrashkin’s defense sector.
Thousands of Syrians protested on Friday in the southern city of Sweida, the largest in nearly a month of anti-regime demonstrations that have intensified despite one incidence of violence, activists said.
…
“Between 3,500 and 4,000 people rallied,” a protester said, adding that it was “the biggest demonstration yet.”
Another activist gave similar estimates. The demonstration took place days after three protesters were wounded by gunfire while trying to weld shut a branch of the ruling Baath Party.
Activists blamed party members guarding the building for the violence.
Sealing of the party’s offices has become a common act of defiance by protesters in recent weeks.
“Today, in response to the gunfire, people turned out in larger numbers,” said the protester.
“We are not afraid and we will keep protesting peacefully until the end.”
Media outlet Suwayda24 shared videos on X, formerly known as Twitter, showing thousands of men and women chanting anti-regime slogans and waving Druze flags. Protesters chanted: “Syria wants freedom” and “Leave, Bashar, enemy of humanity,” one video showed.
Rayan Maarouf of Suwayda24, an outlet run by citizen journalists, said the violence has “only increased people’s determination.”
…
Smaller, sporadic protests have taken place in neighboring Daraa province, the cradle of Syria’s 2011 uprising, which Assad bloodily suppressed….
Labor negotiations continued this week between union negotiators and representatives of the Detroit Three automakers days into a strike…
Below are comments from some of the 10 Republican presidential candidates seeking their party’s 2024 nomination to take on Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden, who has backed the United Auto Workers….
Nikki Haley:
…I don’t think government should get involved in this. These are private sector matters….
Next paragraph:
…As governor, “I was a union buster. I didn’t want to bring in companies that were unionized simply because I didn’t want to have that change the environment in our state….”
[…] overt anti-semitism is still considered gauche in some circles, so instead Trump calls out the “bad Jew,” which is most of us. By definition, “good Jews” support moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and the theft of Arab land. By sheer coincidence, this goal is shared by Trump’s evangelical supporters who look forward to the day when we all drown in a lake of fire. In another amazing coincidence, it allows Republicans to split a voting bloc that’s spent fifty years showing up to vote for Democrats in every election.
It’s a neat trick, turning us against each other even as you remind us that we, soon, could go the way of other minorities, accused of bigotry for acknowledging historical facts that make people feel bad. “Nice Holocaust education program you got there,” the gangster intones, “be a shame if the war on woke happened to it.” After being radicalized by xenophobic “Great Replacement” rhetoric against the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Tree of Life shooter killed 11 Jews as they prayed in schul, but we should throw flowers at the Republican Party for protecting our children from a handful of BDS dipshits on campus.
The message is clear, and so is the threat. You live among Americans, but you are not American. Any political or civil engagement by Jews, aside from grateful obeisance to the king, is improper interference. The Party will decide who is a “real” Jew and who is an imposter. And if you don’t like it, you can pack your bags and go to your own country, which sure as hell isn’t this one.
And so in this season of spirituality, I turn to the language of my great-grandparents, who surely understood anti-semitism in ways that I never will, and would appreciate that wishing ill upon Haman is not the kind of sin you repent for.
Zol es im onkumn vos ikh vintsh im (khotsh a helft, khotsh halb, khotsh a tsent kheylik).
Let what I wish on him come true (most, even half, even just 10 percent).
Russian channels throughout the day confirm that the AFU has counterattacked near Novoselivs’ke-Kuzemivka, in the Svatove axis and regained several strategic positions, previously occupied by Russian forces.
birgerjohanssonsays
I just wanted to show an example to refute the stereotypical image of muslims. Even if I obviously do not buy into his religion, this guy is smarter than a bucketload of Xian fundies (the ‘dawah’ guys are a different matter-they are as dishonest as Creationists).
The government of Ghana is essentially bankrupt, and has turned to the International Monetary Fund for its 17th financial rescue since 1957.
Emmanuel Cherry, the chief executive of an association of Ghanaian construction companies, sat in a cafe at the edge of Accra Children’s Park, near the derelict Ferris wheel and kiddie train, as he tallied up how much money government entities owe thousands of contractors.
Before interest, he said, the back payments add up to 15 billion cedis, roughly $1.3 billion. “Most of the contractors are home,” Mr. Cherry said. Their workers have been laid off.
Like many others in this West African country, the contractors have to wait in line for their money. Teacher trainees complain they are owed two months of back pay. Independent power producers that have warned of major blackouts are owed $1.58 billion.
The government is essentially bankrupt. After defaulting on billions of dollars owed to foreign lenders in December, the administration of President Nana Akufo-Addo had no choice but to agree to a $3 billion loan from the lender of last resort, the International Monetary Fund.
It was the 17th time Ghana has been compelled to turn to the Fund since it gained independence in 1957.
This latest crisis was partly prompted by the havoc of the coronavirus pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and higher food and fuel prices. But the tortuous cycle of crisis and bailout has plagued dozens of poor and middle-income countries throughout Africa, Latin America and Asia for decades.
These pitiless loops will be discussed at the latest United Nations General Assembly, which begins on Tuesday. The debt load for developing countries — now estimated to top $200 billion — threatens to upend economies and unravel painstaking gains in education, health care and incomes. But poor and low-income countries have struggled to gain sustained international attention.
In Ghana, the I.M.F. laid out a detailed rescue plan to get the country back on its feet — reining in debt and spending, raising revenue and protecting the poorest — as Accra negotiates with foreign creditors.
[…] The last time Ghana turned to the fund was in 2015. Within three years, the country was on its way to paying back the loan, and was among the world’s fastest growing economies. Ghana was held up as a model for the rest of Africa.
Agricultural production was up, and major exports — cocoa, oil and gold — were rising. The country had invested in infrastructure and education, and had begun a cleanup of the banking industry, which was riddled with distressed lenders.
Yet Accra is once again desperately in need. The I.M.F. loan agreement, and the delivery of a $600,000 installment in May, has helped stabilize the economy, settle wild fluctuations in currency levels and restore a modicum of confidence. Inflation is still running above 40 percent but is down from its peak of 54 percent in January.
[…] The effects of devastating climate change loom over the problem. Within the next decade, a United Nations analysis estimates, trillions of dollars in new financing will be needed to mitigate the impact on developing countries.
In Ghana, the government owed $63.3 billion at the end of 2022 not just to foreign creditors but also to homegrown lenders — pension funds, insurance companies and local banks that believed the government was a safe investment. The situation was so unusual that the I.M.F. for the first time made settling this domestic debt a prerequisite for a bailout. A partial restructuring, which cut returns and extended the due dates, was completed in February. While the haircut may have been necessary, it undermined confidence in the banks.
As for foreign lenders, there are thousands of private, semipublic and governmental creditors, including China, which have different objectives, loan arrangements and regulatory controls.
[…] The dizzying proliferation of lenders now characterizes much of the debt burdening distressed countries around the globe — making it also more complex and difficult to resolve.
[snipped details of inflation affecting people buying groceries, small shop owners struggling with the depreciating currency, etc.]
[…] When the pandemic struck in 2020, paralyzing economies, shrinking revenues and raising health care costs, fear of a global debt crisis mounted. Ghana, like many developing countries, had borrowed heavily, encouraged by years of low commercial rates.
As the Federal Reserve and other central banks raised interest rates to combat inflation, developing countries’ external debt payments — priced in dollars or euros — unexpectedly ballooned at the same time that prices of imported food, fuel and fertilizer shot up.
[…] “The government is bloated and inefficient,” said E. Gyimah-Boadi, the board chair of Afrobarometer, a research network. Half-completed schools, hospitals and other projects are abandoned when a new administration comes in. Corruption and mismanagement are also problems, several economists and business leaders in Ghana said.
[…] “Ghana’s success story is real,” Aurelien Kruse, the lead country economist in the Accra office of the World Bank, said. “Where it may have been a bit oversold,” though, is that “the fast growth has not been diversified.” The economy is primarily dependent on exports of raw materials like cocoa, oil and gold, which peak and swoop in price.
Manufacturing accounts for a mere 10 percent of the country’s total output — a decline from 2013. Without a thriving industrial sector to provide steady employment and produce exportable goods, Ghana has no other streams of revenue from abroad, which can build wealth and pay for needed imports.
This model — the import of expensive goods and the export of cheap resources — characterized the colonial system.
[…] the problem of finding manageable amounts of low-cost investment capital remains.
Where does an African country — or any developing country — get the type of financing it needs to grow, Mr. Ofori-Atta asked.
Before the cycle of debt crises is broken, that question will have to be answered.
Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, at times grew angry when being interviewed by Welker, refusing to answer whether he called law enforcement on Jan. 6, 2021, who he called that day and how he watched the chaos unfold, claiming he “behaved so well.”
I saw the video clip of this. The man is almost 80. His petulant insistence that he “behaved so well” says so much about him psychologically. I might have to check in on Mary Trump’s podcast to see if she notes it.
SC @45, “petulant” is a good way to describe Trump.
Related to other news, (Ken Paxton), here is some satire written by Andy Borowitz:
Thousands of hardened criminals poured into Texas over the weekend after learning how easy it is to secure an acquittal there.
Interstate freeways were reportedly backed up for miles as acquittal-seeking perpetrators sought to put down roots in soft-on-crime Texas.
Harland Dorrinson, a self-styled recidivist who has been convicted in Ohio, Missouri, and Wisconsin, said that he was heading to the Lone Star state because, “in Texas, no one is below the law.”
“An acquittal is yours for the asking if you’re white, male, and nefarious,” he said. “I check all the boxes.”
When told that one must also be elected as a Republican in order to qualify for Texas’s special “conviction exemption,” the career criminal was unfazed, noting that “even Greg Abbott” managed to do that.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry without a full House vote, at a time when he didn’t appear to have the votes. Republicans have a four-seat House majority, and currently, more than four Republicans indicated that they didn’t see grounds for an inquiry. But McCarthy spoke the support he needed into existence. The kind of ostensibly moderate Republican who didn’t want to see an impeachment inquiry will nonetheless go along with leadership for the sake of partisan advantage.
See, for instance, Rep. Don Bacon. In August, Bacon told NBC News, “We should have more confidence that actual high crimes and misdemeanors occurred before starting a formal impeachment inquiry.” Last week, as McCarthy announced his voteless inquiry, Bacon said, “As of now I don’t support” an inquiry, because it “should be based on evidence of a crime that points directly to President Biden, or if the President doesn’t cooperate by not providing documents.”
Less than a week later, Bacon’s position has shifted to cautious support. “I don’t think it’s healthy or good for our country. So I wanted to set a high bar. I want to do it carefully. I want to do it conscientiously, do it meticulously,” Bacon said. “But it’s been done. So, at this point, we’ll see what the facts are.”
No person who has observed House Republicans over the past eight months could possibly believe that they will proceed carefully, conscientiously, or meticulously. But Bacon has shown how much his opposition is worth—and how much it will be worth if he ever has to decide how to vote on impeachment.
Similarly, Rep. David Joyce said in August, “You hear a lot of rumor and innuendo … but that’s not fact to me. As a former prosecutor, I think there has to be facts, and I think there has to be due process that we follow, and I’ve not seen any of that today.” Now? In a statement, Joyce said, “I support Speaker McCarthy’s decision to direct the House Committees on Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.” What’s more, he’s “confident” that the committee leaders conducting the inquiry—Oversight Chair James Comer, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, and Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith—“will conduct thoughtful and thorough investigations into allegations against the President, which I will carefully review.” [JFC!]
Saying you’re confident Comer and Jordan will be “thoughtful and thorough” is kind of a tell that nothing you’re saying should be believed. [Correct]
People like Bacon and Joyce know there’s no there there, but once McCarthy said the inquiry was happening, they fell in line. Because they’re Republicans, and the only principle in the Republican Party is power. […]
Five Americans wrongfully imprisoned in Iran for years were released Monday as part of a prisoner exchange agreement that gives Tehran access to $6 billion in oil revenues frozen under U.S. sanctions. A plane carrying the five Americans and two of their relatives touched down in Qatar, which had helped broker the swap.
A U.S. fighter jet’s stealth abilities appear to be working too well, with authorities forced to ask the public for help finding an F-35 that went missing somewhere over South Carolina when the pilot ejected because of a ‘mishap.’ Joint Base Charleston, an air base in North Charleston, said it was working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to ‘locate an F-35 that was involved in a mishap’ Sunday afternoon.
The death toll from the unprecedented flooding in northeastern Libya has risen to at least 11,300 people, the U.N. has said, with 10,100 more missing in the devastated city of Derna alone.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday that Turkey may part ways with the European Union, implying that the country is thinking about ending its bid to join the 27-nation bloc.
I watched the new film on Netflix El Conde. It’s not amazing, but it is quite engaging. Probably the only vampire movie I’ll ever see. I agree generally with this review, but I would go even further in praising the cinematography by Edward Lachman. It’s delightful to look at, and (with the production and costume design) visually conveys reaction/greed/despotism, draining them of power and grandeur. It has a Gothic feel, but in a way that doesn’t so much deploy the look as de-romanticize and lead you to reflect on it. I’m sure I’ll watch it again on mute just to take it all in.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is accusing the government of India of involvement in the fatal shooting of a Canadian Sikh leader — a claim that will have seismic effects on an already shaky bilateral relationship.
Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar was brazenly shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C. on June 18.
Nijjar, a supporter of a Sikh homeland in the form of an independent Khalistani state, had been branded by the Indian government as a “terrorist” and accused of leading a militant separatist group — something his supporters have denied.
Now, Trudeau said, Canada’s national security apparatus has reason to believe that “agents of the Indian government” carried out the killing of this Canadian citizen, who also served as the president of Surrey’s Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara…
I have not seen this myself, so cannot recommend it, but it promotes a cause I support. The American Chestnut Foundation is involved in promoting the film, so you may presume it is not objective.
The new documentary film CLEAR DAY THUNDER: RESCUING THE AMERICAN CHESTNUT tells the story of passionate citizen scientists and researchers working to restore this ecologically and economically important species, during this pivotal moment…
There are some places in Ukraine that just never seem to get a break, and for over a year, Bakhmut has been at the top of the list. There were months during which Russia gradually surrounded the city, capturing locations like Soledar to the north and Opytne to the south. There were more months in which Wagner Group forces sent one human wave after another to crash against defenses on the city’s east side, turning every address along Patrisa Lumumby Street into a landmark of destruction. Finally, there came the slow, block-by-block withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Bakhmut, with Russian artillery leveling the city in an effort to leave no position capable of defense.
As Wagner forces moved through Bakhmut, there were a series of absolutely desperate weeks in which Ukraine seemed barely able to reach its forces remaining inside the city. Russia moved through Krasna Hora and Paraskoviivka, cutting off the city from the north. Wagner forces crossed the T0513 highway on the south, then reached Klishchiivka, pushed through the high ground west of the town, and made the T0504 highway on the southwest impassable.
The last paved road into Bakhmut, from Chasiv Yar through Khromove, was briefly known as the “highway of life”—the sole means of getting supplies into Bakhmut and bringing both wounded and refugees out. Then, in the space of days, that same route became the “highway of death,” littered by burned-out hulks of vehicles struck by a rain of Russian artillery from captured Berkhivka and Yahidne.
As the city fell, it seemed like Bakhmut was about to become another city in the backfield of Russia’s slow advance, like Severodonetsk to the north. At Daily Kos, we were already writing about Ukraine’s next defensive position along the roads to Russia’s big targets at Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. But that’s not the way it happened.
For months, there was a grand argument boiling down to this: Why is Ukraine expending so much effort and so many lives defending Bakhmut? There was broad agreement when Russia first approached the city that it was not an important strategic target and hard as hell to defend, with approaches from every direction and the only natural barrier being a river so small it could almost be jumped.
It seemed entirely reasonable for Ukraine to shift its forces west and north, taking position on more defensible and valuable higher ground. And we didn’t hesitate to say so.
But clearly Ukraine’s leadership, right up to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, didn’t see it that way. They kept pouring resources into the city long after every armchair general and spreadsheet-driving analyst was declaring it a waste. Zelenskyy even made multiple personal visits to the city, with Russian forces very close at hand, to thank those defending Bakhmut and encourage them to hold out as long as possible.
As Ukraine dug in its heels, what became clear was that, even though the cost to Ukraine was tremendous, the cost to Russia was absolutely outlandish. Those wave attacks were costing Russia thousands at first, then tens of thousands, with the prison recruits of the Wagner Group bearing the principal costs. There were times when it seemed Russia could not possibly keep this up. But they did. There were times when it seemed Ukraine had no choice but to leave. They didn’t.
As Wagner forces moved to take the last “citadel” of Ukrainian holdouts in the city, and as Russian artillery pounded the final blocks into oblivion, it wasn’t just supporters of Ukraine looking for the next battlefield. Russian propagandists didn’t just say they were going to take Khromove and Chasiv Yar to Bakhmut’s west, they claimed they already had. Next stop: full Russian control of Donetsk oblast. With Ukraine down to a series of makeshift mud roads to get anything into or out of the area, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the area west of Bakhmut would soon be abandoned.
Only … no. Wagner Group completed a token capture of the city, then immediately withdrew to their tents on the east side of Bakhmut to fume and plan their upcoming trip to Moscow. Without those forces, Russia not only couldn’t continue the advance, they also couldn’t hold everything they had taken.
Ukraine counterattacked north, pushing back Russian troops in Berkhivka. It attacked on the northwest, regaining control of Orikhovo-Vasylivka. And most significantly, it pushed back on the south, driving Russian from the high ground west of Klishchiivka, crossing the canal near Andriivka, and eventually liberating both those towns. […]
Ukraine hasn’t only liberated over 100 square kilometers from Russian occupation. At the moment, Bakhmut is reportedly the hottest point of conflict anywhere along the line.
On Monday, there were two conflicting claims about the area, both found in this Telegram statement. “As a result of the successful actions of our troops, the enemy’s defense line was breached,” wrote a Ukrainian commander. Presumably, this doesn’t mean the main prepared defensive trenches, which are east of the line from Opytne to Odradivka as well as several kilometers from any known advance by Ukraine. Instead, he likely meant that in liberating Klishchiivka and Andrivka, Ukraine has placed Russia outside of defensible positions. Russia’s forces are now caught in a kind of trough east of Klishchiiva, with Ukraine able to fire down onto this lower ground.
Still, breaking through Russia’s defenses implies the kind of thing that should result in either a rout or a retreat, and as the same message points out, neither of these things are happening.
Fierce fighting continues in the Bakhmut region. After losing the settlements of Andriivka and Klishchiivka last week, the enemy is conducting numerous counterattacks from different directions, unsuccessfully trying to regain lost positions. After all, these small, at first glance, settlements were important elements of the enemy’s defensive line, which stretched from Bakhmut to Horlivka.
Even with Wagner gone, Russia still has a large number of forces around Bakhmut. It’s hard to tell how exhausted, undersupplied, or incomplete any of them may be, but if Russia is trying to reclaim Klishchiivka, they are doing it from a terrible position, pushing uphill against Ukrainian positions.
A relatively fresh Russian army might have pulled that off against a less experienced Ukraine a year ago. These are not those Russians. It’s not going to happen again.
———————————-
IT’S DEAD, JIM
Every time we get a closer look at Kilo-class submarine Rostov-on-Don, the idea that it will soon be back in service becomes more laughable. If the images released on Monday are accurate, this isn’t something that’s going to buff out. It’s not something that is soon going to be repaired. In fact, it’s likely something that will never be repaired. [Tweet and images at the link]
Oryx has moved the sub to the “destroyed” category. Which means it’s not merely dead, it’s really most sincerely dead […]
———————————-
Remember the Kinburn Spit? This is that narrow point of land, not much more than a glorified sand bar, that pokes out from the delta of the Dnipro like a finger pointing to Odessa. When it controlled much of Kherson west of the river, Russia was able to position artillery here, but anything that moves on the Kinburn is now subject to a very active drone patrol. [tweet and video at the link: A Russian BM-21 GRAD MLRS was destroyed on the Kinburn Spit]
——————————
The modern way of war. [Tweet and video at the link, showing drone operators with goggles on]
———————————–
A pair of 2S9 “Nona” self-propelled guns go for a ride courtesy of HIMARS.
Drone spotting. HIMARS precision. Scratch two.
This is in an area northeast of Donetsk, about 7 kilometers from the current front lines. Russia remains at a huge counterbattery disadvantage, with Ukrainian guns dramatically outranging Russia’s. [Tweet and video at the link, showing destruction of Russian artillery] [Additional tweet and video, shows the battle for Urozhaine]
———————————
The Ukrainian General Staff reports Ukrainian forces successfully repelled multiple Russian attacks at:
Klishchiivka
Andriivka
Mar’inka
Robotyne
Everything else on Monday was either artillery or air strikes.
I think it’s fair to say that the stubborn defense of Bakhmut ended up destroying the Wagner Group as the most effective ground force Russia had in Ukraine. Not a bad result in the end, though the true cost is yet to be determined.
——————–
Nobody knows how to fight a drone-heavy war yet. Ukraine is learning that faster than anyone else. But we know at this point that sneak attacks are basically impossible and that neither side can gather large amounts of forces anywhere.
—————————
with that level of damage to the sub, they’re better off just building a whole new one. Force depletion for their Black Sea assets is going to become a real problem at this rate. They already limit their operations due to the threat of Ukrainian missiles.
ABC News is reporting that among the classified documents found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort after FBI agents searched the premises on Aug. 8, 2022, was a set of classified “notecards” found and reported by one of Trump’s personal assistants.
The details, however, are so bizarre as to be inexplicable.
As described to ABC News, the aide, Molly Michael, told investigators that — more than once — she received requests or taskings from Trump that were written on the back of notecards, and she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials — with visible classification markings — used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters.
Got that? So this was apparently a set of notecards with “classified” markings that were created to prepare Trump for important calls with international leaders. And somehow these classified notecards were, once Trump left office, being used by him as scratch paper and being handed off to his assistant.
The next day, after the FBI search, Michael returned to work at Mar-a-Lago and found her desk in a bit of a mess, with drawers turned over, sources said. Buried underneath a drawer organizer were the to-do lists Trump had written for her on the backs of briefing notes with classification markings, Michael later recalled to investigators, according to sources.
When Michael discovered that the FBI hadn’t taken those documents in their search of Mar-a-Lago, she helped make sure they were given to the FBI that same day, the sources told ABC News.
ABC’s story also reveals that Michaels was one of the aides who Trump allegedly encouraged to lie about the presence of the boxes containing classified documents, but the pending courtroom trial will get to that evidence in due time. It’s the detail of Trump using classified “notecards” as an impromptu scratchpad that manages to be baffling, even in the midst of an unending stream of baffling Trump behaviors.
The implication here is that Trump was getting classified information printed out on notecards to act as cheat sheets during his phone calls—no doubt a standard White House practice. But these classified cards then were somehow not collected after the phone calls, and instead kept by Trump.
Not just kept, but apparently collected. So that by the time he left office, he had a neat little bundle of them that he then brought to Mar-a-Lago.
And not as “keepsakes” or “mementos,” as he has previously insisted, but as scratch paper so he wouldn’t have to buy a $1 pack of notecards from Staples?
[…] How the hell does this sequence of events even work? Someone explain it to me like I’m 5 years old: How is it that Trump was able, just logistically, to hoard a whole set of classified cards about, apparently, different classified phone calls, such that he had enough to “repeatedly” hand them out to others? Where was he keeping them, that he had a pile of these things at his desk ready to be doled out? How is it that this guy was collecting classified notecards not because he wanted to keep them as memories of his administration, but because he didn’t want to have to buy new notecards?
How many people have notecards from this classified stack? Were they just for one assistant, or for general doodling and scratch work?
ABC News is reporting that Donald Trump was quite literally using classified national security documents as scratch paper […] What. The. F-ck?
Planned Parenthood resumed offering abortion services in Wisconsin on Monday after halting them for more than a year since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Providers across the state stopped offering abortions following the June 2022 decision, fearing enforcement of an 1849 state law that appears to ban the procedure but had previously been nullified by the 1973 Roe ruling. A judge ruled last month that the 144-year-old law doesn’t apply to medical abortions.
In light of the ruling, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin began offering abortions at clinics in Madison and Milwaukee again on Monday. The group did not say how many abortions it expected to perform but said appointments at its Milwaukee clinic on Monday were completely filled within 24 hours of announcing that services would resume.
Without access to abortion care in Wisconsin for the past 15 months, many patients have sought assistance in neighboring Illinois, where abortions have remained widely available. According to Planned Parenthood of Illinois, its clinics have seen a seven-fold increase in patients from Wisconsin since the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
The lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s 1849 law was brought by the state’s Democratic attorney general and is expected to end up in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which flipped to liberal control last month. […]
Nobody knows how to fight a drone-heavy war yet. Ukraine is learning that faster than anyone else.
I was wondering if there were ground drones (which sounds like “land shark” and so makes me giggle), and apparently there are. I was thinking more like spy drones with tiny cameras andor microphones that looked and moved like small animals.
Pierce R. Butlersays
Lynna… @ # 58, quoting a Kossack: … she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials — with visible classification markings — used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters. … classified information printed out on notecards to act as cheat sheets during his phone calls—no doubt a standard White House practice.
Functionally (though maybe not legally) the equivalent of the (purportedly) most sensitive docs kept on Hillary Clinton’s server, described as talking points memos for meetings with heads of state; prob’ly for events already past. Many of us (including me) didn’t make that much of this in the former case, so don’t have much room for heavy indignation in the latter.
As for Trump’s hanging on to these cards, then treating them like junk – totally in keeping with his pervasive infantilism. He has his staff too thoroughly broken in for any of them to try more than once to remove anything he claims for his binkie.
SC, that sounds kind of like a combination drone and robot. I don’t remember where I read it, but apparently the Ukrainians have robots they can use to help rescue wounded soldiers.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy is set to address the UN general assembly in-person on Tuesday for the first time since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, telling reporters: “For us it’s very important that all our words, all our messages will be heard”. The Ukrainian president made the remarks during a visit to Staten Island university hospital, where Ukrainian soldiers have been treated for amputations.
Ukraine told the UN’s highest court in The Hague on Tuesday that Russia justified waging war against Ukraine by invoking “a terrible lie”, namely that Moscow’s invasion was to stop an alleged genocide. “The international community adopted the Genocide Convention to protect; Russia invokes the Genocide convention to destroy,” Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych told judges. He called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to decide that it has jurisdiction to hear the case fully and eventually rule that Russia must pay reparations for invading under a false pretext.
There are several reports of Ukrainians murdered in Russian air strikes on civilians, alongside various lies from the Russian propaganda machine. I would love to see an analysis of all of the Russian fact claims reported in the Guardian liveblogs since February 2022; I imagine the percentage that turned out to be true or accurate would be very small.
Reginald Selkirksays
@60,62 drones
I have an idea for an anti-ship drone. It swims through the water to get to the ship, then climbs up thee side and moves to the most vulnerable location before setting off its charge. The idea is that if you can reach the right location, you probably don’t need as much explosive to disable a ship.
StevoRsays
The player in the middle of the controversy that engulfed Spanish soccer after she was kissed on the lips by an official, has accused the country’s soccer federation of trying to intimidate the World Cup-winning players.Jenni Hermoso — who did not consent to the kiss by the federation’s former president Luis Rubiales during the World Cup awards ceremony last month — said the governing body’s decision to call up nearly half of the 39 players who said they would not play for the national team as a protest, was “irrefutable proof” that “nothing has changed”. The players had said they wouldn’t come back until their demands for deep reforms and new leadership in the federation were met. But, on Tuesday, new coach Montse Tomé picked 15 of the players who helped Spain win its first Women’s World Cup last month.Tomé left Hermoso off the list “as a way to protect her,” she said.
“Protect me from what?” Hermoso said.
A far-right US media figure who has made racist attacks on Indigenous Australians spoke at a conservative conference chaired by leading No campaigner Warren Mundine.
The revelation comes amid growing concerns about the impact of racist commentary on Indigenous Australians as the Voice debate intensifies.
The Conservative Political Action Conference, a not-for-profit group, featured prominent No campaigners at its annual event in August, including former prime minister Tony Abbott and shadow Indigenous Affairs minister Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.Among the speakers was Elijah Schaffer, an American podcaster living in Australia, who complained to the crowd that politicians spoke in support of “Aboriginals or the gay community” rather than “the Australian community”.
Mr Schaffer’s social media shows him using a racist slur to describe Aboriginal people, while his podcast recently featured an Australian neo-Nazi who has spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Voice.
Mr Schaffer launched into a racist diatribe about Aboriginal people on a podcast episode in July, speaking against the Voice.
Good, nicely explained clip on Signs of life on an ocean exoplanet? by Harry Cliff on youtube 7 minutes long here. About this discovery hinting at juuu-uust maaaay-be life in the vastness of the ocean of the Hycean (thick Hydrogen atmosphere over deep water ocean and hot high pressure ices mantle) exoplanet K2-18b ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2-18b ) noted in this NASA news page here :
The world’s most powerful publicly known X-ray laser at the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has fired its first pulses with an upgrade that could see it scan our world in strange new ways.
After a decade of effort, the lab’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) atomic X-ray free-electron laser has been upgraded and can deliver up to a million pulses per second, each up to 10,000 times brighter than those emitted by previous instruments – making it 8,000 times more powerful than its predecessor. Or so Uncle Sam says…
X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has stopped working.
The site broke hours after Elon Musk said that he is planning to force everyone to pay for access to the site.
Some parts of X continued to load, for some people. But users had problems with much of the site, including loading tweets and their timelines.
Tracking website Down Detector showed a huge influx of reports of problems on Tuesday afternoon, across the world. That site depends on reports from X, and so may experience problems itself…
The crash site for a stealth fighter jet that went missing during the weekend after its pilot ejected was located Monday in rural South Carolina after the military asked the public for help finding an aircraft built to elude detection.
The debris field was discovered in Williamsburg County, about two hours northeast of Joint Base Charleston. Residents were being asked to avoid the area while a recovery team worked to secure it…
A detail of reportage – Specifying a distance in hours only makes sens if the mode of conveyance is clear. Is that two hours of F-35 jet flight, or a two hour drive by car?
Former President Donald Trump intends to deliver a prime-time speech to union workers in Detroit during next week’s Republican primary debate, three sources familiar with the planning confirmed to NBC News on Monday.
The debate on Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California will be the second snubbed by Trump this election cycle in favor of a competing event. […]
The counter-programming comes amid an ongoing labor dispute between autoworkers and car manufacturers that has drawn national attention. Thousands of United Auto Workers are on strike after Detroit’s three automakers failed to reach a contract agreement with the union last week.
Trump said the United Auto Workers’ leadership had failed its members in an interview with NBC News’ Kristen Welker that aired over the weekend, but held back from criticizing its members.
“The auto workers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump,” he said.
UAW President Shawn Fain has been critical of Trump, calling the prospect of a second Trump presidency “a disaster,” […]
Asked to respond to Fain, Trump said, “I think he’s not doing a good job in representing his union, because he’s not going to have a union in three years from now.”
[…] A spokesperson for the Biden-Harris campaign responded Monday night saying Trump “is going to Michigan next week to lie to Michigan workers and pretend he didn’t spend his entire failed presidency selling them out at every turn.”
“Instead of standing with workers, Trump cut taxes for the super-wealthy while auto companies shuttered their doors and shipped American jobs overseas,” Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “No self-serving photo op can erase Trump’s four years of abandoning union workers and standing with his ultra-rich friends.” […]
Reginald Selkirksays
@74 I did some work with Google maps. Williamsburg County is about 1:45 driving a car from Joint Base Charleston, at a distance of > 70 miles.
That comes as there’s been strong resistance in some GOP quarters to further aid.
Backers have launched a new $1 million ad campaign seeking to get Republicans in Congress behind a new push for aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia.
The group, Republicans for Ukraine, unveiled a new report card evaluating GOP members on their support for Ukraine, as well as an ad on Fox & Friends and The Ingraham Angle.
It also plans to air an ad during the second GOP presidential debate on Sept. 27, as well as four Sunday shows this weekend.
Backdrop: The push comes as rank-and-file Republicans have cast doubt on the need for further assistance for Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is due in Washington this week to rally support for additional funds amid the ongoing fight for government funding this fall.
[…] It was in March 2022 when Trump had the bright idea of suing Hillary Clinton and several other Democrats, alleging they tried to rig the 2016 presidential election by bringing attention to his Russia scandal. The case, believe it or not, alleged “racketeering” and a “conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood,” among other things.
By any fair measure, the lawsuit was utterly bonkers, though it had a serious goal: Trump claimed the Russia scandal cost him more than $24 million — and he wanted his legal targets to pay far more than that.
The judge in the case didn’t just reject the underlying claims, Middlebrooks could barely contain his disgust with the inanity of the legal complaint. “These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims,” Middlebrooks concluded. “This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering. It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.” He went on to cite the attorneys’ “cavalier attitude towards facts.”
With that in mind, the judge sanctioned the former president and attorney Alina Habba nearly $1 million for having filed a case that “should never have been brought.” The jurist added, “Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it.”
Last month, as Newsweek’s report explained, Habba nevertheless refiled the lawsuit, incorporating claims from special counsel John Durham’s report on the Russia scandal investigation. This did not go well.
“Even if the Durham Report uncovered the sort of vast conspiracy alleged by Plaintiff (it plainly did not), it would not change the many legal conclusions I made in the Order dismissing Plaintiff’s lawsuit,” Middlebrooks wrote. “And whatever the Durham Report can be said to have uncovered, for purposes of this case, it does not change my findings that Movants acted in bad faith in bringing this lawsuit and that this case exemplifies Mr. Trump’s history of abusing the judicial process. Therefore, for the reasons set forth below, Plaintiff and his lawyers’ Motion for Indicative Ruling Based Upon New Evidence is denied.”
Habba told Fox News she might appeal. That seems like a ridiculously bad idea, but so too was filing this case in the first place.
President Joe Biden made a robust case before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday that the world must remain united in defending Ukraine against Russian aggression, warning that no nation can be secure if “we allow Ukraine to be carved up” as he tries to rally support for Kyiv’s effort to repel a nearly 19-month-old Russian invasion […]
The U.S. president called on world leaders to not let support for Ukraine diminish, arguing that Russia is counting on countries to grow tired of prolonged conflict in Kyiv which will “allow it to brutalize Ukraine without consequence.” Russia alone is standing in the way of a resolution, Biden argued, saying that Moscow’s price for peace was “Ukraine’s capitulation, Ukraine’s territory and Ukraine’s children.”
“I ask you this: If we abandon the core principles of the United States to appease an aggressor, can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected?” Biden said in his address. “If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?
He continued: “I’d respectfully suggest the answer is no.” He implored the leaders to stand up to “this naked aggression today to deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow.”
During his address, Biden described the partnerships that the U.S. government was fostering around the globe — from Africa to the Indo-Pacific […]
“When it comes to China, let me be clear and consistent,” Biden said. “We seek to responsibly manage the competition between our countries so it does not tip into conflict.’
In his 30-minute address, Biden repeatedly emphasized the value of institutions such as the United Nations and international coalitions that has helped the world confront significant challenges such as poverty and disease, as well as echoing his defense of democracy, a common theme of his presidency.
“We will not retreat from the values that make us strong,” Biden said. “We will defend democracy — our best tool to meet the challenges that we face around the world. And we’re working to show how democracy can deliver in ways that matter to people’s lives.”
The annual forum is a chance for Biden to showcase to other world leaders — and the 2024 U.S. electorate — that he’s reestablished U.S. leadership on the world stage that he says was diminished under former President Donald Trump.
[…] “I will not side with dictators like Putin. Maybe Trump and his MAGA friends can bow down but I won’t,” Biden told supporters at a Broadway fundraiser.
There were some notable absences as Biden made his case before the General Assembly: British Prime Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin are all skipping the gathering.
[…] “We rallied the world to support Ukraine and united NATO because I was convinced from the beginning that Putin’s counting on NATO not being able to stick together,” Biden said at another Monday fundraiser. “He’s still trying. And our allies know once again, the United States can be counted on.”
[…] In addition to underscoring continued U.S. support for Ukraine, Biden is expected to touch on mobilizing global resources to combat climate change and bolstering multilateral organizations to help poor and middle-income countries, according to senior administration officials.
[…] After the speech, Biden planned to meet with António Guterres, the U.N. secretary-general, as well as leaders from the so-called C5 group of Central Asian nations, which include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The meeting was expected to focus on regional security, trade, climate change, ongoing reforms to improve governance and other issues.
Xi has stepped up his own courting of those countries. During his own summit in May with the Central Asian leaders, Xi promised to build more railway and other trade links with the region and proposed jointly developing oil and gas sources.
[…] Biden is scheduled to host talks Thursday at the White House with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
[…] Republicans’ opening bid for negotiations: As a show of GOP unity, leaders of the Main Street Caucus and House Freedom Caucus crafted a bill to keep the government open — including spending cuts and a few GOP priorities. But more than a dozen conservative Republicans quickly denounced the bill.
To give you a sense of just how tight the vote would be: “By the end of the day Monday, about 24 hours after the bill was unveiled, the list of Republicans saying they are definite or probable ‘no’ votes had grown to at least 16. In the narrow GOP majority, that opposition would be more than enough to sink the legislation.” […]
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the floor: “Last night’s proposal in the House can be boiled down to two words: slapdash, reckless. Slapdash because it is not a serious proposal for avoiding a shutdown, and reckless because if passed it would cause immense harm to so many priorities that help the American people.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, is addressing the UN General Assembly. We know Putin’s asslickers in America don’t like that, but we guess they’ll have to deal with it.
A lot of the reporting about today’s addresses suggests Presidents Biden and Zelenskyy have an uphill climb when it comes to sustaining support for Ukraine in the face of the genocidal war Vladimir Putin forced on our ally. This is fucking insane.
This is of course also happening as the Republicans in the House begin a completely BS impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, based on zero evidence, and rooted in lies about what Joe Biden did in Ukraine as vice president. It’s all in service of Donald Trump, to negate his multiple impeachments, and in its quest to rewrite the history of the fight to root out corruption in Ukraine — the pro-Russia elements that not coincidentally tried to help Trump steal the 2020 election — it’s also in service of Putin.
When ex-South Park writer Toby Morton set out to lampoon Moms for Liberty with a parody website this summer, he expected to receive hate mail.
On Morton’s MomsForLiberties.com, visitors are greeted with swastikas encircling the “parental rights” juggernaut’s logo, a leadership page that boasts Hercules actor turned conservative pundit Kevin Sorbo as their minivan driver, and a listing of items the moms have “banned for fun” including the board game Sorry. “Those who are taught to say ‘sorry’ are weak,” the fake site for the far-right group declares. “NEVER apologize for your actions because your actions are probably warranted if you’re white.” …
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Russia is “weaponizing” everything from food and energy to abducted children in its war against Ukraine — and he warned world leaders that the same could happen to them.
“When hatred is weaponized against one nation, it never stops there,” he said at the U.N. General Assembly’s annual top-level meeting. “The goal of the present war against Ukraine is to turn our land, our people, our lives, our resources into weapons against you — against the international rules-based order.”
He pointed to the war’s effect on fuel and food supplies. And he highlighted what Ukraine says were at least tens of thousands of children taken from their families after Moscow’s invasion: “What will happen to them?”
“Those children in Russia are taught to hate Ukraine, and all ties with their families are broken. And this is clearly a genocide,” Zelenskyy said.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in March for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another official, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine. […]
Russia gets its chance to address the General Assembly on Saturday, when Foreign Minister Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected on the rostrum. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky sat in Russia’s seat during Zelenskyy’s speech.
Zelenskyy took to the world stage at a sensitive point in his country’s campaign to maintain international support for its fight. Nearly 19 months after Moscow launched a full-scale invasion, Ukrainian forces are three months into a counteroffensive that has not gone as fast or as well as initially hoped.
Ukraine and its allies cast the country’s cause as a battle for the rule of international law, for the sovereignty of every country with a powerful and potentially expansionist neighbor, and for the stability of global supplies that have been rocked by the war. The commodity upheaval has triggered inflation and caused serious hardships for poor countries.
“We must stand up to this naked aggression today and deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow,” U.S. President Joe Biden told the assembly Tuesday in his own speech. As he pledged support to Ukraine, there was a round of applause, and the U.N. cameras showed Zelenskyy, sitting in Ukraine’s seat in the General Assembly, clapping his hands. […]
The war has raged longer and losses have been greater than Russia hoped, and the fighting has spurred widespread international condemnation and sanctions against Moscow.
But the Kremlin also has influential friends that haven’t joined the chorus of censure: China and India, for instance, have staked out neutral positions. So have many Middle Eastern and African nations. Many Latin American and Caribbean countries prefer to focus world attention on other global issues, including climate change and conflict in Africa.
[…] Hours before Zelenskyy spoke at the U.N., allied defense leaders convened at a U.S. military base in Germany to discuss next steps.
Some nations pledged further money and weapons. But a key sticking point is whether to supply longer-range missiles that Kyiv insists it needs in order to hit Russian troops and facilities from a safe distance — as far as about 180 miles (300 kilometers) away. […]
The U.S. Congress is currently weighing Biden’s request to provide as much as $24 billion more in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, amid a growing partisan divide over spending on the conflict. Zelenskyy is scheduled to spend time Thursday on Capitol Hill and to meet with Biden at the White House.
After landing Monday in New York, Zelenskyy suggested that the U.N. needs to answer for allowing his country’s invader a seat at the tables of power.
“For us, it’s very important that all our words, all our messages, will be heard by our partners. And if in the United Nations still — it’s a pity, but still — there is a place for Russian terrorists, the question is not to me. I think it’s a question to all the members of the United Nations,” Zelenskyy said after visiting wounded Ukrainian service members at Staten Island University Hospital.
Russia is a permanent, veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, which is entrusted with maintaining international peace and security.
Zelenskyy has taken the United Nations to task before. In one memorable example, he lamented at the General Assembly in 2021 that the U.N. was ”a retired superhero who’s long forgotten how great they once were.”
[…] During his time at the Staten Island hospital, he awarded medals to military members who had lost limbs. With help from a New Jersey-based charity called Kind Deeds, 18 troops have been fitted for prostheses and are undergoing outpatient physical therapy at the hospital, according to its leaders.
“We all will be waiting for you back home,” Zelenskyy told those he met. “We absolutely need every one of you.”
Just watched this. The guy from the Russian delegation could not have been ruder, playing with his phone while Zelenskyy talked about Russian genocide. Zelenskyy was as impressive and impassioned as always, and got a great response, with people applauding for a long time.
———————
[internet meme showing Russian official saying, “Why won’t the West let us rape, murder, torture, and steal toilets in peace!!!”]
In advance of his speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, President Joe Biden traveled to New York on Sunday and spent time at a fundraiser in a Broadway theater Monday night. In front of supporters there, he hammered at the threat Donald Trump presents to the nation’s democracy.
“Let there be no question, Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy. And I will always defend, protect and fight for our democracy,” Biden said, according to the Associated Press.
CNN has more from the speech:
“I will not side with dictators like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. Maybe Trump and his MAGA friends can bow down and praise him, but I won’t,” Biden said.
“I don’t believe America is a dark, negative nation, a nation of carnage driven by anger, fear and revenge. Donald Trump does,” he added later.
Citing Trump’s vow if reelection to act as “retribution” for his supporters, Biden asked: “Did you ever think you’d hear a president of the United States speak like that? Well, I believe we are a hopeful, optimistic nation driven by the proposition that everyone deserves a shot.”
CNN describes the speech as “some of his fiercest condemnation to date” of coup conspirator Trump, but none of Biden’s remarks seem especially controversial. The AP itself has reported on Trump and his allies’ plan to overhaul the government on authoritarian premises. Trump has repeatedly told crowds he was their “retribution,” including at a Waco, Texas, rally that coincided with the 30th anniversary of the deadly Branch Davidian standoff. On a fundamental level, one cannot plausibly argue that a man who organized a mob of known-violent supporters, refused to support their disarming, and had them march on the Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of his opponent’s election victory is not a dangerous threat to democracy itself.
Trump is pressing for fascist revolution, and nothing Biden said at the fundraiser is false. But instead of acknowledging that, the media writes stories that play off the potential ensconcing of an authoritarian cultist as one of many competing election factors. Here’s the AP’s take:
It was the among the president’s strongest rebukes of the Republican front-runner and former president, who is facing criminal charges for his role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election. And it comes as the political pressure is ramping up from Republicans in the House who have opened an impeachment inquiry into Biden in an effort to tie him to his son Hunter’s business dealings and distract from Trump’s legal peril.
Biden said he wanted to send the “strongest and most powerful message possible, that political violence in America is never never never acceptable.”
What the hell is that? [It’s both-sides-ism, that’s what. See below]
On one hand, “criminal charges for [Trump’s] role in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.” On the other hand, Biden is facing an “impeachment inquiry”—one that has editorially been determined to be a House Republican attempt to “distract from Trump’s legal peril,” even as the reporting excludes the crucial detail that the allegations against Biden are, to all available evidence, utterly false.
CNN’s version is no better. “Biden takes on Trump and age questions in new fundraiser speech,” goes the article’s headline. The first paragraph focuses on Biden accusing Trump of being “determined to destroy democracy.” But paragraph two brings us the apparently similarly important news that:
Biden also sought to rebut chronic questions about his age, claiming his long experience in Washington gave him the wisdom to steer the nation forward.
Ah. On the one hand, a potential end to democracy. And on the other, Biden referenced attacks on his age. You can see how both of those things would perk up political journalism’s ears to roughly the same extent.
On the same day Biden made these remarks, we learned that Trump has been using classified documents as scratch paper to pass messages to his assistant. It’s the sort of buffoonish incompetence or intentional criminality—it’s unclear which—that should disqualify anyone from government service.
If press rooms can recognize that the House Republican “impeachment inquiry” of Biden is a straight-up attempt to “distract” from all the crimes Trump’s accused of, then the rest of it should follow. That means the House Republican attempt is crooked. That means the party itself, or at least its most powerful members, are attempting themselves to subvert democracy by propagating hoaxes.
Follow the ball, here, reporters. Yes, we grant you that Biden is slightly older than his also-old opponent. But what is the thing future historians will be talking about when chronicling this election and its outcome? What are the threads that will be weaved together to explain these times, presuming a future Republican Party allows history books to accurately record them?
It isn’t poll numbers on how many Americans think Joe Biden is old, CNN. It’s not a few paragraphs tacked on about Biden’s “tepid fundraising schedule,” AP, after getting bored with Biden’s warnings about our imperiled democracy a mere half-dozen paragraphs in. Figure this out.
Lahaina’s beloved giant banyan tree (badly scorched, but hopeful survivor of Maui’s deadly wildfires) is showing new signs of recovery by sprouting a batch of fresh green leaves. […]
…The past few years have seen an abundance of works of popular science about a variety of human beings who once inhabited Eurasia: “Neanderthals”. They died out, it appears, 40,000 years ago. That number – 40,000 – is as totemic to Neanderthal specialists as that better known figure, 65 million, is to dinosaur fanciers.
What distinguishes these new books isn’t just what they tell us about an extinct sub-species of humans, but the surprising passion they bring to their subject. Their authors are enraged that popular ideas about the Neanderthals lag so far behind the cutting edge of paleontological research – research that has brought the Neanderthals closer to us than they have been in 40,000 years.
…
Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A Morse, authors of a fascinating recent survey of Neanderthal science, The Neanderthals Rediscovered, write in the hope that they might “restore some dignity to those we replaced”. But what could they mean? Since there are no Neanderthals around any more, the fight for Neanderthal dignity risks seeming not merely quixotic but absurd. What does it take to be indignant on behalf of the dead – no longer here to care much, if they ever did, for their own dignity?
Some basic facts about the Neanderthals are now pretty well settled. Of the many species of hominin, they were the dominant ones from roughly 400,000 years ago until 40,000 years ago. (Hominin is the now orthodox scientific term for any member of the genus Homo: a group of species that includes all human-like creatures but excludes, for instance, gorillas.) Their brains were large, their physical strength considerable. Remains of their bodies have been found scattered widely across Europe, even as far south as Gibraltar. Why they aren’t still around remains a vexed question. There are plenty of plausible hypotheses – and conjectures galore about their psychology and behaviour – but nothing yet approaching a consensus.
Our conjectures about the Neanderthals began in 1856…
…
The fossil record was already beginning to show us how different a place the world of the mid-19th century was from the one that the Neanderthals inhabited. There were animals then that are no longer with us: enormous grazing cattle named aurochs, straight-tusked elephants, woolly rhinoceros, and the great auk, a giant penguin-like bird that died out around the time of the discoveries in the Neander valley.
That world, barely a blink of an eye in geological time, was, as Wragg Sykes puts it with sincere excitement, “sparkling with hominins”: Homo antecessor, Homo bodoensis, Homo heidelbergensis, many of which inhabited the Earth during the very same periods. There are at least a half dozen now that are widely recognised, and more seem to be discovered all the time.
The Neanderthals have been joined, much more recently, for instance, by such species as Homo floresiensis, irritatingly referred to as “hobbits” after the discovery of a diminutive skeleton in Indonesia in 2003. In 2010, we got decisive proof of the Denisovans, another hominin, in Siberia. In the years since, the hominin ranks have swelled yet further to include Homo naledi (South Africa) and Homo luzonensis (the Philippines). No one doubts that further archaeological work, particularly in Africa, will yield yet more hominins. [I did not know this!] But the parade of archaic humans all began with the most popular of our fellow hominins: the Neanderthals.
…
It is beyond doubt now that the knuckle-dragging stereotype of the Neanderthal was based on a crude mistake. Marcellin Boule, a French pioneer in the subject, has much to answer for…
…
The Neanderthals, in other words, walked erect, hunted big game and knew how to control fire: hardly the knuckle-draggers of stereotype.
Last year, the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine was given to the scientist whose work has put a number to just how human the Neanderthals were. Svante Pääbo, a Swedish geneticist, was a pioneer in the study of “paleogenetics”, which began with the discovery of how DNA might be extracted from a range of sources: old bones and teeth, naturally, but also from cave sediments. The techniques he and his colleagues refined have enabled us to know vastly more about the Neanderthals, their bodies, their habits and their habitats, than their 19th-century discoverers could ever have imagined possible.
…
The genome offered strong support to what had previously been only a hypothesis: that Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals had had a common ancestor who lived about 600,000 years ago. More significantly, it showed that when early Homo sapiens had walked from their original home in Africa into Eurasia, they had encountered Neanderthals there and interbred with them. The Neanderthals were among the genetic ancestors of modern Europeans and Asians (but not of modern Africans). Eurasians today have between 1.5 and 2.1% of Neanderthal DNA.
…
There appear to be perils in both directions [emphasizing similarity and difference], perils that the analogy with racism brings out. These debates echo conversations that have haunted us since Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492. But it is an essential part of our conversations about colonialism that enough of the colonised – and enough of their ways of life – have survived for them, or their descendants, to give their own answers to these questions about similarity and difference. Importantly, not every person in a colonised nation has given the same answer to these questions. Maybe we shouldn’t even assume it has a single correct answer.
…
The Neanderthals cannot speak. As we put our insistent questions to their bones, their genes and their hearths, we can never be sure that the voice that answers isn’t just ours, echoing back to us from an ancient cave. But perhaps the mistake lies in thinking that the question “Are they like us or different?” presents a real choice. Perhaps the correct answer to that question is, quite simply, “Yes”. Maybe the best way to accord them their dignity is to treat them as we treat each other in at least one respect: by allowing them to be puzzling.
In puzzling over them, we reveal something of ourselves. Why might some of us care so much about creatures so long extinct? No doubt part of the answer is that questions about the Neanderthals serve as proxies for questions about ourselves. The old fiction writer’s choice between a picture of the Neanderthals as thugs and one of them as prototypical flower children no doubt reflects anxieties about human nature that have haunted the last few centuries of our history…
There is more to this than a projection of narcissistic concern. Contemporary scientists appear to be divided between those who think Neanderthal dignity calls for a recognition of their similarity to us, and those who think it calls for a recognition of their difference. It is striking that the camps are of one mind in thinking that dignity – or respect or something of that kind – is owed here, and that fact itself needs an explanation.
But is it really all that eccentric? Is it really odder to want justice for extinct Neanderthals than it is to want a wrongly convicted friend to be posthumously exonerated? Thinkers dismissed in their lifetimes as kooks or cranks have been vindicated several centuries after their martyrdom, by those who rejoiced that justice had finally been done. It is, if anything, a part of human nature to resist the idea that our interests die with us: a part of our nature, and a beautiful one at that. And it makes one wonder: when the civilisations of Homo sapiens have been reduced to bones and rubble, will our successors on this planet, digging up our mounds of plastic waste, be as anxious to give us our due?
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told senators that he will attempt to force a one-off vote on Wednesday to confirm Gen. Eric Smith to become the new commandant for the Marine Corps while he maintains his blockade on more than 300 military promotions.
Tuberville told Senate Republicans on Tuesday during their weekly conference lunch that he will go to the floor and attempt to bring Smith’s nomination up for consideration, which would tee up a cloture vote unless Senate Democrats object to his effort…
A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on felony charges. The indictment is sealed and the charges are not public yet. Here’s everything we know so far.
birgerjohanssonsays
Trump makes an odd speech, even by his standards.
(As my phone cannot show the difference between l and I , I must try several links)
httos://youtu.be/P_xIkWIS5ms
httos://youtu.be/P_xIkWlS5ms
httos://youtu.be/P_xlkWIS5ms https://youtu.be/P_xlkWlS5ms
Temple University acting president JoAnne A. Epps died Tuesday shortly after becoming ill on stage during a memorial service, officials said, describing her loss as a gut punch and struggling through emotion as they recalled her nearly four decades of service.
Epps was attending a memorial service at the university for Charles L. Blockson, a curator of a collection of African American artifacts, when she suffered what a doctor speaking at a news conference described as a “sudden episode.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Epps, who was scheduled to speak at the service, slumped in her chair shortly after the event began and was carried out in the arms of a uniformed officer after the announcer asked if there was a doctor in the house.
Epps was taken to Temple University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead around 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, the university said. She was 72…
whheydtsays
Re: SC (Salty Current) @ #89…
My late wife did secretarial work for a lab on the UC Berkeley campus at which Svante Paabo spent some time as a post-doc. So she met him before he became famous.
The basic mistake made with the Neanderthal type specimen is that he was an old man with arthritis. The mere fact that he lived long enough to get to that condition says quite a bit about Neanderthal society.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #90…
Democrats should insist on following normal procedure and bring up whatever group the Marine Commandant is part of on the consent calendar. Of course…someone might “object” to bringing up only that group and state that the objection will be released if the entire set of promotion lists groups are brought on the consent calendar andapproved, e.g. by bringing the Marine Commandant last.
birgerjohanssonsays
A question:
If placozoans are 800 million years old, does not that mean they pre-date the last ‘snowball Earth’ episode?
And -as they constitute several thousand cells and are less robust than single-celled animals, is not this a final evidence that open water must have existed even during the coldest periods?
The Neanderthal article @ #89 brought to mind the beautiful prologue to Giorgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis:
For many years I wanted to write about the Finzi-Continis – about Micòl and Alberto, about Professor Ermanno and Signora Olga – and about all the others who inhabited or, like me, frequented the house in Corso Ercole I d’Este, in Ferrara, just before the outbreak of the last war. But the stimulus, the impulse to do it really came to me only a year ago, on a Sunday in April 1957.
It was during one of those usual weekend excursions. I was with a group of friends, divined between two automobiles, and we had set off along the Via Aurelia immediately after midday dinner, without a specific destination….
We walked up and down for perhaps twenty minutes, following the arc of the beach. The only jolly person of the company was a little girl of nine, daughter of the young couple in whose car I was riding. Thrilled by the same wind, the sea, the mad eddies of sand, Giannini gave her gay, expansive nature free rein….
After we had reached the Via Aurelia again, in five minutes’ time we were in sight of the turnoff for Cerveteri….
Thus we found ourselves driving along the smooth little paved road that quickly takes you to a small cluster of houses, mostly recent, and from there, proceeding tortuously towards the inland hills, to the famous Etruscan necropolis. Nobody asked for explanations, and I also remained silent.
After the village, the road began to climb slightly, forcing the car to slow down. We were now passing, at a few yards’ distance, the so-called montarozzi, or mounds, which as far as Tarquinia, and even beyond, are scattered throughout that stretch of Latium north of Rome, more towards the hills than towards the sea. The area, really, is nothing but an immense, almost uninterrupted cemetery. Here the grass is greener, thicker, darker than that of the plain below, between the Aurelia and the Tyrrhenian: a sign that the ternal sirocco, blowing obliquely from the sea, when it arrives up here, has lost much of its brine along the way, and the moisture of the nearby mountains begins to exercise its beneficial influence on the vegetation.
‘Where are we going?” Giannini asked.
Husband and wife were both sitting on the front seat, the child between them. The father took his hand off the wheel and placed it on his daughter’s dark curls.
‘We’re going to take a look at some tombs that date back four or five thousand years,’ he answered, in the tone of somebody beginning to tell a fairy tale, who therefore has no hesitation about exaggerating numbers. ‘Etruscan tombs.’
‘How sad!’ Giannini sighed, pressing her neck against the back of the seat.
‘Sad? Why? In school haven’t they told you about the Etruscans?’
‘In our history book the Etruscans are at the beginning, next to the Egyptians and the Jews. Tell me Papà: who do you think were more ancient, the Etruscans or the Jews?’
Her father burst out laughing.
‘Ask that gentleman back there,’ he said, jerking his thumb towards me….
…
“Papà,’ Gianninia asked again, ‘why is it that ancient tombs are not as sad as new ones?’
…
‘That’s obvious,’ he answered. ‘People who have just died are closer to us, and so we are fonder of them. The Etruscans, after all, have been dead for a long time’ – again he was telling a fairy tale – ‘so long it’s as if they had never lived, as if they had always been dead.’
Another longer pause. At the end of it (we were already near the open space I front of the entrance to the necropolis, full of automobiles and buses), it was Giannina’s turn to impart the lesson.
‘But now, if you say that,’ she ventured softly, ‘you remind me that the Etruscans were also alive once, and so I’m fond of them, like everyone else.’
Our visit then to the necropolis, I recall, was completely affected by the extraordinary tenderness of this sentence. Giannina had prepared us to understand. It was she, the youngest, who somehow guided us….
European governments have “systematically” shrunk their railways and starved them of funding while pouring money into expanding their road network, a report has found.
The length of motorways in Europe grew 60% between 1995 and 2020 while railways shrank 6.5%, according to research from the German thinktanks Wuppertal Institute and T3 Transportation. For every €1 governments spent building railways, they spent €1.6 building roads.
“This is a political choice,” said Lorelei Limousin, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace, which commissioned the report. “We see the consequences today with the climate, but also with people who have been left without an alternative solution to cars.”
The report found the EU, Norway, Switzerland and the UK spent €1.5tn (£1.29tn) between 1995 and 2018 to extend their roads – but just €0.93tn (£0.8tn) to extend their rail networks.
In the four years that followed (2018-21), the average gap in investment in rail and road decreased from 66% to 34%. During that time, seven countries invested more in rail than roads – Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the UK – while the rest spent more on roads than rail.
Dr Giulio Mattioli, a transport researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund, who was not involved in the study, said: “Most European countries have been actually encouraging car use by investing large amounts of public money into expanding motorway infrastructure.”
In the public and political debate, Mattioli added, small investments into bike lanes and railways were heavily scrutinised while investments in roads were taken for granted. “This absolutely needs to change if we are to meet climate mitigation targets in the transport sector.”
The report found motorways grew most in Ireland, Romania and Poland, and least in Lithuania, Latvia and Belgium. In 15 of the 30 countries studied, the lengths of motorways more than doubled over the 25-year period.
At the same time, the report found, European governments had shut down more than 2,500 train stations since the mid-90s. They also closed about 8,523 miles (13,717 km) of regional passenger railway lines. As a rough estimation, the researchers said, 4536 miles of these lines could be reopened “relatively easily”.
The EU plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by the end of the decade from 1990 levels but has failed to make any headway in its transport sector. Road transport was responsible for three-quarters of the sector’s emissions in 2020….
Greenpeace called on governments to move money away from roads and towards railways, public transport, cycle lanes and pavements. It also demanded an end to all new motorways and airports.
Limousin said: “To help people shift from cars to public transport, which is really key to cut the emissions of transport, we need to make the infrastructure fit for that challenge. We need the government to stop closing train lines and stations, reopen those which have been closed and that we can easily reopen … and massively increase the public funding in real solutions.”…
Today, we’re going to look at the war through Russian eyes. And no, not Russian propaganda, where they pretend that Ukraine is just the first step toward Russia’s glorious reconquest of its former eastern European colonies.
We’re going to look at it from the viewpoint of people directly impacted by the war.
The following story excerpts are from the Russian-language Radio Freedom (translated by Safari’s browser translator, hence the funky punctuation). Radio Freedom is an American-funded project of Radio Free Europe, started by the CIA in the 1950s, but under State Department purview since 1972. In this case, its journalists talked with the distraught wife of a mobilized Russian soldier, using pseudonyms to protect their identities. “Vera” talks about “Denis,” her mobilized husband.
He called on Thursday and said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine take Andreevka, break through to Bakhmut, – says Vera. – And they are thrown into this Andreevka almost without weapons – he said: roughly speaking, we go to them with shovels and without artillery support. There is nowhere to retreat, because they are behind their own, who will not spare them either. He said that there were four hundred left of the regiment of a thousand people. Six hundred did not return from assignments. And all this in just two days. And in the official reports we are told that only 2-3 people died.
He is talking about Andriivka, south of Bakhmut, liberated by Ukraine in the the past couple of days.
Yesterday my mother-in-law wrote to a group of mothers and wives of the mobilized 94th regiment that our guys were in a difficult situation, – says Vera. – That they do not have weapons. And she suggested that this information be “distributed” on social networks. And everyone attacked her: you don’t have to set everyone up. They worry more because of their salary than because of their husbands. They are worried that if the names of the rebels come up, they will simply be “missing” and they will not be paid.
Little Fedya, sitting on his mother’s lap, knocks his finger on the phone. The photo on the screensaver is a young man with a son on his shoulders.
“Dad,” says the boy.
– Yes, Dad, – Vera nods. – I don’t want my son to know his father only from photos.
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin learned of the power of Russian mothers and wives during the Chechen War, when the Union of the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia agitated against Russia’s effort to pacify its rebel province. He did not want a repeat, and has successfully neutralized their efforts by punishing the families of any vocal dissenters.
If they speak up, Russia marks their loved ones as “missing in action,” meaning that no benefits pay out. Family members are blacklisted from working at state enterprises, and their children are denied survivors benefits. As Vera notes later in the interview, if her husband’s name goes public, “he will simply be recognized as an enemy of the people. And then this status will automatically go to the children. My husband is also afraid that this will affect his son.” Her husband is better off dying, for their son’s sake, than publicly fighting for change. [Holy shit!] This, in short, is why Russians are such sheep.
The concept of “blocking” troops comes up regularly. It’s a supposed line of Russian officers (sometimes the claim is that they’re Chechen soldiers) who shoot any of their men attempting to retreat. I’ve yet to see evidence that this is real in this war. Russia doesn’t have enough troops to move forward; are they really going to waste manpower to shoot stragglers? If this happened, we’d have drone footage of it by now.
What we have seen is Russia targeting its forces attempting to surrender. But even that might be inadvertent. Where is Russia shelling? Where Ukrainian soldiers are. Where are these surrendering Russian soldiers? On Ukraine’s side of the contact line. I’m not saying blocking forces aren’t real, but the evidence just isn’t there.
It is one hell of a bogeyman, however, and if the threat of blocking troops is enough to keep hapless Russians from panicking in retreat, then those stories have served their purpose. As Denis notes at one point in the story:
– I don’t know what it’s fraught with. Although, most likely, I know, but I can’t voice it. Nobody tried it. Because…
– Will you face death, if not on one side, on the other?
– Roughly speaking, yes.
Nobody has tried it. It’s a scare tactic. What we do have is evidence of Russian commanders beating their soldiers for refusing to make suicidal charges or retreating. And rather than fight back—they do have rifles, after all—they sit there and take the beatings. […]
Back to the Radio Freedom story: “Vera’s” husband says the sadistic commander of his brigade is an officer named Zaitsev, a local from either Luhansk or Donetsk. It is this officer who sends his troops on “meat attacks” that have killed hundreds in his brigade. This absolutely tracks. Remember, early in the war, Russian officers sent tens of thousands of residents of Russian-occupied Donbas to slaughter. They weren’t real Russians, so they didn’t show up in casualty figures back in Russia. It was all very convenient—until Russia literally ran out of men to conscript in their occupied territories.
We’ve heard repeated stories of officers from Luhansk and Donetsk, now reinforced with Russian mobilized, returning the favor by sending their Russian charges to die in suicide charges. Whether it’s incompetence or intentional payback, who knows.
– So the artillery doesn’t help you?
– Not that it doesn’t help. The command does not allocate shells to them.
– Are you promised help and support?
People die for nothing. People go one way and don’t come back
– We work here in the same helmet. There is no interaction with anyone else. Everything happens very slowly – either the artillery does not shoot, or you have to wait for the shot for a very long time.
– What are you afraid of now?
– The fact that we are thrown there like meat. People die for nothing. People go one way and don’t come back.
Russia is certainly suffering from “shell hunger,” or the shortage of critical ammunition. There’s a reason Putin is groveling to North Korea for help. There was much fanfare this week when The New York Times reported that Russia had expanded its artillery shell production to 2 million shells per year—double its original output. That sounds terrible, for sure, but simple math tells us that’s … 5,500 shells per day. At one point, Russia was firing nine times that amount, or 40-50,000 shells per day. Given Russian doctrine’s overwhelming reliance on artillery, 5,500 is a pittance.
Meanwhile, while this poor guy thinks it’s all shell hunger, it could very well be a shortage of actual artillery guns. As has been the case since the start of the summer counteroffensive, Ukraine is claiming an average of 30-40 destroyed Russian artillery guns every single day. We’ve seen Russia run low on self-propelled artillery, increasingly reliant on old, obsolete, unreliable towed guns.
Not that it’s either/or—a lack of guns and a lack of shells could both be at fault. But this suggests it’s the former:
– Are there more losses? – We have twenty-five people leaving for the task, six are coming back. Our artillerymen have now stormed. They were told: you don’t have any ammunition anyway, go as an infantry.
Seems counterproductive to send trained artillerymen to slaughter if the issue is merely a lack of ammunition. If nothing else, they’d presumably wait for North Korea to replenish stocks. My guess is that the lack of guns is the bigger issue. Shells can eventually be replenished. Guns, not so much. And without guns, there’s no need for artillery men.
Meanwhile, we’ve often asked why Russia keeps sending men out to die in the open, rather than holding defensive lines Ukraine has otherwise struggled to breach. One operating theory is that no officer wants to report to his superiors that they’ve lost territory. Instead, they keep fighting over lost ground so that they don’t have to deliver the bad news. This story certainly lends that theory support.
– How are your comrades in the mood?
– They’re not in the mood to die for nothing. If there is artillery support, interaction with other units and there is no ammunition famine, then everyone is ready to fight. But no one wants to fight like that. In direct text, they tell us: go, fix yourself there. And we see that it’s not our positions for a long time, we also raise the “bird”. And in general, you can see with the naked eye that our positions have not been there for a long time. And the command claims that it’s ours.
They send Russians to die inside the town because they still claim, to their superiors, that the town is theirs. As long as there are Russian bodies in Andriivka (or wherever), Russian commanders can maintain the fiction that they haven’t lost the territory. They don’t care if they have to lose dozens or hundreds of men every day to keep up the charade.
Now, let’s check in on Aleksander Kots, a Russian war blogger with over 600,000 followers on Telegram. The post is translated by Telegram’s translator, and deals with a Russian in Klishchiivka, just down the street from Andriivka above.
In Kleshcheevka from a direct participant.
“A small area on the Bakhmut side is still ours. Several houses in the north and northeast. The main battle is now to the east (Khokhol approached the railway line and is gaining a foothold, we are attacking) and to the north-west (we are gaining a foothold, they are attacking).
[Artillery] works for them very accurately and competently. They don’t spare shells at all. Previously, they stopped working when they approached their positions within 150 meters. Now they charge us even when we are 50.
There is no big offensive with heavy equipment. They work in small assault groups plus a strong reinforcement group. Overnight they build it up in such a way that it’s amazing – from scratch, a full-fledged indoor dugout or shelter for the foundation of a house.
There are very few copters for the carousel and spare batteries – especially at night, a significant part of the movements and work takes place without our supervision. If we take a position away from them, they immediately raze them to the ground, sometimes to their own. And they come in again.
The advantage in art, observation and adjustment from the air is decisive for them. Well, and the dominant heights, the undulating terrain is very bad for us. Plus, their electronic warfare is still stronger, although we also have fun moments for them in this regard.”
It can sometimes be a challenge to work through some of these translations, but this participant is seemingly claiming that Ukrainian artillery keeps working, even when their infantry is 50 meters away. That’s hard to believe, given the nature of the beast. Even 150 meters is aggressive. They may be facing mortar or even grenade launchers, allowing for greater accuracy. Or maybe it’s tanks hitting Russian positions directly. It could even be anti-tank missiles fired at defensive positions. It’s important to note that the people in the trenches are sometimes the least capable of figuring out what’s going on. They see and feel explosions all around, and it might as well be artillery. [Good explanation]
Regardless, the bigger takeaway is that Ukraine has that artillery advantage along this part of the front. And Russia certainly helps Ukraine out with their “meat assaults” out in the open.
Here’s another one from a Telegram account focused on mobilization information. A group of family members are speaking out on video, showing some modicum of valor.
Relatives of those mobilized from military unit No. 78064 from the village of Sakulovo, Chelyabinsk region, recorded a video message to Alexander Bastrykin [head of Russia’s Investigative Committee]. Mothers, wives, sisters and children of military personnel are asking for leave for their men, many of whom have not been home for almost a year.
“Please give my son a vacation. It’s very hard for him there too, he’s tired,” one of the women asks through tears.
Relatives of those mobilized said that the authorities not only did not respect the legal rights of the soldiers, but also threatened them with death.
“The boys are trying to write reports, some complaints. They submit a vacation report to them, that is, they write it, give it to them, and they simply tear it up. Or they say: “If you want to live, it’s better not to bother with us.” Naturally, they don’t go after that,” said the sister of one of the mobilized.
The commanders do not release the soldiers – they simply tear up the threatening reports:
“Until half of you lie down here, we won’t let you go.”
Women tried to write complaints and appeals to the military prosecutor’s office and this unit. Those who were able to contact this part received the following response:
“If even one more request is received from you, then your guys will arrive in two hundred.” [“Two hundred” is Russian code for “killed in action.”]
In a video message, the women said that the military was being held in inhumane conditions. The conscripts buy equipment and everything they need either themselves or their relatives.
Another confirmation of the violation of the rights of soldiers and the bestial attitude towards them. The commanders, saving their lives, hide behind the mobilized.
Bleak. So, so bleak.
And the news for Russia isn’t likely to get better anytime soon: [Tweet at the link.]
Transcript:
And unfortunately I have to admit that non-fatal, but very painful “difficult decisions” will be made quite soon. If this time they try to shift all the blame onto front- line officers (that is, the “middle link”), then I will reserve the right to move on to voicing the names, decisions and specific moments that led to such a situation. I realize that such specifics will be a holiday for the enemy. I realize that after something like this the channel can be buried.
But maintaining the current order of things is no longer possible.
“The channel can be buried” is a nod to Russia’s ongoing crackdown of critical Telegram bloggers.
———————–
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in New York to address the United Nations. His first stop off the plane? He visited Ukrainian soldiers rehabilitating from severe combat injuries. [Tweets with many images at the link]
—————————
Hmmm …[tweet and image at the link: #China has stopped supplying drones to the #Russian Federation
It is prohibited to import drones weighing 4 kg or more or with a maximum takeoff weight of 7 kg with a flight duration of more than 30 minutes from China to Russia from September 1. Also under the ban are UAVs capable of "carrying cargo with the function of dropping or with the possibility of securing such a device."
In addition, China has restricted the supply of a number of important drone components.]
A friendship without boundaries, Russia and China said days before the invasion of Ukraine. After almost two years of war, China is still uninterested in going down with Russia’s ship.
————————–
Remember all those gains Russia made around Kupyansk in northeast Ukraine, as they sought to tie up Ukrainian reserves in Kharkiv oblast? Well … [Tweet and map at the link] Basically, Russia has lost much of its gains, and we’re almost back to where we started at the beginning of the summer.
Followup to comment 100. Posted by readers of the article:
Russian soldiers’ bleak future in the Ukrainian battlefield must be why Russian recruiting advertisements now feature videos of Russian soldiers under fire in trenches discussing “how they will live in property seized in Ukrainian cities”. Since the whole justification for the invasion of Ukraine is a lie, why not continue to lie when recruiting about how much loot the troops will get? After all, lying is what Putin’s Russia does best.
——————
Russia now has “Z-Youth” making propaganda videos and glorifying war.
——————
Shades of the Nazi Youth core.
——————-
I remember seeing a drone video of the Russian blocking troops shooting their own. I did manage to find it again: https://t.me/rf200_nooow/18256
————————–
A Russian colleague in my office heard through his grapevine that the “blocking” action often appears to be a simple and straightforward threat by officers to any troops tasked with moving forward that they will charge the first ten or twenty or whatever number of soldiers who retreat with desertion, which now carries a roughly ten-year prison sentence. No-one wants to be the first to be charged, so everybody sort of lingers in the combat zone where they become chicken fodder, tragic.
—————————
It is typical of the Russians to lie to their own troops to scare them into fighting – just as they lie to them about the “torture” they face at the hands of the Ukrainians if they surrender.
————————-
These poor souls are not dying for any gain; they are dying to try and avoid their family losing everything.
————————-
What’s waiting for them back home? Poverty at best, prison or execution at worst.
They could defect, but they usually have some people back home they love who would be punished.
It’s all shit whichever direction they look. The Russians with money got out of the country early.
whheydtsays
Re: Jazzlet @ #101…
That’s going to leave scorch marks.
StevoRsays
The Curiosity rover ahs reached one of its toughest destinations Gediz Vallis Ridge which may wellteach us about ancient martian landslides – see :
RNA has been recovered from an extinct species for the first time
by Stockholm University
A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the reconstruction of skin and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from an extinct species for the first time.The researchers note that their findings have relevant implications for international efforts to resurrect extinct species, including both the Tasmanian tiger and the wooly mammoth, as well as for studying pandemic RNA viruses.
The Tasmanian tiger, also known as the thylacine, was a remarkable apex carnivorous marsupial that was once distributed all across the Australian continent and the island of Tasmania. This extraordinary species found its final demise after European colonization, when it was declared as an agricultural pest and a bounty of £1 per each full-grown animal killed was set by 1888. The last known living Tasmanian tiger died in captivity in 1936 at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania.
Re: Reginald Selkirk 107
There’s a place to refer to the supporters and enablers of this as “the liars”. They have to use words that don’t apply beyond casual public and political use.
I’m thinking of a mocking series of observations that require the concept of the concepts > fetus to engage with. Things that I can use to demonstrate dishonesty through a legislative lie.
This one isn’t technically fetus puppetry, it’s fetus outfit play like with dolls put a child characteristics on a fetus, and then play puppets.
Some Republican Congresspersons are saying the truth out loud:
Congressional Republicans are clearly struggling with the most basic tasks of governing right now. The result is an increasingly likely government shutdown, chatter about GOP members fighting it out in an intra-party “civil war,” and an uncertain future for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
But the current conditions are also leading some Republican lawmakers to take stock of what’s become of their conference. After one of yesterday’s failed votes, House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers told Politico the failure was “illustrative that we’ve got five clowns that don’t know what they want except attention.” [Yep]
Rep. Mike Lawler of New York — one of 18 House Republicans who represent a district President Joe Biden won in 2020 — spoke to Capitol Hill reporters late yesterday and went a little further:
“I wouldn’t even call them my right flank. This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity. The idea we are going to shut the government down when we don’t control the Senate, we don’t control the White House. … These people can’t define a win. They don’t know how to take yes for an answer. It is a clown show.”
As part of the same informal Q&A on the Capitol steps, Lawler added, “If you want to have a stronger hand, run better candidates, and win more elections. If you keep running lunatics, you will be in this position.”
On the surface, the congressman’s frustrations are understandable. Lawler is no doubt concerned about his future political prospects, and the challenges of running for re-election in a competitive district while being associated with a far-right political party that struggles to do the basics. He very likely wants to avoid a shutdown next week, and it’s tough to blame him for feeling exasperated.
But I was struck by how the New York Republican characterized his concerns: Lawler didn’t just blame his radical GOP colleagues for their intransigence; he also suggested that the party and its voters ultimately share the blame.
Indeed, Lawler’s assessment rings true: If the Republican Party runs “better candidates,” there will be better outcomes. When the GOP runs what the New Yorker described as “lunatics,” we’re left with the chaos and crises that are gripping Congress right now.
In other words, it’s easy to blame the so-called “clowns,” and there’s no doubt that they’ve earned the criticisms they’re now facing. But Lawler referenced a party-wide problem that needs to be acknowledged and addressed.
As yesterday began on Capitol Hill, House Republican leaders had a relatively specific plan in mind for how the day would unfold. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his team intended to advance a stopgap spending bill — negotiated by two GOP factions — with the goal of preventing a government shutdown, which would then be followed by a procedural vote on a defense spending package.
The first part of the plan was derailed when Republican leaders came to realize that they didn’t have the votes, because too many of their own members were opposed to their own party’s legislation. The second part of the plan fell apart soon after — for the same reason. As NBC News summarized:
Republican divisions paralyzed the House again on Tuesday as a small band of conservative rebels blocked a motion to merely begin debate on a military funding bill and GOP leaders abandoned a separate vote to avert a shutdown at the end of the month.
The failure to pass the defense spending bill was especially embarrassing for McCarthy — in part because he’s now failed to pass this measure twice in two weeks.
A Politico report summarized last week’s developments this way: “To take a step back, this is a pretty dismal position for McCarthy to find himself in. He’s not stretching to pass a monumental piece of legislation. This is a routine spending bill — one that is typically the least controversial, seeing as it funds troop salaries and otherwise provides for the national defense. If he can’t pass this, what can he pass?”
A week later, the House speaker tried again, only to see a handful of Republican members reject a procedural vote — known as a vote on the rule — on the same appropriations bill.
For those who don’t follow Capitol Hill closely, the process of adopting a “rule” might be unfamiliar, but it’s a relatively straightforward step: Before a bill can be voted on, members adopt a measure to establish ground rules for the length of the debate, how it can be amended, etc. In nearly every instance, it’s little more than a procedural speed bump.
In fact, up until very recently a House majority conference hasn’t lost a vote on adopting a rule in more than two decades. This year, thanks to House Republicans, it’s now happened twice since June.
This came the same day in which the McCarthy-backed bill to prevent a shutdown was also derailed by members of his conference.
NBC News’ report added, “The House GOP chaos is worse than it may appear. The bills Republicans are fighting over have no chance of becoming law — and if they passed the chamber they’d merely represent an opening bid to negotiate with the Democratic-led Senate and President Joe Biden, who oppose the spending cuts and conservative policies that House Republicans are pursuing.”
It’s a key detail. Even if the measures the House speaker supports were to somehow pass, it wouldn’t matter: These are far-right plans that would face inevitable defeat in the Democratic-led Senate. But the fact that McCarthy can’t advance bad bills — because too many of his own members think they’re not quite radical enough — reinforces the increasingly obvious fact that electing a GOP majority in the House has brought a ridiculous level of chaos to Capitol Hill.
The bad news is that Republicans are pushing the nation closer to a government shutdown, which would begin next week. The worse news is that there’s an obvious solution that the hapless House speaker is going out of his way to ignore.
To prevent a shutdown, policymakers will need to craft a stopgap spending bill — known as a “continuing resolution,” or “CR” — that can pass both chambers and get President Biden’s signature. In theory, that should be easy: The recently approved debt ceiling agreement set spending levels that both parties agreed on.
But in practice, many House Republicans are refusing to go along with appropriations bills unless they spend far less. McCarthy could simply ignore their intransigence and pass spending bills with Democratic votes, but at that point, the House speaker realizes that some of his own members would try to fire him.
The deadline is 10 days away.
Reginald Selkirksays
@109
As part of the same informal Q&A on the Capitol steps, Lawler added, “If you want to have a stronger hand, run better candidates, and win more elections. If you keep running lunatics, you will be in this position.”
But Republican voters have made it clear they prefer to be represented by lunatics.
News about Democratic Party candidates winning at the state level … good news:
* With control of Pennsylvania’s state House on the line, Democrat Lindsay Powell defeated Republican Erin Connolly Autenreith in a legislative special election yesterday. The results were not close: With nearly all of the votes counted, Powell’s advantage is roughly 30 points. [summarized from a New York Times article]
* In related news, Democrat Hal Rafter defeated Republican James Guzofski in a New Hampshire state legislative special election, flipping the seat from “red” to “blue.” Though Rafter prevailed by 12 points, the outcome was hardly assured: This is a district that backed Donald Trump in the 2020 cycle. [summarized from WMUR New Hampshire website]
There was a funny moment in an otherwise good ABC News report this week, which revealed that Donald Trump liked to use the classified documents he stole as scratch paper. From the reporting, it seems like these were extremely dumbed down note cards that had been prepared for the purpose of briefing Trump when he was president […]
The aide in question, Molly Michael, had also told investigators that last year, when Trump found out the FBI wanted to interview Michael about his stolen classified documents, he said to her, “You don’t know anything about the boxes.”
And ABC News said, we shit you not, “It’s unclear exactly what he meant by that.”
And everybody started laughing at ABC News for being such a naive idiot, and started coming up with funny things to tell ABC News to see if they would believe it.
[…] “Hey ABC News! It’s totally possible that when Donald Trump is clearly telling his underlings to lie and/or commit crimes, in the painfully obvious style of a mob boss, that he is not really telling them to lie and/or commit crimes, and we should probably give him the benefit of the doubt.”
SMDH. [Shaking My Damn Head]
Maggie Haberman and one of her Times buddies did ABC News a solid and did their own reporting, wherein they were sure to CLARIFY VERY SLOWLY that Trump meant to tell Michael to lie just then. The headline explains that Trump told Michael “not to acknowledge” that she knew about his stolen classified boxes.
Then the first graf:
A former assistant to Donald J. Trump has informed investigators that the former president told her to say she did not know anything about the boxes containing classified documents that he had stashed at his private club in Florida after leaving the White House, according to a person briefed on her comments.
And then Haberman’s reporting goes back and confirms the rest of what ABC News had to say […]
Trump’s spox Steven Cheung, who is paid to defend history’s most pointless American, is just apoplectic about all of this, in a statement that’s pretty much the same as what ABC News had:
“These illegal leaks are coming from sources which totally lack proper context and relevant information,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump. “The Department of Justice should investigate the criminal leaking, instead of perpetrating their baseless witch hunts.”
Sure thing, Steven. Did Daddy write that for you on a classified notecard?
It’s nice to see the New York Times helping somebody else out, though. Usually it’s the Times that’s totally missed the fucking point, writing shitty headlines like “Investigating Donald Trump, FBI Sees No Clear Link To Russia,” and everybody else (Wonkette) has to gently show the paper of record Journalism, How Does It Work?
We guess they’re just paying it forward this time.
As the world finally starts the transition away from fossil fuels, and sales of electric vehicles are really taking off, there’s been predictable pushback from the fossil fuel industry, not to mention outright disinformation about EVs, as well as valid concerns about the supply chain for the minerals that go into building EV batteries. Many of those minerals are sourced from poor countries where the labor conditions are often terrible, including child labor […]
(The solution is to demand improved labor conditions, not to say, “OK, guess we’ll keep fossil fuels” — especially considering the human rights record of Big Oil in developing countries.)
And then there are the bullshit claims that because batteries require more rare metals than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, EVs are somehow “just as bad” for the environment as gasoline or diesel powered vehicles, or worse. On social media, such claims are generally illustrated with a photo of icky lithium leaching tanks in Chile, or a stock photo of a giant pit mine that turns out to be a gold mine somewhere. […]
For the sake of lining up some facts, Washington Post climate columnist Michael Coren compares the supply chain for EV batteries to that for fossil fuels and, to the surprise of nobody I’d hope, discovers that clean energy is cleaner:
I looked into the world’s evolving supply chains for the clean-energy economy. In every scenario, it turns out, the demand for battery minerals represents a tiny fraction of the amounts of fossil fuels now needed to power the world.
What’s In The Car (And The Wind Turbines, Etc.)
When it comes to the powertrain for EVs, it’s true that their battery packs require a fair amount of critical minerals, while the engine blocks of ICE vehicles are mostly iron or aluminum.
A typical 200-mile range EV lugs around a lithium-ion battery pack that’s nearly a third of the weight of the vehicle. Much of that weight is the battery pack’s casing, structural materials and a liquid electrolyte that ferries electrons around to charge and discharge the battery.
But roughly 353 pounds are crucial minerals or metals, including cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite, aluminum and copper, […] Not counting steel and aluminum, says MIT, an EV requires six times more minerals than a conventional vehicle.
And yes, mining those minerals requires digging into the earth, and as a WaPo podcast series detailed (I don’t think it’s paywalled), the labor conditions can be terrible, and absolutely need to be addressed. That said, as Coren points out, those very real “environmental and social impacts,” when compared to business as usual in the fossil fuels industry, “are a drop in the barrel.”
The Dirty Details
As a f’rinstance, just the raw amount of “stuff we pull out of the ground” for clean energy and fossil fuels is vastly different. For all clean energy manufacturing, of “wind turbines, solar panels, EVs,” and the like, the world extracted 7 million tons of various minerals in 2020. Seven million tons is a lot!
At least until you compare it to the 15 billion tons extracted by coal, oil, and gas in 2019 — most of which got burned, adding still more CO2 to heat the atmosphere — part of the 33 billion tons of CO2 the world emitted in 2019 (obviously, it wasn’t all extracted or burned in the same year). And then they need to extract the same amount year after year to keep the fossil fuel economy fossil fueled. On t’other hand, Coren adds, “Clean-energy technology can use these materials for decades or, if recycled, in perpetuity.”
He provides a helpful graphic to compare the two. If you’re colorblind, you might miss the tiny green pixel representing clean-energy extraction. [graphic at the link]
But wait! the fossilheads may well exclaim, what about when you try to replace all fossil fuels with your supposedly “clean” energy? Then the green square will be just as huge, suck it libs!
It might sound like an impressive gotcha, at least until you remember that fossil fuels get all burned up while electric infrastructure stuff — not only EV batteries, but also wind turbines, geothermal pipes, solar panels, all of it — is pretty durable, and mostly recyclable. Just in terms of raw materials at the end of production, then, the green square would get bigger, but it would remain a tiny fraction of the big black one. According to the International Energy Agency, an all-in effort to keep global warming below 2 degrees C since preindustrial times would require about 28 million tons of various minerals a year — and that shit wouldn’t be going into the atmosphere to cause additional warming, either; and a lot of it would be recycled at the end of its use.
Coren acknowledges that the total of finished materials “isn’t a perfect gauge of environmental damage,” particularly when you consider that you have to mine a lot of rock to get to the minerals you need. He notes that a ton of copper requires mining about 100 tons of ore, for instance.
But even accounting for this, estimates Sam Calisch, a scientist at the nonprofit Rewiring America, mining minerals for the clean-energy economy amounts to extracting about five times less matter than what’s extracted by the fossil fuel industry. “This is still massive,” Calisch says.
(Fun digression: A big Canadian copper mine is already using giant electric dump trucks the size of houses, so even extraction can be much cleaner than it is today.)
Things That Make Us Go
The biggest difference between ICE vehicles and EVs is, of course, the amount of crap spewed into the atmosphere, which is the whole point of decarbonization in the first place. Even when you include emissions from manufacturing and mineral extraction, EVs come out on top, generating about half the lifetime emissions of ICE vehicles.
Yes, that’s even when EVs are charged by powerplants that burn coal or gas, because EVs are simply that much more efficient. With the current US energy mix, EVs on the road emit less than a third of the CO2 per mile of ICE vehicles. And obviously, when they’re charged by clean energy, like hydroelectric or home rooftop solar, the advantage grows even greater. As the US grid — also in need of upgrades! — decarbonizes, the EV advantage on carbon emissions will become even greater. Joe Biden’s benchmarks are to get US energy generation decarbonized by 2035, and for the nation to reach net zero emissions by 2050.
Let me just underline that one more time, because a good third of the WaPo comments seemed to be people asking “But what good are EVs when our power plants burn coal and?” The calculation that EVs emit a third of the carbon of ICE vehicles includes the US grid as it is today, and as the grid goes greener, so will EVs.
I’m sometimes astonished at the number of people who pretend that technology will never change, as if we won’t green the grid and build charging stations everywhere —yes, even for apartments — or that the current range of EV models will never expand to include small cheap EVs as well as the pricier models that make up much of current EV sales. It’s like claiming that cell phones will forever be the size of bricks and can only be used in cities where rich people can afford them. Harrumph.
Fossil Fuels Make Us Sick. Windmills *Don’t* Cause Cancer.
Finally, there’s the impacts on health and society from clean and dirty energy. Here, there’s virtually no comparison, even if you set aside the vast global impact of extreme weather events resulting from climate change (which of course you can’t).
Even the mundane nastiness of an economy that burns coal, oil, and methane gas is pretty horrific, so transitioning to clean energy will have huge benefits beyond merely keeping large parts of the planet habitable.
Air pollution, one of the world’s leading killers, will decrease as well. Fossil fuels are responsible for 4 million to 8 million excess deaths each year tied to air pollution, report studies in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science and Environmental Research.
The downsides of EV supply chains — the pollution from extracting minerals, and the human toll of mining practices in the developing world — are real, but unlike the health impacts of using fossil fuels, are generally not inherent to the materials themselves. Critical minerals can be mined with greater care, and with ethical labor practices that should absolutely be enforced through international agreements, not just slapping an “ethically sourced” sticker on the side of the finished battery.
The chemical composition of EV batteries is already changing as manufacturers find ways to make them without nickel or cobalt, using instead “metals such as manganese and iron that are safer, abundant, nontoxic and cheap.”
Manufacturers now use six times less cobalt in EV batteries, or have eliminated it entirely in recent years. Last year, half of the vehicles Tesla sold in the first quarter contained batteries with no cobalt or nickel.
Then of course there’s recycling, which is certain to increase simply because it’ll become cheaper than extracting more stuff, and because the minerals in EV batteries are too valuable to throw away.
And yes, a million times yes, it’s not simply a matter of replacing every ICE vehicle with an EV. That too is a red herring: we’ll need better housing policy, more walkable cities with public transit, the whole ball of decarbonized wax. EVs are part of the climate solution, not in any sense all of it.
But don’t worry: Even as we solve more and more challenges of the clean energy transition, the wingnut chorus will still be with us, perhaps complaining that ethically sourcing minerals is taking away jobs from children who used to work the mines.
Lawyers for Alabama voters urged the justices to stay out of a dispute over the state’s congressional map. Eight days after the state asked the Supreme Court to temporarily block lower-court rulings holding that a map drawn earlier this year likely violates the Voting Rights Act, the voters told the justices that the state’s appeal evokes “our unfortunate history of States resisting civil rights remedies through ‘laws and practices which, though neutral on their face, serve to maintain the status quo.’”
Tuesday’s filings were the latest in the ongoing dispute over efforts in Alabama to draw new congressional maps in the wake of the 2020 census. Nearly 27 percent of the state’s residents are Black, but the seven-district map that the state’s Republican-controlled legislature enacted in 2021 had only one majority-Black district. In January 2022, two federal courts agreed that the 2021 map likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bans racial discrimination in voting. The Supreme Court put that decision on hold in February 2022, clearing the way for the state to use the map in the November 2022 elections, but in June the court upheld the rulings in favor of the challengers.
Alabama enacted a new map in July, once again with only one majority-Black district. The lower courts agreed with the challengers that the 2023 plan also likely violated the Voting Rights Act and appointed an expert to draw a new map.
Alabama came to the Supreme Court on Sept. 11, asking the justices to step in again. The voters urged the justices to reject the state’s appeal and leave the lower-court rulings in place. Election officials and legislators “are free to make whatever arguments they wish to the” court-appointed experts “about their preferred redistricting criteria for formulating the final remedial map,” the challengers wrote. But they can’t “pretend this motion is something other than what it is: a request to defy this Court’s decision by implementing a ‘remedy’ that cures nothing and prevents Black voters from having an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice in a second congressional district.”
[…]
The voters cautioned that putting the lower courts’ orders on hold will make it “all but certain” that 2024 elections will use “an unlawful, dilutive” plan.
ScotusBlog
Reginald Selkirksays
@117: Lawyers for Alabama voters…
There are over 3.5 million voters in Alabama. They all got together and hired lawyers? That article takes for granted that the Lawyers are representing the voters without identifying them. Is it some sort of public interest group?
It seems like the “Lawyers for Alabama voters” are on the side of good, but that is very sloppy reporting.
One of Donald Trump’s former lawyers flipped on him in the Georgia indictment, new court documents revealed Wednesday.
Lin Wood was one of the first to promote the falsehood that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen. He was part of Trump’s legal team that unsuccessfully tried to overthrow the election. The Georgia grand jury had recommended Wood be charged for trying to overturn the state’s election results, but Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis declined to do so.
Turns out that was because Wood opted to flip on his former boss. “L. Lin Wood is a witness for the State in the present case,” Willis explained in a court filing…
tomhsays
@ #118
Challengers to the map (voters) are represented by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, the ACLU and others.
@ Reginald Selkirk #118
You’re right that voters was a poor choice of words, it should have said voting rights advocates or something similar (on behalf of voters.) ‘Voters’ was an unnecessary shortcut. This wasn’t a general news story, though, but a blog that only follows the SC, so most readers would have realized that. I should have quoted the CNN story which used different terms. The SC filing is here if you’re interested.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 121
Why do I think this headline was ripped straight from the plot of some 80s cyberpunk thriller?
[…] in a highly diplomatic statement sure to please everyone, Fetterman [Sen. John Fetterman] has delivered a simple proposal right from the big chair at the front of the Senate. “If those jagoffs in the House stop trying to shut our government down, and fully support Ukraine, then I will save democracy by wearing a suit on the Senate floor next week,” he said.
Fetterman’s bipartisan outreach comes even as Republicans keep lining up to get knocked down. Whether it’s ding-a-ling pic-waver Marjorie Taylor Greene or expert on dumbing things down Ron DeSantis, Fetterman is seeming to take delight in dismissing all comers with a single, deftly applied jab.
Since announcing his candidacy in 2022, Fetterman has had to deal with both recovering from a stroke and wrestling with depression while being under heavy public scrutiny. At every turn, he’s displayed high levels of bravery and an unwillingness to let others tell his story. And whatever Fetterman’s position when it comes to dealing with those highly publicized problems, they haven’t stopped him from firing back sharply and powerfully when attacked.
Most of all, Fetterman seems to have zero tolerance for bullshit. He’s more than willing to dig in and work on issues. He’s absolutely unwilling to engage in the kind of nonsense that seems to consume most of the time and effort on Capitol Hill.
However, that doesn’t mean he’s not willing to have a little fun with it all. In response to the critics of his sartorial splendor, Fetterman has issued a line of merchandise that includes hoodies for all occasions. He’s also had a good time laughing over an ongoing right-wing conspiracy theory that claims Fetterman was replaced at some point by a “body double.” (And yes, you can buy a T-shirt that says “John Fetterman’s Body Double.”) […]
Rep. Jim Jordan held one of the weaponized circus House Committee hearings Wednesday, featuring Attorney General Merrick Garland. Superficially, the hearing is supposed to get to the bottom of … nothing. It is a chance for the Republican Party, made up of Trump sycophants, to muddy the waters around the disgraced former president’s four indictments, while getting a chance to say the name “Hunter Biden” a few times.
Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell decided that enough was enough, and used their time to break down how much of a cow-pie circus this entire Republican enterprise is. Schiff painted the big picture: “We meet today at a momentous time in our history. The country is about to go through a great trial. By this, I do not mean any of the several trials of the former president, but rather a trial of the proposition that we are a nation of laws committed to the rule of law and that no one is above the law.”
Schiff then broke down how this “essential ingredient” of any democracy was under threat by Jordan, whom Schiff said was “trying to use the committee’s power of subpoena to compel criminal discovery—in effect, making the committee a kind of criminal defense firm for the former president.” What Jordan is trying to accomplish, according to Schiff, “would establish the principle that the rule of law should apply to almost everyone, just not the leader of his party.”
Continuing his remarks, Schiff said, “According to this alternate proposition, if you were the president of the United States and you lose your reelection, you can violate the law and Constitution to try to stay in power. And if you are successful, well, then maybe you get to be president for life. And if you fail, there is no repercussion. This proposition is also well-known to the world, and it is called dictatorship.”
At one point, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie suggested the attorney general could be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about ongoing investigations—something Garland reminded Massie would fly in the face of our Constitution’s separation of powers. Swalwell jumped off of this during his time, reminding everyone that “the guy who’s leaving the hearing room right now, Mr. Jordan, is about 500 days into evading his subpoena, about 500 days.”
Swalwell didn’t let up on Jordan, “So if we’re going to talk about contempt of Congress, let’s get real. I mean, are you serious that Jim Jordan, a witness to one of the greatest crimes ever committed in America, a crime where more prosecutions have occurred than any crime committed in America, refuses to help his country and we’re going to get lectured about subpoena compliance in contempt of Congress?” He continued, saying that there is no credibility coming from Republicans on the committee, and that Jordan and his fellow House Republicans were busy holding these “clown show” hearings instead of passing gun safety laws and helping support Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Swalwell used the rest of his time to detail how many of those investigating Hunter Biden were appointed by Trump, and how Garland has bent over backward for conservatives in this matter.
Every pathetic conspiracy theory being peddled by the likes of Jordan is so easily refutable by the most basic logic at this point. One wonders if just the sound of conspiracy is all MAGA-Kool-Aid drinkers need in order to throw another $5 down the toilet of Republican fundraiser emails.
Toward the end of Donald Trump’s first year in the White House, Vanity Fair published a memorable piece on the dysfunctional Republican administration. It noted, among other things, that some of the then-president’s team was worried that Trump’s behavior was so erratic that they feared Cabinet members might “take extraordinary constitutional measures to remove him from office.”
In fact, according to the article, Trump heard Steve Bannon reference the 25th Amendment, at which point the then-president responded, “What’s that?”
It’s safe to say [Trump] learned quite a bit about the amendment in the months and years that followed. In fact, in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, Trump came to believe that his own Cabinet members might try to remove him from office through the 25th Amendment, and that was not a paranoid assumption: The Jan. 6 committee uncovered evidence that Cabinet secretaries had, in fact, initiated some quiet conversations about the possibility.
That was two-and-a-half-years ago. Now, as The Hill reported, the constitutional provision is still on t[Trump’s] mind, but not in a way that makes sense.
Former President Trump is questioning why Republicans have not sought to remove President Biden under the 25th Amendment — a move that GOP lawmakers do not have the power to use.
Trump seemed to get the ball rolling last week when he used his social media platform to ask, as part of an anti-Biden tirade, “Where is the call from Republicans for the 25th Amendment?” A day later, he added, “Republicans, call out the 25th Amendment, NOW!”
But it wasn’t until earlier this week when the former president wrote, in an all-caps harangue, “I ask, why hasn’t the Republican Party begun the process of invoking the 25th Amendment” against Biden. Trump added that he thinks it should’ve happened “long ago.”
Putting aside the details of the former president’s weak case against his successor, there’s a more pressing problem: Trump is talking about the 25th Amendment without understanding how it works. In fact, the Republican’s question is effectively gibberish.
Trump’s line is rooted in the idea that GOP lawmakers have some authority to invoke the 25th Amendment. That authority does not exist. The 25th Amendment empowers Cabinet members, not members of Congress, to try to remove a sitting president if “the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
So, when Trump asks why Republicans haven’t “begun the process of invoking the 25th Amendment,” it’s because Republicans, at least in 2023, have literally nothing to do with invoking the 25th Amendment.
As for why the former president is flaunting his ignorance of a constitutional process he really ought to understand, your guess is as good as mine.
As far as Trump’s mind goes, it’s always worse than we thought.
Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump aide turned crucial January 6 witness, says in a new book she was groped by Rudy Giuliani, who was “like a wolf closing in on its prey”, on the day of the attack on the Capitol.
Describing meeting with Giuliani backstage at Donald Trump’s speech near the White House before his supporters marched on Congress in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Hutchinson says the former New York mayor turned Trump lawyer put his hand “under my blazer, then my skirt”.
“I feel his frozen fingers trail up my thigh,” she writes. “He tilts his chin up. The whites of his eyes look jaundiced. My eyes dart to [Trump adviser] John Eastman, who flashes a leering grin.
“I fight against the tension in my muscles and recoil from Rudy’s grip … filled with rage, I storm through the tent, on yet another quest for Mark.”
Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, was Hutchinson’s White House boss. Hutchinson’s memoir, Enough, describes the now 27-year-old’s journey from Trump supporter to disenchantment, and her role as a key witness for the House January 6 committee. It will be published in the US next Tuesday. The Guardian obtained a copy.
[…] Describing the backstage scene at Trump’s speech, she writes: “I find Rudy in the back of the tent with, among others, John Eastman. The corners of his mouth split into a Cheshire cat smile. Waving a stack of documents, he moves towards me, like a wolf closing in on its prey.
“‘We have the evidence. It’s all here. We’re going to pull this off.’ Rudy wraps one arm around my body, closing the space that was separating us. I feel his stack of documents press into the small of my back. I lower my eyes and watch his free hand reach for the hem of my blazer.
“‘By the way,’ he says, fingering the fabric, ‘I’m loving this leather jacket on you.’ His hand slips under my blazer, then my skirt.”
Taylor Swift encourages her fans to register to vote:
Taylor Swift is currently one of the biggest stars in the country. She is still on her record-breaking “Eras” tour, ranks as the second-most-played artist on Spotify this year, and, in July, scored the biggest week of sales for an album this year with “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version).” She’s using that cultural clout to urge her fans, known as “Swifties,” to register to vote.
Swift posted an Instagram story on Tuesday, marking National Voter Registration Day.
“I’ve been so lucky to see so many of you guys at my US shows recently,” she wrote. “I’ve heard you raise your voices, and I know how powerful they are. Make sure you’re ready to use them in our elections this year!”
She went on to offer concrete advice on how: “Register to vote in less than 2 minutes at vote.org/nvrd.” As a result, Vote.org’s communications director tweeted, “our site was averaging 13,000 users every 30 minutes.”
This isn’t a first for Swift. In 2018, she was credited with a surge in young voter registrations after she endorsed two Tennessee Democrats and promoted voter registration. She called on fans to vote in 2020, and just this July, she went local with a post about the Nashville mayoral race.
The question is how much of a difference even arguably the biggest pop star in the country can make. Obviously, Swift’s powers are limited—she can’t propel a Democrat to a statewide win in Tennessee. But getting young people out to vote has historically been tough, and every little bit can help.
In 2020, young voter turnout was up substantially from 2016. It typically drops way off in midterm elections, but 2018 set a record for youth turnout, at 28%. Youth turnout wasn’t quite as high in 2022, at 23%, but that was still significantly higher than the 13% who voted in 2014 […]
Because, yes, young voters do lean Democratic. That may be particularly true in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, and all the ensuing state abortion bans: People ages 18 to 29 are the most likely to say abortion should be legal in most or all cases.
It’s unlikely that Taylor Swift is the magical answer to decades of struggles in getting young people out to vote. But in a tight election—and many of them are so tight these days—young people can make a difference. And having Swift promoting voter registration and reminding Swifties to follow through and vote is definitely a plus.
After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program.
In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.
The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost.
birgerjohanssonsays
Here is an hour and a half interview of a former royal cop, among other things he is exposing Prince Andrew as a piece of sh*t. https://youtu.be/fU26x3qe5_w
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has teed up votes for Wednesday night to advance three top military nominees who have been jammed up by Sen. Tommy Tuberville — a reversal after the Democratic leader said for months he wouldn’t hold standalone votes on confirmations.
But with the Alabama Republican forcing his hand, Schumer filed cloture, a procedural motion to end debate, on three of President Joe Biden’s senior picks — Gen. C.Q. Brown to be Joint Chiefs chair, Gen. Randy George to be Army chief of staff and Gen. Eric Smith to be Marine commandant.
The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon to cut off debate on Brown’s nomination, followed by a vote in the evening to confirm him and then pivot to the other two nominees. Schumer locked in the votes after Tuberville said he wouldn’t stand in the way, portraying the Democratic leader’s push to hold votes as a cave.
The move comes as Tuberville planned to force his own cloture vote on Smith’s nomination to lead the Marine Corps, which could have placed Democrats in the awkward position of blocking Biden’s nominees…
Update: This program is expected to start accepting orders again on Monday, Sept. 25. Here are some other options for people looking for free COVID tests. Read the latest here — our earlier story is below.
American households will now be able to request four more free at-home COVID tests from the federal government. The White House announced it was reopening orders as part of a new “winter preparedness plan,” as cases and hospitalizations are rising around the country.
One request from each household will be accepted for a “limited round of ordering this winter” through COVIDtests.gov. The first tests are set to be shipped out by the U.S. Postal Service during the week of December 19…
Someone in the congressional office of Rep. Angie Craig is having fun with acronyms.
On Wednesday, the Minnesota Democrat unveiled a bill taking aim at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the federal government nears a shutdown at the end of the month. Party in-fighting has left the Republican leader struggling to pass a spending plan to fund government services.
Craig’s bill would block members of Congress from receiving their scheduled pay if the government shuts down and federal workers are furloughed. She is calling the legislation the My Constituents Cannot Afford Rebellious Tantrums, Handle Your Shutdown Act, or the MCCARTHY Shutdown Act for short.
The Democrat said her tribute to the House speaker, if passed, would make sure lawmakers experience the same lost paychecks as regular Americans…
We’ve had lots of coverage here Sunday and Monday about Donald Trump’s pre-taped interview on Kristen Welker’s debut as host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” in which the former president repeatedly lied without really being fact-checked on-air.
But there was another pre-taped interview that aired later Sunday that has received barely any coverage here: on the season premiere of CBS’ “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv ahead of this week’s visit to the United States.
[…] In the “60 Minutes” interview, Zelenskyy said Ukraine tended to get what it asks for from the Biden administration, but generally six months too late, explaining ”If Ukraine had enough of these modern systems, we would have already restored the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We would have already done that. These systems exist.”
[…] In the “60 Minutes” interview, taped last Thursday, Zelenskyy declared that Ukrainians are dying every day to prevent World War III:
“We’re defending the values of the whole world. And these are Ukrainian people who are paying the highest price. We are truly fighting for our freedom, we are dying we are not fiction, we are not a book. We are fighting for real with a nuclear state that threatens to destroy the world.”
And he expressed gratitude for the billions of dollars the U.S. has contributed to the war effort, but emphasized that the U.S. is “not supporting only Ukraine alone.
“If Ukraine falls, Putin will surely go further. What will the United States of America do when Putin reaches the Baltic states? When he reaches the Polish border? He will. This is a lot of money. We have a lot of gratitude. What else must Ukraine do for everyone to measure our huge gratitude? We are dying in this war. Look, if Ukraine falls, what will happen in ten years? Just think about it. If [the Russians] reach Poland, what’s next? A Third World War? […]
“The whole world [has to] decide whether we want to stop Putin, or whether we want to start the beginning of a world war. We can’t change Putin. Russian society has [lost] the respect of the world. They elected him, and re-elected him and raised a second Hitler. They did this. We cannot go back in time. But we can stop it here.”
[…] On “60 Minutes,” Zelenskyy declared that he had no illusions about Putin. He said that Russia was trying to break Ukrainians by deliberately striking civilian targets: “This person who has made his way with such bloody actions, with everything he has said, cannot be trusted. There is no trust in such a person because he has not been a human being for a long time.”
He said Ukraine has “every moral right” to strike targets inside Russia that are being used to launch missiles at Ukraine and warned Russians that “your sky is not as well protected, as you think.” He added that if Russia once again spends the winter targeting power plants and other infrastructure to deprive Ukrainians of electricity, water, and gasoline, Ukraine was now in a position to do the same to Russia.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine had succeeded in stopping the Russian offensive and has now seized the initiative in the war by mounting a counter-offensive: “It’s not very fast. It is important that we are moving forward every day and liberating territory. … We need to liberate our territory as much as possible and move forward, even if it’s less than [half a mile or] a hundred [yards] we must do it. We can’t lose time. Forget about the weather, and the like. In places that we can’t get through in an armored vehicle—let’s fly. If we can’t fly—let’s send drones. We mustn’t give Putin a break.”
Zelenskyy acknowledged that he is worried about the 2024 U.S. presidential election. He said he thinks Putin is going to continue threatening to use nuclear weapons in order to influence public opinion in the U.S. and Europe:
“He is waiting for the United States to become less stable. He thinks that’s going to happen during the U.S. election. He will be looking for instability in Europe and the United States of America. He will use the risk of using nuclear weapons to fuel that [instability]. He will keep on threatening.”
The “60 Minutes” report concluded with Zelenskyy referencing a medal-awarding ceremony that Pelley had witnessed during his visit to Kyiv:
“Today you … saw me awarding people [medals]. [Well] today is a day like that. A week ago, I gave awards to parents [of soldiers who have been killed]. There were 24 families of the dead. There was a woman. She was with three children. There were parents, very old. They could barely walk and they had had only one son. One of the women was pregnant. She arrived holding a baby in her arms. And she was pregnant. And that baby will never see… what should I tell them? That all of them died so that we could say, `It’s okay, [Russia] you can take it all.’ It’s a difficult job. You understand me, right? Giving awards to people whose faces show their whole world has collapsed. And all I can give them, all I can give them—is victory.”
The Federal Reserve left the main U.S. interest rate unchanged Wednesday, waiting to see if its historic series of rate hikes over the last 18 months gets inflation under control. The central bank kept its main policy rate in the range of 5.25% to 5.50%, citing an easing of economic conditions while also acknowledging that inflation is still higher than its 2% target.
General Motors said Wednesday it idled a manufacturing plant in Kansas, and laid off almost all of the approximately 2,000 people working there. The automaker said in its announcement that there is no work available for most of the people at the Fairfax assembly plant because workers at another GM facility went on strike last Friday. Additionally, the company said, it cannot provide supplemental unemployment benefits “due to the specific circumstances of this situation.”
The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, filling a crucial position that was set to become vacant in the coming weeks and overcoming Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) months-long hold on military promotions.
Senators voted 83-11 to confirm the Air Force general to the post after being nominated by President Biden in May to replace outgoing Chairman Mark Milley.
Milley’s term expires on Oct. 1, and filling the post was a top priority for many lawmakers.
All 11 senators who voted no were Republicans: Sens. Mike Braun (Ind.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Josh Hawley (Mo.), Mike Lee (Utah), Roger Marshall (Kan.), Eric Schmitt (Mo.), JD Vance (Ohio), Ron Johnson (Wis.), Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Tuberville. [Group of unethical doofuses.]
[…] Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) earlier on Wednesday made the surprise announcement that he would tee up votes on a trio of military nominations. On top of Brown, the Senate is set to vote on Gen. Randy George to become Army chief of staff and Gen. Eric Smith to serve as the commandant of the Marine Corps.
That came after Tuberville told Senate Republicans on Tuesday that he would attempt to force a cloture vote on Smith’s nomination over his own hold. Schumer kicked off debate on the three nominations just hours before that was set to happen.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Tuberville declared victory after the first of the series of individual votes on these nominees.
“This is not about me. This is about the Senate and the Constitution,” Tuberville said. “This is a win today for the legislative branch of government. Voting gives all senators a voice for their constituents.”
Tuberville put the hold in place in March over the Pentagon’s new policy that allows the department to cover travel expenses for service members who seek abortion care.
Military officials have attacked Tuberville in recent months and argue that his hold is harming readiness of U.S. forces and creating instability within military families.
Many of the more than 300 promotions being held up are usually advanced en bloc via unanimous consent, and Democrats maintain that they will not move to confirm them one by one.
“Taking these promotions one at a time would cost over 100 days on the Senate calendar,” Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told reporters earlier on Wednesday prior to Schumer’s announcement. “This is not a solution to his challenge. It really is going to drag this out at the expense of everything else that needs to be done in the Senate.” [Yep]
Democrats have also chided Republican leaders for not taking further action to find an offramp to end Tuberville’s blockade.
Tuberville added in his floor remarks that he might bring additional cloture votes in the coming weeks on other top military officials but that his hold will continue for the foreseeable future.
“To be clear, my hold is still in place,” Tuberville said. “I reserve the right to seek another cloture position on the nominees in the future, so that’s where we stand today.” [JFC. What an insufferable dunderhead.]
Awww. Tiny violins. Actually, this is a good schadenfreude moment.
Rolling Stone has some joyful news to share, the kind that provides warm fuzzies, like those heartwarming stories where a lost dog is reunited with its owner after years, or like when there’s a story about an old white lady who accidentally meets a Black guy when she texts the wrong person on her Jitterbug phone, but there’s a happy ending because she’s not racist to him.
Donald Trump is scared shitless of going to prison and having to wear the jumpsuit. Bless his heart. He’s probably scared he won’t look pretty. You know, the way he looks pretty in his normal play clothes he wears to the golf course.
Trump told Kristen Welker this weekend that he’s not scared of prison at all, but according to reporting from Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng, that’s a lie. This is the sub-hed of their piece:
Would he be sent to a “club fed” style prison — or a “bad” one? Would he have Secret Service protection? And what would they make him wear? Those are some of the questions Donald Trump is asking his lawyers as his many trials loom.
Let’s answer as best as we can:
– Bad prison, hopefully. You scared?[…]
– Dunno, maybe. You scared? […]
– The same thing the other inmates are wearing.
Oh, also we bet whatever […] he puts in his hair to make it look like that won’t be available at the commissary either, so Eric will have to bake it into a cake and smuggle it in if Trump needs it.
Specifically Trump has been asking his lawyers and whatever passes as his friends if he’s going to have to wear “one of those jumpsuits.” And maybe do they think a judge might let him do prison at home? What if he “wins” the election, by whatever clever means America’s enemies come up with to make that happen? Will he get to stay out of prison then?
They probably don’t even have a Diet Coke button or a Big Mac slide in jail.
Lots of good walls to fling ketchup at, though. Locked doors with tiny windows. […]
Honestly, it’s really unclear what it would look like, trying to jail that fucker. First of all, he’s indicted under 91 felony counts. Would he get to go to a really gross Georgia jail for a while, and then transfer to the feds? Or would the feds get him first?
And then there are the logistics of what an actual prison sentence might look like. […] Let’s not think about those things right now. He’s frightened, and that’s what matters.
Rawnsley and Suebsaeng end their piece drawing one of the only parallels available, that of Nixon’s disgraced vice president Spiro Agnew:
Like Trump, Agnew campaigned as a populist pugilist eager for conflict with the political left. But as the criminal investigation of him mounted, privately “Agnew was utterly terrified of going to jail,” his biographer Charles J. Holden told Rolling Stone. “He was still terrified of that and the humiliation of it haunted him as well.”
[…] Guess Trump will just have to wait and see along with the rest of us.
Poland said it has stopped supplying weapons to Ukraine, further escalating a dispute over grain shipments that’s threatening to break a key alliance in Kyiv’s fight against Russia…
…
DeSantis’ remarks come less than a year after Hurricane Ian — the second-deadliest storm the continental U.S. has seen in decades, after Hurricane Katrina — devastated his home state, leaving more than 100 people dead and destroying homes and businesses…
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared before the U.N. General Assembly to deliver statements about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and call for united action in facing down territorial aggression.
Biden’s statements denouncing the war drew applause from the assembly. “If you allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?” asked Biden. “I would respectfully suggest the answer is no. We have to stand up to this naked aggression today and deter other would-be aggressors tomorrow. That’s why the United States, together with our allies and partners around the world, will continue to stand with the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity, and their freedom.”
The speech from Zelenskyy, which expanded on the theme of defeating Russia as a necessity to see that “no one in the world will dare attack any nation,” also drew widespread and sustained applause. But the more important meeting may have happened on Wednesday morning, when Zelenskyy appeared before the U.N. Security Council where Russia, undeservedly, holds one of the permanent seats.
[video of Biden's speech, and video of Zelenskyy's speech]
“Please, hear me,” said Zelenskyy. “Let unity decide everything openly. While Russia is pushing the world to the final war, Ukraine is doing everything to ensure that, after Russian aggression, no one in the world will dare to attack any nation. Weaponization must be restrained. War crimes must be punished. Deported people must come back home. And the occupier must return to their own land. We must be united to make it. And we will do it. Slava Ukraini.”
Then came a critical meeting of the Security Council on Wednesday morning. It’s safe to say that were Russia not a member of that council, the situation in Ukraine would be vastly different. Without Russia’s presence to veto every action designed to limit its own aggression, the U.N. might have moved much more firmly from the outset of the war to make the invasion more costly for Russia
But Russia, perched in the chair that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union, not only throttles even the most limited proposals, it regularly uses the Security Council as a platform to spread propaganda, excuses, and denial of the war crimes it has committed (and is committing) in Ukraine. Those are just some of the reasons Ukraine is not alone in seeking to have Russia removed from the Security Council.
On Wednesday, Russian U.N. Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia tried to use that seat in a typical Russian way—he tried to interrupt Zelenskyy. Actually, Nebenzia interrupted four times before Zelenskyy had even started, protesting Ukraine’s right to speak and claiming that the Ukrainian president’s statement would be “nothing but a spectacle.”
Nebenzia did not get applause. What he got was laughter, as Albanian President Edi Rama drew praise for handling the matter. [Tweet and video at the link: Dear @EdiRamaal, today at the UNSC you showed the world how to correctly handle Russia, its lies, and its hypocrisy. I thank you for steering the Presidency in such a principled manner.]
When Zelenskyy got to speak, he told the council that he would not have come there if he didn’t have a plan for ending the war. He sketched his long-standing 10-point peace plan that includes security guarantees for Ukraine and a special commission for the prosecution of war crimes.
But most of Zelenskyy’s plan can be relayed very simply, and isn’t far from the deal proposed by Rama (and Biden): Russia has to get completely out of Ukraine. Then there can be peace.
————————–
Norway is sending 50 M548 transports to Ukraine. This is one of many vehicles that is based on the M113 armored personnel carrier, but none of the others do such a good job of looking like a cross between the Jupiter 2’s Chariot and the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Seriously, this thing wins the award for too-cute-to-shoot. Although that probably won’t work in the field. [Tweet and image at the link]
Norway has really stepped up its support of Ukraine. It has not just become one of the leading nations in supplying Ukraine with what it needs to push Russia out, it has also pledged $7 billion to help Ukraine rebuild after the war is over. Whether you measure it per capita or based on GDP, they’re putting us to shame. [Graph showing commitments as % of donor GDP]
————————–
[…] analysis of where Russian units are positioned: [map at the link]
Unsurprisingly, the bulk of Russian troops are engaged at the front line. However, not all red rectangles are created equal. Many of those units lined up around Verbove and Robotyne have been getting the #$@% kicked out of them since the spring. Some are operating at reduced strength, with poorly trained prisoners filling in vital gaps. But the biggest point, and the reason for scaling the map out to this point, is to make clear just how little Russia has left in the backfield.
Why aren’t those third and fourth rows of trenches filled with waiting soldiers? Because there’s no one to fill them. What Russia has now is what Russia has on the line.
Ukrainian forces have been battered as well, and the number and position of Ukrainian reserves has been kept deliberately vague. But one of the reasons that Ukraine has been making progress around Robotyne and Verbove is the simplest: fresher troops in more complete units.
————————-
Once again, Ukrainian general staff reports nothing going on around Kupyansk. Remember that big Russian push, with over 100,000 men, that was going to fling Ukraine back across the Oskil? Didn’t happen. There’s also nothing but crickets from Svatove and Kreminna down to the area north of Bakhmut.
South of Bakhmut, Russia reportedly made another failed attempt at regaining ground between Klishchiivka and Andriivka, as well as another failed assault about 5 kilometers to the south. Which sounds like the kind of action this Russian soldier was complaining about when he said that Russian commanders keep getting sucked into traps. [Tweet at the link]
The key part:
In addition to his actual advancement on the ground, the enemy worked out the situation with Andreevka in the media [space] quite well. As a result, we have hysterical attempts to recapture the ruins of Andreevka. Equally hysterical attempts to counterattack occur in the surrounding area.
At Marinka, near Donetsk, Ukraine reportedly repelled 10 Russian attacks—which is about a daily average in this area. And … that’s it for Russian actions. This is a notably short list, one in which Russia doesn’t even seem to have made a run at regaining any ground in the south.
But part of the reason that Russia is standing still is because Ukraine is not. [Tweets and maps at the link, showing NASA Firms fire data that suggest Zaporizhian battlespace is undergoing significant Ukrainian shaping operations via artillery and missile attacks reaching to Melitopol and beyond …]
————————–
This Russian propagandist is right about two things: Building effective drones has become ridiculously easy and there will definitely be more in the future. Whether it will be effective to flood the zone with this kind of drone is something we don’t know yet. The whole world is watching what’s happening in Ukraine and strategy textbooks are being rewritten every day. [Tweet and image at the link: Russian propagandist Sladkov is so shocked by the ability of Ukrainians to create drones from the most simple materials, he even admits that NATO support does not and will not play any role in this.
And he’s perplexed as to how the self-proclaimed second military in the world is unable to produce wooden or plastic drones en masse.]
—————————–
Watching the daily evaporation of Russian artillery is my new favorite pastime. There’s no doubt that, thanks to drones and better counter-battery fire, Russia could not engage in the kind of artillery march it used to capture cities like Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Lysychansk. Russia is losing hundreds of artillery systems per month and the average rate of loss is still increasing (expect some math on this soon). [List at the link: Russian losses. Look at the numbers of destroyed artillery systems. It’s like that every single day.]
On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland was forced to participate in Jim Jordan’s clown show Judiciary Committee hearing. Democratic representatives at the House hearing used their time to righteously lambaste Jordan and his party’s abject hypocrisy. But even the truth could not inure America to the pitiable attempts at “gotcha” questions lobbed by Republicans like Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin.
Having asked Garland the hard-hitting question, “Do you support more crime?” (Garland said he did not), Tiffany decided to close his sad political performance with a gripe about something dead serious: The World Naked Bike Ride. Did I stutter?
He literally said, “There is a World Naked Bike Ride in Madison, Wisconsin,” and then proceeded to claim he had sent the Department of Justice a letter ”two months ago” concerning reports that a 10-year-old girl might have participated in the naked bike ride through Madison, Wisconsin. “Do you think that’s a problem? And why did you not answer our letter two months ago?”
Garland’s response is perfectly hilarious. “I’m sorry. I’ll have to ask the Office of Legislative Affairs to get back to you about this.” Tee-hee.
Garland subsequently pointed out that what Tiffany was griping about seemed to be an issue for state and local law enforcement—which did investigate and found it was not illegal. [video at the link]
[…]
[…] 2/ ASTRA reports the account of Evgeny P., as told to his wife Evgeniya on 18 September. He says that while fighting with the 27th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade near Bakhmut in May, he suffered a shrapnel wound and was sent to hospital. However, he was not treated.
3/ Instead, he was sent with other injured men to Naro-Fominsk in the Moscow region and confined to a barracks for a week. He says that a military doctor declared them all fit to fight, despite their unhealed wounds. The men were sent back to Ukraine under a new commander.
4/ They were “taken in the direction of Svatove [in eastern Ukraine] and abandoned in the forest with no means of subsistence”. (Many Russian soldiers have reported similar stories of being dumped in the forest without food or water and surviving on berries and puddles.)
5/ When the unit came under fire, the “commanders, senior company officers and everyone who was in charge there just ran away like rats, leaving the guys alone to die under shelling.” Not surprisingly, the injured men refused orders to go into an assault.
6/ Evgeny says they were rounded up and taken to Zaitseve, where hundreds of soldiers are reported to have been imprisoned, starved and tortured to ‘remotivate’ them. […]
THE XVERSE (The Borowitz Report)—Users of X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter, are about to roll out a plan that would require Elon Musk to pay them a monthly fee to keep using the site.
Tracy Klugian, a user who masterminded the plan, said that a monthly fee of $10.99 would compensate users for the toxic experience of being on X.
Additionally, Klugian said, X users will demand that Musk set aside billions of dollars to compensate them for any psychiatric or other medical expenses that they incur as a result of their exposure to the platform.
The proposal drew a harsh response from a legion of bots, who argued that Musk must also compensate them for their continued presence on the site.
“Any plan that pays a monthly fee to X users but not to bots is deeply hurtful,” @TrumpBoebert2024 wrote. “Bots made X what it is today.”
Sunak has resorted to sabotaging the UK’s “net zero” policies (already inadequate) in a desperate attempt to shift the polls that have been showing ~20% Labour leads for a year. I very much doubt this will work, but the effects will outlast Sunak’s remaining year-or-so in office, and I don’t trust Starmer to reverse the damage.
As changes at Elon Musk’s X continue to push former Twitter users to seek alternatives, the open-sourced, decentralized social network Mastodon — a popular Twitter/X rival — is releasing an update designed to make it easier for users to get started, use its network even when logged out, and more easily search for content across its platform. The web interface has also received a visual refresh and a number of other improvements.
The release, aka Mastodon 4.2, is available today to all Mastodon server operators to install. Mastodon, unlike Twitter/X, is a network of interconnected servers, each with their own admins and rules. Though that means the upgrade may not be universally rolled out at exactly the same time across every Mastodon instance, most admins are typically excited about new releases and install them quickly — particularly those who run larger servers.
Mastodon.social, the largest of these, will immediately update to Mastodon 4.2 with this release.
Key among the changes is an overhauled search interface — something that Mastodon actually credits to inspiration from its third-party developer community, specifically the Mastodon client Ivory from Tapbots — a company that switched to supporting Mastodon after Twitter killed its Tweetbot app…
More than 15,000 people in Arizona have registered to join a new political party floating a possible bipartisan “unity ticket” against Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
While that’s less than the population of each of the state’s 40 largest cities, it’s still a number big enough to tip the presidential election in a critical swing state. And that is alarming people trying to stop Trump from winning the White House again.
The very existence of the No Labels group is fanning Democratic anxiety about Trump’s chances against an incumbent president facing questions about his age and record. While it hasn’t committed to running candidates for president and vice president, No Labels has already secured ballot access in Arizona and 10 other states. Its organizers say they are on track to reach 20 states by the end of this year and all 50 states by Election Day.
“If they have someone on the ballot who is designed to bring the country together, that clearly draws votes away from Joe Biden and does not draw votes away from Donald Trump,” said Rodd McLeod, a Democratic strategist in Arizona…
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee went about as well as expected, with a seemingly endless series of exchanges about the investigation into Hunter Biden. The New York Times noted:
Representative Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who leads the committee, repeatedly suggested that Mr. Garland had slow-walked the investigation into the president’s son, Hunter Biden, with an aim toward minimizing the political damage to his boss. “The fix is in,” Jordan said. “Even with the face-saving indictment last week of Hunter Biden, everyone knows the fix is in.”
As the Times’ report added, neither Jordan nor his GOP colleagues “provided concrete proof for their claim — or elicited responses from the attorney general that backed up those conclusions.”
Or put another way, it was another multi-hour Capitol Hill hearing featuring Republicans, certain of their righteousness and confident in their conspiracy theories, making a variety of unproven assertions without uncovering any new information that might bolster their dubious claims.
And yet, there were several references to what “everyone knows.” Jordan declared with confidence that “everyone knows” about the attorney general’s secret scheme to help President Joe Biden’s son — an initiative that appears to only exist in Republicans’ imaginations. Later, in same hearing, the committee chairman added that “everyone knows” that Justice Department prosecutors also took deliberate steps to help Hunter Biden.
Soon after, Republican Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana added that “everybody can see” that the Justice Department gave “special treatment” to the president’s son. Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas said that “everybody can see” that Joe Biden was part of a bribery scheme.
Rep. Matt Gaetz also pointed to obscure details about Hunter Biden that the Florida Republican said “everybody knows.” So did Republican Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, who added that “everybody in the country” knows that the Justice Department helped Hunter Biden.
Time and again, House Republicans took their turns at the microphone. Time and again, they told us what “everyone” and “everybody” is well aware of.
What these GOP members neglected to do was point to any meaningful or credible evidence to support their claims.
The fact of the matter is that producing evidence is hard. Simply asserting that “everyone knows” how right you are is easy.
[…] their incessant assertions don’t make baseless claims true.
As a gubernatorial candidate in 2018, Ron DeSantis seemed eager to appear sensible on environmental issues. The Republican, hoping voters would overlook his record as a far-right congressman, assured Floridians that he not only intended to protect the Everglades, he also believed humans were contributing to climate change.
After narrowly winning that race, the editorial board of The Tampa Bay Times applauded the fact that DeSantis was taking the climate crisis seriously in ways his Republican predecessor did not. The editors went so far as to describe DeSantis as “Florida’s green governor.”
Five years later, the GOP governor is now a GOP presidential candidate, doing his best to appeal to a party base that’s been conditioned to believe that the climate crisis is an elaborate hoax. Predictably, it has led DeSantis to embrace climate denialism in ridiculous ways. The New York Times reported on the Floridian traveling to Texas yesterday to unveil his energy plan.
In a policy rollout at an oil rig site in Midland — a West Texas city that derives much of its economy from oil production — Mr. DeSantis seemed to make a general-election argument, promising to roll back several of the Biden administration’s climate initiatives, calling them “part of an agenda to control you and to control our behavior.”
The fact that a far-right presidential candidate took a far-right position while appealing to far-right voters was not especially interesting. The governor’s phrasing, however, stood out for me.
To try to address the crisis, DeSantis said, is to pursue “an agenda to control you.”
A few months ago, the Florida Republican pushed a similar line on Fox News. “You have an itch on the left, they want to control behavior,” DeSantis said. “We saw the same thing with Covid. A lot of that wasn’t about your health, it’s that they wanted to control your behavior. They just don’t want people to be happy and make their own decisions.”
This comes up with unnerving frequency. It was just a couple of weeks ago, for example, when Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told Fox News viewers that those who believe climate science are “driven” by the desire to take “control over our lives.”
In July, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise appeared on Fox Business and pushed the same line. “They don’t want to talk honestly about science; they just want to control your life,” the Louisiana Republican said in reference to the climate crisis, failing to identify who “they” might be.
It appears, in other words, that a variety of prominent Republican leaders don’t just reject climate science, they’ve also convinced themselves that reality-based observers are secret totalitarians, hellbent on micromanaging Americans’ daily lives for nefarious purposes. [Projection!]
At this point, we could marvel for a while at the tone-deaf hypocrisy, highlighting how ridiculous it is to hear the party of abortion bans, book bans and LGBTQ+ discrimination whine about those who would try to “control our behavior.”
[…] I’m obviously not in a position to speak on anyone else’s behalf, but I know plenty of folks who’d identify as themselves as “progressives” or “liberals,” and I’ve literally never heard any of them say, “You know what would be great? If government would control everyone’s lives. It’s annoying when people are happy and make their own decisions, so let’s pretend that planetary temperatures are rising as part of an elaborate ruse in order to get bureaucratic systems to crack down on everyone’s day-to-day activities.”
This might surprise Republicans, but people on the left don’t think this way. We have no reason to think this way. We’re desperate for action on climate change, not because we’re proponents of government control over the public, but because the climate crisis risks catastrophic results for life on the planet.
If GOP voices such as DeSantis know the truth but peddle nonsense anyway, such a cynical approach to politics is indefensible. But if Republicans like the Florida governor genuinely believe that the left has embraced totalitarianism, perhaps they should take a little time to talk to some progressive voters to learn otherwise.
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits Washington to seek more military aid to help fend off Russia’s invasion, a key bloc of Republicans stopped just short of preemptively saying no.
Six Republican senators and 23 GOP House members sent a letter to the White House Thursday saying that, for now, they oppose a request for $24 billion in additional funding from Congress to support Kyiv.
In the letter, Republican lawmakers outline a series of questions they have about the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression, including progress in the country’s counteroffensive, how the administration defines victory, and what direct assistance the U.S. military has provided.
“For these reasons—and certainly until we receive answers to the questions above and others forthcoming—we oppose the additional expenditure for war in Ukraine included in your request,” the letter reads.
Zelensky is on Capitol Hill today in an effort to maintain support for U.S. aid to his country. But the letter comes as a flank of far-right Republicans, concentrated in the House, try to tank Ukraine aid.
That group is largely missing from the letter’s list of signatories, though members of the group, including Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-PA), have called for the U.S. to reduce its support. The same group of far-right Republicans have been publicly pressuring House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA ), pushing a short term spending bill that does not include additional aid for Ukraine.
McCarthy told reporters on Thursday that he had declined a request to have Zelensky address another joint session of Congress during his visit, and in a bizarre attempt to bring a rhetorical point into reality, he suggested that Biden should support GOP border funding requests before House Republicans agree to pass more Ukraine aid. [WTF!]
Republicans proposed a bill which would fund the Pentagon without appropriating money for Ukraine, which they failed to advance on the House floor for the second time this week on Thursday morning. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said it was a non-starter for the Senate.
The letter itself stops short of saying outright that its signers will block further aid to Ukraine.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) signed the letter, and said on Wednesday that he would use Senate procedural rules to slow down any additional Ukraine spending bills, citing long-debunked ideas around the national debt to justify more aid.
“We have no extra money to send to Ukraine,” Paul said.
Much of the letter is framed in the language of fiscal scarcity, and poses questions which have knowable answers, particularly to members of Congress with access to briefings from the defense and intelligence communities.
“How is the counteroffensive going?” reads part of the letter. “What assistance has the United States provided Ukraine under Title 10? “It would be an absurd abdication of congressional responsibility to grant this request without knowing the answers to these questions.” [Full text of the letter is available at the link.]
You don’t have to be an elected member of the House to serve as Speaker. Maybe Putin should be given the job.
————————
I do not even know the word to describe or explain the insensitivity to life by Republicans, but Republicans wanting “accountability” for aid to the Ukraine need only look at the towns, children and Ukrainian blood on the battlefield to know that whatever aid America provides for the Ukraine to hold off Russian and Putin it is more than paid for.
———————
“Sound and fury”
Tales told by idiots, signifying nothing.
———————–
Everyone needs to push back against the lack of humanity and positivity and vision that is whatever today’s GOP has become.
—————————
Putin’s violent overturning of the post-WW2 security system in Europe is very much a concern of ours, and of our Western allies as well.
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I appreciate when Republicans are so open about being on Putin’s payroll. It makes it easier for the rest of us to know who is corrupt.
[image showing Tommy Tuberville’s signature on the letter]
His blockading of US military promotions making much more sense now.
———————-
This news needs to be framed as “GOP faction supports Putin in Ukraine.”
————————-
The Kremlin Caucus.
———————
How is the counteroffensive going?
Slowly but steadily.
Are the Ukrainians any closer to victory than they were 6 months ago?
Yes, very much so. They’re killing Russian soldiers and destroying Russian materiel at an astounding clip.
What is our strategy, and what is the president’s exit plan?
Our strategy is to provide Ukraine with the weapons, training and other support needed for them to obtain success on the battlefield. And President Biden’s “exit plan” is to not deploy American troops in the first place.
What does the administration define as victory in Ukraine?
The administration does not define victory for Ukraine. Ukraine defines victory for Ukraine.
What assistance has the United States provided Ukraine under Title 10?
I’m the head of OMB. Please direct your inquiry to the Department of Defense.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, holding meetings with President Joe Biden, Pentagon officials, and Congress. He first met with the bipartisan leadership of the House, followed by a briefing with the Senate. In both chambers, Zelenskyy’s request for further assistance depends on the ability of Congress to overcome the Republican dysfunction in the House of Representatives.
The signs aren’t auspicious. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy went into the meeting with a bad attitude, starting with his refusal of Zelenskyy’s request to speak to a joint session of Congress. “We just didn’t have time,” McCarthy told reporters. “He’s already given a joint session.” Then he reiterated that he would demand Zelenskyy justify his request for continued assistance. “What is the plan for victory? Where are we currently on the field? The accountability issues that a lot of members have questions, just walk through that.”
Zelenskyy could very well turn those questions on McCarthy, who has no plan for victory over the dozen or so members of his own conference who are refusing to do their one basic job: keep the government funded and functioning.
The Senate provided a more receptive audience. Zelenskyy has powerful allies there, including the Democratic majority, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the majority of Republican senators who realize the stakes in this war. [Photo of Zelensky addressing Senators inside the historic old Senate chamber. He received multiple standing ovations.]
Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas spoke to the concern that the dysfunction in the House and the threat of the government shutdown fight is delaying assistance. “Am I worried that might be the case? Yes,” he told Politico. “It’s a terrible message, as we struggle to take care of assisting Ukraine in this war. Just even the process is damaging to the view of the stability of the United States and being an ally.”
That’s not to say there aren’t problems in the Senate, as well. The usual suspect, Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, threatened to help the House shut the government down Wednesday, by saying he would not allow the Senate to move a stopgap government funding bill through quickly if it included Ukraine aid. Not to be outdone, freshman Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio piled on with a letter to the Biden administration, rejecting the request. He had just five other senators on board, plus a bunch of House Freedom Caucus jerks.
That attitude is deepening the divide in the Senate, where one Democrat is ready to blow. “These guys need to get goddamn with the program,” Sen. Jon Tester of Montana exclaimed. “These guys don’t want to protect democracy in the world? What the hell have we become?”
That’s what the world is probably wondering now, watching one half of the Congress being held hostage by just a handful of nihilists.
New York Times columnist David Brooks, supposedly a high-flown thinker who is above the social media stunts of his fellow right-wing pundits, was savagely mocked Wednesday night after trying to engage in the fad for pictures of underwhelming amounts of food with an outrageous price tag attached. While many social media posts in that vein are suspect and can be revealed as misleading or false with a little sleuthing, Brooks made it way too easy—and showed his cluelessness in the process. [Tweets and images at the link]
Just a modest meal of a hamburger, some crinkle-cut fries, some packets of ketchup … and a large glass of what appears to be whiskey. Did Brooks think viewers would assume that was iced tea?
Airport food is expensive—and not just because of price-gouging—but not $78-burger expensive. In response, someone tweeted a copy of their own receipt from what may well have been the same Newark airport restaurant, showing a $24.54 burger and a $13 beer. It wouldn’t be hard to spend $40 or more on a whiskey at the Newark airport, though.
This was a ridiculous whiff—one so bad Brooks is likely to announce that he was joking all along—but what makes it interesting is that it was David Brooks. Brooks has long been framed as a public intellectual. His moralizing books are reviewed in serious publications. The American Sociological Association in 2011 gave him its Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues. He spent years as a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. All of which goes to show how low the bar is for a conservative to be taken as intellectual. Brooks is a consistently lazy observer and thinker, and has been since fairly early in his career. [I agree.]
Republicans like to rail against affirmative action, and yet being on the right means you can be an intellectual lightweight and still be celebrated as a great thinker. You can be a Supreme Court justice with nothing much to say. The gulf between the median level of thoughtfulness, originality, and rigor on the left, broadly speaking, and the right, broadly speaking, in the media and the courts and elsewhere is staggering, and the elevation of people like Brooks as weighty thinkers (no, really, so, so serious and smart) is a central part of that. Nice liberals who want to show their breadth of thinking and tolerance convince themselves that David Brooks is the intellectual equivalent of Ta-Nehisi Coates or Tressie McMillan Cottom because it makes them feel better about themselves and because it shields them a little from the reality of just how bleak the U.S. political landscape is. Brooks has made a lucrative career at playing to those impulses.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the most important message Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered to lawmakers was that failure to deliver more U.S. assistance would condemn Ukraine to a Russian takeover.
“There was a single sentence that summed it all up and I’m quoting him verbatim. Mr. Zelensky said ‘If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war.’ That’s a quote from him,” Schumer told reporters following a closed door meeting with the Ukrainian president. […]
Counter-protesters supporting trans rights vastly outnumbered them.
[…] this Wednesday, Canadian transphobes tried to hold a multi-city 1 Million March 4 Children. They dreamt that busybodies in practically 100 cities and towns all over the Great White North would make their own kids walk out of school at 9 a.m. and take to the streets in order to chastise transgender people, children in particular, for existing. Indeed, to chastise the whole darn world for not being as shitty to trans people as they would like, under the guise of “protecting children,” who very likely do not give a flying shit what gender people identify as without the helpful assistance of weird, backwards, bigot parents from whom they will likely be estranged when they grow up.
Specifically, the organizers — who were in cahoots with groups like Gays Against Groomers along with anti-abortion groups and groups supporting the anti-vax Freedom Convoys — said they were “advocating for the elimination of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) curriculum, pronouns, gender ideology and mixed bathrooms in schools.” [Of course anti-vaccine and anti-abortion groups joined the transphobia. All of the ignorant doofuses flocking together.]
One wonders what kind of English (or French, depending) classes they plan to have without pronouns. Or how they are going to avoid having mixed bathrooms when trans girls are forced to use the boys’ room and trans boys are supposed to use the girls’ room, which one imagines would create a whole lot more confusion and chaos than the opposite. (If their big fear is that cis boys are going to pretend to be trans girls in order to sneak into the girls’ bathroom … couldn’t they then also do that by claiming to be trans boys? And much more easily, as it would not require a costume change? Logic, clearly, is not a strong point for these types.)
The protests, in most areas, did not turn out very well for them. [video at the link]
Erin Reed of Erin In The Morning reports that in cities like Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver, only a sparse few turned out for the bigots, who were wildly outnumbered by supporters of trans rights. Democratic leaders and teachers unions showed their support in the streets, while mayors and city governments flew progress pride flags and tweeted their support for trans youth.
Unfortunately, this was not the case everywhere, as some cities in more conservative areas of the country saw about an equal turnout on both sides.
We often think of Canada as being a liberal wonderland — and in many respects, policy-wise, it can be. They have universal healthcare, an unusual number of peppy folk rock bands, a dog that travels from to town to town solving people’s problems and stopping Abe Vigoda from accidentally doing fur crimes, and it seems like they’re all super nice and polite. However, it’s not all sweetness and light. There was that guy who kept killing people and feeding them to his pigs, and there are conservative areas of the country that have started adopting anti-trans policies similar to those supported and enacted by US conservatives.
From Erin In The Morning:
Saskatchewan, for instance, has adopted a new policy alongside New Brunswick that requires transgender students to inform parents if they wish to change their pronouns in schools. The education minister of Ontario, Stephen Lecce, likewise indicated his support for parental notification. Meanwhile, Canadian conservatives, lead by Pierre Poilievre, have recently adopted a set of platform positions that include trans bathroom bans, sports bans, and gender affirming care bans.
If there is any indication that these groups do not give one solitary damn about children, it is these parental notification laws, which put children at risk of abuse, being kicked out of their homes or worse. Kids know their own parents and know whether or not it is safe to tell them something like this — and the sick thing is that those advancing these laws know that and are hoping that fear of their parents finding out will keep kids in the closet at least until they graduate.
It’s good (and important) that every time these people try to go out they are met with resistance, because it’s their belief that they represent the majority […] But 70 percent of Canadian parents say that if they had a trans child, they would do whatever they could to accommodate them, and while it’s certainly not perfect, that’s the real majority.
The Biden administration said late Wednesday that it would allow hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans already in the United States to live and work legally in the country for 18 months.
The decision followed intense advocacy by top New York Democrats, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams and party leaders in Congress. It will affect about 472,000 Venezuelans who arrived in the country before July 31, temporarily protecting them from removal and waiving a monthslong waiting period for them to seek employment authorization.
In an unusual break with a president of their party, the New York Democrats had argued that the city’s social safety net would tear under the weight of more than 110,000 recently arrived migrants unless they were allowed to work and support themselves more quickly.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said that he made the decision because conditions in Venezuela “prevent their safe return” but stressed that immigrants who had entered the country since August were not protected and would be “removed when they are found to not have a legal basis to stay.”
In a joint statement, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top Democrats in the Senate and House, said that the Homeland Security Department had estimated that roughly half the migrants currently living in New York are Venezuelans who would be affected by the decision. They called it a “welcome step forward.”
[…] “As a result of this decision, immigrants will be temporarily allowed to work, fill needed jobs and support their families while awaiting an asylum determination,” they wrote. “The decision will also substantially reduce the cost to New York taxpayers with respect to the sheltering of asylum seekers.” […]
The administration’s decision, which was part of a raft of actions to deal with the crush of migrants trying to cross the border, was announced on Wednesday […]
The administration had already extended humanitarian protections to close to 250,000 Venezuelans who had arrived in the country by March 2021. But officials had been wary that extending it more broadly could create a new, longer-term incentive for migrants to attempt to cross into the country.
[…] The Biden administration helped secure $140 million in emergency funds for New York and has requested more from Congress. Dozens of federal officials are also on the ground in New York City trying to help identify other migrants who were already eligible for employment but had yet to file applications.
White House officials argue that only Congress can meaningfully overhaul the nation’s immigration system […]
For the second time this week, House Republicans on Thursday failed to start debate on a key military funding bill after five conservative rebels blocked the measure over demands for additional spending cuts. The defeat marked yet another public embarrassment for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans as Washington barrels toward a government shutdown.
Commentary from Steve Benen:
[…] Just so we’re all clear, this wasn’t a vote on a bill that would fund the Defense Department; it was a vote on beginning the debate on a bill that would fund the Defense Department.
[…] up until very recently a House majority conference hadn’t lost a vote on adopting a rule in more than two decades.
McCarthy has now lost three such votes — in the last three months.
[…] The deadline for a government shutdown is just nine days away, and McCarthy appears to have no idea how to (a) prevent that from happening; and (b) avoid blame for his own party’s debacle.
[…] Postscript: Just as I was getting ready to publish, Sherman noted online that he’s received texts from inside the House Republican leadership in the last few minutes. One described conditions as “f—ing chaos,” while the other said the chamber has become “a total s— show.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, essentially frozen out by President Biden, is back in laudatory mode. In a long withheld sit-down with the President yesterday Netanyahu told Biden, “Under your leadership, Mr. President, we can forge a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia.” Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s longtime chief agit-prop guy and hype man, says it could be a “reverse 9/11” for the U.S. That sounds kind of weird frankly and not necessarily something you’d want, given that 9/11 and everything that happened after it kinda sucked. But what he means is that whereas 9/11 led to one disaster after another for the U.S. in the region, this Israel-Saudi peace deal would make everything in the region suddenly awesome for the U.S.
But who are we kidding here exactly?
The price for the Saudis appears to be some sort of pretty ironclad security guarantee on the model we have with South Korea.
As I said, who are we kidding here?
What does the U.S. get from giving a strong security guarantee to a country, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that is now largely hostile to the U.S. on behalf of another country, Israel, that is increasingly annoying and meddlesome at best? This isn’t the 1990s or even the aughts when the Middle East was a region made up mostly of various sorts of fairly-locked-in U.S. allies, albeit ones with major disagreements amongst themselves. In that world it was a matter of great value to have Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan sign peace treaties with each other. They may not be allies themselves. But if they had normal state to state relations that made our being allies with each of them individually far more manageable. If that rapprochement could be extended to the Gulf, and especially to Saudi Arabia, even better.
But that’s hardly the case today.
The U.S. partnership with Saudi Arabia, stretching all the way back to the 1940s, was always uncomfortable and even unseemly. But for decades the Saudis were supporters of high level American interests and guarantors of price stability in global oil markets. At least that was the idea. Today they appear more in league with Russia than the United States, certainly in world oil markets and beyond that as well. They openly bid [join?] China against the United States for their favor.
[…] The Saudis have as much right to pursue their own interests as any other sovereign country. But again, what would the U.S. be getting in return for any of this?
The only clear answer I can see is: nothing.
I’m not even talking here about the Saudi Kingdom’s abysmal human rights record. That speaks for itself. Sometimes the U.S. must balance values with core interests. With the Saudis the values side of the ledger speaks for itself. What are the hard foreign policy or economic interests here balancing any of that out?
There’s the additional matter that both [Israel and Saudi Arabia] have become increasingly open about the fact that their connection is with the Republican Party and/or the Trump family rather than the U.S. Even now it seems clear that the Saudis will do what they can to time a spike in global oil prices to coincide with President Biden’s reelection campaign.
With Israel it is not so much Israel per se as Netanyahu and his nationalist bloc. [True] The other Israel has been on the streets weekly for the better part of a year protesting his judicial coup and the steady movement of the state under his aegis to Team Authoritarian. At the moment a majority of Israel is likely on the side of the protestors. But Netanyahu’s return to the premiership makes believing that Israel’s future isn’t his a matter of hope more than reason.
There are of course a thousand complexities in these relationships […] But again, what exactly is in this for the U.S.? Will this peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia pry the latter free of Russia and China? If that were the case, that might conceivably hold some logic. But is there any sign of that?
[…] this seems more flimflam to get something out of the U.S. for nothing. It all seems very Trumpian.
My fear here is that we went so long in U.S. foreign policy seeing something like this as crown jewel type breakthrough that we’re on a kind of autopilot. We haven’t stood back long enough or far enough to consider whether this is really a good deal for us now as opposed to 10, 20 or 30 years ago. On its face it looks like we agree to a committed relationship while the Saudis play the field. The Bibi-fied Israelis might not be far behind.
I would imagine that foreign policy types think that the U.S. being the guarantor of a regional anchor relationship puts us back in the game, a status put in question by the recent Chinese brokering of a rapprochement between the Saudis and Iran and Russia’s virtual protectorate over Syria. But is that really what we’re getting? I have my doubts. They would likely also see it as a further counterweight to Iran. But again, is that really what we’re getting? Again, I have my doubts.
tomhsays
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Trump electors: ‘fake’ or ‘contingent’? Judge hears arguments from Trump electors seeking a move to federal court
By Bill Rankin and David Wickert / Sept 20, 2023
Three Republicans who cast Electoral College votes for Donald Trump after the 2020 presidential election were acting as federal officers and doing what the law allowed, defense lawyers told a federal judge on Wednesday.
The Trump electors — former Georgia GOP Chairman David Shafer, state Sen. Shawn Still and former Coffee County GOP Chairwoman Cathy Latham — are charged in Fulton County with conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election. They are seeking to get their cases removed from Fulton Superior Court to U.S. District Court in Atlanta…
Special prosecutor Anna Cross called the defense’s contentions “untethered to any factual legal evidence.” She urged U.S. District Judge Steve Jones to keep the case in Fulton County.
Attorneys for the defendants argued their clients were “contingent” electors under the federal Electoral Count Act. Among other things, the law requires states to resolve legal disputes about the outcome of elections six days before presidential electors cast their ballots — the so-called “safe harbor” deadline.
When presidential electors met on Dec. 14, 2020, Trump’s lawsuit challenging the election in Georgia was still pending. That meant Gov. Brian Kemp’s certification of Democrat Joe Biden was no longer valid, argued Shafer’s attorney, Craig Gillen.
Because of that, neither the Democratic nor Republican electors were official, Gillen said. At that point, it was up to Congress to pick the proper electors. If both houses of Congress agreed on the winner, that was the official slate, he said. If the houses couldn’t agree, then – and only then – would Kemp’s certified slate become official.
Gillen argued that made the 16 Republicans “contingent” electors under federal law.
Cross called Gillen’s arguments “novel,” “nonsense” and “fantasy.” She noted that, after correcting deficiencies, Trump refiled his lawsuit the day before the safe harbor deadline. Under the electors’ argument, that gave the court one day to resolve the dispute.
Cross said the electors had presented no case law supporting the idea “that you can file a procedurally and substantively deficient challenge and, suddenly, everything’s up in the air.” She said the Republicans did not become federal officers simply by claiming to be official presidential electors.
“They were fake electors,” Cross said. “They were impersonating electors. They were not electors at all.”
[…]
At one point in the hearing, Jones asked Hollie Pierson, another lawyer representing Shafer, why he should disregard two U.S. Supreme Court decisions that said Electoral College electors are not federal officials.
Pierson told Jones that the high court’s references to the electors was “dicta,” meaning the passage was an opinion of a court but not binding in subsequent cases as legal precedent.
Jones agreed but then said, “There’s dicta, then there’s Supreme Court dicta.”
Move over, Rep. Andy Biggs. Stop vaping in that pregnant woman’s face, Rep. Lauren Boebert. We’ve got a new candidate for weirdest Republican in the House, and she is on a roll.
On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland was summoned to the Capitol to be ranted at by House Republican Jim Jordan’s Special All-Clown Revue, or what used to be known as the House Judiciary Committee before Republicans turned it into a dumping ground for congressional crackpots.
Whatever the original plan was, the hearing quickly devolved into the usual circus, with Garland on the receiving end of complaints about a “World Naked Bike Ride” and generally not being able to get a word in edgewise. But there was one Republican bent on making even those complaints look tame: a performatively furious Rep. Victoria Spartz, who took Garland to task over the Jan. 6 insurrection and resulting arrests.
In the past, sedition-backing Republicans brushed off the violence and deaths on Jan. 6 as a typical “tourist visit.” Spartz, however, appears to have invented a whole extended universe twice removed from even those claims. The Indiana Republican is outraged that police were attacking families with “strollers and the kids” on that day, and it’s a complete mystery what the flying hell she thinks she’s talking about.
“You talk about Jan. 6 people, some people came on Jan. 6 here that had bad intent but a lot of good Americans from my district came here because they are sick and tired of this government not serving them,” Spartz told Garland. “They came with strollers and the kids and there was a chaotic situation because proper security wasn’t provided.”
Let’s back that trolley up a bit, because what? No seriously, what? Here’s the clip, via Aaron Rupar. [Video at the link. You can see AG Garland working hard to keep a straight face. He doesn’t even roll his eyes. He does look a bit puzzled.]
There are several things going on with this, and all of them are muddled together into a great big pile of What The Hell. It’s gracious that Spartz is willing to allow that there were at least “some” people in the crowd that had bad intent, given that the crowd attacked and injured over 140 law enforcement officers as they made their way into the Capitol to hunt for lawmakers and ransack their offices—a few bad actors there!—but this is the first anyone has heard of the rioters supposedly wheeling in baby strollers so that their toddlers could get their own taste of the violence.
Spartz, though, just kept on going. “They were throwing smoke bombs into the crowd with strollers with kids. People showed up, you know, FBI agents, to people’s houses. You had, in my district, in my town, FBI phone numbers all over the district.”
While it’s conceivable that a handful of Trump supporters might actually have brought young children to Trump’s planned Jan. 6 march—because Trump supporters, by definition, have the worst judgment of anyone in America—if there’s footage out there of rioters bringing their children into the rioting mob, none of us have found it yet.
[…] Garland wasn’t in charge of the Justice Department back then, so if “proper security wasn’t provided,” then maybe Spartz should devote some of her apparently voluminous free time to figuring out who the hell did keep “proper security” away from Trump’s armed rally mob.
Here is a tip: Witnesses say it was the White House itself.
Curiously, or perhaps not, there doesn’t seem to be much of anything in Spartz’s rant that is true. She claims that “in my district” the FBI was allegedly running amok, but there appears to be only one Spartz constituent arrested after the riot, a bear spray-wielding Oath Keepers founder who’s been cooperating with the federal probe of the seditious conspiracy.
If Spartz is going to argue that law enforcement overstepped in charging the militias that led the attacks on that day, she’s going to need to spell it out a lot more clearly. Because it’s a damn certainty that none of those Oath Keepers showed up with baby strollers.
Spartz isn’t seeking reelection, so chastising a man who wasn’t in charge for an insufficiently baby-friendly environment inside the mob of violent attackers is evidently not a play for new votes. She just has really strong thoughts about imaginary babies and imaginary constituents being terrorized by, uh, “FBI phone numbers.” […]
Reginald Selkirksays
#164 Fake electors
Supposing that, for the sake of argument, we accept their argument that they are ‘contingent electors’ rather than fakety fake electors. Wouldn’t that make them state officers, not federal?
Ukraine liberated Robotyne, in the southern Zaporizhzhia front, in late August. Since then, things seem to have slowed down, but Ukraine has been busy. And in the last few days, things have gotten truly interesting again.
[…] map of the southern front: [map at the link]
Green marks the territory liberated since the start of Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive. Blue is the “gray area” between fronts, in which neither side has confirmed control. As is clear at this scale, the Robotyne axis, in the direction of the strategically important city of Tokmak, has proven most fruitful for Ukraine. Not only have its forces penetrated deeper into Russian lines than anywhere else, but it’s done so by piercing two of Russia’s major lines, including the (in)famous “Surovikin line.”
After Robotyne’s liberation and the first confirmed puncturing of the Surovikin line, I wrote that ideally, Ukraine could begin rolling up the full line from that breach in the east, sweeping westward behind those lines. [map at the link]
Well, that’s exactly what is now happening. Ukraine has consolidated its gains behind that line, outside of Verbove, and begins to push out from that beachhead (breachhead?). [map at the link]
The map above comes from a credible pro-Russia source Suryak, but it may already be outdated. We now have geolocated confirmation that Ukraine is operating well into the gray area in the map above. And even more notably, Ukraine is moving armored vehicles into the breach. That means two key things:
– Ukraine has cleared the area of mines, allowing armor to more freely operate in that backfield.
– Ukrainian infantry has cleared the area of anti-tank traps—defensive emplacements equipped with anti-tank guided missiles—while pushing suicide-drone operators further from the contact line (making their drones both more susceptible to running out of power before finding a target, and more vulnerable to electronic countermeasures).
Remember, rather than wage costly head-on charges with vulnerable armor (which bit them at the start of the counteroffensive), Ukraine has held back its heavy gear and painstakingly pushed forward using small-infantry tactics. This has made it harder for Russia’s strained artillery guns or massive minefields to stall the advance, at the expense of slower Ukrainian gains.
Interestingly, a great number of those armored vehicles punching through the breach near Verbove aren’t tanks, and while we’ve seen Marder infantry fighting vehicles, the bulk of the armor are MRAP—mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. Those are the big heavy-wheeled vehicles, such as American Strykers.
As much as Ukraine begged for armor, those have proven vulnerable to suicide drones and are expensive to equip, operate, and move. Their fuel needs are beyond comprehension. (An American M1 Abrams tank uses 2-3 gallons of fuel per mile, not a typo.) MRAPs are faster, more nimble, less difficult to maintain and support, and there are a lot more of them available to donate by allies.
Their presence likely means that Russian armor has been depleted enough along the contact line that these vehicles are less exposed to tank fire—their biggest enemy. Sure, they are vulnerable to infantry-fired anti-tank guided missiles, but those can do only so much against a swarm of MRAPs, and Western vehicles do a good job of protecting the crews inside them. […]
And Ukraine isn’t just advancing east of Robotyne. There have been methodical gains to the west as well. [map at the link]
Just like the east, around Verbove, Ukraine has punctured two layers of the Surovikin Line in the high ground to Robotyne’s west. Russia’s defenses are starting to leak like a sieve. As Ukraine consolidates this territory, it will be able to more effectively sweep downhill toward Tokmak. There aren’t even that many mines in that direction, as Russians violated their own doctrine to frontload their entire mine supply in front of the first line. That has left little for the backfield, giving Ukraine a big mobility advantage as it continues widening that salient.
The biggest danger, for now, is exactly that salient. Ukraine will need to figure out what to do about Verbove, which sits in a valley surrounded by hills crawling with Russian defenses. Ideally, it would bypass the settlement, maybe even cut off supply routes to its east, but those look safe for now. It can’t leave that hornets nest of Russians on an exposed flank. Or can it? Can Ukraine plop in some territorial defense forces on the now-occupied Surovikin line itself to protect that flank? Beats me. But as this counteroffensive has developed, it’s been clear that wherever Ukraine makes gains, it spends time flattening the front. It does not like salients—and probably for good reason.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is putting pressure directly on the main line, south of Robotyne. [Tweet and maps at the link]
I don’t know if Ukraine thinks it can breach the lines at those points while Russia holds the heights along the bottom of that salient, especially around the now-famous Hill 166, the highest point in that entire region. But as long as the line is pressured, Russia can’t shift forces toward Verbove or Robotyne to contain those breaches, so it makes perfect sense to keep pushing southward. Russia is forced with an unwinnable dilemma—attempt to plug the holes in the line, weakening its main line, or hold the middle of the lines and see them rolled up from behind.
With Ukraine regaining lost territory up north around Kupyansk, it’s clear that Russia has shifted whatever it had up there to the south. It is running out of reserves. Meanwhile, Ukraine is reportedly ready to roll, preparing reserves to move into action. As Euromaidan Press writes:
Russian analysts claimed that Ukrainians already started preparing for the next big push. Russian sources reported that Ukrainians are gradually reinforcing the region with elements from the 71st Jager Brigade, 82nd Assault Brigade, and 46 Airmobile Brigade.
Russians claimed that Ukrainians were accumulating these forces in the Chubenkova gully, somewhere in the center of the bridgehead. Having forces in such close proximity to the front line increases the chances of successful exploitation of the element of surprise because the probability that Russians notice and react on time to a massive assault is low.
On top of that, by keeping these forces right in the middle, Ukrainians create for Russians an unpleasant dilemma because the Russian defense line is breached not only near Verbove but in several places along the entire line. So, Russians must be prepared to face a big attack on Verbove, Novoprokopivka, between the two, and also near Kopani.
All the while, Ukraine’s “shaping” operations continue, with counterbattery fire absolutely decimating Russian artillery, and suicide drones continuing to systematically attrit Russian tanks, armored vehicles, infantry, and their logistics (supply trucks and vehicles).
And Russia being Russia, it continues to counterattack lost positions out in the open, rather than reinforcing their defensive lines. [Tweet and video at the link: Russian attack attempt on Robotyne direction. Repelled by the 47th brigade. Also, as stated, Russians mistakenly launched a TOS-1 strike at a position where Russian infantry had landed not long before.]
In yesterday’s update, Mark Sumner included a snippet from Russian Telegram complaining about those suicidal efforts. “[Russia’s situation] is very difficult, mainly not because the enemy, in principle, managed to push through our defenses in this area,” wrote the account Philologist in the Gray Zone. “The key problem is the hysterical retaliatory actions that our command is taking in this Area. We have hysterical attempts to recapture the ruins of Andreevka. Equally hysterical attempts to counterattack occur in the surrounding area.”
And the reason Russian commanders keep sending people to die in those fruitless counterattacks? I wrote about that a couple of days ago. “In direct text, [Russian commanders] tell us: go, fix yourself there,” said the wife of a mobilized soldier stationed around Bakhmut, relaying his reports from the front, according to Russian-language publication Radio Liberty. “We see that it’s not our position for a long time … And in general, you can see with the naked eye that our positions have not been there for a long time. And the command claims that it’s ours.”
As long as a Russian soldier is moving in that contested territory, commanders can report back to Moscow that they retain control. So they keep sending wave after wave of soldiers to die, in order to maintain their charade. You can literally see that happening in the video posted above.
Ukraine is breaching Russian lines […] The biggest question hanging over all of this is the question of reserves—how much, and how fresh, does each side have? The fog of war is thick, and it’s oftentimes hard to sift between reality and wishful thinking. So here’s hoping that Russia truly is running low, and Ukraine truly has multiple brigades ready to spring into action.
—————–
[Tweet and images at the link: After receiving treatment and rehabilitation in Germany, 8-year-old Roman Oleksiv has returned home. On July 14, 2022, a russian missile struck a Vinnytsia clinic where he and his mother were waiting for a doctor’s appointment. Roman’s mother (along with 22 other people) died before his eyes.
The boy suffered severe injuries. 45% of his body was burned, internal burns in some places reached his bones. After Ukrainian doctors stabilized his condition, Roman was taken to a clinic in Dresden. Doctors were amazed at the boy’s strength of character. Because of the burns on his leg, a muscle was removed.
Roman began training and is now walking on his own. He went to a German school and continued his online studies in Ukrainian.
His mask must be worn for two years to avoid scarring. Plastic surgeons vow that the boy’s face will be entirely restored later.]
Oh man, this story.
Russia’s missile attack on Thursday on targets across Ukraine, damaged energy facilities and caused power outages in several regions, a reminder of a Russian air campaign on infrastructure last winter that sought to break Ukrainians’ will by plunging them into cold and darkness.
birgerjohanssonsays
(It is the lower of the links that work, with lower case L at the end. )
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna, OM
I think we all know about Russian attitudes to terror bombing by now…
If they still had chemical weapons in their stockpiles, they would be using it.
Following House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s second stunning defeat in just three days, he cried “uncle,” calling it quits for the day. There reportedly weren’t enough votes for the House to officially adjourn, possibly because some Republicans apparently didn’t want to hang around just to vote to leave. [Tweet at the link: Some members have already caught flights out of DC]
That’s how seriously they take McCarthy, who declared on Monday, “I’ve told all of Congress you’re not going to go home. We’re going to continue to work through this.” On Wednesday, he told reporters there would be Saturday votes this week. Leadership is still threatening that the House may reconvene as soon as Friday. Since few in McCarthy’s conference seem to take him seriously, with some reportedly already booking it out of town, it doesn’t seem likely he’ll be able to get enough of them back to the House chamber to pass anything.
If they don’t come back this weekend, they won’t meet again until next Tuesday, after observing Yom Kippur on Monday.
The defeat on moving forward with defense appropriations Thursday was a surprise. According to members who were in the meeting, McCarthy was certain after meetings Wednesday that he had enough votes to advance the defense spending bill. Two of his extremist caucus members—Marjorie Taylor Greene and Eli Crane—upended his plans when they voted against moving the defense bill forward. “Two people flipped so I got to figure out how to fix that,” McCarthy said after the vote. “That wasn’t the impression they had given us.”
This is very much a moving target, but as of Thursday afternoon, McCarthy’s plan to salvage all this was to, in essence, hand the gavel to chief chaos agent Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. Gaetz proposed scrapping the effort to pass a stopgap funding bill and instead bring up the individual funding bills for each department—11 out of 12 of which are still outstanding (they passed one in July) at funding levels below what passed in the Appropriations Committee. Oh, and doing it between Tuesday and Sunday of next week, to meet the Sept. 30 deadline.
If McCarthy follows that plan, and it looks like he intends to, it means no stopgap funding bill. Gaetz told reporters following a meeting with leadership Thursday afternoon that his plan had been adopted, and what’s more, he said that he wouldn’t ever vote for a continuing resolution. That precludes any effort to keep the government open as the House and Senate figure out the full appropriations bills for the new fiscal year. It means the government would definitely shut down, because the House would be working on new appropriations bills—a process that also requires a back-and-forth with the Senate—rather than the immediate funding.
That’s if it happens, and with Gaetz apparently in charge now, all bets are off.
The Senate finished work for the week early, as well, with no agreement from Republicans on moving its spending plan forward. The meltdown in the House could drive Senate Republicans to relent and work with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democrats on a continuing resolution next week. It seems that the only way to avoid a shutdown is for a united Senate to pass a continuing resolution and land it on McCarthy’s doorstep at the last possible minute, forcing him to either adopt it with the help of Democrats or shut the government down.
Christians who claim to be “ex-Satanists” are a lot like people who believe in past lives — not a schlub or a minion among them. Every single one was a “high priest” or a “high priestess,” just like people who believe in past lives were always royalty of some kind and never like, a random farmer or chambermaid.
We can only assume that it is one of these “High Priests” or “High Priestesses” that gave Daily Wire host Michael Knowles his inside intel on What The Satanists Are Up To These Days.
In a recent broadcast, as reported by Media Matters, Michael Knowles filmed himself doing reactions to a 2018 VICE short featuring an unnamed fella purporting to be the head of the UK branch of the Satanic Temple answering questions about Satanism. Though the Satanic Temple people are atheists and not literal devil worshipers, Knowles got pretty huffy over this Satanist fella’s assertion that he does not sacrifice or sex traffic children. [video at the link]
Knowles swerved right from “You support sacrificing children because you support abortions and that is the same thing!” — a place where one can be wrong and stupid but still somewhat planted in this reality — to the place of “And all of the abortion clinics are attached to Satanic covens, I know because I heard this from an ex-Satanist.”
He said:
“If you support abortion as a political matter, which all of these people do, then you are involved in the killing of babies — wholesale slaughter of babies. And, by the way, every single abortion clinic in the United States has a satanic coven attached to it. And you might say, that’s crazy. That’s a cult. There’s no way that stuff really happens. Look at these people. You think these people wouldn’t do that? And maybe if it’s not these people, if it’s the more hardcore — if they’re the more semi-ironic Satanists, the hardcore ones are — you could speak — you hear testimony from former Satanists who — who talk about this frequently.”
You know, I love this. I do. Abortion clinics across America partnering with “satanic covens” for unspecified reasons that I guess have something to do with baby sacrifice. They never really get into the details here. Do they eat the fetuses? Do they use them in rituals? And what, exactly, do the abortion clinics get out of this? What if a new one opens up? Do they have to go seek out some Satanists first?
I mean, really, when you think of it, what are the Satanists even getting out of this besides a general “Yeah, this is a thing Christians think is bad!” From what I’ve seen, it seems like they’re usually far busier trying to get the antichrist born, either from Mia Farrow or a jackal. I mean, if we’re talking about definitely true things that are not fiction here.
About a week ago, I actually came across the most hilarious video earnestly purporting to explain why “they” (by which I assume they mean “we”) are always sacrificing babies. It’s fair that they were curious, because let’s be real — this is something their thought leaders never really get into. Mostly it’s just “Because they are the bad guys.” Anyway, Lara Logan is pretty sure she has the answer. [video at the link]
The formerly celebrated war correspondent explains that someone told her that “these people” sacrifice babies because their one purpose is to defeat God. Which is just like, the absolute height of Main Character Syndrome — thinking people are out there procuring and sacrificing babies (somehow without ever getting caught or anyone reporting any missing babies) just because they are trying to “defeat” your favorite immortal deity.
But again … to what end? Like, what is it they think anyone would even get out of that? And who are these people who believe in the Christian religion but want to take it and their God down. I, for one, do not believe in their God, so why should I have to go around sacrificing babies in preparation for some sort of war with him? When are any of us even finding the time? [LOL]
The fact is, Satanism, the way people like Michael Knowles or Mike Warnke or Jack Chick or Lara Logan conceive of it, literally just does not exist. This oddly corporate, multi-level marketing Satanism that only someone who has been a born again their whole lives could possible come up with. There is theistic Satanism, though even those groups are not “Worshiping the bad guy of the Christian Religion” and usually have a different understanding of what Satan is than do Christians. For instance, the Temple of Set venerates the Egyptian god Set, not the Christian devil. Perhaps ironically for Knowles, the vast majority of those groups — like the Order of Nine Angles and the Joy of Satan — are pretty right-wing (as in, they are literally neo-Nazis).
I get that it makes their religion a lot more exciting if you imagine a highly organized group of franchised Satanists plotting against you than the very boring reality, which is that people who don’t belong to your religion don’t care what you do so long as you don’t bother anyone, and that the last time I encountered anyone claiming to love Satan, it was sophomore year of high school and some goth kid was on a lot of acid and also telling me he had a forest in his eyes. Actually had to kick that guy off of my Facebook for whining about “SJWs” a while back, so make of that what you will.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden greeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday afternoon as he arrived for the Ukrainian leader’s third visit to the White House. Earlier in the day, Zelensky met with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon and with lawmakers at the Capitol. The Biden administration is seeking approval from Congress for an additional $24 billion in aid to Ukraine, but it announced that the United States would send “more artillery, more ammunition or antitank weapons” to the country. And next week, the first U.S. Abrams tanks will be delivered to Ukraine.
[…] “We agreed to work on the future force of Ukraine,” the Ukrainian president said during his meeting at the White House. “It’s very important and is a strategic decision that will allow us to prevent any new aggression against us, against Ukraine, our people. And this will be one of the outcomes of the Vilnius G-7 declaration and our bilateral security arrangements. … We reached new agreement that will strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities.”
[…] House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) used his private meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to ask a direct question on how open-ended the war in Ukraine might be and whether Kyiv’s military is using U.S.-provided weapons in a responsible manner, said people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive exchange.
[…] President Biden noted that he has approved the next tranche of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, which he said includes “more artillery, more ammunition or antitank weapons.” Next week, he added, U.S. Abrams tanks will be delivered to Ukraine.
The United States, he said, will “continue to support Ukraine’s diplomatic effort to deliver a just, lasting peace, a peace that protects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
[…] In the Oval Office ahead of a private bilateral meeting, President Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, touted the strength of their alliance, with Biden calling Ukraine a “partner” and Zelensky calling their nations “really, truly allies.”
In prepared remarks, Biden said that the United States is “formalizing our commitment to Ukraine’s long-term security,” alongside other partners. “We’re supporting a just and lasting peace,” he said, according to a pool report.
[…] At the White House for a bilateral meeting with President Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sidestepped a question from a reporter about whether Ukraine was worried about losing the support of Poland.
“I want to thank the Polish people, Polish society, for their support. That’s it,” Zelensky said in response to the question, which was posited by a reporter from Polish radio, according to pool reports. […]
While carbon has been discovered at the Jupiter moon Europa, the briny water in the subsurface ocean will hardly be hospitable for life.
birgerjohanssonsays
Russel Brand ha done for.
More accusers are coming forth, and he has admitted things, this looks like a Jimmy Savile situation where a lot of people knew but protected a rich celebrity.
The White House found a rare moment of agreement with extremist Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), then let him know in the form of a pretty vicious meme.
Gaetz on Wednesday said any government shutdown would “absolutely” be the fault of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
“We cannot blame Joe Biden for not having moved our individual spending bills,” he said, according to Fox News digital reporter Liz Elkind. “We cannot blame House Democrats. We can’t even blame Chuck Schumer in the Senate.”
Gaetz has been threatening to file a motion to get McCarthy booted from the speaker’s chair.
The White House shared Elkind’s tweet with the Gaetz quote along with the meme “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point.”…
California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Thursday sued an anti-abortion group and a chain of anti-abortion counseling centers, saying the organizations misled women when they offered them unproven treatments to reverse medication abortions.
Heartbeat International, a national anti-abortion group, and RealOptions Obria, which has five anti-abortion counseling centers in Northern California, used “fraudulent and misleading claims” to advertise a procedure called abortion pill reversal, according to the lawsuit. Abortion pill reversal treatments are unproven, largely experimental and have no scientific backing, Bonta said in the lawsuit…
People who have seen what I have written are shocked to discover about the Native Police. They’d maybe heard the name, but it is a discovery for people who are even well read on the business of the Australian frontier – a killer, a band of killers, that operated for 60 years and killed. Well, all of their records have disappeared, presumed destroyed but scholars working on the kinds of ratios of how many blacks died for every white are now talking about the possibility that this band killed 40,000 people – 40,000 Aboriginal people in its time.
LAURA TINGLE: Because you were tracing your family’s particular connection, you do sort of cut a swathe, shall we say, through a particular history from, shall we say, the Murrumbidgee north and it seems to get worse the further north it goes.
DAVID MARR: What I have written is a narrative history of the Native Police through the eyes of a family that backed it, directed it and served in it and in this way by cutting a path, as you say, a swathe, through that history, … (snip)..And you’re right, the further it went north, really the worse it became, and the killings were notorious. This was an armed band of killers working for the Queensland government, which was quite happy to admit at the same time that there was no law to authorise them to do the killings they were doing.
They didn’t care about that a bit.
Plus this bit esp too :
DAVID MARR: The arguments. I mean, I was under the delusion that the notion of, of sort of attacks on woke people were kind of invented maybe 15 or 20 years ago but they weren’t.
In the 1830s, there are newspapers, one of them belonging to that appalling wind bag Wentworth, who attacked what he called the wailers for Aborigines. The people who were saying, “Don’t shoot, don’t steal, these are human beings.” They were attacked for living in the cities, being elite, not knowing what they were talking about and showing off their humanitarian views.
It’s exactly the same. That same argument is still being used nearly two centuries later.
Folks, what you’ve heard so far is true. Apple’s new FineWoven iPhone cases and accessories are bad. Like, really bad. I’ve been puzzling over them for the past week, looking at them from different angles. Picking them up, setting them down, petting them. Seven days later, I still can’t make sense of them and have no other choice but to say it out loud: FineWoven is very bad.
FineWoven is a new fabric option you’ll find on iPhone 15 cases, AirTag holders, and MagSafe wallets. Apple calls it a “luxurious and durable microtwill.” It’s silky, almost slippery to the touch, and costs $59 for any of the phone cases, $35 for an AirTag holder, and $99 for one of the new watch bands — not the most expensive phone cases you can buy, but pretty darn pricey.
Apple is pitching them as a premium replacement of sorts for the leather accessories it discontinued. The company won’t sell leather iPhone cases and straps anymore because making them at Apple’s scale “has a significant carbon footprint,” according to Lisa Jackson, the company’s environmental policy VP. That’s fair; as my colleague Justine Calma puts it, “Cattle are a big source of greenhouse gas emissions because cows burp out methane, which is even more potent than CO2 when it comes to its ability to trap heat on the planet.” If you want a fancy first-party iPhone case, then your new, more sustainable option would be FineWoven.
But FineWoven is very much not the premium material that leather is. When I popped the MagSafe wallet out of its box, I could clearly see some places where it was already showing wear along the edges. Little bits of lint immediately caught on the fabric, too. And then there’s the fingernail test…
quotetheunquotesays
#177- Good. Just tragic that it took so long, of course. (Another Saville parallel.)
On Jan. 25, 2018, dozens of private jets descended on Palm Springs International Airport. Some of the richest people in the country were arriving for the annual winter donor summit of the Koch network, the political organization founded by libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch. A long weekend of strategizing, relaxation in the California sun and high-dollar fundraising lay ahead.
Just after 6 p.m., a Gulfstream G200 jet touched down on the tarmac. One of the Koch network’s most powerful allies was on board: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
During the summit, the justice went to a private dinner for the network’s donors. Thomas has attended Koch donor events at least twice over the years, according to interviews with three former network employees and one major donor. The justice was brought in to speak, staffers said, in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.
That puts Thomas in the extraordinary position of having served as a fundraising draw for a network that has brought cases before the Supreme Court, including one of the most closely watched of the upcoming term.
Thomas never reported the 2018 flight to Palm Springs on his annual financial disclosure form, an apparent violation of federal law requiring justices to report most gifts. A Koch network spokesperson said the network did not pay for the private jet. Since Thomas didn’t disclose it, it’s not clear who did pay.
Thomas’ involvement in the events is part of a yearslong, personal relationship with the Koch brothers that has remained almost entirely out of public view. It developed over years of trips to the Bohemian Grove, a secretive all-men’s retreat in Northern California. Thomas has been a regular at the Grove for two decades, where he stayed in a small camp with real estate billionaire Harlan Crow and the Kochs, according to records and people who’ve spent time with him there.
[…]
The Koch network is among the largest and most influential political organizations of the last half century, and it’s underwritten a far-reaching campaign to influence the course of American law. In a case the Supreme Court will hear this coming term, the justices could give the network a historic victory: limiting federal agencies’ power to issue regulations in areas ranging from the environment to labor rights to consumer protection. After shepherding the case to the court, Koch network staff attorneys are now asking the justices to overturn a decades-old precedent. (Thomas used to support the precedent but flipped his position in recent years.)
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is simply saying, “Yes,” in replies to Republican candidates that are criticizing him over his prioritization of union jobs.
I like the ads that just let the Republicans hang themselves with their own words. Video at the link. Nikki Haley does not come off well in that video. Nor does Tim Scott. Joe Biden, on the other hand, looks really good to union workers,
The last time federal prosecutors charged Sen. Bob Menendez, the case went to trial, but they couldn’t secure a conviction. The case ended in a mistrial after jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict, and those charges were ultimately dropped.
Six years later, it appears the New Jersey Democrat is going to face the process again. As NBC News reported, Menendez has been indicted on federal bribery charges.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., has been indicted on federal bribery charges, the Justice Department announced Friday. The indictment alleges that Menendez and his wife, Nadine, received “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in bribes and used the senator’s influence to enrich several businessmen from New Jersey, as well as the Egyptian government.
By all appearances, the allegations appear very serious. As NBC News’ report added, the court filing alleges that Menendez received, among other things, cash, gold bars, payments toward a home mortgage, compensation for a low- or no-show job, and a luxury vehicle.
In fact, to drive home the point of the seriousness of the case, according to the indictment, shortly after the senator returned from a trip to Egypt, he did a search for, “How much is one kilo of gold worth.”
[…] This is, in other words, no small matter. The conversation about whether Menendez should resign is likely to get quite loud, quite quickly. (It appears, under Senate rules, that the New Jersey Democrat will have no choice but to give up his gavel as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)
Time will tell, of course, what becomes of the case, which also comes with significant political implications: Menendez is up for re-election next year, and his indictment is likely to have a significant impact on his prospects.
It’s also worth keeping a close eye on how Democratic officials respond to the developments — and whether we’ll soon hear chatter about other possible candidates for the Garden State ballot in 2024.
[…] Remember, as far as the GOP is concerned, the Justice Department under President Joe Biden is a corrupt and politicized institution, which has been turned into a partisan weapon used to advance Democrats’ electoral interests.
In case this isn’t painfully obvious, today’s news points in the opposite direction: It doesn’t do Democrats any favors to have federal prosecutors charge an incumbent Democratic senator the year before his re-election campaign. If the Justice Department were a corrupt and politicized weapon, with a partisan White House pulling its strings, we’d see prosecutors doing the exact opposite of what they’re doing today.
[…] How will GOP conspiracy theorists incorporate Menendez’s latest charges into their preconceived assumptions? I can hardly wait
“Telling workers they’ll be fired for striking is violating federal labor law, and that’s not something becoming of a senator.”
AFTER INVOKING THE legacy of Ronald Reagan to suggest that striking United Auto Workers members should be fired for demanding higher wages, Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., may soon find himself before the National Labor Relations Board. On Thursday, Shawn Fain, the president of UAW, filed a complaint claiming that Scott’s utterance violated federal labor law. Under the National Labor Relations Act, anyone can file a charge against an employer, even if they do not work for that employer.
The complaint accuses Scott of violating the section of the NLRA that lays out employees rights to participate in labor actions: “Within the past six months, the employer has interfered with, restrained, or coerced employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7 of the Act. On Monday September 18, 2023 Tim Scott threatened employees with adverse consequences if they engage in protected, concerted activity by publicly responding to a question about striking workers as follows: ‘You strike, you’re fired.’”
The complaint was filed against Scott in his capacity as a representative for Tim Scott for America. In addition to being a senator representing the state of South Carolina, Scott is running for president, making him an employer as well. The premise of the complaint is that Scott’s comments could be construed as a direct threat against his campaign staffers, whose right to strike is enshrined in federal law.
Scott’s comments appear to violate those laws, said Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor law at Harvard University. “A statement as direct as ‘if you strike, you’re fired’ is textbook unfair labor practice language because workers can’t be fired for striking,” Sachs told The Intercept. “If a reasonable employee could interpret the statement as ‘if I strike, I’m fired,’ then it is without a doubt an unfair labor practice violation.” […]
Ex Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson reveals Trump almost never wore a mask during the pandemic because it would mess with his makeup: “When he looked at the straps of his mask, he saw they were covered in bronzer. He wasn’t happy about that. ‘Why did no one else tell me that? I’m not wearing this thing.’
The press would criticize him for not wearing a mask, not knowing that the depth of his vanity had caused him to reject masks – and then millions of his fans followed suit.” (The Guardian)
A new law could give the GOP legislature the ability to overturn results and cut early voting in Democratic areas.
North Carolina Republicans on Friday passed a major power grab, stripping the state’s Democratic governor of the authority to appoint a majority of members to state and county election boards and giving the heavily gerrymandered GOP legislature far more influence over how elections are run and certified in the battleground state.
In North Carolina, the governor dictates the political makeup of the state and county election boards, which are each composed of five members. Under Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, the boards have three Democrats and two Republicans. The governor appoints the members of the state board and the chair of the county boards. Under the new bill, those bodies would be evenly divided, with legislative leaders choosing the members of the state and local boards.
While that is theoretically more bipartisan, it is a recipe for gridlock that could hand sweeping new powers to Republicans in the legislature, who have a supermajority in both chambers due to the gerrymandered maps they drew in 2021.
If the state election board deadlocks and cannot certify a winner of an election, that power would instead go to the legislature. That means Republicans could determine the state’s presidential electors and potentially subvert the popular vote winner of the state if a Democrat carries North Carolina. “The legislature now gets to decide the outcome of all of our elections,” says Melissa Price Kromm, executive director of North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections, a pro-democracy coalition in the state. “When people vote is the will of the people still going to be accepted in North Carolina?” (State and federal courts could still order that elections be certified, and in presidential elections the legislature would need to comply with the revamped Electoral Count Act passed by Congress in 2021, which makes it harder for rogue legislatures to overturn the will of the voters.)
The bill also makes it easier to overturn elections in another way: only five of eight members of the new state board need to vote in favor of redoing an election, compared to four out of five members under the previous law (the board would grow in size from five members to eight under the new bill).
In addition to subverting fair election outcomes, the bill could lead to a huge decrease in voter access as well. Local election boards currently determine the number of early voting sites in a county, but if those boards deadlock under the new legislation there would only be one early voting location per county. That would dramatically limit the number of early voting sites in large urban counties that favor Democrats, leading to much longer lines at the polls. In 2020, for example, Wake County, home to Raleigh, had 20 early voting sites used by 374,000 voters, according to WRAL News. “There would only be one early voting location in counties with more than a million people,” says Price Kromm. “Can you imagine how long the lines would be?”
[…] That’s not all. The legislation could also lead to the ouster of the current executive director of the state board of elections, Karen Brinson Bell, who is widely respected but has been targeted by election deniers for extending the deadline for returning mail ballots during the pandemic. If the state board cannot come to an agreement on the board’s executive director by July 15, 2024, Republicans in the legislature would get to make the selection, allowing them to put in place someone who is more allied with the GOP just months before the 2024 election.
The new legislation follows similar moves by the GOP in other battleground states that are designed to give election deniers and conspiracy theorists more influence over how elections are run.
Last week, Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate voted to oust the nonpartisan administrator of the state’s elections commission. In May, the GOP-controlled Texas legislature voted to abolish the position of election administrator and give the GOP-appointed secretary of state the power to take over election operations exclusively in Houston’s Harris County, the most populous blue county in the state.
North Carolina Republicans are pursuing a multi-pronged strategy of election subversion and voter suppression to gain an electoral advantage in the state, which Trump narrowly won and which in recent years has seen close statewide races for governor and US Senate. They also passed another bill in August that undercuts Election Day registration, gives voters less time to cast ballots by mail, and expands voter challenges. That legislation was inspired, at least in part, by conservative activist Cleta Mitchell, one of the architects of Trump’s effort to overturn the election, who consulted with North Carolina Republicans on its drafting.
[…] Cooper has promised to veto both bills, but the legislature is expected to override them. “This legislation has nothing to do with election security and everything to do with Republicans keeping and gaining power,” the governor said.
Republicans have been trying to undermine fair elections in North Carolina for years.
GOP attempts to gain more control over election boards were previously blocked by the state Supreme Court and soundly rejected by 61 percent of voters through a ballot referendum in 2018. Similarly, a law passed by North Carolina Republicans shortly after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act that limited ballot access by adding strict ID requirements, cutting early voting, and ending same-day registration was found by a federal court to target Black voters with “almost surgical precision.”
But with conservatives now comprising a majority on the state Supreme Court and Republicans holding supermajorities in the legislature, they’re emboldened to go to nearly any length to cement their grip on power.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced on Friday that he will strip funding for Ukraine out of a Pentagon spending bill after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) joined conservatives in blocking the legislation from advancing earlier this week.
[…] “Our defense appropriations bill should never be going to fund a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, so this is a victory for common sense,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene later added. “I’m proud to have made it happen.” […]
[…] “Our country is being invaded by the thousands every damn day and our Department of Defense does nothing,” Marjorie Taylor Greene posted Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Our Defense bill should not fund our DOD for blood money for the Ukraine war, that’s why I’m a NO. What did we get out of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan?” […]
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is about to address the Canadian parliament, where he will plea for continued support for his country. He is on his first visit to Canada since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. [He’s speaking now. They’re liveblogging the content.]
A Russian missile strike on civilian infrastructure in Kremenchuk in the central Poltava region of Ukraine killed one person and injured 15 others, governor Dmytro Lunin said on Friday on Telegram.
The US president, Joe Biden, has told his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that the US will provide a small number of long-range missiles to help in Ukraine’s fight against Russia, NBC News was told on Friday.
At least one Ukrainian missile struck the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea navy in the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Friday, Russian-installed officials said…. Ukraine’s military confirmed it had attacked the Russian Black Sea fleet’s headquarters, but gave few details.
Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said that Russia has restarted a campaign of aerial attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, according to AFP.
Thanks to the Pollution Paradox – the dirtiest industries have the greatest incentive to invest in politics, so politics comes to be dominated by the dirtiest industries – such lobbies exert a vast impact on political choice. If people were asked to vote on whether they want their hearts and lungs damaged, their children’s cognitive development impaired, extra cancers, more stillbirths, a higher risk of dementia and earlier death, they’d be likely to reject these options. But, thanks to decades of spin, the stark nature of the choice has been obscured.
The interests of some of the most powerful industries on Earth are represented as the interests of the working man and woman, trying to go about their business while greens and bureaucrats impede them. In reality, those who drive for their living – such as taxi drivers, couriers and rubbish collectors – have the greatest exposure to toxic diesel fumes. We could achieve cheaper, more effective mobility with a fraction of the pollution. With the right incentives, we could also heat our homes without poisoning our neighbours.
If you don’t have the evidence required to win an argument, there’s a ready alternative: set people against each other by stoking a culture war. Low emission zones and low-traffic neighbourhoods have been the subjects of grotesque falsehoods in the media, lurid conspiracy theories and dark money lobbying. As the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, pointed out this week, hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on troll farms on social media attacking London’s ultra-low emission zone (Ulez). We don’t know where this money came from, but it may have been decisive in securing a Conservative win in the Uxbridge byelection.
Emboldened by the apparent success of such lobbying, the government is waging war on public health, announcing a “review” of low-traffic neighbourhoods and scrapping the commitment to stop the sale of polluting private vehicles by 2030. Across both the billionaire press and social media, those who seek cleaner air are demonised. Tory MPs who have called for severe penalties against environmental protesters are noticeably more relaxed about the the vandalism of Ulez cameras. It scarcely gets more perverse.
The Guardian’s mapping of air pollution in Europe (including the UK) tells a shocking story. Only 2% of people live in places where the pollution caused by PM2.5s – tiny particles that cause a wide range of diseases – is within the limits recommended by the World Health Organization. Most people, including millions in the UK, are exposed to toxic particles at concentrations of at least twice this level. You would have to move to northern Scotland to escape the daily assault on your health.
Many rural people will be surprised to see how polluted their air is, but that’s because the media seldom mention the major source of these particles: ammonia from farms. A study by researchers at University College London found that even in cities, ammonia from farms produces more particulate pollution than the cities themselves do….
Where there is public silence, lobbyists rule. The ammonia comes from livestock farms and the manure and fertiliser spread on fields. There are several ways of greatly reducing its release: storing manure in sealed tanks rather than open lagoons, injecting it into soil instead of spreading it, banning the use of urea as a fertiliser, reducing [or eliminating] the animal products we eat. According to a paper in the journal Science, cutting ammonia pollution is 10 times more cost-effective than cutting nitrous oxide pollution, another major cause of airborne particulates. Halving ammonia emissions, another analysis suggests, could save 3,000 lives in the UK every year. Reducing ammonia, according to Andrea Pozzer of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, is the “most effective way to reduce mortality linked to air pollution”.
But the government, lobbied by the National Farmers’ Union, has thwarted all such efforts. In a submission to parliament, the NFU appeared to admit that the purpose of much manure spreading is to dump surplus slurry rather than to fertilise crops: it needs to happen because “the production or import of manures far outstrips the immediate need of accessible soil and crops”. This is the issue that blights our rivers as well as our air: livestock farms produce far more manure than the land can absorb. The lobby group went on to argue against a ban on autumn spreading, which causes the worst pollution, and against a ban on the use of urea, a potent source of ammonia. The government gave it everything it wanted.
The European parliament has now voted to bring EU legislation in line with the science, setting the WHO’s recommended level as the legal limit for PM2.5 pollution, but, thanks to the lobbyists and their stooges, not until 2035. There are, however, no such plans in the UK. As one of the great benefits of Brexit, the government merely aims to change the current “guidance” level of PM2.5 pollution from four times the WHO recommendation to twice the recommended level by 2040. The dates 2040 and 2050 are used by this government as synonyms for “never”.
The idea that some people may freely poison others is one of the most astonishing but least contested aspects of modern life. It’s time we saw past the lies and the culture wars. It’s time to stop accepting our daily poisoning on behalf of corporate profits.
China is fuelling a global surge in mpox cases, accounting for the majority of new cases reported in September, according to the World Health Organization.
The number of weekly cases reported globally increased by 328% in the week to 10 September, data shows. Most of that rise came from China, where more than 500 new cases were reported in August. The WHO said China was experiencing “sustained community transmission” of the virus, which was first detected as an imported case in September last year.
…
In July, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported for the first time that the disease was spreading domestically, with 106 cases recorded in June. Since then cases have surged by nearly 400%, with the true number of infections thought to be much higher than the official count.
…
The majority of mpox cases since 2022 have been in men who have sex with men and 92.5% of cases in August were among that demographic. But in recent years the pressure on LGBTQ+ activists in China has increased, limiting their ability to advocate and increasing the social stigmatisation of LGBTQ+ people.
Experts believe that this could make people less likely to get tested. Vaccinations are not available in mainland China, although state media reported that a domestic vaccine is being developed. “Public health concerns are one of the only ways of discussing gay men in public discourse,” said Chuncheng Liu, a medical sociologist. “[But] you cannot rely on scaring people to come to you for help.”
In August, several accounts on the messaging app WeChat dedicated to gay, trans and feminist issues were closed down without explanation. In May, the Beijing LGBT Center, one of China’s best known LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, closed down for undisclosed reasons. It had been one of the last active civil society groups after LGBT Rights Advocacy China, another influential NGO, closed in 2021.
The closures had a “huge influence for the community”, said one LGBTQ+ activist, who left China in recent years because of pressure from the authorities, “because it says that the government is still trying to target them”.
While the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has been publishing reports about mpox, and there is uncensored information on social media about recognising symptoms, Liu noted that LGBTQ+ people might not be following those accounts. “The problem is not about information or about a specific message,” Liu said. It is about how to “circulate this message to the community”.
A report published in September by Outright International, a New York-based LGBTQ+ rights organisation, said activists in China were “increasingly restricted” by the government. One anonymous activist said police had encouraged them to “just focus on providing services like HIV prevention and care”, while groups that mention the words “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer” are often refused official registration.
Many LGBTQ+ groups started out with a focus on HIV/Aids awareness, making their case to the authorities on the grounds of public health rather than political rights.
In the early 2010s, as HIV/Aids prevention and treatment became more established in China, support from international donors such as the Global Fund and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, started to dry up. And in 2016, Beijing passed a foreign NGO law that restricted the ability of domestic groups to work with foreign organisations or receive international funding.
Amazing footage [same as @ #197 – totally amazing] of the Ukrainian missile hitting the Russian Black Sea Fleet HQ, today. The Russian air defense seems to be completely AWOL, destroyed or beyond capacity. Either way, we are witnessing how much sideways this war has gone for the Russian aggression.
The Justice Department on Friday unveiled a multi-count indictment against Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, his wife, and three business associates on charges of being so comically corrupt that all jokes anywhere involving stereotypes about shady New Jersey politicians and Sopranos characters and sad middle-aged gold diggers whiling away their lives in McMansions in South Orange or wherever must now and forever vanish from the discourse. Just as soon as we get our shots in, anyway.
Because hoo boy, is there comedy gold in this 39-page indictment. Exploiting your position as a powerful United States senator to do favors for a foreign government (Egypt in this case)? Check. A businessman giving a no-show job to the senator’s wife? Check. That same businessman buying you and your wife a $60,000 Mercedes, for which he handed over the down payment to the wife in a parking lot? Check. (Was it at the Bada Bing? Please let us find out it was the parking lot of the Bada Bing.) Well over half a million dollars in cash and gold bars salted away in a safe deposit box and around your house, including stuffed in the pockets of your suits?
Check, check, and fucking check.
One of the three businessman even allegedly has ties to the Genovese crime family, because like we said, this is the most New Jersey indictment ever. […]
In short, Menendez agreed to keep doing favors for Egypt’s military so long as his wife got to wet her beak or get her taste or whatever the current parlance is for taking payoffs. […]
While the House and Senate remain far apart on a spending deal, the federal government will soon formally initiate the process of preparing for a potential shutdown, participating in the mandatory but standard process of releasing shutdown guidance to agencies ahead of the September 30 funding deadline.
The standard procedure laying out the steps toward bringing non-essential government functions to a halt is about to get underway.
“One week prior to the expiration of appropriations bills, regardless of whether the enactment of appropriations appears imminent, OMB will communicate with agency senior officials to remind agencies of their responsibilities to review and update orderly shutdown plans, and will share a draft communication template to notify employees of the status of appropriations,” reads a budget circular document from the Office of Management and Budget.
With a potential shutdown just one week away, that communication will be sent to agencies Friday [today], OMB officials told CNN.
Every department and agency has its own set of plans and procedures. Those plans include information on how many employees would get furloughed, which employees are essential and would work without pay (for example, air traffic controllers, Secret Service agents and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory staff), how long it would take to wind down operations in the hours before a shutdown and which activities would come to a halt.
It’s not the first time the government has been on the brink of a shutdown. The government shut down for 35 days, a record length, from December 2018 to January 2019 amid a congressional stalemate over funding for then-President Donald Trump’s border wall. [Republicans shut themselves down.]
The government also shut down for three days over a deadlock during the Trump administration in January 2018. And in 2013, then-President Barack Obama presided over a 16-day partial government shutdown caused by a dispute over the Affordable Care Act and other budget disagreements.
Putin Republicans were cool to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the Capitol, and it didn’t go unnoticed or uncelebrated on Russian state TV. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Sens. Ron Johnson and J.D. Vance all featured in a Russian report on Zelenskyy’s U.S. trip.
“Zelenskyy asked for a joint session,” McCarthy is shown saying. “We just didn’t have time. He’s already given a joint session.” McCarthy got top billing as speaker, but his fellow Republicans shown in the clip were more inflammatory. Vance, it noted, has called for the U.S. to stop sending weapons to Ukraine “and finally focus on Taiwan,” […] [US already focuses on Taiwan]
“We have Zelenskyy in town and he’s going around begging and pleading for the American people’s hard-earned tax dollars, and at the same time, we learn of the news that more money-laundering is happening in Ukraine,” Marjorie Taylor Greene is shown saying. “Ukraine is such a long, drawn-out war. They won’t win it. It needs to end, I’m calling for it to end.” [JFC!!!] And of course, the way for the war to end, in Greene’s view and that of Russian state television, is for Ukraine to quit fighting for its independence, not for Russia to stop its invasion. McCarthy is reportedly considering Greene’s demand—a separate vote on Ukraine aid rather than including it in the broader Pentagon spending bill. While such a bill would have majority support in both chambers, there are many ways the minority could procedurally sabotage the aid. [See also comments 190 and 191.]
In the clip, Johnson—who in 2018 spent July 4 in Moscow—similarly complains that the war is going on too long and that Putin isn’t giving up, so the U.S. should stop funding Ukraine. After this, the Russian anchor brightly summarized, “Good signals from Washington!” The report then shifted to a Russian diplomat at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The diplomat unleashed a rant about Zelenskyy showing just what these Republicans are supporting.
The U.S. and Western Europe, Maria Zakharova said,
… took a barely literate person, whom they placed at the helm of Ukraine. They placed him at the Olympus, a barely literate, uneducated person, with substance dependency and wild ambitions. Not knowing history, having no knowledge in this area, he is totally obsessed with his own ambitions. Based on what his American advisors threw at him, he thinks he is the center of the universe, and since he was once used against Russia, now he is the Lord of the Rings.
If a roach runs out to the middle of the kitchen, people see him and scream. This does not mean that the roach is almighty! No, it simply evokes a feeling of disgust! This is exactly the same story, you know? At some point, everyone yelled and made noise when they saw Zelenskyy in his dirty clothes, an outfit conjured up by U.S. intelligence services. They got excited, they invited him, but this moment is coming to an end!
Saying that Zelenskyy is “barely literate, uneducated” is insulting and belittling. (For the record, Zelenskyy has a law degree and a past career as a successful film and television producer and actor.) Saying that he has substance dependency undermines his judgment and competence. But comparing him to a roach scuttling across the kitchen floor is another thing entirely.
Dehumanizing rhetoric is a tactic with a long history, one that “has accompanied mass atrocities and conflict throughout history,” according to the organization Beyond Conflict. “Dehumanization removes the moral prohibition against violence, genocide, and systemic discrimination – thereby enabling them to occur.” The specific use of “roach” to describe Zelenskyy echoes how Rwanda’s Tutsi minority was labeled “cockroaches” in the run-up to the genocide there.
That dehumanizing language and description of Zelenskyy as a clueless, drug-addled puppet of the U.S. tells the story, as do Russian actions like the alleged kidnapping of Ukrainian children. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not simply a war, as ugly and brutal as war is. And congressional Republicans are increasingly vocal about letting Putin have his genocidal way. [video at the link]
Meanwhile, the GOP civil war has certainly extended to the Ukrainian question. Six Republican senators signed Vance’s letter against Ukraine assistance—Sens. Rand Paul, Mike Braun, Tommy Tuberville (of course), Mike Lee, and Roger Marshall—as did 22 House Republicans, many of whom are members of the Freedom Caucus. […] On the other side, Republican Sens. Tom Cotton, Roger Wicker, Susan Collins, and Lindsey Graham signed a letter demanding more aid for Ukraine, specifically ATACMS long-range missiles. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell met with Zelenskyy alongside Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, in a bipartisan show of solidarity. [video at the link]
And former Rep. Liz Cheney continues to infuriate the MAGA crowd by pointing out the obvious. [Tweet and image at the link] It’s been a long time since the mainstream Republican Party replaced Ronald Reagan with Donald Trump as their guiding deity. Ukraine has just put an exclamation point on it.
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The game of “The U.S. will send ATACMS missiles, no they won’t, yes they will, no they won’t” continues. “President Joe Biden has told his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that the United States will provide a small number of long-range missiles to aid the war with Russia, three U.S. officials and a congressional official familiar with the discussions told NBC News on Friday,” reported NBC News.
Also, The Guardian reports that the 31 M1 Abrams tanks that the U.S. pledged to Ukraine are scheduled to arrive in Ukraine “next week,” giving Ukraine a nice offensive boost as they work to exploit breaches in Russia’s defensive lines in the south. Crews have been training for months in Germany, so they should be ready to hit the ground running.
If history is any guide, this will hopefully be just the first delivery of many in the coming months and years.
…
But that was an old version of Howard Stern; the Howard Stern of 2023 is woke and proud. “I’ll tell you how I feel about it. To me the opposite of woke, is being asleep,” he said on his show this week (via Variety). And if woke means I can’t get behind Trump, which is what I think it means, or that I support people who want to be transgender or I’m for the vaccine, dude, call me woke as you fucking want.”
Stern went on to praise access to updated COVID vaccines, adding, “This fucking country is so great… I am woke, motherfucker, and I love it. I want to be awake. I want to read legitimate news sources. Here’s how woke I am. I believe the election was not rigged. I am woke. I think that’s a compliment.” …
It looks increasingly like Tucker Carlson is going to have his own dubbed show on Russian state TV’s rolling news channel
The same trailer as two weeks ago is now being shown on Rossiya 24 with the added caption of “at the weekend”
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“The high-profile American presenter is moving to another level. Here.”
In a new ad, Russian state TV’s rolling news channel Rossiya 24 seems to say that Tucker Carlson has landed himself a new job there.
[…] A new analysis has found that mobilised Russians who have been sent to Ukraine have only survived, on average, for 4.5 months before being killed. One in five of the mobilised has not survived longer than eight weeks.
3/[…] 20% were killed within two months, with the average mobik dying within 4.5 months. 0.2% lasted 11 months before they were killed.
4/ Every tenth mobilised person who died was aged under 25, with half of the fatalities occurring between the ages of 30 and 45. Anton Getman from the Rostov region was the youngest at 19; he was mobilised three months after the end of his conscript service.
5/ At the other end of the scale, 62-year-old Major Nikolai Isakov from the Tver region survived eight months in Ukraine. He was killed in Russia, in the Shebekinsky district of the Belgorod region, during the June 2023 incursion by the pro-Ukrainian Russian Volunteer Corps.
Say what you want about Republican presidential contender and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, but when it comes to keeping people alive through a pandemic that has claimed over 1 million American lives, the man has been nothing but consistent. He’s vowed not only to do absolutely nothing that might help, but also to make sure nobody else can do anything about it either.
He’s at it again. In a new ABC News interview, DeSantis promises that if he’s elected president, he’ll end pandemic vaccine funding. That’s his promise: poof, no more COVID-19 vaccine funding. Because reasons. Whether that means DeSantis intends to end all federal funding of vaccine research or just target the ones specific to the current pandemic isn’t immediately clear. It would be strange for him to single out the vaccines we need most urgently for a new federal funding ban, but given that it’s DeSantis we’re talking about, maybe that’s exactly what he intends?
Before we continue, we need to call out CNN here for some egregiously sloppy reporting. This needs some editing, big time.
As some limited, local mask mandates have returned, DeSantis held a roundtable last week on the new Covid-19 shots from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, where his surgeon general recommended people under 65 against receiving them.
DeSantis in the ABC interview doubled down on recent guidance from his state discouraging anyone under 65 from getting them, contradicting federal health officials’ recommendations.
The governor said the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cannot be trusted – a response that elicited a prolonged on-air clarification about the scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines from ABC anchor Linsey Davis.
No, no, no. This is exactly what’s wrong with allegedly “political” reporting: the flat recitation of what DeSantis claims with no context on whether those claims are accurate, not even when it is of the utmost public interest to know whether he’s being truthful or lying. CNN dodges even the appearance of fact-checking here, opting instead for a weak both-sidesing reference to ABC having to “clarify” DeSantis’ claims, even as CNN lets them sail on by.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, whom DeSantis appointed, is an infamous hoax-promoting anti-vaccine quack, one who engaged in scientific fraud to justify his claims of alleged vaccine dangers. The whole of Florida’s vaccine recommendations are scientifically fraudulent, not merely controversial. That’s already been established, and DeSantis and Ladapo are lying.
[…] DeSantis’ anti-vaccine fearmongering is estimated to have played a part in at least 16,000 pandemic deaths during the summer of 2021 alone, and Florida has the dubious distinction of having more of its residents die of COVID-19 after the vaccines became widely available than died beforehand. […]
The Biden administration is creating a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention as an effort to coordinate federal policy on guns, and if that also reminds people which party actually wants to do something to reduce gun violence with the 2024 election coming up, Biden won’t mind, either.
Vice President Kamala Harris will oversee the office as part of her portfolio of executive branch duties, and the office’s director will be Stephanie Feldman, a longtime gun policy wonk and Biden adviser who, following the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, helped then-VP Biden develop policies and legislative proposals aimed at reducing gun violence.
[…] Biden announced the new office this morning with a Tweet that says what most Americans have been thinking for a long time now: “Because thoughts and prayers are not enough […]”
What’s needed more than anything is of course for enough Americans to become angry and sick enough of all the killing and maiming that they’ll finally vote in a Congress willing to do more than nibble around the edges of the gun problem — and of course for electoral politics more widely to make it possible to replace the current Supreme Court, which consists of three Democrats and six AR-16s that hide in human form most of the time.
That said, It does feel like the increased activism among young people since Parkland … and Uvalde … and El Paso … — and all of the other human sacrifices on the altar of the Second Amendment — signals the start of a long term change. It doesn’t feel quite so much like the NRA has a monolithic veto against all progress on guns. We’re gonna go with hope, because the alternative is unthinkable.
President Biden and Vice President Harris will hold a Rose Garden event to announce the new office [video available at the link]
Union President Shawn Fain said the UAW is broadening its strike to 38 warehouses in 20 states over lack of progress in contract talks.
The United Auto Workers on Friday widened its strike against General Motors and Jeep-maker Stellantis out of frustration over contract talks but did not target more Ford locations because it said negotiations with the company are progressing.
The union said it walked out of 38 GM and Stellantis parts distribution centers in 20 states just after noon. UAW President Shawn Fain said the aim is to “shut down parts distribution until those two companies come to their senses and come to the table with a serious offer.”
The warehouses send parts to dealerships and others for vehicle repairs. The UAW shared videos on social media of newly striking workers chanting “No pay, no parts!”
Speaking alongside striking workers at a Stellantis warehouse in Center Line, Mich., Fain said the distribution centers “generate a lot of profits, especially for Stellantis.”
Fain said the union will not widen the strike against Ford for now because Ford has made further concessions and negotiations are progressing. He said Ford had agreed to reinstate cost-of-living adjustments to wages and offer new protections against plant closures.
The union is continuing its current strike against one Ford factory in Michigan, however. […]
Federal officials promised the new covid shot would be free and covered by insurance, but some Americans have encountered a different reality this week as they tried to get vaccinated, only to be denied coverage or charged up to $200.
They have faced myriad complications, from pharmacies being out of network, to the vaccine not showing up on lists of approved medical expenses, to needing prior authorization. Some Americans paid out of pocket to avoid waiting. Others say they weren’t even given that option.
The hiccups reflect a new reality for covid vaccines as they go from being treated as a public good to a commercial product. Now that the federal government is no longer buying and distributing all the shots, Americans must endure the usual headaches of dealing with insurance companies and a for-profit health care system.
[…] Eric Allix Rogers forked over the $155.99 for the updated vaccine even though his Chicago pharmacy called ahead of his Monday appointment offering to reschedule because an insurance check showed the shot wasn’t covered by his Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois HMO plan. He had a bad case of covid in 2021 before he could get vaccinated and does not want to risk another infection when he travels to Minneapolis next week for a large work event.
“We are being told we have to transition to treating covid as a routine matter and yet the people responsible for medical care have not figured out how to treat it as a routine matter,” said Rogers, 38. “This shouldn’t have been complicated.”
A spokesman for Rogers’s insurer said members can get free vaccines at in-network pharmacies and can call customer service if they face challenges. It’s not clear how many people like Rogers have encountered trouble getting vaccinated, but social media outlets are flush with similar stories, and federal officials, insurers and pharmacy chains have acknowledged these are not isolated incidents. […]
In a quiet bay of the Dnipro River, a one-hour drive from Kyiv, a group of Ukrainian engineers and special forces soldiers tested what they believe can be a game-changer in the Ukrainian counteroffensive: the Poloz-M16 combat kayak.
What otherwise looks like the familiar watercraft has been redesigned for special military purposes – in the Kherson region, for example, where the front line parallels the wide Dnipro, with multiple islands between its banks…
“Poloz-M16 is similar to what the American and British soldiers have been using, but it’s ten times cheaper, around 2,500 dollars per item,” Ostaschenko explained to ABC News…
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced Friday that he is switching to the Republican Party, making the city the largest in the U.S. to be led by a GOP mayor.
Although mayoral offices in Texas are nonpartisan, the switch is a boost for Texas Republicans who have been losing ground around the state’s major cities for more than a decade. Johnson was elected mayor in 2019 after serving more than a decade as a Democrat in the Texas House of Representatives.
Making the announcement in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, Johnson said he was never a favorite of Democrats in the Capitol and called on mayors to champion “law and order” and fiscal conservatism…
Hoo boy, is he out of tune. Republicans these days are not about law and order and fiscal conservatism.
A Maricopa County, Arizona judge on Thursday rejected three of Kari Lake’s witnesses and their testimonies at the Republican’s third trial related to her 2022 defeat in Arizona’s gubernatorial race.
As RawStory reports, Lake’s latest lawsuit’s trial kicked off with a Thursday hearing, for which her attorney, Brian Blehm, sought to have the state release ballot envelopes signed by about 1.3 million early voters.
Superior Court Judge John Hannah, however, shook up those plans when he deemed two of Lake’s witnesses — Erich Speckin, a forensic document analyst, and Chris Handsel, a software consultant — irrelevant to the trial. He then homed in on witness Shelby Busch, a participant in the Cyber Ninjas computer security firm’s voting audit, whom Hannah singled out as an especially irrelevant witness.
“On this one, I’m inclined to go a step further because she’s so obviously — she’s a medical office manager,” Hannah said. “I mean, she’s so obviously unqualified that I kind of find a need to make a finding about that, as well as that her testimony is irrelevant. I mean, she’s not even in the ballpark.” Though Blehm countered that Busch had a lot of experience “under her belt as someone who does investigations into elections,” including her work with the now-defunct Cyber Ninjas, Hannah was not impressed. He swiftly granted the motion to exclude Busch from the batch…
A letter, signed by 124 scholars and posted online last week, has caused an uproar in the consciousness-research community. It argues that a prominent theory describing what makes someone or something conscious — called the integrated information theory (IIT) — should be labelled as pseudoscience. Since its publication on 15 September in the preprint repository PsyArXiv, the letter has resulted in some researchers arguing over the label and others worrying that it will increase polarization in a field that has grappled with issues of credibility in the past…
Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create. It’s time for a win-win agreement that keeps American auto manufacturing thriving with well-paid UAW jobs.
The Biden administration is not violating any federal law by allowing acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to serve indefinitely despite her stalled Senate nomination, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued Thursday.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 191
What did we get out of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan?
Oh, you mean the wars YOUR side of the political spectrum demanded to fight “godless communism” and “Islamic terrorism?”
Explosions once again rocked Ukraine’s Russian-occupied city of Sevastopol in Crimea on Sept. 23, with residents reporting the sound of a missile flying overhead and a column of smoke seen rising over the city, the Telegram channel Crimean Wind has reported.
The column of smoke was seen rising in the Inkerman area, presumably, after the missile struck there. There is an oil depot of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the area.
A missile was also reported to have been seen flying at an altitude of 30 meters.
Following the explosion, the city’s occupation administration closed Sevastopol Bay to marine traffic…
An Oklahoma judge was arrested in Austin, Texas, last week after authorities say he opened fire on parked vehicles while out driving, striking at least one of them, and intentionally crashed into a woman’s vehicle, telling officers later that she had cut him off.
Brian Lovell, an associate district judge in Garfield County, Oklahoma, was arrested Sept. 11 on a misdemeanor count of reckless driving. A felony count of engaging in deadly conduct with a firearm was forwarded to a grand jury for consideration…
If you were paying attention to social media at all yesterday, then you probably know that the rapture was supposed to happen yesterday and it didn’t. Probably a lot of people are disappointed that they didn’t get vacuumed up into heaven, or because those they don’t especially care for didn’t get vacuumed up into heaven.
This, I believe, is the 70 billionth rapture/apocalypse that didn’t happen. Surely, they’ll get it right someday.
In commemoration of the 70 billionth apocalypse, your present this week is a video of a Jack Chick comic that lives rent free inside my brain. [Video “The Beast” is available at the link]
The part I think about constantly is this part where all of the bad post-Rapture people are going around beheading the good post-Rapture people who refuse to say they hate Jesus, so that those people then have a chance to get into heaven afterwards. Because “martyrdom is now the price of salvation.” [pages 12 and 13 from the comic]
Personally, I find this to be an incredible imposition. I faint at the sight of blood, am relatively lazy and don’t actually care what people believe so long as they’re not bothering anyone, so I really, really don’t want to have to drive a guillotine-mobile around beheading people so they can get into heaven. That’s rude. If they want their heads chopped off, they can do that themselves.
Again, I don’t care what people believe so long as they are not bothering me about it, and this bothers me. It is an inconvenience. Don’t they think I have better things to do? That we all, perhaps, have better things to do?
It’s like with the Satanic cults they’re so obsessed with that don’t really exist the way they think they exist. I have zero interest in eating a baby. I wouldn’t even eat a boar taco (or something to that effect) recently because I am a recovering picky eater and it is a bridge too far for me. I also do not believe in Satan. If Christians want people to believe in Satan and eat babies, they can also do that themselves. Though they will end up in prison for doing that, because contrary to Republican opinion it is definitely illegal to kill newborn babies, whether you eat them or not.
An increase in space weather could lead to the greatest display of the northern lights in the past two decades.
Every glimmer of the northern lights begins as a spot on the sun’s surface. And if increased solar activity is any indication, the next year and a half will be filled with glimmers.
Sunspot observations, a key indicator of the likelihood of northern lights, have increased dramatically since the end of 2022, surpassing recent forecasts and in some cases increasing the area the phenomenon is visible from. Scientists say that if the trend continues, the next 18 months will bring the strongest northern lights activity of both the coming decade and the past 20 years, with the show being viewable more often and from more places on Earth.
“Skywatchers are excited,” said Mark Miesch, a research scientist at the University of Colorado – Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel, an international scientific group sponsored by NASA and NOAA that forecasts sunspot activity, forecast in 2019 that the coming year would be below-average, with around 110 to 115 sunspots at its peak. But updated models from multiple scientists show the increase in solar activity could be much higher. [Graph at the link]
Solar activity is expected to steadily increase until fall 2024, when the likelihood of aurora borealis, also known as northern lights, is highest, Miesch said.
Sunspots — dark, lower temperature, strongly magnetic regions on the sun’s surface — create space weather when magnetic distortions hurl particles into space. This activity, called a coronal mass ejection, sends particles more than 94 million miles until they find vulnerabilities in the Earth’s magnetic field, where particles collide with the planet’s atmosphere and create the neon colors that fill the sky. [illustration at the link]
The northern lights are most visible near the North and South poles, where the Earth’s magnetic field is weakest. But the additional solar activity has already increased the range the lights can be spotted from this year: The northern lights could be seen as far south as Minnesota and Wisconsin on Monday night, and the Arizona Daily Star reported that northern lights were seen in the state in April.
Space weather isn’t the only factor: Autumnal and spring equinoxes lead to greater disruptions in the Earth’s magnetic field, Miesch said. This is because the orientation of the Earth’s magnetic field points its vulnerable part toward the sun, which allows space particles easier access to the Earth’s atmosphere. […]
Angelo Carusone, President & CEO of Media Matters for America, issued this statement following reports that Rupert Murdoch is retiring from the boards of Fox Corp. and News Corp. and will be replaced by his son Lachlan Murdoch:
Rupert Murdoch’s legacy is one of deceit, destruction, and death.
Wherever his media properties exist across the globe, they disregard basic journalistic practices and pump venomous misinformation into the public discourse.
In Fox News, Murdoch created a uniquely destructive force in American democracy and public life, one that ushered in an era of division where racist and post-truth politics thrive.
Rupert Murdoch’s media properties helped reshape the Republican Party into a Trumpist authoritarian death cult.
Rupert Murdoch allowed Fox News to fuel the insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol, letting his stars intentionally and knowingly lie to undermine our democratic elections.
Rupert Murdoch’s media outlets, especially Fox News, spread dangerous medical misinformation that not only worsened the global pandemic but also resulted in countless needless deaths — including those of many of the network’s own viewers.
Given the unparalleled global scale of his media footprint, no one on the planet has done more to spread lies denying climate change and undermine efforts to address the crisis than Rupert Murdoch.
The world is worse off because of Rupert Murdoch. No one should sugarcoat the damage he caused. Making matters worse, his parting act — handing the reins to Lachlan Murdoch — is akin to tossing a match onto the kindling he stacked.
Lachlan certainly is a less competent leader than his father, but his worldview is considerably more brutal. His leadership will likely just intensify the misconduct, misinformation, and malevolence that have come to define Murdoch media.
Since its founding in 2004, Media Matters for America, a nonprofit media watchdog, has been the leading force in countering Fox News’ right-wing misinformation and GOP propaganda, including naming Lachlan Murdoch and Fox Corp. among its Misinformers of the Year. Here are 400+ moments that have defined Fox News and the Murdochs’ legacy.
Ukrainian officials said they’ve broken through a key line of Russian defense in the country’s southeast thanks in part to US-provided armored vehicles.
Ukrainian forces broke through the Surovikin Line, a series of Russian defenses littered with anti-vehicle spikes and minefields, a commanding officer told The Washington Post. Ukraine first sent these US-supplied vehicles — called Strykers — into battle last month in the southern Zaporizhzhia Region…
Academics, universities and government agencies are overhauling or ending research programs designed to counter the spread of online misinformation amid a legal campaign from conservative politicians and activists who accuse them of colluding with tech companies to censor right-wing views.
The escalating campaign — led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans in Congress and state government — has cast a pall over programs that study not just political falsehoods but also the quality of medical information online.
Facing litigation, Stanford University officials are discussing how they can continue tracking election-related misinformation through the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a prominent consortium that flagged social media conspiracies about voting in 2020 and 2022, several participants told The Washington Post. The coalition of disinformation researchers may shrink and also may stop communicating with X and Facebook about their findings.
The National Institutes of Health froze a $150 million program intended to advance the communication of medical information, citing regulatory and legal threats. Physicians told The Post that they had planned to use the grants to fund projects on noncontroversial topics such as nutritional guidelines and not just politically charged issues such as vaccinations that have been the focus of the conservative allegations.
NIH officials sent a memo in July to some employees, warning them not to flag misleading social media posts to tech companies and to limit their communication with the public to answering medical questions.
“If the question relates in any way to misinformation or disinformation, please do not respond,” read the guidance email, sent in July after a Louisiana judge blocked many federal agencies from communicating with social media companies….
“In the name of protecting free speech, the scientific community is not allowed to speak,” said Dean Schillinger, a health communication scientist who planned to apply to the NIH program to collaborate with a Tagalog-language newspaper to share accurate health information with Filipinos. “Science is being halted in its tracks.”
Academics and government scientists say the campaign also is successfully throttling the years-long effort to study online falsehoods, which grew after Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election caught both social media sites and politicians unaware.
Conservatives have long complained that social media platforms stifle their views, but the efforts to limit moderation have intensified in the past year.
The most high-profile effort, a lawsuit known as Missouri v. Biden, is now before the Supreme Court, where the Biden administration seeks to have the high court block a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that found the White House, FBI and top federal health officials likely violated the First Amendment by improperly influencing tech companies’ decisions to remove or suppress posts on the coronavirus and elections. That ruling was narrower than a district court’s finding that also barred government officials from working with academic groups, including the Stanford Internet Observatory. But the Biden Justice Department argues the injunction still contradicts certain First Amendment principles, including that the president is entitled to use his bully pulpit to persuade American companies “to act in ways that the President believes would advance the public interest.”…
Jordan has issued subpoenas and demands for researchers’ communications with the government and social media platforms as part of a larger congressional probe into the Biden administration’s alleged collusion with Big Tech.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) in a statement said the federal government “silenced” information because “it didn’t fit their narrative.”
“Missouri v. Biden is the most important First Amendment case in a generation, which is why we’re taking it to the nation’s highest court,” he said.
[…]
NIH and other public health agencies have also sought to limit their employees’ communications with social media platforms amid the litigation, according to internal agency emails viewed by The Post that were sent in July after a Louisiana judge blocked many federal agencies from communicating with social media companies.
In one instance, an NIH communications official told some employees not to flag misleading social media posts to tech companies — even if they impersonated government health officials or encouraged self-harm, according to a July email viewed by The Post. The employees were told they could not respond to questions about a disease area or clinical trial if it did “relate in any way to misinformation or disinformation.”
Everybody knows the Western movie trope: two gunmen on either side of a dusty road with cowboy hats, tumbleweed rolling between them. Both reach for their guns at the same time, but one is faster, and the other’s dead.
On a fundamental level, warfare with guns is brutally simple: The one who shoots the fastest and most accurately wins. The other dies.
But artillery upends that trope.
War can be simply encapsulated in the theoretical concept of the “kill chain.”
In its most simplistic conception, the kill chain can be reduced to just three key elements:
– Identification;
– Tracking/Deployment; and
– Engagement.
Identification means finding where your enemy is located. Tracking means following your enemy’s movement until force can be brought against it, while you deploy your forces into a position where they can launch an attack. Engagement is the act of attempting to destroy the enemy target.
A gunman in a Western movie has a very simple kill chain. See the villain across the street. Watch his movements. Draw and shoot. The kill chain is completed when the target is neutralized.
There are two ways to disrupt the enemy’s kill chain.
First, you can “break” the kill chain by preventing the completion of any of the steps. Avoid detection in the first place, and the enemy cannot get started. If you are found, evasion, armor protection, electronic and physical countermeasures can also break the kill chain.
Second, you can complete your own kill chain before the enemy can complete theirs—like a gunman drawing his revolver faster, and gunning down his opponent.
The kill chain concept explains why the Russian forces are at such a severe disadvantage in the artillery war with Ukraine.
RUSSIAN ARTILLERY DOCTRINE BEFORE 2022
Modern Russian artillery doctrine grew from Soviet artillery doctrine. And Soviet artillery doctrine philosophically dates back to the very roots of its formation, in the last days of World War One.
The Red Army’s lessons from WWI were fundamentally different from the Germans’ blitzkrieg concepts later adopted by Western military forces. Instead of concentrating mass at a single point to achieve a breakthrough utilizing mobility, Soviet doctrine was built out of concepts known as “Deep Battle” and “Deep Operation.”
“Deep Battle” meant engaging the enemy deep behind their front lines using artillery, and challenging their entire operational front. Meanwhile, front line positions would engage the enemy fluidly, while maintaining a static battle line as the artillery attrited the enemy’s rear positions.
Then, a massive concentrated mechanized armor force would punch through weakened enemy lines. That was the “Deep Operation.”
Deep Battle-Deep Operation doctrine necessitated massive armored formations, and conceived of movement in terms of corps- and division-sized operational units—numbering in the tens of thousands of soldiers.
In the 1950s, atomic weapons and increased overall firepower of artillery, rocket artillery, and air forces rendered the massive armored concentrations obsolete. Recognizing that, the Zhukov Reforms adjusted Russian doctrine toward smaller operational units, while attempting to maintain the goals of the “Deep Battle”—that is, to degrade the enemy force at depth.
The question for Soviet planners then became: How could they effectively engage Western armies with superior air power, without using large concentrations of forces that could be easily targeted and destroyed? Their answer, adopted in the 1970s and 1980s, was what became known as the “nonlinear warfare” concept.
Maintenance of large division- and corps-sized formations and coordination was deemphasized. Divisions, corps, and combined arms armies would still maintain a semblance of control and coordination over the front line tactical units through the control of operational and strategic reserve forces. When and where to devote elite mechanized reserve forces remained an important consideration, both offensively and defensively.
But while principle firepower—namely tube and rocket artillery—were controlled at the division and corps levels, artillery command was increasingly decentralized. A corps (25,000+ troops) or division (10,000+) no longer shared an artillery command; by the 1980s the battalion (800-1,000) became the tactical unit of choice.
In the new nonlinear doctrine of deployment, Russian battalions were no longer expected to maintain a linear defensive position in cooperation with other elements of their division or corps. Each battalion was expected to protect its own flanks, maintain its own logistics, and thus had its own full contingents of anti-air forces, armor, mechanized infantry and artillery.
This was a concept known as “tactical independence,” and evolved in the Battalion Tactical Group concept (known as BTG) adopted by the Russian army in the decade prior to the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which you might remember from early last year. Russia had largely abandoned the BTG concept as an organizational model by late 2022.
However, while Russia has distributed new manuals and tactics aimed at changing their doctrinal modes of warfare, the extent to which any tactical reform has taken place remains on an ad hoc basis, due to lack of training. In particular, the artillery of Russia has continued to operate much the same way—that is, decentralized.
As a matter of standard operational practice, Russian units attach artillery battalions to heavily engaged individual battalions at the front lines. This means that the “attached” artillery unit takes commands directly from the frontline battalion commander.
Attaching BTG battalions to frontline units permits commanders to more easily access coordinated artillery firepower on queue. This reduces the need for commanders to coordinate and share artillery assists with each other, reducing the need for secure and reliable communications—a weakness of Russian military equipment. RUSI has noted that insufficient and poor-quality radios are an endemic problem for the Russian military.
Furthermore, before Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian military doctrine placed these Russian artillery units extremely physically close to the front lines—just 2km from the line of contact.
This both maximized the range and depth of firepower that Russian artillery units could bring against reward enemy targets (“Deep Battle”), and allowed close coordination with frontline forces, by sheer proximity.
Russia was able to deploy artillery this close to the frontlines because of their reliance on overwhelming firepower to overcome enemy counter battery firepower, and through a faster kill chain than enemy artillery.
RUSSIAN EFFORTS FOR A FASTER KILL CHAIN
Russia devoted a great deal of effort to accelerating its artillery kill chain, to establish and maintain an overwhelming artillery advantage.
It developed a variety of reconnaissance UAVs such as the Orlan-10, and numerous counter battery radars like the Zoopark-1M, to more quickly identify targets.
Russian doctrine sought to minimize the tracking/deployment phase of the kill chain, by positioning its artillery units almost right behind the front lines, just 2km behind the front line units.
In early 2022, well-trained Russian artillery crews could regularly bring Russian artillery firepower to bear on targets in as little as three minutes, obtaining target data from multiple sources (anti-battery radar, UAV reconnaissance, or auditory triangulation).
Finally, Russian artillery aimed to achieve effective engagement through either precision munitions or “weight of fires.”
Their primary precision-guided munition was the Krasnopol guided artillery shell, a laser-guided munition that could theoretically target Ukrainian artillery armored targets effectively.
However, the Krasnopol’s guidance systems performed erratically and inconsistently. Low hanging cloud cover, certain terrain disruptions, and electronic warfare can severely disrupt the Krasnopol’s accuracy. Furthermore, the Russian munitions industry failed to provide the Krasnopol in sufficient quantities to provide a decisive effect in 2022.
Thus, Russian artillery units predominantly relied on the classic solution to this problem: weight of fire. That is, Russia relied on the quantity of shells to make up for a lack of precision strike capability. Russian artillery might not be able to narrowly hit a target with an individual shot, but if they drop enough shells in an area, the chances of hitting the targets increased.
For example, if a 12-gun Russian battery of self-propelled howitzers targets its 12-gun enemy counterpart with 600 rounds within 15-20 minutes, the odds are good at least one of those rounds will hit something. That’s how you end up with moonscapes like this one, around Dovhen’ke. [photo at the link]
Russian howitzers cannot fire more than three rounds per minute without doing harm to their barrel longevity and accuracy; thus that 600-round target requires a 12-gun Russian battery to remain in place firing continuously—for a full 15 minutes.
Russians anticipated fighting classic “artillery duels” where opposing gun batteries would spend 10-20 minutes exchanging fire, until one side was destroyed or forced to relocate. Russian planners were confident that the sheer weight (quantity) of fire from Russian artillery units would make up for any precision munitions by the enemy, maintaining Russian superiority.
With sufficient ammunition, sufficient number of guns, sufficiently trained crews, sufficient reconnaissance and counterbattery radar assets, the Russian army could bring a fearsome amount of firepower down on Uranian positions. That’s why Ukraine’s first request of its Western partners was artillery, and that’s why American M777 howitzers were the first heavy Western system delivered. Few observers would dispute the idea that Russian artillery maintained a significant advantage over their Ukrainian counterparts on most engagements, and at some points, Ukraine pegged the disparity at 10:1, with Russia firing up to 50,000 shells per day.
RUSSIAN ARTILLERY DOCTRINE HAS BEEN NEUTRALIZED
However, beginning in the summer of 2022, then more rapidly in 2023, this Russian advantage began to disappear. By this summer, at the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Russian observers were warning of a “genocide” of Russian artillery units.
Oryx tracking of publicly available losses of both sides of the conflict began to show a massive disparity in artillery losses. Whereas earlier in the war, artillery losses remained largely even, by this summer, Ukraine was losing only a single artillery gun for every three to four Russian losses.
What changed?
First, and arguably one of the most important Ukrainian tactical innovations was to disperse its artillery assets. Placing a 12-gun battery in close proximity to each other would obviously make such coordinated and choreographed fire sequences simpler for a battery commander to execute. The first three to four minutes in a barrage are considered crucial, as they represent a golden opportunity to strike an unready enemy target, before crews have a chance to take cover, or even drive away.
However, Ukrainian batteries tend to operate in much smaller groups, choosing to disperse their artillery assets over a broad area. So to coordinate, they employ radio communications and more sophisticated electronic tools to coordinate their fires, while maintaining dispersion.
As such, rather than target fields with 12 Ukrainian guns with a decent chance of scoring kills, Russian artillery units have struggled to bring sufficient weight of fire on dispersed Ukrainian artillery. Instead of a single locale, Russian batteries may be forced to divide their attention among six, eight, or 10 separate targets. Saturating their vicinity with sufficient shells to obtain a hit would quickly drain Russian ammunition, thus Russian batteries are forced to shorten their barrages. This significantly reduces the effectiveness of Russian counterbattery fire.
Second, particularly across the southern front, where the fighting has been heaviest, Ukraine has increasingly moved from relying on towed artillery, like the American M777 howitzer, to relying on self-propelled howitzers like the M109 Paladin. [images at the link]
Towed artillery requires several minutes to pack up and hitch to its towing vehicle, leaving the crew vulnerable to counterbattery fire. Western self-propelled guns like the M109 Paladin can stop, fire several rounds, and then be ready to move again in under two minutes.
By continuously staying on the move and not relying on long barrages of stationary and sustained artillery fire, Ukrainian artillery batteries remain elusive and difficult to target with conventional counter battery fire. The sustained “artillery duel” Russia planned for has simply ceased to exist. Artillery crews of both sides now consider lengthy stationary artillery positions to be impossible to survive. Dispersion and positional fluidity are the new norms.
In essence, Ukrainian artillery breaks Russia’s kill chain by relocating before Russian artillery are prepared to engage. Ukrainian artillery have not similarly suffered for two reasons: precision munitions and DPICM shells (also known as cluster munitions).
Precision munitions radically reduce Ukraine’s need for “deployment” and “engagement” as part of its kill chain, providing a decisive advantage.
Precision munitions, like the 155mm Excalibur GPS guided shell, have a range of 50km, allowing Ukrainian guns to theoretically operate deep behind friendly lines, well outside the 20-25km range of Russian artillery. However, Ukraine is so confident in its ability to avoid Russian counterbattery fire, it chose to operate as close as 10km from the frontlines. allowing leaders to strike even deeper behind enemy lines if they so choose.
And of course, Ukraine frequently uses GMLRS rocket artillery’s 70km range to destroy Russian guns. Those rockets, launched from either HIMARS or M270 launchers, so badly outrange Russian weaponry that Ukraine has yet to lose a single confirmed launcher—despite being in theater since last June, over a year ago, and being one of Russia’s highest priority targets.
It is impossible for a Russian artillery gun to open fire without being in range of Ukrainian guns.
Furthermore, while Russian artillery must generally sustain a barrage for several minutes to bring sufficient weight of firepower on a target to destroy it (recall the moonscape picture shared above), Ukrainian artillery can quickly and effectively respond with small numbers of guided munitions to take out their opposing counterparts with ruthless accuracy. Not only are these strikes more precise (and require fewer shells), the engagement phase is merely the time to load and fire a single precision round—as little as 15-20 seconds.
As if things weren’t bad enough for Russia, the arrival of cluster munitions has made things even worse. Ukrainian artillery are making nearly constant use of cluster munitions shells against Russian soft targets (trucks, troops, trenches, anything without armor or concrete). A RUSI analysis showed that U.S. conventional shells required 13.6 rounds to obtain a hit, but a DPICM cluster munition—which scatters grenade-like bomblets over a wide area—could strike a target every 1.7 shells.
Thanks to the wide area of effect, a Ukrainian howitzer does not need to remain stationary for an extended period, firing 10-15 shells at a target to destroy it. It can stop, fire two DPICM cluster rounds, then relocate. And there are millions of those rounds in U.S. stocks.
The same way that precision munitions reduce the engagement time for Ukrainian artillery, DPICM shells improve both the deadliness of Ukrainian artillery, as well as reduce Russian opportunities for counterbattery fire.
Furthermore, improvements in Ukrainian counterbattery radar equipment have made their identification portion of the kill chain faster, and sustained targeting of Russian counter battery radar assets have degraded Russians’ ability to identify Ukrainian artillery assets in turn. Drones have further changed the game, both in identifying targets, and in striking them.
RUSSIAN COUNTERBATTERY FIRE HAS DWINDLED
The net effect of these developments has been a major Ukrainian advantage in the artillery war.
Massive losses have forced a change in how Russia uses its artillery guns. Whereas pre-war doctrine placed brigade artillery assets 4km from the front, Russian artillery units now hide 15-20km behind the frontlines, advancing only for brief periods to conduct fire missions.
While this may improved the survivability of those Russian guns, their continued communication problems mean that Russian units on the contact line suffer from poorly timed and coordinated fire support.
It is now Ukrainian artillery that operate close to the frontlines with impunity, and Russian batteries that have largely been forced back to a safer distance. [photo at the link]
Russian batteries are struggling to provide sufficient weight of fire on Ukrainian guns due to ammunition issues, leading Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to beg North Korea for artillery supplies, an international humiliation. Recent reports claim that Russia will double its annual production of artillery shells to 2 million, which sounds impressive—until you do some math and realize that amounts to less than 5,500 shells per day. It’s a pittance, given Russia’s doctrinal needs.
RUSI noted an increasing and overwhelming reliance on Russian loitering munitions like the Lancet drones for a counterbattery role. In fact, drones have become one of the only ways left for Russia to fight back in the artillery war.
Still, Lancet drones and other loitering munitions are susceptible to electronic warfare countermeasures, or short-range air defenses like the Gephardt or the Viktor SHORAD system, providing inexpensive anti-drone firepower to protect key artillery assets. “Cope cages” made of chain-link can actually protect from much drone damage. And even when they hit, the smaller warheads mean that the chances of outright destroying the gun are far lower. Damaged systems can be towed to the rear and repaired.
Nonetheless, due to doctrinal shortcomings that have left Russia unprepared for this highly disperse, highly mobile artillery battlefield in Ukraine, Russian artillery commanders have been left with fewer and fewer effective alternatives in 2023.
A further problem for Russia is its loss of experienced artillery crews and battery commanders to counterbattery fire. Oryx has recorded over 1,000 lost Russian towed, self-propelled, and rocket artillery systems. And these are almost assuredly severely undercounted, as destroyed artillery guns aren’t as visible as frontline armor.
As such, it is fair to say that Russia has already lost thousands of trained artillery crews and officers. And given the poor to nonexistent training policies of the Russian army, it’s entirely doubtful that the artillery crews are being replaced with anything but inexperienced and poorly trained personnel, which may help explain friendly fire incidents such as this one: [Tweet and video at the link, Russian artillery firing at their own positions. The video has English subtitles, and you can also hear the desperation in the voices of the Russians trying to get their own artillery to stop firing at them.]
Or this incident. Or this incident, or this incident. [Embedded links available at the main link]
These types of friendly fire incidents provide some of the most dramatic examples of poor Russian coordination and training, but ineffective fires or instances of poorly coordinated support likely represent a far more common form of Russian training issues in artillery.
Furthermore, there are persistent reports of Russian artillerymen being repurposed as cannon fodder infantry for commanders desperate to hold ground in the face of Ukrainian advances.
As Ukraine continues to severely degrade the Russian artillery corps—to the tune of 30-40 guns per day—its advantage is likely to only continue to grow. This is the end result, as relayed by a Russian on the front lines:
So the artillery doesn’t help you?
Not that it doesn’t help. The command does not allocate shells to them.
Are you promised help and support?
People die for nothing. People go one way and don’t come back.
We work here in the same helmet. There is no interaction with anyone else. Everything happens very slowly; either the artillery does not shoot, or you have to wait for the shot for a very long time.
In fact, this Russian claimed that the artillery shortage is so severe, that Russian commanders are sending their artillerymen as storm infantry on the front lines.
Are there more losses?
We have twenty-five people leaving for the task, six are coming back. Our artillerymen have now stormed. They were told: you don’t have any ammunition anyway, go as an infantry.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen claims that Russian commanders are using artillerymen as cannon fodder to desperately hold onto ground in the face of advancing Ukrainian forces.
This degradation of Russian artillery will have a more dramatic impact on the eventual success of Ukraine’s counteroffensive than counting square kilometers thus far liberated.
Among the worst takes on the impeachment: “Biden’s words from 2020 fuel GOP’s impeachment push” (Axios); and on Hunter Biden’s indictment: “Biden allies worry son Hunter’s indictment could strain the president’s 2024 focus” (NBC News). The worst of the worst was from the Wall Street Journal: “Biden’s Rough September: Auto Strike, Son’s Indictment, Inflation, Impeachment Inquiry.” (Inflation is actually down, and there is no sign anything involving his son is a drag on his reelection.)
These fit a common media pattern: Hammer an item and then castigate Democrats for getting distracted by or worrying about it. I find it hard to believe any significant number of people willing to vote for Biden would say, “Nope, his kid is being indicted, so I will go with Donald Trump” or “Even if there’s no evidence, Biden’s impeachment is as bad as Trump’s two.” Both the amount of and hysterical tone of coverage remind us how little self-awareness the media gained during the Trump years.
If it were not so infuriating, it would be comical. The political media’s obsession with alleged problems for Biden frankly smacks of attempting to make its own coverage a self-fulfilling prophecy. [I agree.] Then, the media can safely claim “both sides have problems,” even though no negative issue on Biden’s side remotely matches the danger and lunacy in inviting an accused felon and twice-impeached former president back to the White House.
As for the impeachment based on the utterly baseless charge that President Biden helped his son and/or benefited from his foreign business dealings, an unlikely source provided the definitive take on the entire gambit. Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) wrote for The Post: “What’s missing, despite years of investigation, is the smoking gun that connects Joe Biden to his ne’er-do-well son’s corruption.” That’s a simple statement of fact, one that should have been the news headline for the episode, not endless speculating about the “problem” it supposedly poses for the president.
Moreover, as the media attempts to even the scales, it diverts from a near-collapse in House leadership as Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can find no feasible escape hatch from a shutdown that he knows will work to his and his party’s detriment. Maybe the most pressing story is not Hunter Biden’s gun charge but the utter incapacity of Republicans to govern.
Commentary:
[…] This is what we are up against: a media determined to make stories without two sides seem like two sides. A media obsessed with showing that they are “fair” by tearing down Democrats. A media obsessed with the clicks that bad news and sensationalism bring. […]
Democrats are doing great things
Biden’s new Climate Corps will train thousands of young people
President Biden on Wednesday announced an initiative to train more than 20,000 young people in skills crucial to combating climate change, such as installing solar panels, restoring coastal wetlands and retrofitting homes to be more energy-efficient.
In a TikTok video Monday that racked up more than 16,000 views, the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate group, declared that “Dark Brandon would pass a CCC” — a reference to a meme that Biden’s 2024 campaign has embraced.
Biden’s move bypasses gridlock on Capitol Hill, where Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have introduced legislation to establish a Civilian Climate Corps that is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House.
[…] This is what taking on election deniers really looks like
Democrats won a whole lot of elections in 2022, in no small part on their vow to strengthen and defend democracy. But if they hope to turn the issue into a sustained political winner, they have to deliver on that promise by showing voters what a pro-democracy governing agenda actually looks like.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is set to make a big move in this direction by unveiling a big change on Tuesday that will implement what’s known as “automatic voter registration” statewide.
Automatic registration makes getting on the voter rolls something you have to opt out of, rather than actively sign up for in advance. An underappreciated success story, it has been put into effect in two dozen states, mostly by Democrats. It typically works by automatically registering customers at state Department of Motor Vehicles offices (or other agencies) or by automatically extending them that option, while offering an opt-out alternative.
“I see voter participation as key to strengthening democracy,” Shapiro told me in an interview, noting that he is “committed to ensuring free and fair elections, and to making sure every eligible voter can make their voice heard.”
Great news — starting today, Pennsylvania will begin automatic voter registration for folks getting a driver’s license or state ID card at the DMV. Hopefully even more states will follow.
Lynna @225: Re: Misinformation story, indeed it is. I left out a lot and now I see that no WaPo subscription is required to read the entire article, so for anyone that wants the rest it’s here.
Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) announced Saturday he would challenge indicted Sen. Bob Menendez, becoming the first major intraparty challenger to emerge since Menendez insisted he would not step down in the face of charges he accepted bribes from three businessmen…
The landmark Washington National Cathedral unveiled new stained-glass windows Saturday with a theme of racial justice, filling the space that had once held four windows honoring Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
The new windows depict a march for justice by African Americans, descendants of the very people who would have remained in slavery after the Civil War if the side for which the officers fought had prevailed.
The cathedral had removed the old windows after Confederate symbols featured prominently in recent racist violence…
As the Republican stalemate over government funding continues, two freshman GOP House members opened the door Thursday to end-running their party’s leadership and working with Democrats to fund the government.
Reps. Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler, two New York Republicans who represent Hudson Valley-area districts that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, said they’re willing to consider a “discharge petition” to force votes on a short-term funding bill — if their party fails to get its act together.
It would take a few more to get that done. According to Wikipedia, there are 221 Republicans in the House, 212 Democrats and 2 vacant positions. So 3 more defectors would do it.
Republican Rep. Mike Lawler on Friday criticized House GOP hardliners for “play[ing] stupid games” that are “screwing the American people” as the government heads toward a shutdown.
“I didn’t come here to shut the government down or play stupid games so we could raise $5 donations by claiming we’re doing something and sticking it to the administration, when in fact all they would be doing is screwing the American people,” Lawler (R-N.Y.) told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Friday…
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is preparing to issue a bipartisan resolution next week that would reinstitute the Senate’s dress code, after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., relaxed the rules last weekend….
I guess he considers that more important than overcoming Tommy Potato-head’s veto on military promotions.
lumipunasays
This is not terribly relevant to current politics, but the Finnish public broadcaster Yle has just published the only known video material of Vladimir Putin taken in a private setting (ie. not orchestrated as PR for him). It was taken in the early 1990s while he was on a business trip in Finland as an assistant of Anatoli Sobchak, the newly elected mayor of the newly re-named St. Petersburg. The material wasn’t entirely unknown before; it’s unclear why Yle made a story on it right now.
Here’s an English language version of the original Finnish story:
The two men with their families were recreating as guests at a villa owned by a Finnish company that wanted to establish good business relations with the New Russia’s new ascending elite (a form of soft bribery). I gather that a lot of video was taken there for PR purposes, for either Sobchak or the host company. In some clips, Putin looks relaxed, apparently unaware of the camera. In others, he looks grumpy and tries to hide his face from the camera, in the deeply ingrained habit of a KGB agent. He plays ping pong in the yard, throws darts and goes fishing with Sobchak.
Yle has interviewed several people who were involved with the event, hiding their identities for safety reasons. There’s also some commentary from The Guardian’s Russia expert Luke Harding. The Finnish editors have repeated snide comments on how Putin dresses in a casual private setting – looking sloppy yet blingy in the latest Adidas sportswear, in stereotypic Russian noveau riche fashion. As an amusing detail, it is revealed that the 3.2 kg pike the men are shown bringing back from the fishing trip was caught beforehand. There’s obvious parallel to Putin’s more recent official vacation photos as president, for example a famous 2017 photo of him posing with a remarkably large perch he almost certainly didn’t catch on spot.
The story is mainly interesting as a summary of Putin’s career and of his approach to publicity. There’s the cringey “monster shows a human face” commentary, which isn’t the least interesting to anyone who knows that human can be monsters, and therefore monsters are often humans. It also shouldn’t be surprising that Putin has aged a lot in 30 years, despite all the Botox, though it’s worth pondering that he’s been Russia’s leader for most of that time.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday struck down part of a state law that would have authorized some circuit court judges to be appointed rather than elected in the capital city of Jackson and the surrounding county, which are both majority-Black.
Critics said the law was an effort by the majority-white Legislature to stomp on voting rights and to treat Jackson and Hinds County residents unfairly in a state where most judges are elected….
Justices noted in the ruling Thursday that a longstanding Mississippi law allows the chief justice to appoint some justices for specific reasons, such as to deal with a backlog of cases. But they wrote that “we see nothing special or unique” about the four appointed Hinds County circuit judges in the law this year, “certainly nothing expressly tethering them to a specific judicial need or exigency.”
On Thursday, a Senate Special Committee on Aging took place to discuss how people with disabilities, older adults, and veterans can be ensured access to government technology. Sen. John Fetterman gave a very moving speech on how much deeper his empathy has grown since suffering a stroke last year.
Fetterman explained that as a result of the stroke, “I have lost my ability to fully process language.” He said he depended on a transcription app on his phone, which showed the audience. It allows him to understand more clearly what was being said around him, he said. “I can’t imagine if I didn’t have this kind of a bridge to allow me to communicate with other people effectively.”
Fetterman became emotional when talking about the disrespectful public environment for people with disabilities, and his experience in office. “Because I live in a political environment, I was ridiculed and made fun of because I wasn’t able to process things sometimes or say things,” he said. “I’m so sorry that I’m sure many of you had to go through this kind of thing.”
The video, which can be seen below, went viral because it exemplifies the kind of bravery and seriousness we all desire from our elected leaders. Fetterman’s wife retweeted the video, writing, “All heart, all goodness [heart emoji] my grandmother always used to say that John had to be made that tall to fit his whole heart.”
[…] when I say that Peter Navarro is insane, I am using the lay definition – which means his mental processes are self-destructive, loathsome, and beyond the expected normal range of people who live in a society with others.
The latest evidence for his parlous mental state is a tweet in which he said,
Watched Hutchinson in West Wing suck candy daily outside Meadows office doing NOTHING. Pimping new “book” with White House loser alyssa farah. Hutchinson sold soul to J6 witch hunt. This her next 15 minutes of fame. @RudyGiuliani hero, Cassidy trash.
[eyeroll]
He then quoted his own tweet to add:
Why would White House men – prez, vp, senior aide – EVER hire a woman after watching book pimps Cassiday Hutchinson, Alyssa Farah, Stephanie Grisham, Kayleigh McEnany, Olivia Troye throw mud @realDonaldTrump @RudyGiuliani et. al. Pimp ladies be giving real MAGA WOMEN bad name
[…] We should not be surprised. That there was a trial in the first place is further proof Navarro is deranged. All this moron had to do was go to Congress and decline to answer their questions. But he fancies himself as some constitutional superhero. It is time for Petey to grow up.
”Pimping” is providing prostitutes to Johns and taking a piece of the action. It is hard to see how promoting a book is “pimping.” For instance, who is the prostitute in this case? It cannot be the book. Navarro must see these female authors as both the procurer and the harlot. Note: If book promotion is the same as illegal commercial sex, Navarro is a well-seasoned practitioner of the art, as he has pimped 32 books.
Navarro is also either a liar or a stalker. He says: “Watched Hutchinson in West Wing suck candy daily outside Meadows office doing NOTHING.” His office was on the second floor of the West Wing, Hutchinson was on the first floor beside her boss. Does Navarro have X-ray vision?
Lastly, he calls Rudy Giuliani a “hero”. That is insane.
[…] Navarro ices his misogyny with some backhanded racism. “Pimp ladies be giving” is how a white guy wears vernacular black face. Navarro does not elucidate what qualities make his ladies “real MAGA WOMEN.” I am scared to imagine.
[…] Navarro was particularly fond of demeaning female staffers. WaPo reported:
The trade adviser routinely exploded at his assistants while scheming to undermine other senior White House officials.
Young women appeared to suffer the most verbal abuse. Some female White House employees complained that Navarro, 71, was habitually disrespectful, assigning professional women to act as note takers during policy meetings rather than allowing them to participate. [Sigh. Been there … have had that particular sign of disrespect inflicted on me.]
[…] Navarro is capable of messaging. And the message is clear. The man is a steaming pile of ego, anger, bile, and stupidity.
Trump threw a tantrum a 2:30 AM. Apparently, there were no babysitters there to stop him.
[…] The entire focus of his campaign is firmly rooted in his delusional and thoroughly debunked claims of election fraud, and his seething animus for his victorious opponent, President Biden. And to illustrate just how fixated Trump is on Biden, he posted a comment at 2:30 AM Saturday morning that was curdling with contempt. He obviously couldn’t sleep after Biden announced his plan to upstage Trump’s debate-dodging, phony union rally next week. What follows is an annotated transcription of Trump’s tantrum:
“Crooked Joe Biden had no intention of going to visit the United Autoworkers, until I announced that I would be heading to Michigan to be with them, & help then (sic) out.”
Needless to say, Trump had no idea of what Biden’s intentions were. And Biden surely doesn’t consult with Trump before setting his schedule. However, any fair observer would have presumed that Biden would show his support for the striking union workers. And Biden’s decision to do so the day before Trump’s bogus union rally is just smart strategic thinking.
“Actually, Crooked Joe sold them down the river with his ridiculous all Electric Car Hoax. This wasn’t Biden’s idea, he can’t put two sentences together.”
This is Trump’s 19th allegation that whatever is triggering his anxiety is a hoax. And with regard to who is able to put coherent sentences together, the following video will provide some relevant context. [video at the link]
“It was the idea of the Radical Left Fascists, Marxists, & Communists who control him and who, in so doing, are DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY! Within 3 years, all of these cars will be made in China.”
First of all, someone needs to inform Trump that fascists and Marxists are at polar opposites of the ideological spectrum. More to the point, Trump has lately been pushing this nonsense about all electric vehicles being made in China. The EV market in the U.S. is already huge, and not one of the major brands is Chinese. His twisted imagination is getting away from him, again.
“That’s what Sleepy Joe wants, because China pays him and his family a FORTUNE. He is a Manchurian Candidate.”
“If the UAW ‘leadership’ doesn’t ENDORSE me, and if I don’t win the Election, the Autoworkers are ‘toast,’ with our great truckers to follow.”
Trump loves to issue impotent threats like this that have no basis in reality. The truth is that he, and his Republican Party, are longtime opponents of unions and the interests of the working class. They are beholden to the corporations who fund their campaigns in order to cut taxes and regulations, and weaken the bargaining power of unions. By contrast, Biden is lifelong union supporter, and is proud of it, […]
“Crooked Joe Biden is the most Corrupt and Incompetent President in the history of the USA. If he is able to gather the energy to show up, tell him to go to the Southern Border instead, & to leave the Car Industry alone!”
Trump closes his rant with some textbook projection. It is Trump whose corruption has resulted in four criminal indictments on 91 felony counts. And it is Trump’s incompetence that led to the loss of millions of jobs during his occupation of the White House. Not mention more than a million lives due to his deliberate mismanagement of the COVID pandemic.
[…] he might want to try and get some sleep, because these late night tantrums can’t be good for his already feeble cognitive state.
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flung a capsule the size of a car tire onto a bombing range in Utah on Sunday, delivering safely to Earth a sample of the intriguing and potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu.
The capsule, released four hours earlier by the spacecraft, parachuted onto the muddy Utah Test and Training Range. Recovery teams in four helicopters raced to the landing site in a carefully rehearsed effort designed to bag the capsule quickly to lower the risk of contamination and then spirit it to a hangar on a military base. It will be flown Monday to the NASA Johnson Space Center in Texas for future scientific study.
Mission managers, pleased with the trajectory of the spacecraft, voted early Sunday morning to proceed with releasing the capsule, which spent four hours nearing Earth before plunging into the atmosphere. The parent spacecraft then fired thrusters to ensure that it would not wind up in Utah, but would instead move on to another target, the asteroid Apophis, with a scheduled encounter in 2029.
[…] Bennu contains rocks that date to the earliest epoch of the solar system. The mission is designed to give scientists samples of these “fossils” that date back 4 billion years. The molecular makeup of the material brought back to Earth could provide clues to how it became an ocean planet, with the kind of environment where life could appear (and eventually evolve into complex organisms such as astrobiologists). […]
The sampler device at the end of a robotic arm of the spacecraft plunged into Bennu’s surface about 20 inches deep and emerged with a mixture of material known as regolith. How much is in the sample, exactly, is unknown. Some spilled during the maneuver, but mission leaders believe they have about 250 grams (about 8.8 ounces) of material, plus or minus 101 grams. To meet the mission’s stated goal, there needs to be at least 60 grams in the capsule.
[…] This was a triumph of aerospace engineering. The technical challenges were immense, including the complexities of guiding a spacecraft into orbit around a small object many millions of miles away.
[…] Because the acronym is much easier to say than the full name, which is Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer. Osiris is the name of an ancient Egyptian god, and Dante Lauretta, the lead scientist on the mission, is a mythology buff who thought the name would work well. Now that the spacecraft has a new target, OSIRIS-REx has been renamed OSIRIS-APEX, for OSIRIS-Apophis Explorer.
1. Ukraine liberated 32 square kilometers of territory around Robotyne
After Robotyne’s liberation over the last few days of August, things seemed to slow a bit. However, the lack of progress on the ground did not mean a stalled campaign. Ukraine used the following two weeks to consolidate its gains and soften the next set of Russian defensive lines. The result? Last week, Ukraine made significant gains in all directions. [map at the link]
Ukraine is systematically degrading Russian positions across the entire salient, preventing them from moving their reserves to plug any single hole.
We’ve all been looking at Ukrainian advances west of Verbove, and Ukrainian forces are at the edge of the settlement today (if not deeper into it, as some more outlandish and unsupported rumors currently claim). But look at how, having beached the Surovikin line in that direction, Ukraine is now sweeping down and around it, as I suggested they would three weeks ago. Remember, that main defensive line is on a ridge, requiring Ukraine to attack uphill. If Ukraine can execute a pincer maneuver and cut off that line from behind, it could precipitate a Russian withdrawal or surrender.
Still, I am most excited about that tiny sliver of liberated blue on the high ground west of Robotyne, because that’s the second major breach of the Surovikin line. Russia has struggled to contain one breach. A second one makes it an impossible task. The dam is bursting.
Yesterday, Russia released video of one of its soldiers ambushing and killing two Ukrainians. It was a sad and devastating loss, but it provided visual evidence that Ukraine is now at the edge of Novoprokopivka, directly south of Robotyne. These are solid advances against fierce Russian resistance.
2. Russian soldier admits to massive losses around Bakhmut
We’ve wondered endlessly why both sides are so obsessed with Bakhmut, a city with little strategic value. Over 9 months, Russia lost tens of thousands of men to take it, while Ukraine lost multiple thousands resisting that advance. And now, Ukraine is expending valuable resources and men to claw back territory all around the city.
Thanks to another Russian video, we know that Ukraine currently holds Khromove, literally on the western tip of Bakhmut. Only a small canal separates it from Bakhmut proper.
Ukraine has made more significant advances to the south, further consolidating its hold around Klishchiivka and has advanced to the edge of Kurdyumivka further south, having crossed a canal that protects it from the west. [map at the link]
This is the part of the discussion where I kvetch that Ukraine could better use those forces pretty much anywhere but here. But I’ll have to rethink that if this Russian dispatch from Russian television is true. [tweet and video at the link: […] The AFU keep almost all roads to Bakhmut under fire control. The 150th division’s medical unit receives from 100 to 150 wounded every day.]
[…] Given that half of Russia’s units around Bakhmut are VDV airborne or Spetsnaz special forces—the best trained units Russia can deploy—this would be catastrophic for the invaders.
For better context, we’d need to know 1) are those numbers accurate, and 2) what are Ukraine’s rate of losses in this direction. But there would certainly be no reason for a Russian soldier to exaggerate losses on Russian propaganda TV. At this rate, Russia is losing around 1,000 soldiers per week for this strategically insignificant plot of land. If Ukraine’s losses are modest in comparison, it’s a trade Ukraine will be happy to make.
3. ATACMS coming
ATACMS long-range missiles are coming.
Supposedly, U.S. President Joe Biden was always going to approve them, but it was supposed to be a big secret to catch Russia unawares, or something. “The decision was made before Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the US this week, but the Biden administration chose not to announce it publicly,” said the Financial Times report. “One person said this was to avoid tipping off the Russians.”
Never seen something so consequential cited to “one person.” It could be some random person on the street, or National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. The gamut of possibilities is large. And, it’s kind of stupid. Are we really going to believe that Russia would move its logistics back on the mere announcement that ATAMCS was coming? If so, they should’ve announced them a long time ago, even if they had no intention of sending them.
[…] But really, Ukraine already has long-range missiles. There’s nothing magical about ATACMS, other that it gives Ukraine more capabilities than it already has.
So don’t expect these to be game changing. They will be game … helping. Ukraine is already doing a good job of disrupting Russian logistics and command and control centers, and ATACMS will help. More excitingly, this opens up the likelihood that Germany delivers its Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. They have a range of 500 kilometers (300 miles), are cloaked in stealth technology, and pack a serious 500 kilogram warhead. Now those could be game changing, insofar that they have the range and punch to take down the Kerch Bridge.
Cutting Russia’s Crimean logistical lines would, indeed, change the game.
4. Speaking of Crimea
Earlier this month, Ukraine staged several daring missile and special forces raids to destroy Russian air defense capabilities in Crimea, including destroying two of its five billion-dollar S-400 batteries on the peninsula. And as a result, Ukraine now seems able to strike targets at will.
It started 10 days ago, when Ukraine destroyed a submarine and landing ship on a dry dock at Sevastopol, the massive Russian naval base on the southern tip of Crimea. But that was just the beginning, as last week, Ukraine destroyed the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, as well as destroyed two additional naval ships.
The Black Sea Fleet HQ was a particularly important strike, as Russian telegram sources claim the strike killed at least 34 officers, while Ukrainian intelligence claims the strike seriously injured two admirals and, plot twist, two key generals —Col. Gen. Alexander Romanchuck, who commands Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia, which is the southern front, and Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsekov, who has commanded various brigades, and might be serving as chief of staff for Romanchuck.
This suggests that the strike wasn’t just a random target, but was chosen because Ukrainian intelligence knew of the gathering. The strike was specifically targeted to hit senior Russians during a meeting. Russian propaganda is stunned. [tweet and video at the link]
Note, Russia has yet to strike any of Ukraine’s command and control buildings in Kyiv—the presidential palace, the legislature, the ministry of defense, etc. Given how eagerly they strike civilian targets, it’s bizarre how they’ve left Ukraine’s top governmental buildings alone. [Or, the air defense in Kyiv was improved before Russia could get the task done.]
Meanwhile, we don’t know much about the two additional ships Ukraine reportedly struck, other than Russian Telegram coping hard. Rybar, for example, claimed that the two ships were “slated to be written off.” Well, they’re sure as heck written off now!
Note, leadership decapitation is a key part of “shaping” operations. And Ukraine is systematically degrading Russia’s officer command. [tweet and images at the link]
Destroy Russia’s leadership and supply lines, and rolling up those defensive lines becomes infinitely easier.
5. M1 Abrams are arriving
I’m kinda cheating here—the M1s Abrams main battle tanks are arriving next week. But it was confirmed this week. With Russian defensive lines crumbling around Robotyne, one of the big questions is whether Ukraine has the reserves to exploit the breakthroughs. Adding 31 of the best tanks in the world should provide some much appreciated backup at just the right time.
There is no public information on what units will get them, but we are guessing they land with Ukraine’s 82nd airmobile brigade, currently fighting in that Robotyne salient. That unit operates T80BV tanks, which have the same kind of gas turbine engine as the Abrams. Their mechanics are already familiar with that kind of machinery, and their logistics are already built to sustain gas-guzzling tanks. An Abrams needs 2-3 gallons per mile. Not 2-3 miles per gallon, but 2-3 gallons per mile. Their logistical demands are astronomical.
—————————
A reminder that this “good week” comes at a horrific price. [Photo at the link]
“On the day of our victory, I’ll put away my uniform, don an elegant gown and heels, and celebrate. I’ll get married and have a big happy family. But I’ll never forget the men & women who died for our freedom,” Ivanna Lemeshko once wrote.
[…] So as we steam toward yet another GOP-manufactured crisis, we can only hope that Americans are starting to understand who’s really fucking everything up. (Psst, it’s Republicans. It’s always been Republicans. The call is coming from inside the House!) […]
Of course, it’s hard to argue—or negotiate—with political terrorists, which is precisely what Republicans are. We all witnessed their debt ceiling brinkmanship earlier this year, and now they’re fixing to impeach Joe Biden and shut down the government, largely to appease the Malignant Smegma Golem of Mar-a-Lago […]
Rep. Maxine Waters appeared on “The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart,” and she made clear that she’s done with Republicans trying to claim patriotism as their exclusive bailiwick. […]
CAPEHART: “Congressman [Brendan] Boyle, the ranking member on the Budget Committee, I think he said in one of the … Congressman Matt Gaetz is proposing cuts as high as 23%—budget cuts.”
WATERS: “Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely. And when you take a look at what they’re doing it shows that—you know the Republicans who have claimed patriotism, claimed that they love this country, they don’t care. If they will allow seniors and veterans not to be able to get their disability checks, for example. They don’t care. If they were to allow education to be dismantled in this country—they don’t care. If they don’t care about the people sleeping on the streets, the homeless, and they’re cutting housing vouchers, they’re not patriots. They are basically not only disrupting this country, they’re destroying it. And they cannot claim patriotism anymore. We, who fight for the people, claim patriotism. We’re the patriots, not them. For the Republicans, patriotism is lost. It’s gone.”
[…] I don’t know if Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg would have made a good president—though as the former mayor of a midsized Midwestern town he still has more relevant experience than Trump, who spent the bulk of his tenure shopping for Supreme Court justices who’d make abortion illegal […]
That said, Buttigieg is great on the teevee. If he ever gets tired of his transpo gig, he might want to think about advocating for Democrats and Democratic policies full time.
He appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Dana Bash and pointed out Republicans’ hypocrisy when it comes to … well, everything, really. But in this case, complaining about the dire repercussions of budget-slashing and deregulation when they’re the ones out on the wing ripping pieces off the engine. […]
BUTTIGIEG: “And I would add, the shutdown is being used by some House Republicans as leverage to get budget cuts over and above the deal that was made, which would also have an incredibly negative effect on …
BASH: “They didn’t like the deal in the first place.”
BUTTIGIEG: “Yeah, but think about what this means for transportation again. Obviously, I’m speaking mostly to what’s in my lane, but some of the very same House Republicans who were lining up to try to make a partisan political issue of air travel disruptions are proposing cuts that would make it harder to modernize our systems. Some of the very same House Republicans who were lining up to try to make the pain of the people of East Palestine, Ohio, into a partisan political issue would cut railroad safety inspections. It makes no sense.”
[…] Republicans are not interested in governing. They just want to sow chaos and force John Fetterman to wear a suit. Because that’s what’s really important, isn’t it?
George Takei:
Breaking: Sen. John Letterman to wear a suit to the Senate but it will be a TAN one.
[…] Republicans are making the same mistake they made in 2016. Instead of rallying around a marginally coherent, intermittently lucid candidate like former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, they’re splitting the primary vote a dozen different ways, leaving Trump all alone as the prohibitive favorite.
Ah, but Chris Christie doesn’t see it that way. [video at the link]
WELKER: “Former President Trump is solidifying his lead with GOP primary voters. You’ve been in this race since June, Governor. Why aren’t you gaining more traction?”
CHRISTIE: “Well, Kristen, look, I know you all spent a whole lot of money on national polls, so I don’t mean to go after the polling folks. But the fact is that national polls don’t matter. We don’t have a national primary. If you look at Donald Trump in the latest polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the two earliest states, he is barely at 40 in Iowa and he is under 40, at 34 and at 38, in New Hampshire. That means that between 60 and 65% of Republican voters in those two very important early states want an alternative. And in a place like New Hampshire, I’m in second place behind Donald Trump. So, you know, this whole race is going to change when people actually vote, Kristen. And no offense to any poll that comes out now, but if it’s a national poll, we don’t have a national primary, and I don’t spend more than three minutes thinking about it.”
Oh, come on, Kristen. You already know the answer to your question. It’s because Republican voters love chaos, autocracy, and merciless revenge against their enemies, which Trump is offering in spades. […]
On the bright side, Welker seems marginally more dignified now that she’s not interviewing a venal tub of McNugget sauce.
[…] Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, […] joined Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” to whine about Speaker Kevin McCarthy. […]
Bartiromo somehow gets Matt to admit the Republican-controlled House is completely useless. We all knew this, of course, but it’s nice to hear it straight from the horse’s arse.
BARTIROMO: “Well, [McCarthy’s] doing the four bills next week.”
GAETZ: “Because we’re making him! Because we’re making him!”
BARTIROMO: “But he’s doing it. So to push now, to blow up all of the wins that you all have had now …”
GAETZ: “Which wins? Please enumerate them.”
BARTIROMO: “Well, okay, well how about the fact that he has set up a weaponization committee to investigate the DOJ, whether they’re involved in a coverup?”
GAETZ: “That’s process!”
BARTIROMO: “Hold on. How about the fact that he has set up the China Select Committee to keep China to account and, of course, he has launched this inquiry into impeachment, potentially, for President Biden. Is that not what you want?”
GAETZ: “None of those things are deliverables. Those are steps in a process. Setting up a committee is an end unto itself only in Washington, D.C. … These committees have done nothing to reduce inflation. They’ve done nothing to actually constrain the Biden government. We can set up committees and have hearings and yell at people, but at the end of the day if we still send the check to fund a weaponized government, having a weaponization subcommittee is little relief to the American people. And if any of this was serious, we would be sending out subpoenas and compelling process the way the Jan. 6 committee did. We should be operating like them. Instead, we’re playing patty-cake with the Bidens. We’re allowing them to get away with it. And we’re funding it. We’re sending the money. If we were serious, use the power of the purse.”
We’re letting the Bidens get away with … that thing we’re sure they did, have no evidence for, and will surely discover just as soon as we impeach the president for high crimes and coffee cup-saluting. Oh, and we’re also taking a hard line against the weaponization of government. […]—we’re confident no one will notice the irony.
But the big takeaway here? This Republican-led House has been a colossal waste of time.
Link. There are many video snippets available at the link.
Ukraine is pinning down a newly created Russian reserve force near Bakhmut and is confident the 15,000-strong unit will be destroyed, Ukraine’s spy chief says.
Kyrylo Budanov told The War Zone that Ukraine was pinning down Russian forces in Bakhmut to prevent them from being deployed to other axes where its counteroffensive is pushing forward.
“The Russians recently redeployed their only reserve force – the 25th Army – which was just recently raised and hasn’t completed its creation,” he said.
“Now it’s redeployed to roughly the north of Bakhmut, and that’s the place where it’s going to be buried.” …
Even as attendance cratered and many elected Republicans steered clear, a faction of Michigan Republicans convened on Mackinac Island this weekend for the party’s biennial leadership conference, celebrating a community that embraced the same conspiracy theories and ultra-conservative policies.
Chair Kristina Karamo, while lambasting the theory of evolution, dispelled rumors she was planning to resign.
“Those who wish to maintain the status quo and manage inefficiently are angry that I’m chair,” she said. “Pound sand.” …
Speakers pushed theories of widespread election fraud and railed against vaccines, globalists and the “uniparty.” Charles Thurston, a speaker that claimed to unify the bible and medicine, appeared at the podium wearing the mask of a medieval plague doctor and a tri-cornered hat, ringing a bell to skewer the pandemic response.
Karamo introduced Kari Lake, the former Arizona gubernatorial candidate, as “the true governor of Arizona.” Like Karamo, Lake has been fined by a judge for filing a “frivolous” lawsuit baselessly alleging widespread election fraud in her election…
The next day, a plane was flying over the Grand Hotel, reportedly sponsored by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, towing a banner that read “Mike Rogers (R-Deep State.)” …
Ukrainian judges are helping to defend Kyiv by shooting Russian drones out of the sky, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Approximately 35 judges are part of a paramilitary squad called the Mriya, which comprises about 380 volunteers. Some of the judges are retired, while others still work within the judicial system of Ukraine.
The judges joined air defense efforts last fall when Russia started firing Iranian-made Shahed drones at Ukraine. The volunteers defend their capital with machine guns, strategically positioning themselves on Kyiv’s rooftops.
Their contributions complement the sophisticated Western air defense systems that have succeeded in thwarting many of the multiple attacks on Kyiv, per The Associated Press…
StevoRsays
A future hydrogen terminal near Whyalla has secured funding commitments from the state and federal governments, with expectations of “large-scale” global exports before the end of the decade. The state and federal governments have ratified funding arrangements for a so-called “hydrogen hub” at Port Bonython, committing to a combined $100 million spend, in addition to private sector funding.
The location, in South Australia’s Upper Spencer Gulf region, was earmarked by the previous federal government before last year’s election for future hydrogen projects.
Among them is what Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has described as a “large-scale export terminal” for “green” hydrogen.
“Because there’s such available land there of course, there’s abundant solar and wind resources, South Australia is primed to become a world-class low-cost hydrogen supplier, and the government has a comprehensive plan to develop a hydrogen industry in the Spencer Gulf,” Mr Albanese told ABC North and West SA this morning.
After several long consecutive days of negotiations, the Writers Guild of America and the labor group representing studios and streamers have reached a tentative deal on a new contract in a major development that could precipitate the end of a historic, 146-day writers strike.
The Writers Guild of America emailed strike captains the news on Sunday night, and shortly after, its negotiating committee informed all members. “We have reached a tentative agreement on a new 2023 MBA, which is to say an agreement in principle on all deal points, subject to drafting final contract language,” the latter message stated. “We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership.” …
StevoRsays
One of the people responsible for imprisoning & mistreating refugees in Australia is in trouble – not for that secuifically but still :
The secretary of the Home Affairs Department, Mike Pezzullo, has been asked to step aside as an investigation is conducted into text messages he is alleged to have sent to a Liberal Party powerbroker. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have published the texts said to have been sent over a number of years between Mr Pezzullo and Scott Briggs, an influential figure within the Liberal Party.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil on Monday morning asked Mr Pezzullo to stand aside while the messages are investigated by the Australian public service commissioner. …(Snip)…In a message allegedly sent to Mr Briggs during the Liberal Party’s 2018 leadership contest, Mr Pezzullo advocated for the appointment of a prominent conservative as home affairs minister.
“You need a right winger in there – people smugglers will be watching … Please feed that in [to Morrison and Turnbull],” the newspapers claim Mr Pezzullo said in one of the published messages.
Other messages regard appointments like attorney-general and defence minister.
Some of the conversations also appear to show disdain for parliamentary processes like Senate estimates, where senators are given the opportunity to grill departmental officials about policy.
Encountering the police in general can suck. It can be even worse when you’re a person of color. But LAs ABC7 reports that the Los Angeles County Sheriffs are trying something a bit different to improve interactions between the public and police. A new app is being tested that will allow people to video call the officer that’s pulling them over.
The sheriff’s department in West Hollywood is using a new app from a company called SafeStop. While details on how exactly this all works are a little light, the gist of it is when an officer initiates a traffic stop on a motorist, the driver will open up the SafeStop app on their phones and initiate a video call that allows the officer and driver to talk without ever having to leave their vehicles. Data shows that the first few moments of a traffic stop are critical in how things go forward; even more so when the stops involve Black drivers.
In a statement, SafeStop said that the app gives drivers “the ability to take the lead on alerting police to their presence and creating transparency in the process.” But why is something like that the job of the driver to do? But mostly it’s so these encounters with law enforcement can go well and cooler heads can prevail. LA County Sheriffs West Hollywood Capt. William Moulder called the app “an innovative new tool for our Deputies to use in appropriate situations during traffic stops.” And to incentivize drivers to use it, SafeStop says that for a limited time the company will pay a percentage of a driver’s ticket when they use the app…
StevoRsays
@249. Reginald Selkirk : Phew! I hope so! I hope the Union wins and I’m really looking forward to having Colbert among others back on TV. Been missing that show – and I blame the bosses for every bit of this.
StevoRsays
@249. Reginald Selkirk : Phew! I hope so! I hope the Union wins and I’m really looking forward to having Colbert among others back on TV. Been missing that show – and I blame the bosses for every bit of this.
Far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn ridicule for using an image of a Hanukah menorah in an attempt to commemorate the unrelated Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.
The derision the Georgia representative brought upon herself comes after she was previously criticized for perpetuating antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Green on Sunday posted a message on X – previously known as Twitter – on Sunday wishing observers a meaningful fast for Monday’s observation of Yom Kippur. She tried to add a traditional Yom Kippur greeting but mispelled it: “Gamar Chasima Tova!”
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Ukrainian sources are claiming that Russian Black Sea fleet admiral Viktor Sokolov died in the missile strike on Sevastopol on Friday. It is important to note at this point it is a claim that has not been independently verified. The Russian ministry of defence is yet to make any comment.
The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces said in an update that Friday’s attack killed Viktor Sokolov along with 33 other officers.
“After the hit of the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, 34 officers were killed, including the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet,” the Ukrainians said Monday, adding that more than 100 other Russian servicemen were wounded.
This statement must exist since it’s quoted by other news organizations, but no one is linking to it. NBC says rumors that he was killed in the strike were circulating over the weekend.
Comfort Town is a residential area of Kyiv built on a former industrial area. It was designed to brighten up the former grey Soviet buildings from the 1950s and 60s…
The Xokleng people of Santa Catarina state, after years of persecution, evictions and legal battles, have finally seen the rights to their ancestral lands endorsed by the state, with wide implications for other Indigenous groups…
The new death and casualty figures reported by Ukraine today following the missile strike that blasted the Crimean headquarters of Russia’s navy last week are a steep increase from the figures cited by its intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, at the weekend.
He said at least nine people were killed and 16 others wounded in the attack that left the building smouldering. He also said Alexander Romanchuk, a Russian general commanding forces along the key southeastern front line, was “in a very serious condition.”
Now, Ukraine claims 34 officers were killed, including the fleet commander, admiral Viktor Sokolov with 105 injured, but it has provided no evidence to support its claim and the claims have not yet been independently be verified. The figures are also vastly different from what Russia has reported. [Well, Russia lies.]
Russia’s military announced the attack on the building and initially said one serviceman was killed but later said the person was not killed but missing. Moscow has provided no further updates, AP reports…. [Right.]
birgerjohanssonsays
Very rare Kelvin Helmholtz clouds formed over my home town Umeå. Also, at night there has been several opportunities to see northern lights.
A statue of the dead cardinal and bishop Frans Hengsbach has been removed in Germany. And if you speculate about the reason, it is exactly what you think.
Donald Trump has demanded that the parent company of MSNBC and NBC be investigated for “treason” over what he described as “one-side and vicious coverage”.
In a Truth Social rant on Sunday, the former president threatened to launch a probe into Comcast if he wins the 2024 race.
“They are a true threat to Democracy and are, in fact, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE! The Fake News Media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great Country!” he wrote.
Mr Trump spent much of the weekend ranting on his social media platform.
In another post on Sunday, he demanded that “all” Senate Democrats resign over the charges facing Senator Bob Menendez – at a time when Mr Trump is refusing to step aside from the 2024 race while facing four criminal cases…
More dangerous threats coming from Trump, and new threats also coming from Paul Gosar:
First up, let’s see what Paul Gosar has to say:
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) used his weekly email newsletter — hosted on a .gov domain that is funded by American taxpayers — on Sunday to launch a thinly veiled, homophobic attack on Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, shockingly suggesting Milley should be put to death.
(Text from The Daily Beast.)
Commentary:
[…] As part of a bizarre harangue related to Jan. 6, the Arizona congressman referred to Milley as “the homosexual-promoting-BLM-activist Chairman of the military joint chiefs.” Gosar’s newsletter went on to say, “Of course, we now know that the deviant Milley was coordinating with Nancy Pelosi to hurt President Trump, and treasonously working behind Trump’s back. In a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung.”
I won’t bother to fact-check such a missive, except to note that Gosar’s claims are stark raving mad. […]
And now we turn to Trump’s latest incendiary language. From The Atlantic:
Late Friday night, the former president of the United States — and a leading candidate to be the next president — insinuated that America’s top general deserves to be put to death. That extraordinary sentence would be unthinkable in any other rich democracy.
What Trump wrote in his online posts:
This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States.
This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH! A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act. To be continued!!!
Commentary:
[…] To the extent that reality still has any meaning, Milley did contact Chinese officials in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, assuring Beijing that the United States was stable during the presidential transition process. The diplomatic outreach was, as The Washington Post reported, “authorized by Trump administration officials at the time.”
Or put another way, there is no sane way to characterize what transpired as “treasonous” — a word Trump has casually thrown around in recent years without cause — and the Republican’s reference to “DEATH!” was needlessly provocative and potentially dangerous. […]
More commentary from Steve Benen:
The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg spoke at length with Milley, and his latest report included this memorable paragraph: “Milley has told friends that he expects that if Trump returns to the White House, the newly elected president will come after him. ‘He’ll start throwing people in jail, and I’d be on the top of the list,’ he has said.”
It was, by her [Cassidy Hutchinson’s] telling, an administration awash in paranoia, with Mr. Meadows and others refusing to dispose of daily litter in “burn bags” for fear that someone from the “deep state” might intercept the contents. Instead, she writes, Mr. Meadows burned so many documents in his fireplace in the final days of the Trump presidency that his wife complained to Ms. Hutchinson about how expensive it had become to dry-clean the “bonfire” aroma from his suits.
Trump posted last month:
The January 6 unselect committee extinguished and destroyed all ‘evidence’ & records. Criminals!
Steve Benen:
[…]More recently, Trump appeared on “Meet the Press” and told NBC News’ Kristen Welker, in reference to the Jan. 6 investigation, “They burned all the evidence. Okay? They burned all the evidence.”
As it happens, there’s reason to believe someone burned evidence, but it wasn’t Jan. 6 investigators. […]
The British empire, in sentimental myth, was more free, more just and more fair than its rivals. But this claim that the British empire was ‘free’ and that, for all its flaws, it promised liberty to all its subjects was never true. The British empire was built on slavery.
Padraic X. Scanlan’s book Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain (Robinson, 2021) puts enslaved people at the centre the British empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In intimate, human detail, the chapters show how British imperial power and industrial capitalism were inextricable from plantation slavery. With vivid original research and careful synthesis of innovative historical scholarship, Slave Empire shows that British freedom and British slavery were made together.
In the nineteenth century, Britain abolished its slave trade, and then slavery in its colonial empire. Because Britain was the first European power to abolish slavery, many Victorian Britons believed theirs was a liberal empire, promoting universal freedom and civilisation. And yet, the shape of British liberty itself was shaped by the labour of enslaved African workers. There was no bright line between British imperial exploitation and the ‘civilisation’ that the empire promised to its subjects. Nineteenth-century liberals were blind to the ways more than two centuries of colonial slavery twisted the roots of ‘British liberty’.
Freedom – free elections, free labour, free trade – were watchwords in the Victorian era, but the empire was still sustained by the labour of enslaved people, in the United States, Cuba and elsewhere. Modern Britain has inherited the legacies and contradictions of a liberal empire built on slavery. Modern capitalism and liberalism emphasise ‘freedom’ – for individuals and for markets – but are built on human bondage.
…Connecting [Charles] Babbage’s theories of worker control and his architectures for computation is a unified objective: the discipline of purportedly “free” labor such that it could continue to produce for the British empire. The templates for worker control that shaped Babbage’s contributions to computing draw on technologies created on the plantation, which were already actively applied to control rebellious workers in industrial factories. The links between computation, plantation technology, and industrial labor control raise questions well beyond who gets to control systems of automation and computation in the present, assuming that systems controlled by those with benevolent intentions will produce positive outcomes.They request that we engage in more fundamental inquiries, examining the technologies of control that structure the core logics of computation and attending to the enabling conditions in which computational technologies are designed to work…
This presentation was a guest lecture in the Business Associations class in October 2020. Professor Caitlin Rosenthal is a Professor of history at UC Berkeley.
Can Britain escape from being a nation trapped in its past? In Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain (Penguin, 2023), Charlotte Lydia Riley, an Associate Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Southampton, and co-host of the Tomorrow Never Knows podcast explores the history of Britain as an imperial nation, both at home and abroad. The book shows how it is impossible to separate the history of post-war Britain from the history of empire, even as contemporary politics demands we misremember or deliberately forget. Moving chronologically from the 1940s to the present, but drawing on a wealth of themes and ideas, the book makes a compelling case for rethinking British, and global, identities in light of a reckoning with the role of empire in shaping society. An important historical and popular intervention, the book will be read widely beyond arts and humanities, and is essential reading for anyone keen to better understand the history of both Britain and the world today.
When uprisings against colonial rule broke out across the world after 1945, Britain responded with overwhelming and brutal force. Although this period has conventionally been dubbed “postwar,” it was punctuated by a succession of hard-fought, long-running conflicts that were geographically diffuse, morally ambiguous, and impervious to neat endings or declarations of victory. Ruthless counterinsurgencies in Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus rippled through British society, molding a home front defined not by the mass mobilization of resources, but by sentiments of uneasiness and the justifications they generated.
Age of Emergency: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire (Oxford UP, 2023) traces facts and feelings about violence as torture, summary executions, collective punishments, and other ruthless methods were employed in “states of emergency.” It examines how Britons at home learned to live with colonial warfare by examining activist campaigns, soldiers’ letters, missionary networks, newspaper stories, television dramas, sermons, novels, and plays. As knowledge of brutality spread, so did the tactics of accommodation aimed at undermining it. Some contemporaries cast doubt on facts about violence. Others stressed the unanticipated consequences of intervening to stop it. Still others aestheticized violence by celebrating visions of racial struggle or dramatizing the grim fatalism of dirty wars. Through their voices, Erik Linstrum narrates what violence looked, heard, and felt like as an empire ended, a history with unsettling echoes in our own time.
Vividly analyzing how far-off atrocities became domestic problems, Age of Emergency shows that the compromising entanglements of war extended far beyond the conflict zones of empire.
What are the origins of the hostile environment against immigrants in the UK? In We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire (Verso, 2021), Patel retells Britain’s recent history in an often shocking account of state racism that still resonates today.
In a series of post-war immigration laws from 1948 to 1971, arrivals from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa to Britain went from being citizens to being renamed immigrants. In the late 1960s, British officials drew upon an imperial vision of the world to contain what it saw as a vast immigration “crisis” involving British citizens, passing legislation to block their entry. As a result, British citizenship itself was redefined along racial lines, fatally compromising the Commonwealth and exposing the limits of Britain’s influence in world politics. Combining voices of so-called immigrants trying to make a home in Britain and the politicians, diplomats and commentators who were rethinking the nation, Ian Sanjay Patel excavates the reasons why Britain failed to create a post-imperial national identity….
In this episode of Beyond the Noise, Dr. Paul Offit discusses a recent court ruling in Mississippi put children at greater risk of vaccine-preventable diseases.
Gina Song Lopez is a PhD candidate at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies and a member of the Lund University Critical Animal Studies Network at Lund University in Sweden. Her research focuses on the Veg*n/plant-based movement in Taiwan and China. Meatless diets in East Asia have been traditionally associated with religious practice. However, in recent years there has been a noticeable expansion of motivations to adopt veganism and vegetarianism. The new generation of vegans and vegetarians are concerned about issues of animal protection, climate change, health, and self-cultivation. This shift brings attention to changing narratives around veg*n food and identity. As such, her project is also concerned with how ‘new’ veganism is translated into the regional cultural (and political) contexts and the actors involved in this translation.
[…] The best way to interview Donald Trump is simply this: Don’t. Trump has been given more free air time, by far, than any candidate in history. That was true in 2016 and 2020, and it’s still true now. Bringing Trump on and allowing him to speak is nothing short of a campaign contribution. By now, everyone in the news business should be well aware that inviting Trump onto a program is inviting him to spread lies and attack democracy for the length of his appearance. Anyone who doesn’t know this shouldn’t be in the news business.
But if Trump must be interviewed, the transcript of that “Meet the Press” interview offers a place to start in understanding how it should be done.
Here’s Welker’s start.
Welker: “There are a number of things that make your campaign unprecedented. You are the first former president to run for re-election in more than a hundred years. You are facing four indictments. You have an incredibly significant lead in the GOP primary polls. But I want to ask you this, Mr. President: Why do you want to be president again?”
There’s a lot to not like even in that opening, because after tossing off that Trump is facing four indictments, “why do you want to be president” shouldn’t be the immediate follow-up. But the real fault of the interview is apparent just a few seconds later.
Trump: “Well, it’s a very simple answer, and I can give it very easily. It’s called: “Make America Great Again.” Our country is in serious trouble. I don’t think we’ve ever been so low in terms of, certainly opinion, world opinion and country opinion.”
There. Right there. That’s where Welker should have stepped in to say that this isn’t true. World opinion of the United States right now is extremely positive. That opinion represents a huge rebound since President Joe Biden took office, with a Pew Research survey of 16 nations showing that “75% expressed confidence in Biden, compared with 17% for Trump.”
Welker should have interrupted Trump’s statement at this point and disputed his false characterization. Even if the numbers weren’t at her fingertips, certainly the broad knowledge that world opinion of the United States was vastly improved without Trump should have come readily. And she should not have left this point until that was clear.
No “let’s move along” or simply asking the next question. Nothing else until the truth of this point was clear. And if that was the whole interview—either because Trump never admitted the truth, or because he walked off the set in a huff—that’s fine. Any interviewer unwilling to accept the possibility that an interview may be terminated by a subject unwilling to admit to facts should never be engaging in an interview to begin with.
What actually happened is that Welker ignored this statement and allowed Trump to carry on lying about the state of immigration, about the economy, about the military, and about Afghanistan. She allowed him a side trip talking about how someone tried to keep him from saying “insane asylums,” and another excursion into lying about international terrorism. He was allowed to do it all uninterrupted.
Is world opinion of the U.S. the most important issue facing the nation? No, but by making it the keystone of his pitch about why he should be handed the White House keys again, Trump made it important. Most of all, by allowing this first lie to sail past without ever being touched, Trump and Welker together set the terms for their discussion: He would get to make lengthy, lie-riddled statements, and she would trail along behind him, picking just one or two things to challenge.
How many lies should journalists attempt to correct when confronting not just Trump, but any politician or candidate for public office? All of them. And especially the first of them, because letting that first one go is simply giving permission for an unlimited number to come.
Trump is an existential threat to both democracy and journalism. Treating him as anything less is trying to normalize the apocalypse.
Americans will once again be able to order free COVID-19 tests through the mail after the Biden administration announced last week it would relaunch its free-at-home COVID testing program ahead of a possible surge this winter.
Starting Monday, those interested can head to a government website to order four free COVID tests directly to their home. [Website: https://www.covid.gov/tests ] Each household is allowed up to four tests, intended to be used through the end of 2023.
[…] This marks the fifth round of free COVID-19 tests to households across the country, with a total of more than 755 million distributed since the program began. The program was suspended at the end of May to preserve the existing supply, but Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said the stockpile has been replenished.
The White House said it will also invest $600 million to purchase 200 million new tests from 12 domestic test manufacturers. […]
[…] Several differences in the blood of people with long Covid stood out from the other groups.
The activity of immune system cells called T cells and B cells — which help fight off germs — was “irregular” in long Covid patients, Putrino said. One of the strongest findings, he said, was that long Covid patients tended to have significantly lower levels of a hormone called cortisol.
A major function of the hormone is to make people feel alert and awake. Low cortisol could help explain why many people with long Covid experience profound fatigue, he said.
“It was one of the findings that most definitively separated the folks with long Covid from the people without long Covid,” Putrino said.
The finding likely signals that the brain is having trouble regulating hormones. The research team plans to dig deeper into the role cortisol may play in long Covid in future studies.
Meanwhile, doctors do not recommend simply boosting a person’s cortisol levels in an attempt to “fix” the problem.
“There is no evidence that replacing cortisol in someone with long Covid would be a safe or effective thing to do,” Sala said.
The study also found that dormant viruses, such as the one that causes mononucleosis, Epstein-Barr, come alive again in long Covid patients. It’s unclear, however, whether those old viruses are causing symptoms or flagging a problem within the immune system.
“We were looking for signals, and we found them,” said Akiko Iwasaki, one of the researchers and a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular and developmental biology at the Yale School of Medicine. “Now what we need to do is home in on each of these signals and understand better how the disease has been driven by these signals.”
The investigators did not find significant evidence that long Covid is the result of an autoimmune disorder, in which the body attacks itself.
Dr. Clinton Wright, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s division of clinical research, said additional studies will be necessary to find other ways Covid may lead to long-term symptoms. One theory is that the virus is hiding in brain tissue or other organs.
“We’re really interested in whether the virus still exists in reservoirs in the body,” he said. “It’s really hard to do that by measuring blood.” He was not involved with the new study.
Long Covid affects 1 in 13 U.S. adults, or 7.5%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings offer hope to patients like Joshua Roman, 39, of New York City, who participated in the study.
“We’re in such a mysterious swamp of symptoms,” he said. “My long Covid treatment is just management of symptoms.”
Roman, a professional musician who plays the cello, takes daily medication to ease the lingering physical trembling that affects his ability to perform.
“It would be great if we could get to the thing that’s causing me to shake in the first place, but we still don’t know exactly what that is,” he said.
Taylor Swift left Arrowhead Stadium with Kansas City NFL star Travis Kelce after cheering him on in his Sunday game while seated next to his mother. And yes, there’s a political angle here, thanks to the likes of right-wing personality Charlie Kirk—and thanks to Kelce’s own decisions. At age 33, he’s presumably contemplating what his life after the NFL will look like.
Swift’s attendance at the game followed rumors that she and Kelce were dating, as well as him publicly reiterating an invitation to her to come to a game. All this focused attention on Kelce and his recent endorsement decisions, which are legitimately interesting. In the wake of the right-wing boycott of Bud Light for its promotion with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, Kelce appeared in an ad for Bud Light. Last week, he appeared in a Pfizer commercial for COVID-19 and flu vaccination.
“With my schedule, saving time is key,” Kelce wrote on Instagram, alongside the video. “The CDC says you can get this season’s updated COVID-19 shot when you get your flu shot if you’re due for both. That’s why I got two shots in one stop! Ask your doctor or pharmacist if it would be right for you. You can also visit CDC’s vaccines.gov to learn more and schedule an appointment.”
This is not a guy looking to steer clear of controversy—he’s making money while telling us something about his values. He surely had other, equally lucrative endorsement offers. Kelce had taken some incoming fire over the Bud Light endorsement, including predictable labels like “woke.” But having Swift show up cheering for him renewed the attention on those decisions in predictably gross ways. [examples at the link]
[…] With influencers like Clay Travis [who suggested that Kelce “just go ahead and cut his dick off”] and Charlie Kirk whipping things up, the outrage flowed freely.
But here’s the thing: Swift and Kelce are huge stars—one a wee bit bigger than the other—in their respective fields, and they’ve made the decisions they’ve made, including Kelce’s endorsements and Swift pushing voter registration and making sure her “Eras” tour movie was made under an interim agreement with SAG-AFTRA, all with an understanding of the likely political fallout. The rage that we see at a big macho white guy daring to not stay in line with the right-wing culture wars is telling, as is the specific attack on his masculinity. But Kelce clearly decided that he was fine with that when he made his endorsement decisions. Basically, this is yet another thing Republicans are welcome to die mad about.
Meanwhile, doctors do not recommend simply boosting a person’s cortisol levels in an attempt to “fix” the problem.
“There is no evidence that replacing cortisol in someone with long Covid would be a safe or effective thing to do,” Sala said.
LOL. This is the US. People are 100% going to start trying that.
“With my schedule, saving time is key,” Kelce wrote on Instagram, alongside the video. “The CDC says you can get this season’s updated COVID-19 shot when you get your flu shot if you’re due for both. That’s why I got two shots in one stop!…”
A Missouri judge tossed Republican-written ballot summary language Monday that described several proposed constitutional amendments as allowing “dangerous and unregulated abortions until live birth.”
Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem rewrote the ballot summary to describe the language as establishing the “right to make decisions about reproductive health care, including abortion and contraception,” as well as undoing the state’s almost total ban on abortions.
In Missouri, summaries are provided to voters on ballots to help quickly explain sometimes lengthy and complicated proposals. The office of Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, which wrote the summaries, plans to appeal…
“With my schedule, saving time is key,” Kelce wrote on Instagram, alongside the video. “The CDC says you can get this season’s updated COVID-19 shot when you get your flu shot if you’re due for both. That’s why I got two shots in one stop!…”
I’m doing that this week!
Good. I have mine scheduled for the end of October. Trying to do the correct and reasonable things. :-)
While scientists well understand the physics of climate change, they don’t completely understand the effects it will have on a wide range of geophysical systems and processes, meaning we are embarking on a planet-size laboratory experiment in which we and every other living thing are the guinea pigs.
Take, for example, what is happening in New Orleans. Drought in the Midwest is contributing to record low river levels on the Mississippi that allows saltwater intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico upriver as far as New Orleans, threatening the drinking water supply of hundreds of thousands of people. Salt water is not only not potable but it can wreak havoc on drinking water infrastructure.
Consider this remarkable mitigation strategy just casually dropped into news articles about the official response:
The Corps of Engineers is also getting barges to transport water that can be combined with water at the treatment facilities for safe drinking. Colonel Jones said about 15 million gallons will be delivered in the coming days, but the demand at treatment facilities could ultimately rise to at least 36 million gallons per day. Colonel Jones said that the Army Corps was working to get access to more barges but that he was confident that figure could be met.
The scale of that undertaking is remarkable. It’s not clear how sustainable it is, either as a one-time stopgap this year or as a recurring strategy for each future dry summer.
In the meantime, as a temporary measure, the Army Corps is adding 25 feet of height to the underwater sill it built across the river below New Orleans over the summer. Because salt water is denser than fresh water, it sinks to the river bottom. A sill – like a dam but not breaching the surface of the water – is intended to keep the salt water from creeping further upstream while allowing fresh water to continue to flow downstream.
Long-term forecasts suggest that rain levels in the Mississippi River drainage won’t be enough to raise river levels sufficiently to flush the salt water down stream for weeks or months. […]
Take, for example, what is happening in New Orleans. Drought in the Midwest is contributing to record low river levels on the Mississippi that allows saltwater intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico upriver as far as New Orleans, threatening the drinking water supply of hundreds of thousands of people. Salt water is not only not potable but it can wreak havoc on drinking water infrastructure.
Consider this remarkable mitigation strategy just casually dropped into news articles about the official response:
The Corps of Engineers is also getting barges to transport water that can be combined with water at the treatment facilities for safe drinking. Colonel Jones said about 15 million gallons will be delivered in the coming days, but the demand at treatment facilities could ultimately rise to at least 36 million gallons per day. Colonel Jones said that the Army Corps was working to get access to more barges but that he was confident that figure could be met.
The scale of that undertaking is remarkable. It’s not clear how sustainable it is, either as a one-time stopgap this year or as a recurring strategy for each future dry summer.
In the meantime, as a temporary measure, the Army Corps is adding 25 feet of height to the underwater sill it built across the river below New Orleans over the summer. Because salt water is denser than fresh water, it sinks to the river bottom. A sill – like a dam but not breaching the surface of the water – is intended to keep the salt water from creeping further upstream while allowing fresh water to continue to flow downstream.
Long-term forecasts suggest that rain levels in the Mississippi River drainage won’t be enough to raise river levels sufficiently to flush the salt water down stream for weeks or months.
Text quoted from Talking Points Memo’s “Morning Memo.”
Extreme heat and low rainfall in the Midwest this summer caused the river level to plummet, making it vulnerable to a saltwater “wedge” from the Gulf of Mexico. […]
The Corps of Engineers is also getting barges to transport water that can be combined with water at the treatment facilities for safe drinking [in New Orleans]. Colonel Jones said about 15 million gallons will be delivered in the coming days, but the demand at treatment facilities could ultimately rise to at least 36 million gallons per day. Colonel Jones said that the Army Corps was working to get access to more barges but that he was confident that figure could be met. […]
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Monday that nuclear fusion is a pioneering technology and the Biden administration wants to harness it as part of the transition to clean energy.
As part of its energy agenda, the Biden administration wants to create a commercial nuclear fusion facility within 10 years, Granholm said in a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press in Vienna…
Ten years to commercially-produced fusion energy? That sounds ambitious and probably unlikely. And fusion facilities are very expensive, so if you start building before experimentation indicates a clear direction, there could be expensive setbacks.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed today that US Abrams tanks have arrived in Ukraine:
“Good news from Minister [of Defense Rustem] Umerov. ‘Abrams’ are already in Ukraine and are getting prepared to reinforce our brigades. I am grateful to our allies for fulfilling the agreements! We are looking for new contracts and expanding the geography of supply,” Zelensky said in a Telegram statement
The Pentagon has confirmed that Abrams have indeed arrived in Ukraine. The tanks had been in Germany for refurbishment. The Biden Administration has committed to sending 31 Abrams and at this point less than half of them have arrived, but US officials confirm that the rest will arrive over the next several weeks.
The U.S. sanctioned several Chinese and Russian companies on Monday for allegedly supplying a blacklisted Russian firm with parts to make drones for Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.
The Commerce Department announced sanctions against 28 entities in total, nine of which were implicated in the effort to sell parts to the blacklisted Special Technology Center to make drones for Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff.
“Our actions send a clear message to those trying to evade our export controls that there will be consequences for behavior that seeks to undermine U.S. national security interests,” Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Alan Estevez said in a statement.
“We will not hesitate to take swift and meaningful action against those who continue seeking to supply and support Putin’s illegal and immoral war in Ukraine,” Estevez added.
The China-based company Asia Pacific Links Ltd. and four Russian companies — Device Consulting, Grant Instrument, SMT-iLogic, and Streloy — were sanctioned on Monday for the alleged efforts to evade U.S. export controls.
Three Finnish companies — Evolog Oy, Luminor Oy, and Siberica Oy — and ICW-Industrial Components Weirich from Germany were similarly added to the U.S. trade blacklist over the scheme.
Another 10 additional companies from China, one other from Russia, five from Pakistan, two from Oman and one from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were also sanctioned on Monday for their involvement in “activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy of the United States.”
Hundreds of Armenians waiting for gasoline to flee the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh were injured in an explosion at a fuel depot on Monday, according to local officials, as senior U.S. officials visited Armenia and pledged humanitarian support to deal with a flood of refugees that began Sunday ahead of an imminent takeover by Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan recaptured most of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous area that is internationally recognized as its territory, during a brief war in 2020 that ended decades of Armenian occupation and control of the region. A truce hastily brokered by Russia helped end the fighting but left tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians living in the region, especially in the capital city, Stepanakert, without a long-term plan, but ostensibly under the protection of Russian peacekeepers.
A military offensive by Azerbaijan last week forced the self-declared government of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenians call Artsakh, to capitulate and agree to dismantle its armed forces. Warnings by local authorities that the advancing Azerbaijani forces would engage in “ethnic cleansing” have terrified residents and spurred thousands of people to evacuate to Armenia.
Russia last week again claimed to broker a cease-fire, but events in recent days demonstrated a stunning failure by Moscow to fulfill its peacekeeping role. Moscow was unable to prevent the military operation by Azerbaijan, to protect the Armenians living in the region or to enforce the terms of the 2020 cease-fire, which called for maintaining a highway that connects Stepanakert and Armenia. The highway, known as the Lachin Corridor, has been blocked for nearly a year, and closed entirely since mid-June.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov bristled on Monday at suggestions that Russian peacekeepers had failed in their mission. “We understand the emotional intensity of the moment, but we categorically disagree with the attempt to put the responsibility on the Russian side, and especially on the Russian peacekeepers, who are showing real heroism, performing their functions in accordance with the mandate that is in place,” Peskov said.
He insisted that “Armenia is a nation close to us,” and pledged continued dialogue with Yerevan.
But other nations appeared to be bracing for a humanitarian disaster.
More than 6,650 Armenians have left Nagorno-Karabakh since Sunday, according to Armenian officials, and thousands more want to leave. Residents are searching desperately for fuel and roads are choked. […]
Baku’s success in its military operation last week marked a sweeping change in a strategic and fragile South Caucasus region, traversed by crucial oil and gas pipelines, where Russia, Turkey and the West all jostle for influence and leverage.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought two wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, the first in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Armenia took control of Nagorno-Karabakh and several other regions of Azerbaijan, displacing more than half a million Azerbaijanis in a humiliating defeat for Baku. In the 44-day war in 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed most of the territory it had lost.
[…] Moscow was deeply irritated by a U.S.-Armenia military training exercise that ended last week, and by Pashinyan’s recent announcement that Armenia would join the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court. The court, which is located in The Hague, last year indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In her meeting with Pashinyan, she [Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development] spoke of Washington’s deep commitment “to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and democracy of Armenia,” signaling Washington’s support for Armenia as it faces a massive influx of displaced people, and the final loss of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region that has immense political, cultural and emotional significance to Armenians. […] the United States would direct resources to help the government provide refuge and support for those leaving the area, and “also to encourage other countries to do the same.”
[…] Pashinyan initially claimed there was “no direct threat” to the Armenian population of Nagorno- Karabakh but in a televised address Sunday he said there was a risk of mass murder. [Genocide]
[…]
… — so the big question is, can they get them all at once?
Since there are no data on giving this trio of vaccines at the same time, most experts advise a different strategy.
Take flu and COVID together, they told MedPage Today. The CDC endorses this, as there’s evidence and experience that people can take this combination just fine.
There’s also some evidence from the clinical trials of the two RSV vaccines that it’s okay to give flu and RSV shots together, said William Schaffner, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, who is also a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
But Schaffner told MedPage Today that some practitioners may be “a little bit more cautious about giving RSV along with the others,” and there “may not be too many people who want to get all three at the same time.”
“If there’s one [shot] that doctors might want to treat separately, it might be this newbie [RSV], because there simply hasn’t been that much experience with it,” he said…
President Emmanuel Macron announced Sunday that France will end its military presence in Niger and pull its ambassador out of the country as a result of the coup that removed the democratically elected president.
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan complained this week that he was uncomfortable with the use of what he described as ‘LGBT colors’ at the United Nations, which is decorated this week with bright colors promoting the Sustainable Development Goals. […]
There are 17 colors. It’s a lovely display. Photo at the link.
At the heart of every single Republican conspiracy about both President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine is a single claim. The claim is that Joe Biden got Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin sacked in order to protect energy company Burisma, where Hunter Biden was on the board.
That was the claim former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani brought back from Ukraine, and the basis on which Donald Trump tried to blackmail Ukraine and earned his first impeachment. Also, because Republicans keep saying things long after they know, we know, and they know we know that they’re lying, this claim is also behind the hearings being led by Rep. Jim Jordan in the House. It’s behind the messages being pushed by Rep. James Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley. And it’s the basis of an improbable number of stories at Fox News.
The idea that Shokin was fired to protect Burisma has been debunked so many times that de bunk is exhausted, but it has seldom gone down with as much grim satisfaction as it did on Sunday when Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade interviewed former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. [video at the link]
Kilmeade: Is that why he got fired? Because of the billion dollars and the former vice president, now president?
Poroshenko: First of all, this is a completely crazy person. This is something wrong with him. Second, there is not one single word of truth. And third, I hate the idea to make any comments and to make any intervention in the American election. We have very much enjoyed bipartisan support. Please do not use such person like Shokin to undermine the trust between bipartisan support and Ukraine.
It helps to get the laughter flowing if you know that Kilmeade is a near-constant spouter of this false claim who has been treating Shokin as a fount of wisdom. As for Shokin, in his portion of the recording, he states the Republican claim quite succinctly.
“Poroshenko fired me,” said Shokin, “at the insistence of the then-Vice President Biden because I was investigating Burisma. There were no complaints whatsoever and no problems with how I was performing at my job.”
Well, that seems like something that might be checked out. We can start with a Financial Times article where officials from a number of nations (not just the U.S.) sought the removal of Shokin for months before Biden ever became involved because Shokin was not investigating potential corruption cases, including Burisma, and was suspected of being corrupt himself. In addition to U.S. and E.U. officials, senior officials from the International Monetary Fund called for reforms because widespread corruption in Ukraine was seen as the country’s biggest obstacle to growth and stability.
And there was one other group really pushing for Shokin’s removal, as CNN reported in 2019. That group was the Senate Ukraine Caucus, where Republican member Sens. Rob Portman, Mark Kirk, and Ron Johnson dispatched a letter urging Poroshenko to “press ahead with urgent reforms to the Prosecutor General’s Office.”
Shokin’s own deputy testified that there was no active investigation into Burisma at the time of Biden’s actions. And not only was all this looked into as part of Trump’s impeachment, a Republican investigation launched in 2020 specifically to find any wrongdoing by Biden ended in an 87-page report that “contained no evidence that the elder Mr. Biden improperly manipulated American policy toward Ukraine or committed any other misdeed.”
The claim that Biden did something wrong in Ukraine wasn’t true, isn’t true, and can’t be made true through repetition. Shokin was fired because he was corrupt, bad at his job, and everyone complained.
As The Washington Post points out, Fox News and Republicans come out of this looking extremely foolish, though no one should expect them to admit it. They are deeply invested in this lie. In 2020, Republicans looked into this idea and realized it was baseless. But then, 2020 was a year when some Republicans still thought they could pull their party away from Trump and chart a course back to a world where they had both policies and a platform. Connections between Republicans and reality have become much more tenuous since then.
They’ll keep promoting the lie, because without it everything that Jordan, Comer, Grassley, and the rest are doing is revealed as pointless political theater in support of a lie. They know that we know that they know they are lying.
It helps that they don’t care.
I should apologize for bolding so much text for emphasis, but I am well and heartily tired of hearing Fox News and Republicans repeating that particular set of lies. It was really nice to see Poroshenko be so blunt.
On Monday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted that American M1 Abrams tanks were “already in Ukraine and are preparing to reinforce our brigades.” This confirmed a statement that President Joe Biden made last week when he indicated the tanks were to arrive within days.
It was only in May that Ukrainian troops began training in the operation and maintenance of the United States’ main battle tank, and some had suggested that the tanks were unlikely to see combat before the end of the year. However, it appears that timeline has now been busted. According to The New York Times, the arrival is “months ahead” of earlier estimates and means that the Abrams tanks are on hand in time to become involved in the counteroffensive Ukraine is conducting in Zaporizhzhia.
However, it’s not clear how soon those tanks will make their way to the front. Other Western tanks have often been retrofitted with cages to help protect against drones and with additional armor to guard against anti-tank weapons. That’s true of even the British Challenger 2, which arrived in Ukraine as one of the most heavily armored tanks in use. It’s likely that the Abrams will also receive some Ukraine-centric upgrades before it sees combat.
The 31 M1 Abrams tanks are unlikely to redefine operations along the front line any more than the Challenger 2, Leopard 2, or other Western-provided tanks. The pace of operations in the counteroffensive is being controlled at the moment by the difficulty of clearing thickly planted minefields and dealing with swarms of kamikaze drones. Those two things have gone a long way in turning operations in and around Robotyne and Verbove into an infantry-forward fight where tanks are not making as much impact as might be expected on either offense or defense.
However, there are some indications that Russia expended the majority of its mines ahead of those first defensive lines, and that minefields are becoming rarer and sparser as Ukraine penetrates more of the “Surovikin lines,” strong defensive lines named after Russian Gen. Sergey Surovikin. For example, some satellite images show a large number of vehicle tracks crossing fields in multiple places south of Verbove—which would be unlikely if Russia had those fields heavily mined.
There is still a chance, and maybe even a likelihood, that at some point in the future Ukraine could reach a point where those M1 Abrams could be used in a genuine tank-supported breakthrough.
[…] it’s amazing how much of the world’s rolling stock is currently represented on the front lines of Ukraine. Other than China’s Type 99 and the South Korean K2 Black Panther, just about the only representative of current main battle tanks not pulling up to the front lines in Zaporizhzhya is the French Leclerc (which France isn’t sending because their numbers are few and there’s no new tank ready to replace them).
[…] Tank designers are going to learn a lot from what happens in the coming weeks. A lot. Most of that won’t be about how these tanks perform in massed attacks against other tanks. It’s going to be about preserving the all-important crew when confronting mines, artillery, anti-tank weapons, and FPV drones. It’ll be about the changing role of armor on the battlefield.
Still, every now and then one of these tanks is going to get the chance to direct its gun at some Russian counterpart. That will be interesting, if brief.
In any case, the M1 Abrams has arrived in Ukraine. It’s unclear how many of the expected 31 tanks have been delivered. Regardless, expect Russia to announce it has destroyed 147 of them by Thursday. [Heh. Liking the dark humor.]
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[Tweet, videos, and map at the link: More information about yesterday’s Khalino military airfield incident. As per Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine: “At the airfield “Khalino” in the Kursk region, a Ukrainian drone was landed by Russian electronic warfare systems on the runway. When the leadership of the aviation regiment and FSB officers arrived for closer inspection drone exploded. As claimed, the following were killed or injured during the explosion”:
→ commander of the 14th aviation regiment;
→ one of his deputies;
→ a group of aviator officers;
→ a representative of the FSB military counterintelligence;
→ airport employees.]
This story from Liga.net concerning a drone reportedly brought down through electronic warfare near the city of Kursk, Russia, supposedly goes back to a source within Russian intelligence. It’s being widely reported, but there doesn’t seem to be any official confirmation of these events from either Ukraine or Russia, so keep in mind that some aspects of this story may represent either fanciful reporting or deliberate misinformation.
Still, if true, it shows how a drone can end up doing more valuable damage after being “captured.” If not true … it’s a pretty good propaganda piece designed to make Russia think twice about closely inspecting Ukrainian drones.
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Republican Sen. Mike Lee wants to know who let the corgis out. [Tweet at the link: Someone’s behind the pro-Ukraine troll campaign known as “NAFO.” Who is it? A few possible candidates have been suggested. Which one seems most likely to you? https://thegrayzone.com/2022/10/28/spooks-mercs-hawks-nafo-troll/
Pentagon Contractor, 10.4%
CIA Contractor, 43.9%
Ukraine (using U.S. $), 20.7%
Soros]
Lee insists that there is some nefarious force—not skipping the side order of antisemitism—behind the online effort to troll Russian military bloggers, tankies, and bots. And it’s hard to decide if he’s being grotesque or merely harebrained. Maybe a little of both. In any case, it’s always interesting to see a U.S. senator so clearly taking directions from Russia.
Once upon a time, when British secret service officers were being recruited to spy for the Soviet Union, they would occasionally be shown a glorious Order of Lenin or other big reward that was awaiting them on that day when their task was over and they were at last allowed to defect to the motherland. Considering some of Lee’s solo trips to Moscow, it seems possible that Vladimir Putin might have tipped open a box to give Lee a glimpse of an oh-so-shiny Hero of the Russian Federation just waiting for his special day. [Heh. More black humor. Unfortunately, probably on the nose this time. Putin wing of the Republican Party.]
——————————
Fighting continues to be heavy in the area around Verbove, where Ukrainian forces have occupied the second Surovikin Line and reportedly moved into the western part of the village. […] Ukraine has consolidated its gains around Robotyne and north of the first line of defensive trenches. Now the struggle is to clear more of the defenses in that second line, secure the town of Verbove along with local high ground, and prepare to move on.
Self-described Ukrainian military officer Tatarigami_UA has put together a thread showing the combined use of several forms of available data to determine the current situation. [Tweet and map at the link]
Out of this, the most important message may be: “I want to emphasize that russian defense has not collapsed. Despite enduring substantial losses and being compelled to retreat, they still maintained control over their forces and afforded organized retreat, continuing to present a formidable challenge to our forces.”
Russian hasn’t been routed, but it is retreating. Satellite imagery appears to show Russian vehicles heading south out of Verbove. However, if accurate, that shouldn’t be taken as any signal that the village has been abandoned, or that Russia has in any sense surrendered the area. Ukraine has also taken some heavy losses as it has moved into Verbove and the fight at the moment is described as exceptionally difficult. Ukraine may take Verbove in days, or they may be still working to control this area for some time. NASA FIRMS data suggests the area to the northeast of Verbove, where a series of trenches are known to exist, is currently being pounded. [List of losses at the link]
The official areas of control are about where they were last week, but there are reasons to believe that Ukraine has taken areas both inside the town and to the north. On Saturday, it was reported that Ukraine had moved armored vehicles (reportedly including BMPs and Bradleys) across the second line of defenses and used them in the attack on Verbove, supposedly losing several vehicles in the process. The losses are definitely not good. However, that Ukraine is able to bring these vehicles to the fight shows that their control over those defensive lines has expanded and is solid at this point. It also suggests that the minefields around Verbove are not nearly as dense as those north of Robotyne. [Tweets at the link]
In the area south of Bakhmut, Ukraine continues to hold Klishchiivka and Andriivka in the face of repeated Russian assaults. Considering the Ukrainian guns positioned on high ridges west of the town, dislodging Ukraine from this area would take a considerable effort, but Russians are reportedly lining up a big swing designed to recapture some of this territory. Ukraine’s public concerns about this reported upcoming assault could be real, or they could be taunting Russian commanders who have repeatedly launched failed and costly attacks from the east.
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In case you’re in the mood to start your own Russian military, you can snap up this MiG-21 for less than the cost of a late-model Cessna.
Why show up at your next conference in a Learjet when you can smash some windows with your supersonic arrival? Missiles not included.
————————
Imagine lining up enough drones to have this coming across the battlefield Doctor Manhattan-style? [Tweet and video at the link, showing the Grand Opening Ceremony of the 19th Asian games in Hangzhou, china on September 23, 2023.]
—————————–
As this was being written, air raid sirens were sounding in Sevastopol. Ukraine is reportedly mounting another attack on Russian military targets in Crimea.
House Republican extremists holding the government hostage want you to believe that they just want to “rein in” government spending and “get our fiscal house in order.” One former legislative counsel for Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul even advises, “A good old government shutdown is exactly what we need right now,” arguing that it will “push the budget closer to balance.”
Then there’s reality: Shutting down the government costs taxpayers billions of dollars in lost fees, revenue, administrative costs to both shut down and start government agencies back up, and back pay for furloughed federal employees. It means small businesses can’t get loans from the federal government for the duration. It will delay people from getting federally backed home loans. And while the Republican-controlled House is fiddling around doing nothing to solve the pending shutdown, it’s also not reauthorizing a bunch of other programs with a direct impact on people’s lives.
According to a 2019 investigation by a Senate subcommittee, “the last three government shutdowns cost taxpayers nearly $4 billion—at least $3.7 billion in back pay to furloughed federal workers, and at least $338 million in other costs associated with the shutdowns, including extra administrative work, lost revenue, and late fees on interest payments.” Everything from entrance fees at national parks to souvenir sales at gift shops shuts down, along with the government.
Some of the largest agencies couldn’t provide estimates on the shutdowns’ cost to their operations, including the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, Justice, and Commerce, and the Environmental Protection Agency. But among the agencies that did report, the figures for lost days of work are eye-popping and indicate “the combined total of furlough days during all three shutdowns was about 14,859,144, representing an estimated 56,938 years of lost productivity for those agency employees.”
[…] Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale, one of the GOP hard-liners pushing a shutdown over fiscal terms, downplayed the impact. “The government continues on, business as usual,” he said. “When we have these supposed shutdowns, it’s more like a slowdown.” It’s true that the government continues on, business as usual, for him and other members of Congress—they’ll still be getting paid. The hundreds of thousands of federal workers who will be furloughed, however, won’t get a paycheck for as long as the shutdown continues.
Compounding the looming shutdown is the fact that the House has been too chaotic to accomplish most of what it was supposed to do by now. For instance, they haven’t passed a farm bill, which means that a bunch of programs—including crop insurance, nutrition programs such as SNAP, rural development funds, and agricultural research and conservation programs—expire at the end of the week. Flood insurance and disaster relief funds are also drying up as the clock ticks down.
Grants and other funding for child care programs expire at the end of the week. The authorization for welfare benefits, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, expires as well. Without congressional action, hospitals around the country that take a disproportionate share of Medicaid patients will see as much as a 54% cut in reimbursements beginning next month.
All of this has an impact not just on millions of lives, but on the economy. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the 35-day shutdown in 2019 lowered the gross domestic product by a total of $11 billion for the first half of that year, and estimated that $3 billion of that would never be recovered. […]
Hurting almost everyone, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and not accomplishing the Republican’s stated goal of “reining in” government spending. As good an example of shooting themselves in foot (feet?) as we’ve seen.
Vivek Ramaswamy is a serial plagiarizer who has no original ideas so plagiarizes (steals) material. In his tweet, Vivek plagiarized (word-for-word) a 2019 article in Foreign Policy magazine, and that’s not all. Vivek’s main campaign slogans are plagiarized from successful politicians: President FDR, President Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders, & President FDR. In August, Vivek got caught plagiarizing from President Obama during the Maga/GOP debate. [More examples at the link]
Vivek’s plagiarism of Bernie Sanders is particularly disturbing. Whereas Bernie’s “Revolution” was/is about improving the American experiment by pushing for equity for all Americans, in all facets: Wages, Healthcare, Education etc. Vivek’s “Revolution” requires destroying and ravaging the entire American experiment & being left with nothing but dust. [image at the link] Notice in his plagiarism of President Lincoln, the 38 year Vivek even uses the same ‘side profile’ photo as Lincoln.
[…] In Aug 2023, the 38-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy had spent his entire adult life as a hedge fund grifter. In fact, by August 2023, Vivek:
– Vivek paid Wiki editors to scrub his wiki page,
– His SuperPAC was formed (Feb 17, 2023)
– Had never engaged in any public service in his entire life,
– Had never advocated for any policy—ever,
– Had never registered to vote as “Republican” (and still isn’t),
– Had never voted in any primary election,
– Had never voted in any state or local election,
– He made millions Insider Trading: pump/dump scamming investors with his fake-Alzeheimer’s drugs
– Incorporated his two main companies Roivant, and Axiovant in Bermuda to avoid paying US taxes, (not in America).
That’s a lot of words to say Vivek Ramaswamy is a serial plagiarizer who has no original ideas so plagiarizes (steals) material.
Trump spox idiot Steven Cheung posted a video earlier — link now go POOF! for some mysterious reason — from a campaign stop at the Palmetto State Armory in Summerville, South Carolina, saying Trump had bought a Glock.
The meaning of the now deleted tweet isn’t really up for interpretation, unless you want to haggle over what the meaning of “purchase” is, or unless you make it a policy to never believe Donald Trump has actually paid for something unless you personally witnessed him actually handing over the money, in which case you are SMRT. [Tweet and image at the link]
It was a whole thing. Here are some screengrabs from the video: [Screen grabs at the link]
Oooooooooh! What do you have there? Is it Big Mac is it Diet Coke is it 11,780 votes is it [P-Word] is it gun?
Smile with your new gun friend, Donald! No, a real smile.
OK fine, guess that’s your real smile. Fuck it. School picture day must have been garbage in the Trump household.
OK, time for a silly one! Gun friend will hold the real gun and you hold your finger like a gun and and we’ll both close our eyes and we’ll point them at each other like “PEW PEW PEW!” [JFC!]
Gun friends like to joke around and have fun.
[…] So in the (now deleted) video, Trump says “I want to buy one.” But did he? And did they even have a Glock that would fit hands that little?
No, Donald Trump did not buy a gun during his trip to South Carolina on Monday – he only said he wanted to.
Social media lit up after the Trump campaign posted a video of him admiring a gun with a likeness of him branded onto it. A now-deleted post said the former president “purchases” a Glock, which was dubbed “Trump 45.”
“I want to buy one,” Trump said at one point. “Isn’t a Glock a great gun?”
Trump posed for pictures with the gun – his entourage included Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – but he did not actually buy it.
That would have been illegal because Trump is under indictment in four criminal cases…
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #294…
Randall Garrett in his book Too Many Magicians does some word play on that. There is a character named Neapeler Einzig living on the Isle of Man, who sends word to his niece using a Manxman named Colin MacDaffyd as a courier. It all ties in with the series that was MacCallum’s first big hit.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, said on Monday that it’s a “make-or-break” moment for the Republican Party to take a stand against former President Trump ahead of the 2024 election.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Hutchinson told host Rachel Maddow that while she still considers herself a Republican, she doesn’t believe that her former employer is a “Strong Republican.”
“I do not believe that Mr. Trump is a strong Republican. But in this election cycle, in my opinion, it’s a make-or-break moment for the Republican Party,” Hutchinson told Maddow. “Now is the time if these politicians, these men and some women, that are currently in Congress want to make the break and want to take the stand, they have to do it now.”
Hutchinson also said that she doesn’t understand why Republican lawmakers are still willing to support Trump, even with the ongoing controversy and legal challenges that surround him.
“I think it’s extremely disappointing, and it’s not a hard issue to take. We’re talking about a man who at the very essence of his being almost destroyed democracy in one day and he wants to do it again. He wants to run for President to do it again,” Hutchinson added.
“He has been indicted four times since January 6. I would not have a clear conscience and be able to sleep at night if I were a Republican in Congress that supported Donald Trump,” she concluded. “And I think that if they’re not willing to split with that, then we’re in serious danger for the party.”
It’s been a year since Hutchinson, who was an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified before the now defunct select committee investigating the Jan 6., 2021 attacks at the Capitol. She was the first member of the Trump administration to do so.
Hutchinson’s remarks come a month after Trump, along with 18 of his allies, were indicted by a Georgia grand jury on charges tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
[…] Hutchinson’s appearance on Maddow’s program was focused on her new book, titled “Enough,” which details her experience working under the Trump administration and the events that lead to her testifying before Congress.
Hutchinson’s new book is set to publish on Tuesday.
KGsays
Ten years to commercially-produced fusion energy? That sounds ambitious and probably unlikely. – Reginald Selkirk@279
I’d say “complete and utter crap” is nearer the mark.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the drawing of a new Alabama congressional map with greater representation for Black voters to proceed, rejecting the state’s plea to retain Republican-drawn lines that were struck down by a lower court.
In refusing to intervene, the justices, without any noted dissent, allowed a court-appointed special master’s work to continue. On Monday, he submitted three proposals that would create a second congressional district where Black voters comprise a majority of the voting age population or close to it…
Federal lawsuits over state and congressional districts also are pending in Georgia, Louisiana and Texas…
Ukraine’s Defence Forces targeted the temporary command post of the Russians in Kherson Oblast, following a tip-off from the Security Service of Ukraine.
Source: Ukrainska Pravda source in the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU)
Details: The video of the recent explosion in the temporary command post of the Russians near Kherson was provided by a source to the UP.
Reportedly, thanks to the tip-off from the SSU, the HIMARS missile “visited” the daily meeting of Russian officers of the 24th Motorised Rifle Regiment of the 70th Motorised Rifle Division.
Quote: “The meeting ended early: eight officers ended as 200 and seven ended as 300 [military slang terms; 200 means killed in action, and 300 means wounded – ed.].”
A discussion of how Trump is really worse than he was in 2019, … and still going downhill:
In the same way that the United States is not immune from the ravages of political violence, it has no special ability to put the toothpaste of political violence back in the tube once it’s unleashed.
Make no mistake: It has been unleashed.
“Trump’s real, enduring legacy is his successful introduction of violence, the threat of violence, and targeted harassment into the dynamics of our political system, as if they were all just a natural extension of democratic disagreement,” Juliette Kayyem rightly observed in The Atlantic this summer.
The past few days have reinforced how unhinged Trump has continued to become and how political violence is the core of his message and for many his central appeal. Since Friday, Trump has:
– Suggested the country’s top general should be executed for treason;
– Threatened retaliation against one of the country’s largest media companies for “Country Threatening Treason“;
– Urged Republicans in Congress to shut down the government, as “the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots,” and later ominously said: “It’s time Republicans learned how to fight!” against “the Radical Left Marxists, Fascists and Thugs – THE DEMOCRATS.”
The Trump of today is not the same as the Trump of 2019 or even the Trump of Jan. 6. He is cornered, under indictment, facing the deprivation of his liberty if convicted – and winning the presidency is his only way out. He will stop at nothing, do anything, and tear down everything to protect himself.
I don’t usually find myself pointing you to Nick Catoggio, but he had a thoughtful post on these developments:
Strive to resist numbness. Because despite all the blather about Biden and Trump being the two most known “known quantities” in politics, we actually don’t know how dangerous and destabilizing Trump might prove to be as his mind bends under the strain of an election and four indictments. Or whether it’ll break entirely once he’s back in power and surrounded by the most obsequious fascist toadies he can find.
Scroll down at the link in comment 303 to view interviews with Cassidy Hutchinson.
She rejects Matt Gaetz’s claim that he dated her: “I have much higher standards in men.”
She describes the reckless and careless handling of classified materials during the Trump administration.
“Cass, I don’t want you to go to work on January 6th. Are you looking at the news? Crazy people are going to that rally.“ — Cassidy Hutchinson’s mom mastering open-source intelligence five days before Jan. 6.
After weeks of delay, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has finally scheduled a Garcia hearing in the Mar-a-Lago case to address the conflicts of interest of defense counsel. But she did so in a way that renews concerns about her experience, competence, and diligence:
– Cannon set the hearing for Oct. 12, meaning an additional delay of 2 1/2 weeks plus whatever time she needs after that to issue a ruling. Not having the witnesses or standby counsel present at the hearing risks further delays if she later decides she does need their participation.
– Cannon denied Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for the witnesses who have conflicted counsel to appear for the hearing.
– Cannon denied Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to have standby counsel available for defendants with conflicted counsel to confer.
Big picture is these are routine matters that are usually handled expeditiously, and they’re not here. More granularly, Cannon seems grudging and resistant to even routine moves by the special counsel’s team. (For a deeper dive, read Joyce Vance.)
In this instance, the prosecutor is trying to protect his case and the court’s resources from an attack on the verdict later by one of the defendants on the grounds that they had insufficient legal representation under the Sixth Amendment, so how she handles it is important even if it is, or should be, routine.
Scroll down at the link in comment 303 to view “What’s Aileen Cannon Up To Now?”
birgerjohanssonsays
Half of North America is one big delta island. https://youtu.be/mN2flAvdQXU
Orinoco and the Amazon river are also connected to one of these bifurcated rivers.
Bifurcations are usually found at river deltas or at small river islands and very rarely elsewhere.
With Monday’s Maddow interview of Cassidy Hutchinson, we know that Previous Guy, “…chanted along with insurrectionists demanding to “hang Mike Pence” as he watched on live TV during the January 6 attacks.
“We all should want the republic to survive. But in the way that Mr. Trump’s trajectory is currently going, I am not confident he will have it survive and I would just encourage them to think about that.” […]
Posted by Aaron Rupar, with accompanying video snippet:
Cassidy Hutchinson on MSNBC: “Do we want people who have already shown that they are willing and want to overthrow an election for a duly elected president, which is the pinnacle of our democracy — do we want to put people like that back in power?”
Elon Musk has been warned by the EU Commission to comply with sweeping new laws on fake news and Russian propaganda after his site formerly known as Twitter was found to have the highest rate of disinformation posts of all large social media platforms.
Facebook was the second-worst offender, according to the first-ever report recording posts that will be deemed illegal across the EU under the new Digital Services Act which came into force in August.
However, Facebook and other tech giants such as Google, TikTok and Microsoft, have signed up to a code of practice which the EU has drawn up to ensure they could be ready in time to operate within the confines of the new laws.
Twitter/X left the code of practice, but is obliged under the new law to comply with the rules or face a ban across the EU.
Google-owned YouTube has told the EU that it has removed more than 400 channels involved in co-ordinated influence operations linked to the Russian state-sponsored Internet Research Agency.
Google has removed advertising from almost 300 sites linked to state-funded propaganda sites.
Meta has expanded its fact-checking to 26 partners covering 22 languages in the EU.
TikTok fact-checking covers Russian, Ukrainian and 17 other languages via a new partnership with the Reuters news agency.
Microsoft has downgraded questionable information in relation to 800,000 search queries. about the war in Ukraine.
Commissioner Jourová said the Kremlin propaganda was a multimillion-euro weapon of mass manipulation aimed both internally at the Russians as well as Europeans and the rest of the world and the very large platforms must address this risk. The war in Ukraine was the most frequent topic for propaganda but the platforms also reported hate speech in relation to migration, LBGTQ+ communities and the climate crisis.
“I think one of the advantages of disinformation is that they are so predictable,” said Jourová, making it easier for factcheckers to find. On Twitter/X, she said “disinformation actors were found to have significantly more followers than their non-disinformation counterparts and tend to have joined the platform more recently than non-disinformation users”.
Failure to comply with the new EU law could lead to hefty fines of up to 6% of the company’s global annual turnover and in case of repeated offences or willful non-compliance to a complete ban across the entire EU.
The decisive moment will come at the end of the year when very large online platforms must publish their first risk assessment to be audited by external auditors. However, Twitter/X’s ability to comply must be called into question after its wholesale dismantling of existing transparency and safety features.
However, unlike the other large tech companies, Europe has never been a major market for Twitter/X — its market in the UK, which has now left the EU, is worth roughly as much, if not more, as the entire EU.
Predicably, Twitter/X replied to both The Guardian’s and EURACTIV’s request for comment with a poop emoji.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals this morning abruptly withdrew Monday’s order giving red states a chance for an even bigger win in a case that has blocked much of the Biden administration from flagging misinformation on social media sites.
The 5th Circuit’s Clerk of Court told TPM that the original order was a “clerical error.”
A three-judge panel had on Monday quickly granted the red states a rehearing as they seek to get another couple government agencies blocked from communicating with the tech companies. The judges did so without giving the government a chance to respond, seeming to run afoul of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure that govern the court.
After the court withdrew that order Tuesday in a stunning turnaround, the court’s clerk told TPM that the withdrawal corrected a staff error.
“The order today cures a clerical error made by my staff,” Clerk Lyle Cayce said in an email. “The court intended yesterday only to permit the filing of a motion for panel rehearing — but the order we entered made it appear that a rehearing was granted. That was erroneous and not in accordance with direction.”
“As you know, the mandate was issued forthwith, and the parties are still within the time permitted to request rehearing,” he added. “So, the order today withdrew the erroneous order and recalled the mandate, giving the court jurisdiction to consider any petition for rehearing filed by noon, September 28.”
The about-face by the appeals court appeared to come after the Justice Department, which is defending the government in the case, had brought the latest developments to the attention of the Supreme Court, which was already considering its stay request. In a blistering memorandum to the high court, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar described the irregular move by the Fifth Circuit panel as a “procedural impropriety,” “unreasoned” and “unexplained.”
“Although Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 40(a)(3) provides that ‘no response to a petition for panel rehearing is permitted’ ‘[u]nless the court requests’ one and that ‘[o]rdinarily, rehearing will not be granted in the absence of such a request,’ the Fifth Circuit never requested a response from the government,” Prelogar wrote. “And although the Fifth Circuit had already issued its mandate — thereby divesting itself of authority over the case — the court also did not purport to recall the mandate or explain why that step would be justified.”
By late this morning, the 5th Circuit panel addressed Prelogar’s complaints by giving the government a chance to respond to the petition — due Thursday at noon — and recalling its mandate, essentially shifting jurisdiction back into its own hands. It also asserted that the district court ruling would remain on ice until the rehearing petition is resolved, which is something the Justice Department has originally asked for and been denied.
In an additional procedural wrinkle, these flip-flopping orders come as the Biden administration had already appealed the panel’s ruling to the Supreme Court, where it’s also requesting a stay. In Monday’s filing, Prelogar asked that the government’s stay request be applied to any expansion of the panel’s original ruling.
“A stay of any expanded injunction would also be warranted because of the procedural impropriety of substantially expanding the injunction after issuance of the mandate and without giving the government an opportunity to be heard,” she wrote.
Posted by readers of the article:
Judges overshoot, hear about it from their bosses at FedSoc, then underbuss some staff…
When President Joe Biden arrived at a Michigan picket line Tuesday, it was the first time a sitting U.S. president is known to have done so, historians say. Biden made the trip at the invitation of United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, who accompanied him as he spoke to striking workers.
“You guys, UAW, you saved the automobile industry back in 2008 and before. You made a lot of sacrifices, gave a lot when the companies were in trouble, and now they’re doing incredibly well. And guess what, you should be doing incredibly well too,” Biden said, who was at times drowned out by applause. “You deserve a significant raise you need, and other benefits. Let’s get back what we lost, okay? We saved them, it’s about time for them to step up for us.” [video at the link]
Biden’s visit to Michigan came a day ahead of a Donald Trump speech that was initially billed as outreach to union workers but is being held at a nonunion auto parts manufacturer. Trump is trying to play the populist and the stronger job-creator, but it rings false on both fronts:
With Biden and Trump both courting auto workers in MI today, a quick refresher on auto industry jobs created/month under recent presidents.
*Clinton: 1,800
*Bush: -5,800
*Obama: 2,800
*Trump (pre-Covid): 600
*Trump (total): -200
*Biden: 4,000 [graph at the link]
While the UAW has not yet endorsed Biden for reelection, Fain strongly rebuffed Trump’s efforts to portray himself as an ally of union workers.
“Every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers,” Fain said in a statement shared with news organizations when Trump announced his Michigan speech. “We can’t keep electing billionaires and millionaires that don’t have any understanding what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems of the working class.”
During Trump’s time in the White House, his record was one of hostility to workers and unions, even as he occasionally claimed to be on the side of workers for political advantage. Trump’s administration, the Economic Policy Institute summarized, “rolled back worker protections, proposed budgets that slash funding for agencies that safeguard workers’ rights, wages, and safety, and consistently attacked workers’ ability to organize and collectively bargain.”
Yep. All correct.
Posted by readers of the article:
Well done Mr. President. It’s hilarious that the former rancid Chee-toh guy is showing his support for the UAW and the strikers by giving a MAGA rally whine at a non-union parts supplier.
————————–
Kudos to Biden. The real election issue boils down to BidenEconmics vs MAGAeconomics. MAGAeconomics is based on the “trickle down theory” brought to us by President Reagan. The trickle down theory has never worked for working people and never will. Let’s vote for BidenEconomics.
———————–
“But he’s old” *snark* He’s gonna get my vote!
——————–
One of my favorite Joe Biden moments of all time, happening right now. Yes!
I hope the strike resolves soon, and on terms that are decent enough for the UAW.
On Monday, Sen. Josh Hawley became the rare high-profile Republican to visit a United Auto Workers picket line. But don’t rush to give him credit for supporting workers: Hawley used the occasion to slam efforts to fight climate change, pitting American workers against the environment.
Hawley, like Donald Trump and some other Republicans, points to China’s big head start in electric vehicle and battery manufacturing to suggest that the U.S. shouldn’t promote electric vehicles, because they’ll just be manufactured in China. Democrats, on the other hand, are fighting—against fierce Republican resistance—to build the domestic supply chain and support U.S. manufacturing. The Inflation Reduction Act included provisions to support electric vehicle and battery production in this country. A shift to electric vehicles could cut jobs, it’s true—but doing it the right way, with policy supports in place, could mean more auto jobs, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis.
Republicans want to block climate efforts and then wail about how Democrats are harming workers—and that was Hawley’s real intent in bragging about his support for the UAW strikers. [Tweet and images at the link]
Hawley’s ulterior motive is clear when you look at his record: Hawley, a Missouri Republican, has a 0% agreement rating in the most recent United Autoworkers Labor Union scorecard.
Hawley has a lifetime score of 12% on the AFL-CIO legislative scorecard, though he did score a whopping 17% in 2022. That’s below the Senate Republican average. One visit to the picket line to claim that he thinks autoworkers should be paid better—and that climate change initiatives are to blame for their situation—does not make him some hero of the working class.
Yes, Rudy Giuliani is being hit with yet another lawsuit.
Hunter Biden has filed a civil suit against Rudy Giuliani, a number of shell companies through which Giuliani does business, and Giuliani’s attorney Robert Costello. The suit charges Giuliani and Costello with violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, specifically accessing Hunter Biden’s personal information “without authorization or exceeding authorized access,” resulting in the “total annihilation” of his digital privacy.
Additionally, the suit reminds the court—and everyone else—that for all the talk of “Hunter Biden’s laptop,” there is no laptop. There never was. Instead, “Defendants themselves admit that their purported possession of a ‘laptop’ is in fact not a ‘laptop’ at all. It is, according to their own public statements, an ‘external drive’ that Defendants were told contained hundreds of gigabytes of Plaintiff’s personal data.”
According to Giuliani, the data on that drive came from John Paul Mac Isaac, the former owner of a computer repair shop, who claimed to have data taken from one of Hunter Biden’s laptops and who offered to send it to Giuliani. According to the lawsuit, neither Isaac nor Giuliani ever maintained any kind of chain of custody on this data, and the data they have has been not just accessed but also tampered with, manipulated, altered, and damaged.
The basis of the lawsuit is the claim that Giuliani and Costello violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing the data stored on the external drive sent to them by Isaac. Hunter Biden specifically does not admit that all the data on the drive was ever in his possession, or that Isaac was ever actually in possession of a laptop that Biden had owned.
What the lawsuit alleges of Giuliani seems patently obvious.
Plaintiff is informed and believes and thereon alleges for the past many months Defendant Giuliani has spent many hours hacking into and manipulating data that he claims to have been obtained from Plaintiff, making copies of the data for himself and others to access and analyze, and further altering, impairing and damaging the data through his unlawful hacking and manipulation. In public interviews and media appearances and during podcasts, Defendant Giuliani has not only admitted but bragged about downloading data from Plaintiff’s “laptop” (even though he only had a hard drive) onto his own computer; about using his own computer to access, tamper with and manipulate the downloaded data; and about maintaining multiple copies of the data for his and Defendant Costello’s personal use.
[Yep, that sound like Giuliani’s modus operandi.]
[…] It’s clear that both men have repeatedly accessed the information, that Giuliani has hired others in an attempt to recover more information from the hard drive, and that the data has been altered and tampered with at least to the extent of being edited into pieces that Giuliani has provided to the media or used on his own podcast.
The move to try the suit in California is particularly important for the second claim made in the suit, which addresses how Giuliani obtained information from the hard drive that allowed him to access more information that was stored on Hunter Biden’s “cloud” accounts. That kind of violation is specifically addressed in California’s penal code. Hunter Biden also notes that this data came from a computer used for business purposes, a critical point in providing protections under both federal and California law. […]
[…] Sen. Bob Menendez from New Jersey was indicted last week for bribery, corruption, and a not-so-secret plan to aid Egypt’s authoritarian government. He allegedly was paid off in gold bars and cash-stuffed envelopes like a common gangster. This is obviously bad, even for a US Senate with a relaxed dress code, but Menendez refuses to resign. That makes sense, considering the Senate is how he gets all his gold bars. You don’t want to kill the golden goose job.
Menendez claimed he was the true victim, a target of a “smear campaign” because his political opponents “simply cannot accept that a first generation Latin American from humble beginnings could rise to be a US senator.” No, I just can’t accept that anyone from anywhere would keep their bribe money stuffed in suit pockets, Goodfellas style. New Jersey deserves a corrupt senator with a brain in their head.
Monday, a defiant Menendez denied keeping gold bars around the house like a Bond villain but he did offer a comically absurd explanation for all that cash the cops found. [video at the link]
“For 30 years, I have withdrawn thousands of dollars in cash from my personal savings account for emergencies and because of the history of my family facing confiscation in Cuba,” he said at a press conference in front of people who could see and hear him.
This story moved me to tears, and I could barely compose myself to conduct a quick Google search: Menendez was born in New York to Cuban immigrants in 1954, five years before Castro assumed military and political power in Cuba, but we’re sure the second-hand experience was traumatizing. […]
Menendez thinks we’re gullible enough to believe the $480,000 in cash found in his home came from his “personal savings.” Sure.
[I don’t have an opinion on this … yet. Waiting for more facts. People are effing weird when it comes to money. One of my grandmothers hid money all over her house, and the cash was found after she died. If Menendez is telling the truth about that part of the story, then he should have records of those bank withdrawals. I note that Menendez did not talk about the gold bars, payments to his wife, etc.]
[…] As of today’s writing, 17 Democratic senators have joined Fetterman and called for Menendez’s resignation: Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Peter Welch, Elizabeth Warren, Jon Tester, Bob Casey, Tammy Baldwin, Jacky Rosen, Martin Heinrich, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Kelly, Michael Bennet, Ed Markey, Kirsten Gillibrand (don’t even start in the comments), Mazie Hirono, Maggie Hassan, and Raphael Warnock.
Not sure what’s holding up the others, including (not a Dem) Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, who quickly defended Senate “decorum” from Fetterman’s shorts.
Meanwhile, Menendez maintains support from the strangest people. [Tweet from Tom Cotton] Tom Cotton posted this morning: “Senator Menendez has a right to test the government’s evidence in court, just like any other citizen. He should be judged by jurors and New Jersey’s voters, not by Democratic politicians who now view him as inconvenient to their hold on power.”
It’s predictably cynical of Republicans to refuse to believe that Democrats might have honorable motivations for their actions. However, you can also appreciate why Republicans might not want to take the public position that a federal indictment alone disqualifies you from political office.
Wonkette discusses more weird and misleading coverage of Joe Biden and age-related issues: “Axios Can Now Confidently Report That Joe Biden Wears Tennis Shoes.”
Axios: it’s the website where paragraphs are too hard, but on the other hand the journalism is just OK.
But not today.
Today, Axios has a SCOOP! and it is that the entire national security apparatus of the United States of America has been mobilized to prevent President Falls-A-Lot from fall down go boom.
President Biden and his campaign are working on a critical project for his re-election bid: Make sure he doesn’t trip.
Is that what they’re doing?
As voters express deep concerns about the 80-year-old president’s age and fitness for office, Biden’s team is taking extra steps to prevent him from stumbling in public — as he did in June, when he tripped over a sandbag at the Air Force Academy.
Are they?
– With a physical therapist, Biden has been doing exercises to improve his balance as far back as November 2021.
Exercises, the bullet point says? How long has this madness been going on? Oh, it says almost two years. We should have read to the end of the bullet point.
Since his stumble in June, he has been wearing tennis shoes more often to avoid slipping — and using the short stairs on Air Force One, entering the plane on a lower deck than before.
Tennis shoes, heaven forfend! And he’s not even scaling the side of the plane with his sticky spider feet like he used to.
Can we trust this man not to start a land war against NATO?
Why it matters:
Nope.
Because again, the scoop is “tennis shoes.”
Axios went to print because it got multiple sources (and publicly available pictures going back months) to confirm that “tennis shoes.” (We should note that Fox Business had the scoop of “tennis shoes” two months ago, as did Politico. We guess it took Axios two additional months to confirm its own independent reportage.)
Axios includes the requisite anonymous quotes from “many Democrats” and “senior Democrats” who are furious with Biden, or terrified Biden will fall, or just generally having an ennui about Biden.
Then Axios writes each one of these bullet points to explain that it’s uncovered incontrovertible evidence that an 80-year-old man has arthritis:
– Biden works out many mornings with physical therapist Drew Contreras, who also worked with former President Obama.
– Biden’s doctor has recommended exercises for balance, which he called “proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.”
– What the maneuvers entail is unclear.
– “I have never heard the term ‘proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.’ It is not a clinical term in standard use,” said Professor James Gordon, associate dean and chair of the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California.
“What the maneuvers entail is unclear” is what a real human being employed by Axios typed about the president’s motherfuckin’ exercises.
So this has been cool. What have we learned? We have learned that nobody wants Joe Biden to fall down and he has arthritis like a common 80-year-old and sometimes he does some exercises but Axios [doesn’t] know which ones he does.
Oh yes, and we learned “tennis shoes.”
Thanks for all your hard journalistic work, guys.
At the bottom of the article Axios mentions in passing that youthful 77-year-old Donald Trump accused Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark Milley of treason this weekend and accused NBC News of treason this weekend. Then it starts talking about Joe Biden being old again.
Axios does not include the fact that Trump expressed awe and wonderment last night over migrants possessing cell phones, asked sincerely if the veterans of our armed forces possess cell phones, and then embarked on an extended soliloquy about windmills giving orcas clinical depression, anxiety, and probably erectile dysfunction.
It could have included those things, but it was too busy linking to polls that show that when the Dunning Krugers of the Beltway Journalism and Polling Club incessantly call American voters and ask them if they’re worried about Joe Biden’s oldness, some Americans say they have concerns.
The White House is making fun of Axios. “Move over, tan suit!” [Tweet at the link]
White House Comms Director Ben LaBolt replied to Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates to confirm that this is “The single greatest scandal in presidential history (since President Obama wore a tan suit).”
We are all stupider because Axios went to work this morning.
We also have yet more repetition, repetition, repetition that Joe Biden is old. They are trying very hard to make this a major issue. One would think that they are having trouble landing any of their other accusations.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Elon Musk in his office a couple of weeks ago, and according to a message the California Republican published to social media, the GOP leader told Musk “he would have better luck” with the Justice Department “if he changed his last name to Biden.”
This was, of course, intended to be amusing. In the political picture Republicans are desperate for the public to believe, the Justice Department has been corrupted to such a degree that the president’s relatives and allies can get away with crimes scot-free.
It was literally the day after the McCarthy/Musk meeting, of course, when federal prosecutors charged Hunter Biden, the president’s son, doing obvious harm to the misguided GOP talking point.
Last week, after the Justice Department indicted a sitting Democratic senator — the year ahead of his 2024 re-election campaign — NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked Rep. Don Bacon whether the charges undercut the partisan claims about two systems of justice. “I think it does to a degree,” the Nebraska Republican replied.
Given the circumstances, the “to a degree” caveat was unnecessary. A New York Times report summarized the larger context nicely:
On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee repeatedly accused Attorney General Merrick B. Garland of singling out former President Donald J. Trump for selective prosecution, slamming him for what they call a “two-tiered system” of justice. Forty-eight hours later, the Justice Department indicted one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate — Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee — on bribery charges, making public a trove of evidence, including cash and gold bars stashed at his house.
The whole idea of a “two-tiered” justice system has long been a lazy argument, concocted to help respond to the Trump indictments, in large part because attacking federal prosecutors with baseless allegations has been easier than trying to deal with the substance of the allegations pending against the former president.
[…] This month’s indictments against Hunter Biden and Menendez did additional harm to the talking point that never should’ve been uttered.
[…] We know, of course, that it won’t silence those critics — assorted voices on the right are already incorporating the charges into their conspiracy theories about the Justice Department — but given the circumstances, it’s become effectively impossible to take those complaints seriously.
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says he isn’t confident in the government’s explanation of what happened in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, continuing his penchant for entertaining conspiracy theories.
“I don’t know what happened on 9/11,” Kennedy said in a podcast interview with journalist Peter Bergen released Tuesday. “I know there’s strange things that happened… One of the buildings came down that wasn’t hit by a plane.”
Kennedy referred to the conspiracy theory surrounding World Trade Center Building 7, a smaller office building in the World Trade Center complex that collapsed after debris from the two towers started fires. […]
A liberal watchdog group on Monday sued a secret panel investigating the criteria for impeaching a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, asking a judge to order the panel to stop meeting behind closed doors.
The panel is a government body and therefore required by state law to meet in public, attorneys for American Oversight argued in a complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court.
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos established the panel of three former state Supreme Court justices earlier this month as he considers taking the unprecedented step of impeaching Justice Janet Protasiewicz. He has refused to say who is on the panel…
birgerjohanssonsays
A famous ex-president claimed windmills drive whales batty, and seemed to confuse Jeb Bush with George W Bush.
Reginald Selkirksays
@ 187, 200, 313 Menendez
So he’s just got a bunch of envelopes full of cash sitting around. Sounds entirely innocent‽
Is there any indication that this is from criminal activity?
United States Attorney’s Office – Southern District of New York
… Some of the envelopes contained the fingerprints and/or DNA of DAIBES or his driver.
… During this same search, agents also found home furnishings provided by HANA and DAIBES, the luxury vehicle paid for by URIBE parked in the garage, as well as over one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gold bars in the home, which were provided by either HANA or DAIBES.
… For example, in or about July 2019, after the mortgage company for the residence of NADINE MENENDEZ initiated foreclosure proceedings, HANA caused IS EG Halal to pay approximately $23,000 to bring the mortgage current. HANA did so after a series of discussions with NADINE MENENDEZ, as well as URIBE and DAIBES, about various options for bringing the mortgage current. Later in 2019, HANA and DAIBES caused IS EG Halal to issue three $10,000 checks to NADINE MENENDEZ for a low-or-no-show job. As the scheme continued, including through the additional actions described below, MENENDEZ and NADINE MENENDEZ received additional bribes, including gold and cash.
Also in 2019, HANA and URIBE offered to help buy a new Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible worth more than $60,000 for MENENDEZ and NADINE MENENDEZ. ..
… Thereafter, URIBE made monthly payments to Mercedes-Benz for the convertible between 2019 and June 2022. URIBE only stopped making those monthly payments after the FBI approached MENENDEZ, NADINE MENENDEZ, and URIBE in connection with this investigation…
Since these are serious prosecutors, when they say home furnishings or gold bars “were provided by either HANA or DAIBES” I expect they would be able to present specific evidence that is the case. And the DNA evidence is a nice touch.
Authorities arrested a man who they say was minutes away from carrying out a mass shooting at a church in Northern Virginia on Sunday morning.
Rui Jiang, 35, was taken into custody with a loaded gun and extra ammo at Park Valley Church in Haymarket. Authorities said he was on a mission to kill.
“This was a thwarted diabolical plot to kill churchgoers in Haymarket, Virginia … and local law enforcement stopped it,” Chief Kevin Davis of the Fairfax County Police Department said…
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., will undergo a voluntary pay cut if Congress does not avert a government shutdown by its Sept. 30 deadline.
In a letter to House Chief Administration Officer Catherine Szpindor, Gaetz said he does not expect to be compensated throughout a shutdown, despite a provision in the Constitution that allows for him to continue to receive pay…
Sounds like a noble gesture, but keep in mind that most members of Congress are relatively rich, either because only rich people can afford to run for office or because they have used their positions to enrich themselves. We don’t need a legislature where only millionaires need apply.
Scientists investigating the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines have revealed key new details of explosions linked to the event, which remains unsolved on its first anniversary.
Researchers in Norway shared with the Guardian seismic evidence of the four explosions, becoming the first national body to publicly confirm the second two detonations, as well as revealing a detailed timeline of events…
Reginald @326, yep, it looks like the Trump Organization is now toast. More details below:
With Donald Trump already facing four criminal indictments across the three jurisdictions, it might seem hard to believe that his legal predicaments could get even more serious. But there’s a pending civil case that poses a dramatic threat to the former president, his business, and his finances.
The Associated Press reported on a major development in a closely watched case in New York.
A judge has ruled that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House. Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling Tuesday in a civil lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.
The full, 35-page ruling is available online here.
In case anyone needs a refresher, it was exactly a year ago this week when New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a sweeping lawsuit against the former president and the Trump Organization. The civil case was rather devastating: The state attorney general’s office, pointing to more than 200 instances of fraud over 10 years, announced that it was seeking roughly $250 million in civil penalties.
As a New York Times report explained, that case is still ongoing, but James’ office has won “a major victory” now that a judge has concluded that Trump did, in fact, fraudulently inflate the value of his assets “to obtain favorable loans and insurance deals.”
What this latest ruling indicates is that the evidence was so clear that a trial isn’t necessary to prove the underlying claim about Trump defrauding lenders. The judge agreed that James’ argument about Trump’s financial misconduct was true, and elements of the defense from the former president were ultimately “preposterous.”
The AP’s report added that Engoron “ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations.”
Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor and an MSNBC legal analyst, responded via social media, “This is New York’s corporate death penalty, applied to Trump because of years of misconduct.”
The former president has not yet issued a written response to the developments, though if recent history is any guide, a hysterical, all-caps tirade appears inevitable.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is desperately trying to avoid the heat over the looming Republican-caused government shutdown and aim it at President Joe Biden instead. When reporters pushed him Tuesday morning over his inability to get his House Republicans in order and avert a shutdown, and asked whether he’d have to turn to Democrats for votes, McCarthy tried to pass the buck and change the subject.
“I think it’d be very important to have a meeting with the president,” McCarthy said. “The president could keep government open by doing something on the border.”
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s new book detailing the last days of the Donald Trump administration, “Enough,” is now on shelves. It appears safe to say that whatever you thought was going on inside Team Trump, the reality was probably worse. Initial reviews of the book mostly appear to be expressing shock at the many, many anecdotes of recklessness, incompetence, and law-skirting.
CNN’s initial review seems the most complete so far, and even the summary is a ride. “If I can get through this job and manage to keep [Trump] out of jail, I’ll have done a good job,” White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows allegedly told Hutchinson in June of 2020 as Trump’s reelection fight was in full swing. That really does seem to describe the larger White House Cult of Trump: Keep your head down, keep the boss happy, and try to distract the buffoon when he demands you do something criminal.
One of the most noteworthy episodes of something criminal might be Hutchinson’s allegations that Meadows was burning so many papers in his office fireplace that his wife complained she couldn’t keep up with the dry cleaning. “[A]ll his suits smell like a bonfire,” she complained. But Hutchinson also relates Meadows handing over classified documents to far-right media personalities, as well as both White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s attempts to get them back and his acidic request to her to inform Meadows that “we cannot pardon Kimberly Guilfoyle’s gynecologist.” And no, he wasn’t joking.
It seems the mishandling of classified documents was widespread on the Trump team. On a Monday appearance on the “Rachel Maddow Show,” Hutchinson carefully allowed that she and “colleagues” were “under the impression that how classified documents were being handled was not within proper protocol.” We may never know just how many classified documents left the White House after Trump, Meadows, or others simply handed them off.
And to this day, we’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer on what might have been burned in those days when Meadows’ fireplace was apparently billowing smoke like an evacuating Russian embassy. There hasn’t been much speculation on it, either. When it comes to things Meadows and others would absolutely want the public to never see, the possibilities seem nearly infinite.
It’s Hutchinson’s many apparent examples of cavalier lawbreaking and worse that would appear to be the most noteworthy bits of the book. One example is her already-known account of Trump’s furious reaction when his security team informed him that his Jan. 6 crowd wasn’t going through the metal detectors to get into the area of his planned speech, and Trump demanded that they get rid of the detectors and let the crowd stay armed. The press has seized more quickly on some of the more tawdry goings-on, however. Among the first leaks from the book was Hutchinson’s account of being groped by Rudy Giuliani on Jan. 6, just before the mob stormed the Capitol. It’s another gross episode for Giuliani, to be sure, but not nearly as consequential as the coup attempt that the rally had been organized to help facilitate.
Likewise, there’s one exceptionally satisfying bit of gross in Hutchinson’s description of Rep. Matt Gaetz being an obnoxious manslut. Hutchinson described that incident during her Maddow interview, and Jeebus, this guy may be the creepiest creep in Washington—but at least Hutchinson gets her public revenge. [video at the link]
Remember when former Rep. Madison Cawthorn publicly claimed his Republican colleagues had invited him to orgies and done cocaine in his presence? House Republican leadership had a full-on meltdown, reacting with more fury toward Cawthorn for saying that than they ever directed toward any of the sex-trafficking, theater-groping, murder-advocating cretins in their ranks. You’ll never convince me Cawthorn wasn’t referring to Gaetz, and that dozens of Gaetz’s fellow House members know damn well he was referring to Gaetz.
As for what Hutchinson has learned from all of this, it does not seem to include an acknowledgement that the Republican Party is an irredeemable cesspit of fascism and corruption. That seems inevitable for a person who stayed around until the bitter, history-defining, and seditious end of Trump’s term. Again on Maddow, Hutchinson said of her party’s continued support for Trump: “I don’t think we are a part of the same Republican Party. I still consider myself a Republican. I consider myself a Republican in the sense of Sen. Mitt Romney and the Reagan Republican Party.”
But the Republican Party of Romney, Cheney, and Reagan no longer exists, except in the still-starry minds of pundits and book authors. That other Republican Party has been purged. It is dead. It has no staff, no power, and no plausible candidates. The purge was very public and very thorough; Romney was perhaps the last notable survivor. Even among Trump’s Republican detractors, challengers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the question is not whether to reject Trumpism but how best to capture Trumpism, with its hunger for cruelty and contempt for moderation, and retain it as Republicanism’s core even when Trump himself departs the scene. […]
Senate Republicans and Democrats reached agreement on Tuesday on a stopgap spending plan that would head off a government shutdown on Sunday while providing billions in disaster relief and aid to Ukraine, according to officials in both parties, but the measure faced resistance in the Republican-led House.
The bill, which is slated to face a test vote late Tuesday afternoon, would keep government funding flowing through Nov. 17 to allow more time for negotiations over yearlong spending bills and provide about $6 billion for the Ukraine war effort as well as approximately $6 billion for disaster relief in the wake of a series of wildfires and floods.
Senate leaders hoped to pass it by the end of the week and send it to the House in time to avert a shutdown now set to begin at midnight Saturday. But there was no guarantee that Speaker Kevin McCarthy would bring the legislation to the House floor for a vote, since some far-right Republicans have said they would try to remove him from his post if he did.
Still, in putting it forward, Senate leaders in both parties were ratcheting up the pressure on Mr. McCarthy, who has failed to put together a temporary spending plan of his own.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said the Senate agreement “will continue to fund the government at present levels while maintaining our commitment to Ukraine’s security and humanitarian needs while also ensuring those impacted by disasters across the country begin to get the resources they need.”
The Senate proposal would meet stiff resistance from House Republicans both because it includes assistance for Ukraine that many of them oppose and also maintains federal funding at current levels. Many House Republicans are demanding steep cuts in even an interim funding plan. As a result, Mr. McCarthy would need Democratic votes to pass it, and leaning on Democrats would stir a backlash from his own party.
Mr. McCarthy on Tuesday morning told reporters at the Capitol that he would not address “hypotheticals” about whether he would put a stopgap plan passed by the Senate to a vote on the House floor. He and his deputies were toiling ahead of a scheduled vote on Tuesday evening to round up support to allow a group of yearlong spending bills to come to the floor for debate, even as a group of hard-right Republicans vowed to continue blocking them.
[…] Senate leaders were hoping for a strong bipartisan vote for the interim funding as a show of strength to put added pressure on Mr. McCarthy. The measure would require 60 votes in the Senate to advance.
Senate negotiators had considered trying to move forward with a stopgap bill that would simply maintain funding at current levels, considering that might be the least complicated path for Mr. McCarthy.
But senators of both parties pressed for some assistance to Ukraine, arguing that to ignore the Biden administration’s request for more aid would be an affront to the U.S. ally after President Volodymyr Zelensky made a personal appeal to members of Congress just last week. Both the Ukraine money and disaster recovery funding are seen as down payments on the full amounts requested by the Biden administration — nearly $25 billion for Ukraine and $16 billion for the disaster recovery fund.
[…] The so-called continuing resolution would also extend authority for expiring Federal Aviation Administration programs through the end of the year, extend some community health programs and maintain higher pay for those fighting wildfires as the original source of the firefighting money is running low.
The Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. government’s primary business regulator, sued Amazon on Tuesday, alleging that the company has used its market power to warp ecommerce across the internet. […]
California will double the taxes on guns and ammunition and use the money to pay for more security at public schools and various violence prevention programs under a new law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Tuesday. […]
A judge granted Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ request to restrict identifying information about jurors in the Georgia election interference case, a new court filing shows. In a two-page order Monday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee imposed strict limits regarding the identities of jurors involved in any trial in the case against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants. […]
According to a new peer-reviewed study in the journal Nature, the anti-viral drug dubbed molnupiravir is linked to specific SARS-CoV-2 mutation signatures that happened to spring up in 2022 when the drug was introduced.
The study’s authors—led by researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London and the University of Cambridge—scanned through more than 15 million SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences found in global databases. They picked out unique mutation signatures that closely linked to signatures seen in viruses from patients known to have been treated with molnupiravir. These suspected molnupiravir-linked mutation signatures also matched those seen in viruses examined in a clinical trial of molnupiravir. Overall, the signatures appeared in older people, who are most likely to have been treated with an antiviral, and people in countries where molnupiravir has often been used.
Beyond simply finding molnupiravir-linked mutations, the researchers noted concerning features of them. The researchers found evidence that some of the molnupiravir-linked mutations were under positive selection—that is, they increased in frequency, suggesting that they were advantageous to the virus in some way. They also noted that some viruses with molnupiravir-linked mutations were passed on from person to person in clusters, which suggested onward transmission of these drug-induced mutations…
A federal judge in Texas ruled on Tuesday that the state’s new law limiting public drag performances was an unconstitutional restriction on speech and he permanently forbid enforcement of it.
“Not all people will like or condone certain performances,” U.S. District Judge David Hittner wrote. “This is no different than a person’s opinion on certain comedy or genres of music, but that alone does not strip First Amendment protection.” …
Re: #336
When you can’t get an anti-LGBTQ law past a conservative, Reagan-appointed, over 80 year old judge in Texas, you know it must be a seriously flawed piece of legislation.
On the same day Alabama Black voters scored a victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal trial opened in Florida in which lawyers say Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis violated the U.S. Constitution by deliberately dismantling a congressional district that favored Black candidates.
It’s one of several lawsuits around the country that are challenging Republican-drawn maps they say are gerrymandered to diminish the ability of Black voters to select a candidate of their choice. If successful, the lawsuits could help Democrats as they try to regain control of the House.
The focus in Florida is a district that stretched more than 200 miles to connect Black voters in Jacksonville and in the majority Black county of Gadsden about 200 miles (322 kilometers) to the west. DeSantis vetoed maps the Legislature drew, which would have preserved a Black district, and forced the Legislature to approve one his staff drew…
Turkey’s parliament will keep its promise to ratify Sweden’s NATO bid if U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration paves the way for F-16 jet sales to Ankara, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday, according to Turkish media…
After weeks of fighting around Robotyne, R037 brought the word on Sep. 5 that Ukrainian forces had breached the second “Surovikin Line” just west of the town of Verbove. That breach involved passing a large tank trench and occupying a section of infantry trench. Since then, Ukraine has squeezed Russian forces largely or completely out of the northern end of those trenches, extended the length of trench under their control, brought armored vehicles across those trenches, and entered western Verbove.
It’s unsurprising that multiple sources have described this as a “breakthrough” by Ukrainian forces. The steady progress from Robotyne to Verbove has come at a high cost, in both Ukrainian lives and vehicles, but it seems to represent the kind of step 1, step 2, step 3 action that many were expecting to see when the counteroffensive began in June.
The move from Robotyne to Verbove is significant. It’s an advance of nearly 10 kilometers, directly through the minefield–dragon’s teeth–tank trench–infantry trench sequence that represents the sort of defensive line Russia has constructed at many points between the existing front lines and strategic goals like Tokmak or Melitipol. But it’s still a breach, not a breakthrough, and it’s worth understanding the difference.
Ukraine’s ability to execute this operation, utilizing an infantry-forward strategy supported by armored vehicles, shows a growing sophistication on the part of both troops and commanders. It shows how Ukraine is learning to utilize their amalgam of Western-sourced gear, older Soviet designs, and homegrown tech in a way that amplifies Ukrainian advantages in drones and artillery.
As usual, Russia has engaged in multiple attacks designed to recapture lost ground and interrupt Ukraine before it can consolidate gains. At Robotyne, at Klishchiivka, in western Verbove, and at Andriivka, Ukraine has dug in against waves of Russian assault, and they have held. Not “held” in the sense of the grudging, slow “Bakhmut holds!” retreat from last year. They’ve just held. The way Ukraine has held that territory has been the definition of tenacious.
In the past two days, Ukraine has advanced directly south out of Robotyne to broaden the active front, moving to the outskirts of Novoprokopivka. [Tweet and map at the link]
Social media shows extensive activity around Novoprokopivka and a Russian tank being destroyed by artillery to the south of Novoprokopivka. This may represent the main direction of the Ukrainian movement for the moment. However, since resuming offensive operations in the Robotyne area in August, Ukraine has been very deliberate in keeping a broad front, with multiple roads and opportunities to advance. [map at the link]
[Note: You might notice that I’ve done something here that hasn’t happened in some time—used one of my own maps. Since my maps don’t show Russia’s prepared defensive positions, don’t show the current location of Russian forces, and don’t provide a good sense of the topography, I’ve been phasing them out of coverage. But today, Deep State is several days behind in updating their map and I needed to better reflect current areas of control around Robotyne.]
In addition to the western part of the town itself, there are some indications that Ukraine has advanced north of Verbove. There were reports on Monday of action in that area, which is higher ground looking down on the town. But this is not confirmed.
That area of control around Robotyne now extends to about 70 square kilometers. That’s double what it was two weeks ago. This is far from the kind of satisfying collapse of Russian forces that happened in the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv last fall, but it’s happening right through Russia’s prepared defenses and squarely against the most tightly packed area of the best troops Russia can field.</b.
As one Ukrainian soldier said […], Russia’s army is "a living evil” which is "much bigger than you and has unlimited resources." And still, Ukraine is advancing with increasing confidence through the use of all its various weaponry.
And there’s another important factor: losses. Ukraine is showing an increased willingness to sustain losses both in attack and in defense. Awful as it sounds, when Ukraine first made an assault north of Robotyne in June, some Western militaries were dismayed at the results. Not because Ukraine lost a few Bradleys or a Leopard tank. They were upset that, in the face of those losses, Ukraine retreated. The feeling among Western militaries was that Ukraine was going to have to be willing to endure loss, even high levels of loss, if it wanted to crack Russia’s defenses—especially because Ukraine doesn’t have the kind of air superiority around which Western tactics are often built.
That’s a terrible thing to ask of any military, especially an outnumbered military at the start of what it already knows will be an extended offensive against a prepared enemy. Add in the losses that Ukraine had taken in the long, slow, dreadful, but ultimately successful effort to grind Russian forces down at Bakhmut, and it would be completely understandable if the response of the Ukrainian military leadership to any suggestion it needed to sacrifice more started with “f*ck” and ended with “you.”
The reason that we are talking right now about Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the south, rather than Russia’s continuing advance up the highway to Kramatorsk, is because President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his military staff did what almost everyone thought was the wrong thing in fighting for every inch of a shattered city. They have earned the right to tell armchair generals, even those with big clusters of medals from some non-Ukrainian military, to take a hike. Several hikes.
But if Western leaders were concerned about Ukraine being willing to put everything on the line in the counteroffensive, those fears should be assuaged by now. Ukraine is Rocky Balboa-ing this thing every day: taking a pounding, without going down or backing away. To see the real cost of what’s happening around Verbove right now, read this story of a family’s loss. Then multiply that loss by several dozen people per day. [Tweet at the link: his morning, I got the call I long dreaded. My wife's cousin Sasha or Sashko, with whom she was close, was killed in action in the Verbove direction in Zaporizhzhia.
Sashko was only 33 years old and already served in the army in the Donbas in 2015-16. After the full-scale invasion started, he and his father initially remained in the occupied territories in northern Luhansk. The two of them fled Svatove in early April, once the horrors of Bucha broke the news. The Russian's then had systematically began to search houses looking for veterans. They got lucky because they were not there when the Russian army raided their house.
Together Djadja Ihor and Sahshko fled with their small, ancient Zhiguli in what both described as an adventure that included a lot of dirt roads to Rivne. Days after, Sashko voluntarily enlisted to the Airborne Forces, where he had served in 2015-16. Just like many infantry men, he saw a lot of intensive fighting since April 2022. I vividly remember how happy he was when we helped him to buy decent boots, spare cloth, a modern helmet and a decent bulletproof vest…
[…] His biggest wish was to have a daughter… and just last week, he got the results from his latest medical examination. Because of the multiple injuries and a disability status he would have been allowed to return to the training grounds as an instructor. He refused as he did not want to leave his unit in the middle of intensive fighting.
The last we heard of him few weeks ago, he echoed the sentiment that so many of our Ukrainian friends and acquaintances share: as difficult as it is and despite the high cost, I want to fight this war, so that his future children would not have to. Sashko paid the ultimate price before becoming a father. We will never forget you. Rest in peace, brother!]
Sasha fought seemingly everywhere in this war. He died in Verbove.
[…] Right now, what’s going on in Verbove and Novoprokopivka is a breach, not a breakthrough. Ukraine is working steadily, systematically, and tenaciously to take and hold ground. They have shown that Russia’s big defensive lines can be defeated—especially when they’re not fronted by kilometers of tightly-packed minefields—and they consistently extracted a high cost on Russian forces.
Here’s a roughly translated post from Twitter user @GirkinGirkin (who, for the record, is not that Igor Girkin). This is supposedly sourced from a frontline Russian soldier near the Robotyne front.
“At the front, our paratroopers are in dire need of optics, drones, warm clothing, and just basic rest. The guys are physically and psychologically exhausted. Still, they do not surrender their position. They hold the line,” the soldier writes, “However, I constantly come across lovely pictures of how soldiers in the rear are living. Also, when I am at checkpoints in rear areas, I come across fighters in full gear, with warm clothes, night lamps, new magazines, and other expensive equipment. And there are a lot of them!”
On the one hand, it’s gratifying to think that Russia’s logistics are as awful as ever, and to hear that their forces are both poorly supplied and exhausted. That seems to weigh toward the idea that Ukraine’s breach really could become a breakthrough—the kind of rapid advance where tanks and armored vehicles support infantry in taking 20 kilometers in a day, not a month, the kind of advance that happened in Kharkiv oblast.
But the fact that this soldier is still complaining of a large number of forces in reserves—and claiming those reserves are still well-equipped—is concerning. Sure, it’s the kind of griping every front-line soldier has done since Sargon marched on Sumer, but it would be much better to read concerns from Russian soldiers about just how few forces remained in those rear positions.
There are a lot of trenches and prepared positions between where Ukraine is now and where they want to be, but their current rate of advance will definitely get them there. After all, strategic Tokmak is less than 20 km away from current fighting. Ukraine should continue to power its way through Russian forces to reach that critical rail and road junction, possibly in a matter of weeks. [tweet at the link]
But it’s going to be incredibly difficult, and extremely costly.
————————–
Russia is fuming over word that M1 Abrams tanks have reached Ukraine. As The Washington Post reports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the tanks will have no effect on the war and that they “will burn” like any other tank. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin mouthpiece Dmitry Medvedev did what he does on every day ending in “Y”: threaten nuclear war.
North Korea said Wednesday that it will expel a U.S. soldier who crossed into the country through the heavily armed border between the Koreas in July.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said that authorities have finished their questioning of Pvt. Travis King. It did not say when officials plan to expel him or to where…
A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects.
Toregem Biopharma is slated to begin clinical trials in July of next year after it succeeded growing new teeth in mice five years ago, the Japan Times reports.
Dr. Katsu Takahashi, a lead researcher on the project and head of the dentistry and oral surgery department at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital, says “the idea of growing new teeth is every dentist’s dream.”…
In his research, which he’s been conducting at Kyoto University since 2005, Takahashi learned of a particular gene in mice that affects the growth of their teeth.
The antibody for this gene, USAG-1, can help stimulate tooth growth if it is suppressed – and scientists have since worked to develop a “neutralizing antibody medicine” that is able to block USAG-1.
Now, his team has been testing the theory that “blocking” this protein could grow more teeth.
After their successful tests on mice, the team went on to perform similarly positive trials on ferrets – animals who have a similar dental pattern to humans.
Now, testing will turn to healthy adult humans and, if all goes well, the team plans to hold a clinical trial for the drug from 2025 for children between two and six years old with anodontia – a rare genetic disorder that results in the absence of six or more baby and/or adult teeth.
According to the Japan Times, the children involved in the clinical trial will be injected with one dose of the drug to see if it induces teeth growth.
If successful, the medicine could be available for regulatory approval by 2030…
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #343…
According to the BBC, he was sent to China and the Chinese government turned him over to US authorities.
Fifty House Democrats on Wednesday called on Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from a major upcoming Supreme Court case after a report detailed the justice’s visits to Koch network events.
ProPublica reported Friday that Thomas attended a private dinner for donors at the network’s annual summit in California in 2018 and participated in at least one other event.
In their letter, the lawmakers take aim at how attorneys linked to the Koch network are representing the plaintiffs in a major Supreme Court case this upcoming term with major impacts on the future of executive agencies’ power.
“But there is no question that your lengthy relationship with the Kochs, including your participation in donor retreats for the Koch network, requires recusal in the upcoming case that the Koch network has teed up in an attempt to overturn Chevron,” the lawmakers wrote.
The case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, asks the justices to overturn the so-called Chevron deference, which for nearly four decades has given agencies wide authority to implement regulations.
Under the Chevron deference, if Congress is ambiguous or silent on an issue, courts must uphold an agency’s action if it was “based on a permissible construction of the statute.” …
Ohio’s political map-making commission unanimously approved new Statehouse maps Tuesday night, moving a step closer to resolving a long-running redistricting battle.
The state’s lengthy saga over the new political boundaries required to be drawn after every U.S. Census has been riddled with lawsuits and repeated court rulings finding previous maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor the state’s leading Republicans.
The new state House and Senate maps are poised to last into the 2030 election cycle, pending legal hurdles, and, like their predecessors, give the GOP an advantage statewide.
Under the plan, Republicans would have an advantage in roughly 62% of the House seats and 70% of the Senate seats. By contrast, the state’s partisan breakdown, averaged over the period from 2012 to 2020, was about 54% Republican and 46% Democratic. Republicans currently hold a supermajority in each of the state legislative chambers.
State Sen. Rob McColley, a Henry County Republican who served on the Ohio Redistricting Commission, said in a statement that the vote proved that bipartisan “good faith negotiations” in the redistricting process produce results, and that he’s “very pleased” with those results.
The final maps deliver Democrats more competitive seats than first proposed at the beginning of the latest round of redistricting negotiations last week — negotiations that got off to a slow start after a 16-month hiatus, thanks to Republican infighting over commission leadership.
However, the 7-member commission’s two Democrats did not appear to see this as a win as much as a necessary compromise.
“We collectively produced better, fairer maps,” Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, the commission’s co-chair, said in a news release. “However, this cycle of redistricting has made it clear that this process does not belong in the hands of politicians.”
Antonio’s statement comes amid plans to put a constitutional amendment on next year’s ballot creating a citizen-led commission to replace the current Redistricting Commission, which is comprised of three statewide elected officials and four state lawmakers. Former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who retired last year, is helping the effort, which calls itself Citizens Not Politicians…
As Steve Benen reports, the second Republican presidential debate is expected to be a bit of a dud:
The second Republican presidential primary debate is tonight, and there’s reason to believe Fox is expecting a modest viewing audience. According to a Semafor report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, a prospective ad buyer was presented with rates: “For the first debate, the cost of a single 30-second spot topped $495,000. But the same 30-second spot during Wednesday night’s contest would cost just over $200,000.”
Yeah, I don’t want to watch it either. I will probably watch MSNBC’s post-debate coverage. Rachel Maddow will be there and her intelligence will make the coverage bearable.
A government shutdown is just days away, a bipartisan solution is ready in the Senate, and Republicans in the House aren’t even close to coming up with an answer as Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy gives in over and over to the most extreme elements of his extreme party. It’s clear that with time running out and McCarthy utterly unable to deliver anything even close to a solution, urgent steps need to be taken.
Like making up a new Hunter Biden scandal.
That’s where things are on Wednesday morning. Because surely Americans won’t notice hundreds of thousands of furloughed workers, closed national parks, a military going without pay, and critical government services being shut down when they can understand that Hunter Biden once got a loan. And that in getting that loan he listed his actual legal address.
No, seriously. That’s the scandal.
Last night, McCarthy took a break from demonstrating his origami-like ability to fold to any demand from the people who never wanted him as speaker in the first place to bring America breaking news from one of three ongoing Republican investigations into President Joe Biden’s son. [Tweet at the link]
That big “discovery” by Rep. James Comer concerned two transfers that have been known about from the outset because they were in bank records. The only thing that changed was that someone bothered to look at the routing information and discovered that the official address listed on the wire transfers was the Wilmington, Delaware, home of Joe Biden. Republicans are treating this as if it’s smoking-gun evidence that Biden took money from China. With Comer’s House Oversight Committee handily providing a breakdown that repeatedly says things like “wired $250,000 with Joe Biden’s home listed on the wire.”
However, according to a statement from Hunter Biden’s attorney to CNN, the whole big revelation “evaporates in thin air the moment facts come out.”
First, the money that Hunter Biden received was a documented loan secured through equity from an investment he had made two years earlier. Second, it went to the Wilmington address because that was Hunter Biden’s legal address. Hunter Biden’s attorney made clear that this was “the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time.”
As Republicans have made clear, these wires have been confirmed by banks. Confirmed as in they went to Hunter Biden’s account, not to Joe Biden’s. Just because the Wilmington address was on the transfers, that doesn’t even mean Joe Biden was aware they had occurred. It’s not as if a truck full of cash backed up to his home—no matter how Republicans want it to seem. These were wire transfers that moved numbers between accounts. That Hunter Biden used his legal address on these transfers is completely reasonable and doesn’t in any way tie them to the president.
As Hunter Biden’s attorney stated to CNN, “We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda.”
But it’s hard to blame McCarthy for retreating so far into fantasy when the reality of how badly he is managing his job is so hard to face.
[…] The funny thing about my political text spam is that it’s about equal between Republican spam and Democratic (kind of sad that it’s all the same language on both sides designed to terrify us into giving $. Dems are much better on policy but barely better on fundraising sleaze). I suspect a fair bit of my text solicitations are also fraud which never goes to any political campaign. […]
Readers of the article posted additional advice in the comments section. It’s all quite useful.
Former President Donald Trump, his top executives, and heirs were declared completely liable of “persistent and repeated fraud”—and the real estate empire was unceremoniously stripped of its business licenses in New York—after a judge’s powerful ruling Tuesday ahead of a massive trial that seeks to hit them with more than $250 million in penalties for bank fraud.
And in a stunning development, the judge has already ordered the complete dissolution of the fabled Trump Organization–the tycoon’s pride and joy, the empire that made him famous and elevated him into the White House. The Trump Organization and its sister companies will be sent into receivership to be under the control of a court-appointed officer.
Commentary:
[…] New York judge Arthur Engoron granted James request for a partial summary judgment. This move will make it a lot easier for James to pursue her goal of not only making Trump and his sons cough up over $250 million in fines, but strip them of the remains of the Trump Organization. […]
In his 35-page opinion, Justice Arthur F. Engoron tore apart what he called the Trump family’s “bogus arguments” and obstreperous conduct. And he summed up the entire defense as “a fantasy world, not the real world.”
“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land, restricts can evaporate into thin air… all illegal acts are untimely if they stem from one untimely act; and square footage [is] subjective,” he wrote. […]
On Tuesday, Engoron ripped the Trumps—and their lawyers—apart for dragging this on so long with legal arguments that wasted the courts time by repeatedly questioning whether the AG even had the authority to hold them accountable this way.
Those arguments “glaringly misrepresent” the law and trying them again and again “invoke the time-loop in the film ‘Groundhog Day,’” the judge wrote, calling attempts to topple the case this way “pure sophistry.”
Commentary:
[…] Engeron has already made it clear that he isn’t happy with Trump. In the same ruling, he tore Trump a new one for not allowing a court-appointed independent monitor to properly do her job. The monitor, a retired federal judge, had been tasked with making sure Trump didn’t improperly shift assets. Despite that, Engeron wrote that he found evidence of “false and misleading information while conducting business.” He also slapped Trump’s lawyers with $7,500 each in sanctions for making frivolous arguments. […]
The thing to understand about the partial summary judgment against Donald Trump, his two grown idiot boys and his companies that just came out of New York state is that they’re all absolutely fucked. And though there will still be a trial, a lot of the important part is pretty much over.
Both sides had asked for summary judgments from the judge — for findings of fraud, or for the judge to say this is a WITCH HUNT!!!1!!!, respectively. Clearly Judge Arthur Engoron did not find WITCH HUNT!!!!!11!
He did find some fraud.
He also sanctioned Trump’s lawyers for their trifling-ass bullshit so-called legal arguments, which as he explains have been rejected again and again and again, so please stop wasting his time.
The top lines here: did Trump inflate his net worth when it was convenient, to get better interest rates and loan terms, and so forth? He sure damn did. Did he do this by inflating the value of real estate holdings? Yes, Eric Trump, he sure damn did, by up to $2.2 billion, […]
What happened here is known colloquially as the “corporate death penalty” — the judge ordered the cancellation of Trump’s New York business certificates, the dissolution of all the LLCs, and so forth. How that plays out is unclear […] but the overall gist is GOODBYE, TRUMP ORGANIZATION IN NEW YORK!
Of course, Trump’s trifling-ass lawyers will appeal and drag this shit out until Kingdom Come, but whatever. The arc of justice bends toward burying Donald Trump underneath every prison in the country and dissolving every shred of evidence that his business entities ever existed. […]
This Ruling Is Fun To Read!
Engoron’s disdain and contempt drips through every page. It’s fuckin’ gorgeous.
In our morning post on Eric Trump insisting that his daddy’s trash palace is worth a billion dollars —( overvaluing the property, which is incidentally what this case is about, DUMBASS ERIC) — we laughed as Engoron ripped to shreds Trump’s expert whose valuation of Mar-a-Lago appeared to be based on “unexplained and unsubstantiated ‘dreams.’”
On page three Engoron handles Trump’s arguments that the attorney general didn’t have standing to sue, saying Trump’s legal arguments “invoke the time-loop in the film ‘Groundhog Day, ’” and explaining that they have been rejected repeatedly. There’s a lot of “yet again” and “erroneously claim” and “incorrectly rely on” and “glaringly misrepresent,” as Engoron disposes with each and every Trump argument.
“Fatally flawed.”
“In flagrant disregard of prior orders of this Court.”
Even if you don’t know the details, you can just read it for tone.
How much disdain does this judge have for the bullshit Trump’s lawyers have put him through? Get a load of this passage:
In response to both OAG’s request for a preliminary injunction and to defendants’ motions to dismiss, this Court rejected every one of the aforementioned arguments. In rejecting such arguments for the second time, this Court cautioned that “sophisticated counsel should have known better.” However, the Court declined to impose sanctions, believing it had “made its point.”
Apparently, the point was not received. […]
Defendants’ conduct in reiterating these frivolous arguments is egregious. We are way beyond the point of “sophisticated counsel should have known better”; we are at the point of intentional and blatant disregard of controlling authority and the law of the case. This Court emphatically rejected these arguments, as did the First Department. Defendants’ repetition of them here is indefensible.
Or this passage, which is even meaner:
Capacity and standing are not esoteric concepts. Infants, legally declared incompetents, and persons under certain legal disabilities are not allowed to sue. The New York Attorney General is none of the above. […] [LOL]
That is a fantasy world, not the real world.
Breathtaking.
And it’s only after all that — those are still the arguments for why the damn lawyers should be sanctioned! — that Engoron gets into the meat of the various frauds […]
He goes through Trump’s claims that he can’t possibly overstate value, because so much of the value is in the BRAAAAAND, which is him (LOL), and because he could get a “buyer from Saudi Arabia” to give him any amount of riyals he wanted for his properties.
And Trump’s claims that his 10,996 square-foot Trump Tower apartment can be rounded up to 30,000, because “the calculation of square footage is a subjective process.” Practitioners of the dark arts of math must use all kinds of weird sorcery to arrive at their numbers! (In a footnote, Engoron notes that during oral arguments, Trump lawyer Christopher Kise admitted that square footage is an objective number, not just a general vibe.) [LOL]
[…] Fraud fraud fraud fraud fraud. “Persistent and repeated fraud.” Open and shut, chapter and verse, fuck around and find out.
Donald Trump likes to bellyache about how everything is ELECTION INTERFERENCE! and people are only going after him because he is such a brilliant and beloved man of the people trying to make America Great Again. It’s bullshit, but contained therein is a nugget of truth, namely that all this obvious in-your-face fraud might have gone unnoticed had he never decided to waddle down that elevator in 2015 and leave his skidmarks all over the Republic.
But he did do that.
He invited the scrutiny that comes with that. And he got it.
In Trump’s hilarious crybaby statement in response to this ruling, he wails that “if they can do this to me, they can do this to YOU!”
So listen, if any of y’all are considering lying and saying your house is 30,000 square feet, and claiming it’s worth $1.5 billion to get the kinds of loan terms really rich people get, and then arguing it’s OK because the Saudis would probably buy your house for whatever you listed it for, maybe don’t do that. […]
[…] Perhaps Eric doesn’t know much about real estate, but you can’t compare single-family homes to gaudy trash palaces that get ketchup stains all over the walls when Daddy loses elections and/or gets indicted. […] Or to commercial or mixed use properties like Mar-a-Lago in general. They’re not valued the same. […]
While we are also annoyed when people who don’t understand real estate try to opine on it on Twitter — and that includes a number of journalists — that’s a deflection. Nobody who understands real estate is saying Mar-a-Lago is worth only $18 million, per the lowest tax assessment cited in the ruling. But likewise it’s fucking insane to think that anyone besides a Saudi or Russian buying nuclear secrets would pay over a billion dollars for that ugly, beclowned piece of shit.
[…] mocking Trump’s suggestion that it would be impossible for him to inflate the value of properties because — get this — “he could find a ‘buyer from Saudi Arabia’ to pay any price he suggests.”
[…] We don’t know about y’all, but that sounds less like a statement about real estate to us than it does a statement about bribery by hostile foreign powers and, at best, a tacit admission that one could potentially easily be bought by one.
At worst it sounds like an oopsie confession that one is maybe a teensy tiny bit already a witting asset of a hostile foreign power, perhaps Saudi Arabia maybe who knows.
By the way, see at the end of that statement, where there’s a little “10,” which suggests the presence of a footnote? The footnote says, “This statement may suggest influence buying more than savvy investing.”
[…] But sure, Eric, Daddy’s house is a billion dollars […]
The agency has paused aid for long-term disaster recovery in nearly every U.S. state and territory while scrambling to conserve cash in case a government shutdown collides with hurricane season.
With a government shutdown as few as four days away, the Biden administration has started to ration federal disaster aid, delaying the delivery of about $2.8 billion in grants so the money is available in the event of a crisis, according to state and federal officials and budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.
The last-minute move has allowed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to shore up its rapidly dwindling budget against the immediate threat of wildfires, hurricanes and other natural disasters as they arise, according to a senior agency official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal budget matters. But it has also disrupted longer-term recovery projects in Florida, Puerto Rico and other communities hit by past calamities, illustrating how a Republican-led standoff in Congress could unleash real hardship in Americans lives.
Over the past month, FEMA has paused at least $555 million for long-term recovery projects in Florida, including those related to Hurricane Ian last year. It has held back $101 million from Louisiana and another $74 million in California, according to the federal records, which reflect delays through Sept. 18.
The agency similarly has delayed more than $200 million intended to respond to past disasters in Puerto Rico, according to budget records. Much of the stalled federal money was supposed to reimburse the territory for the cost of repairing ports, fixing schools and bolstering infrastructure against future disasters — some dating back to Hurricane Maria, a Category 5 cyclone that unleashed vast devastation on the island six years ago.
[…] Fearing a costly, deadline hurricane season this fall, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell has pleaded with Congress to restock the fund, along with the rest of her budget. And she has warned lawmakers that a failure to act could leave her agency unable to handle fresh emergencies. […]
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told members of the House GOP conference Wednesday morning that he will not bring the Senate’s bipartisan continuing resolution to the floor for a vote.
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) told reporters after a closed-door House GOP conference meeting that McCarthy informed lawmakers during the gathering that he will not bring the upper chamber’s legislation to the floor for a vote, even after the Senate voted to advance it in a bipartisan fashion Tuesday night.
[…] The Senate advanced the legislation in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote Tuesday night, 77-19.
While the measure has the backing of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, a number of House conservatives have already lined up against the legislation, pointing to the inclusion of Ukraine aid and the exclusion of border security provisions.
[…] Some House Republicans, however, would be open to the stopgap measure.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who represents a district President Biden won in 2020, said he would support the Senate’s legislation and that McCarthy should bring it to the floor “if that is the only option.”
“I don’t want a shutdown. I would support it,” he noted earlier.
[…] A number of hard-line conservatives have said they will not vote for a continuing resolution under any circumstances.
Graduates of Trump University are incensed that they were never taught that defrauding banks was a crucial strategy to building a real-estate empire, the grads have confirmed.
In interviews with Trump U. alumni, the former students expressed shock and dismay that such an important entrepreneurial skill was somehow omitted from the school’s curriculum.
“If I had learned to defraud banks, my post-Trump University career would have played out very differently,” Tracy Klugian, class of 2006, said. “As it is, I’ve gone bankrupt four times.”
“Every time a bank asked me how much my properties were worth, I put down the correct figure,” Harland Dorrinson, class of 2007, said. “Trump University really should have taught me how important it is to just pick a big number out of thin air.”
Carol Foyler, ’08, said that, given the school’s failure to teach the fundamentals of asset overvaluation and bank swindling, her Trump University diploma “isn’t worth the Staples printer paper it was printed on.”
“Trump University claimed it would teach me all of Donald Trump’s real-estate secrets,” she said. “Now it seems like he kept his most important secrets secret.”
The cartoon, “Mr. Trump’s Stuff,” shows several items, including “used toothbrushes $347.50 each,” “Hair-color enhancer $1,985.50,” and “Tower $4.5 billion (or best offer).” There’s also a $5,000 coffee mug and a comb-over comb, etc.
[…] t’s not even all Republicans fighting; it’s just a “pissing match” between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and chaos agent Rep. Matt Gaetz. That’s the “whole reason” the government faces a shutdown.
That pissing match is going to cost the nation a whole lot—which is why the Chamber [U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a traditional booster of the GOP] isn’t happy about this. Plenty of economists fear a prolonged shutdown could send the nation into recession. And it sure won’t be good for the people who sent both Gaetz and McCarthy to Congress.
The Congressional Research Service used census data to estimate how many federal employees—those people who are going to be sent home without pay when the government shuts down—are in each congressional district.
McCarthy’s district has about 14,000 federal workers, representing nearly 4% of the district’s workforce. This is just civilian employees, by the way, and not military. McCarthy brags about the military installations he represents on his congressional website: Edwards Air Force Base and the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake. He also touts the Mojave Air and Space Port and the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center.
The people working on those installations won’t be getting paid, either. Neither will the service members stationed at Eglin Air Force Base, Hurlburt Field, and Pensacola Naval Air Station in Gaetz’s district in Florida. Gaetz represents even more federal employees than McCarthy, about 25,000 in the 1st Congressional District. That’s nearly 7% of all workers, and one of largest contingents of federal workers who would be hit by the shutdown.
The impact of the pissing match between Gaetz and McCarthy on tens of thousands of their constituents, not to mention the whole of the federal workforce, won’t be a laughing matter.
National Treasury Employees Union President Doreen Greenwald described what happened to federal workers during the last shutdown: “We had thousands of members across the country who missed a mortgage payment, took out short term loans and ran up their credit card debt because they had no paychecks for a month. They stood in line at food banks, pulled their children from childcare, begged creditors for grace and were unable to put gas in their cars to report to work for an IOU. This is not how the United States of America should treat its own employees,” Greenwald said.
… The fossil comes from shale deposits found in the Prague Basin of the Czech Republic. Those rocks date from the Ordovician, which came immediately after the Cambrian and lasted until about 450 million years ago…
In addition to capturing much of its external anatomy in exquisite detail, the researchers were able to image its interior using radiation from a synchrotron, a type of circular particle accelerator.
Running down the center of the animal’s interior was a line of material composed primarily of small pieces of shells. Based on existing arthropods, the researchers conclude that this is almost certainly the remains of its digestive tract. While there are three clusters of material along the track, smaller bits of shell are present between them, providing an outline of the entire digestive tract.
The synchrotron radiation imaging was detailed enough that the species that the trilobite had been eating could be identified. Most of them appeared to be ostracods, a small crustacean that remains common today (there are 13,000 existing ostracod species). Some of these appear to be larval versions of the animal. There are also fragments of thin shells that probably were derived from shellfish like clams and mussels, as well as some pieces of an echinoderm (think starfish and sea urchins).
Overall, the most striking thing about the food present is the sheer variety of it. It appears as if the animal hoovered up anything with a shell it came across on the floor of the body of water it was living in…
A Montana law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors is temporarily blocked, a state judge ruled Wednesday, just four days before it was to take effect. District Court Judge Jason Marks agreed with transgender youth, their families and healthcare providers that a law passed by the 2023 Montana Legislature is likely unconstitutional and would harm the mental and physical health of minors with gender dysphoria.
Fox host Mark Levin on Trump’s growing legal troubles: “Isn’t it amazing to you that he never wins a case? Is it because he’s just wrong all the time?”
[…] While Trump may be on the road to reclaiming power he is also in the process of being eaten alive. He faces almost a hundred separate felony indictments, in four jurisdictions, on charges ranging from novel and uncertain to open and shut. Trump’s uncanny luck has led many of us to think he can’t possibly see the inside of a jail cell regardless of just how he evades it. But this is an illusion created by Trump’s own unique reality-distortion vortex. There are very good reasons to think Trump is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. You may not believe it. But Trump’s own words and actions say he definitely does. The threats of violence and vengeance that make his potential return to power such a horror are driven in large part by his fear and desperation.
Meanwhile his family business yesterday took the first steps toward being dissolved. The state of Trump’s finances generally today are as opaque as always. There’s little question that much of his old business has been damaged greatly by adverse publicity. But other revenue sources have clearly increased, perhaps dramatically. While the details are unclear Trump clearly got a windfall from the de facto Saudi takeover of PGA Golf. Trump appears to be facing vast legal expenses, though for the moment the GOP small donor spigot he still controls appears to be willing to pick up the tab. Regardless, he clearly feels besieged and endangered on every front with the standard ruses and gambits he’s used in the past failing again and again.
In this sense we see most clearly that the two story lines are actually one. The mounting existential threats Trump faces fuel his escalating threats of violence, authoritarian crackdowns and extra-constitutional actions if he is returned to power. A week ago Rolling Stone published an account of Trump privately worrying that he is headed to prison and anxiously asking advisors what sort of treatment he might expect in confinement. While not doubting the reporting, I am always wary of these kinds of stories since I suspect the Trump world is so leaky and filled with different layers of lickspittles, backstabbers and hangers-on that you can find people who will say, claim, report lots of things about what Trump is really saying. But it is enough to make us consider the degree to which Trump’s current posture of bravado and menace – while real enough as a threat – is simply his latest con, concealing a weaker and more terrified reality. It may best be seen as the kind of over-the-top aggression that in his earlier history allowed him to overawe and cow more conventional business titans when he was actually holding no cards at all.
There is a Republican debate tonight. The heavily indicted frontrunner is not participating, and if he doesn’t have to go, neither do we. This time it’s on Fox Business, but yet again it’s not streaming on YouTube or anything, just on the TV and on NaziChristianMingle or Rumble or whatever it’s called.
[…] We are not participating.
If you want to find it on your TV that’s fine, it’s at 9 p.m. Eastern, kinda late, because it’s out at the Reagan Library in California. But we’re not doing that.
“Fuck that,” explained us. “Get out of here,” we added.
The participants in the debate we are not liveblogging will be the aforementioned DeSantis, plus his fellow non-winners Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, churlish human “Kick Me” sign Vivek Ramaswamy, and Breck Durgum.
Maybe something will happen, in which case we will hear about it tomorrow. (Honestly, we will look for internet clips to see if Nikki Haley does the Bowling Green Massacre to Vivek again. That was fun.)
So bad it is good?
Neil Breen has a sixth film in the works.
He is the king of unwatchable vanity films (för instance the guy who made Champagne And Bullets only made one).
It would be great if the makers of bad Christian films that end up on Pureflix let Breen direct one of their films, then we would transcend Plan Nine From Outer Space.
Since Ukraine began its counteroffensive in June, one of the obvious goals has been the city of Tokmak. With a pre-war population under 33,000, Tokmak is barely one-fifth the size of nearby Melitopol, and it’s even smaller when compared to coastal metropolis Mariupol. What makes such a small city such a big target can be summed up in a single word: transportation.
Tokmak is one of those places in Ukraine where multiple highways and rail lines come together. In fact, it’s a crucial transportation hub for the “land bridge” that Russia currently occupies along the southern coast of Ukraine, which is why Russia built not just one or two, but at least eight lines of defensive structures between Ukrainian positions at the start of the counteroffensive and those critical junctions in the middle of Tokmak. That includes a circle of defenses that entirely surrounds the city in case Ukraine tries to come at this location from another direction.
At first those defensive lines seemed to be extremely formidable, mostly because the first such line was preceded by a densely planted minefield that extended for kilometers. However, Ukraine has been able to punch through lines closer to Tokmak seemingly without facing anything like that initial minefield. As Ukrainian forces work their way through Verbove and Novoprokovika, it looks as if Russia may be moving to literally retrench their defenses around the obvious target of the Ukrainian advance.
Here’s a portion of the map created by online analyst @Defmon showing some of the defenses that already exist around Tokmak. Right now, Ukraine is advancing into both Verbove and Novoprokovika. [map at the link]
On Tuesday, Russian sources reported a large increase in Ukrainian artillery being directed into these areas and to points south along the line to Tokmak. One of those sources described the bombardment as “apocalyptic.” There has also been an increased use of precision weapons systems like HIMARS to hit concentrations of materiel and Russian troops behind the lines. [Tweet and video at the link]
Such heavy use of artillery often precedes an attempted advance. Considering Ukraine’s recent successes in penetrating Russian lines, it would not be surprising if there were a determined effort in the next day or two to extend the liberated area—though this is far from certain. That artillery barrage is a good sign that Ukraine is preparing to move, but it’s far from a sure sign.
Even if Ukraine doesn’t follow up those shells with infantry and armor, what they’ve done already is drive 10 kilometers through Russian defenses against the most tightly packed and heavily reinforced Russian units anywhere on the front, which has to be making Tokmak, just 17 km from the current front, seem like it’s seriously under threat.
According to a Telegram post from Melitopol Mayor Ivan Federov, the “constant onslaught” of Ukrainian forces is driving Russia to bring in the concrete and rebar. Again.
“To the north of Tokmak, a new fortified district appeared on both sides of the highway leading to the recently liberated Ukrainian village of Robotyne,” writes Federov. “At the border of Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, concrete trucks are arriving to construct more fortifications.”
It’s unclear to what extent Russia has added defenses along the highway between Tokmak and Robotyne. However, considering the level of satellite imagery available to OSINT in recent days, it’s likely we’ll get a look at anything significant very soon. And considering how Ukraine is moving, they may be getting a direct look at this area in the not too distant future.
——————————–
UKRAINE’S COUNTERBATTERY FIRE CONTINUES TO IMPROVE
If there is one complaint that Russian soldiers on the southern front have expressed repeatedly, it’s that there’s a profound lack of artillery support. According to online analyst @JayInKyiv, there are good reasons that this could be more than just generic grousing. [Graph at the link]
Until May, Ukraine was reporting the destruction of about 200 Russian artillery guns each month. That’s an impressive number, but it’s also also a number that could be within Russia’s rate of manufacture. Russia recently claimed that it could manufacture about 200 tanks a month, though the real value may be more like 90, with most of those being older tanks put back into service. So 200 artillery pieces seems possible.
However, since the counteroffensive began, Ukraine has been steadily improving its ability to knock out Russia’s big guns. Reports like this one from the Ukrainian General Staff on Wednesday, showing 38 artillery pieces knocked out, have become typical. [list at the link]
That brought Russian losses to nearly 700 guns a month for the early summer and over 800 lost in September. It’s a pretty good bet that Russia isn’t making anything close to that many replacements.
The rapid rate of artillery depletion is likely to have another effect on Russia’s ability to provide artillery cover. Fast counterbattery action, whether utilizing artillery or drones, limits the number of times a gun can fire before it needs to move to a new location. That makes it harder to hit targets and provide the sustained fire necessary to hold positions. Harried artillery is ineffective artillery.
Last Saturday, RO37 wrote about what this means in context of Russia’s doctrine:
[snipped details] while Russian artillery must generally sustain a barrage for several minutes to bring sufficient weight of firepower on a target to destroy it (recall the moonscape picture shared above), Ukrainian artillery can quickly and effectively respond with small numbers of guided munitions to take out their opposing counterparts with ruthless accuracy. Not only are these strikes more precise (and require fewer shells), the engagement phase is merely the time to load and fire a single precision round—as little as 15-20 seconds.
The numbers like those above have to be on the mind of every Russian gun crew.
——————————-
Tokmak may be critical to Russian transportation across much of the south, but according to a Ukrainian official quoted by CNN, Russia is working to expand its options in the south by creating a new rail line to the occupied city of Mariupol. [Tweet and images at the link]
There are a number of rail lines into Mariupol, but currently all of those lines run to the north. At some points, those lines are less than 10 km from the front lines. Just as with the additional fortifications at Tokmak, this construction assumes that Ukraine will make further advances, severing those northern lines.
It’s unclear how long it would take Russia to actually construct a rail line in this area.
——————————
UKRAINIAN REPORTS SUCCESSES SOUTH OF BAKHMUT
On Wednesday, Ilya Yevlash, spokesperson for the eastern group of Ukrainian forces, reported that Ukraine had “success within 24 hours near the villages of Klishchiivka, Odradivka and Shumy” south of Bakhmut.
That Ukraine would still be successfully fending off Russian attempts to retake territory around Klishchiivka is expected, as Russia has made several failed attempts over the past two weeks. But it’s the other two names on the list that bring some interest to this statement. [map at the link]
Shumy is well south of most recent action, near the occupied town of Mayorsk. There’s a major highway there running to the city of Horlivka, but there hasn’t been much action in this area. That could be changing.
Odradivka is also puzzling because it’s located over 3 km east of Klishchiivka and Andriivka. Even if Yevlash’s statement is simply an indication of direction, this could mean that Ukraine has taken steps to move away from the towns it has liberated on the west side of this area and attack across the low ground directly south of Bakhmut. It will likely be another couple of days before the meaning of this is clear.
[…] The Washington Post has put together a fun little math tool that allows you to plug in home values and watch them balloon to Trumpian rates. Now you too can defraud banks and insurers by claiming your Mar-a-Lago social club can be considered a private residence valued between $347 million to $739 million while eschewing the Palm Beach County’s assessment of the same property (during the same time period) at $18 million to $27.6 million.
[…] The Washington Post sets the tool’s default to roughly the median sales price for houses sold in the United States: $400,000. Applying the magic math used to value Trump Tower turns your $400,000 home into a pretty swanky $1,091,306 abode. Here is what your $400,000 place would be worth using the math Trump et al. used to inflate their properties:
– Mar-a-Lago: Your home is now worth between $6,181,589 and $13,602,455. (Not too shabby!)
– Seven Springs: Your home is now worth $3,880,000.
– 40 Wall Street: Depending on if you use Trump’s 2011 or 2015 math, you’ve got yourself a property worth between $544,741 and $1,049,400.
That’s pretty sweet stuff. Let’s stick with the modest fraud of Trump Tower and apply the magic math to a few states’ median house prices:
Nebraska’s median home costs $296,000. But not anymore! Now those Cornhuskers fans can say their place is worth around $818,479! On the other end of the spectrum, Californians’ median home costs $799,000. Yeee-ouch! (Trust me, I live here and can’t afford to own!) But using Trump Math, those Callifornians can tell everyone they are multimillionaires since their median house is worth about $2,182,612. What about the Iowans with the country’s most affordable median housing price? Their $239,000 house is now worth north of $550,000!
Trump’s pathological lying became world-class only when he ascended to the presidency. And at that point, people really began to dig into what many knew was true for a very long time: Everything about the real estate “mogul” was corrupt, and his power relied on our easily corruptible systems.
She claims to be the Queen of Canada, and now she’s holding court in an abandoned school.
Romana Didulo, a QAnon-inspired conspiracy theorist, leads a group of supporters who have spent the last few years traveling around Canada in motorhomes and other vehicles.
Recently, the group moved into Richmound, a village of around 150 people in south-western Saskatchewan, and settled in at a former school.
Ms Didulo and around 15 to 25 of her followers have been at the site for about a week, says Thomas Fougere of Community TV, a local independent news outlet based in nearby Medicine Hat.
Soon after their arrival, the neighbours began pushing them to leave.
Around 100 local residents drove around the school on Sunday in tractors, semi-trucks and other vehicles, trying to drive out the incomers, according to Mr Fougere.
“It’s the only place in the village where there’s a playground and where kids can safely ride their bikes away from the highway,” he said. “It’s become a high tension situation. The town doesn’t want them.” …
Round discs of barren dirt known as “fairy circles” look like rows of polka dots that can spread for miles over the ground. The phenomenon’s mysterious origins have intrigued scientists for decades — and they may be far more widespread than once thought.
Fairy circles were previously spotted only in the arid lands of Southern Africa’s Namib Desert and the outback of Western Australia. But a new study has used artificial intelligence to identify vegetation patterns resembling fairy circles in hundreds of new locations across 15 countries on three continents. This could help scientists understand fairy circles and their formation on a global scale…
Sometimes this week you may wonder if Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are even in the same party anymore. McCarthy and McConnell are diverging on strategy, tactics and legislative goals on a near-daily basis as Washington hurtles toward the third big government shutdown in the last 11 years.
Commentary:
[…] It was earlier this week when the Senate’s Democratic and GOP leadership reached an agreement on a stopgap spending bill — called a continuing resolution, or CR — and on Tuesday afternoon, it received support from 77 members in a procedural vote. It wasn’t long before observers drew an obvious conclusion: If Congress is going to avoid a shutdown before Saturday night’s deadline, this bipartisan deal deserves to be seen as the solution.
A day later, McCarthy told his members that the Senate agreement would not come to the House floor for a vote. The problem is not that the Senate deal would fail. On the contrary, as far as the House speaker is concerned, the problem is that it wouldn’t fail: Democrats would no doubt vote for the bipartisan CR in large numbers, and they’d likely be joined by several House Republicans from competitive districts who don’t want to see a pointless shutdown.
McCarthy seems to realize that if he allowed a bipartisan spending bill to pass with Democratic votes, his most radical members would launch an effort to fire him. And so, even if the stopgap bill were to clear the Senate, the House speaker has no intention of approving it.
McConnell wasted little time in making his dissatisfaction known. “The choice facing Congress is pretty straightforward: We can take the standard approach and fund the government for six weeks at the current rate of operations, or we can shut the government down in exchange for zero meaningful progress on policy,” the Kentucky Republican said.
He concluded, “Shutting down the government isn’t an effective way to make a point.” [Well, it does make the point that those shutting down the government are bonkers.]
[…] The Senate minority leader and the House speaker have, for example, disagreed over defense spending and aid to Ukraine. They clashed over giving Tucker Carlson access to Jan. 6 security footage. After Donald Trump was indicted, McCarthy scrambled to defend the former president, while McConnell did not.
Late last year, in the midst of a previous GOP shutdown threat, McConnell and McCarthy also differed dramatically on a stopgap spending bill, with the House Republican throwing some unusual public jabs at his Senate counterpart.
[…] while McConnell supported reforming the Electoral Count Act, the bipartisan infrastructure package, and the biggest gun reform bill in three decades, McCarthy opposed all three.
[…] obvious that McCarthy and McConnell differ more often than leaders from the same party generally do, and these differences are increasingly unavoidable.
On Wednesday, MediaMatters.org reported that Twitter, now known as X, placed NFL ads on the accounts of multiple white nationalists. On Thursday, the NFL responded.
“NFL unequivocally denounces any form of hate speech and has absolutely no association with these individuals or any group that promotes racism,” chief NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told PFT via email. “As soon as this was brought to our attention, we immediately expressed our concerns to X to understand and rectify the issue.”
One of the accounts belongs to a streaming host who has suggested that Bills safety Damar Hamlin died from a reaction to the COVID vaccine, and that he’s currently being portrayed by an actor. That same host has also, per MediaMatters.org, called for the execution of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift over Kelce’s recent promotion of the COVID vaccine.
Just last week, NFL chief media and business officer Brian Rolapp praised Twitter/X CEO Linda Yaccarino for “doing great work innovating to make the platform better for [NFL] fans and partners.”
On 28 September, Taiwan launched its first domestically built submarine. Named the Hai Kun, it is a diesel-electric submarine (SSK) that looks to be based on the Japanese Soryu class with some design features carried over from Taiwan’s two Dutch built SSKs. Indications are that this is the first of eight to be built at a total cost of around 10 billion US dollars…
Reginald Selkirksays
@378 … his most radical members would launch an effort to fire him.
And whom would they replace him with? The free-dumb caucus doesn’t have enough votes to put their own candidate in. If they choose to drag the country down that road, it probably means a period of chaos while they nominate a series of successors who cannot pull the votes necessary to win, and in the meantime the House fails to get anything done.
Which, in a sane world, means they wouldn’t do that; but we are not talking about sane people.
The Republican 2024 hopefuls gathered in Simi Valley, California Wednesday for a very combative second debate. While the moderators asked mostly substantive questions, they failed to control a group intent on getting in the punches the candidates didn’t land last time.
Competition for the most memorable moment in the debate is stiff between Chris Christie bawdily saying that President Biden is “sleeping with a member of the teachers union” — followed by Mike Pence making the most uncomfortable sex joke on record — and Nikki Haley telling Vivek Ramaswamy “every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber.”
Christie and Ron DeSantis took a few more whacks at Donald Trump than last time, mostly for his debate absenteeism. It was loud, it was long, it had me hiding my face in the collar of my sweater.
[Joe Biden took advantage of some of the remarks made during the Republican presidential debate.] [Tweet and video at the link: DeSantis: “[Donald Trump] owes it to you to defend his record where they added 7.8 trillion to the debt. That set the stage for the inflation that we have now” … Joe Biden: “Couldn’t agree more.”]
[…] The debate ended with one of the Fox hosts cutting off a lengthy Ramaswamy rant praising Trump.
[…] Ramaswamy just declared “transgenderism, especially in kids, is a mental health disorder.”
And right after, Pence goes on to say that he will pass a federal ban on “transgender chemical or surgical surgery anywhere in the country.”
[…] Christie started this out by saying that “you have the President of the United States sleeping with a member of the teachers union.” Biden sleeps with his wife, got ’em.
Pence jumped in later to say he’s been sleeping with a teacher for 30-plus years, the moment of the debate that my brain imploded and melted out of my ears.
[…] Pence mentioned he wants to get rid of the Department of Education and Haley suggested something similar about pulling programs from the federal government and letting states decide on education.
[…] Pence Will Solve Mass Shootings By…Giving Shooters Death Penalty. It’s a genius solution for people who mostly expect to die in the act and often kill themselves.
[…] Both Christie and DeSantis are placing the blame on an amorphous “Washington” and the Biden administration, instead of the real culprits single handedly threatening the now almost inevitable government shutdown: House Republicans. Specially, far-right MAGA House Republicans.
[…] Fox Business Network host Stuart Varney with the horrible bungling of Univision anchor Ilia Calderón’s name has me physically uncomfortable.
Michigan state Rep. Karen Whitsett (D) recently (and annoyingly) voted against multiple bills that sought to repeal abortion regulations in the state, thereby joining a troubling trend of supposedly “pro-choice” politicians looking to curb legislative gains in abortion access. Whitsett, who represents areas of Detroit and Dearborn, voted against the Reproductive Health Act (an 11-bill package) in committee last week, wielding her one vote to potentially upend a major Democratic priority after a decade of Republican rule…
Republicans begin their impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden today. Appropriately enough, they’re bringing in three “witnesses” who haven’t witnessed anything. One is accountant Bruce Dubinsky, whose expertise consists of going on Fox News to attack Hunter Biden. Another is a former member of Donald Trump’s transition team, Eileen O’Connor, who served in the Department of Justice two decades ago. The last member of this Republican dream team is, of course, “legal scholar” Jonathan Turley, the attorney who ponied up to defend Donald Trump during his impeachment hearings and the go-to choice when Republicans need support for their most ridiculous theories.
[This is what they are doing instead of making sure that the government is funded.]
None of these three have any connection to Hunter Biden or President Joe Biden. They have no knowledge of the events, no involvement in any investigation, no special knowledge, and no reason to appear.
[…] Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi goes to Turley. “Not anywhere in Hunter Biden’s investigation is there any allegation of Joe Biden doing anything wrong, right?”
Turley: “That’s correct”
Krishnamoorthi: “Not a parking ticket, not a moving violation, not a library fine … In fact, you said, the current record does not establish any crime, much less an impeachable offense.”
Krishnamoorthi runs through again the lengthy list of Republicans willing to debunk the Republicans’ own impeachment inquiry.
Goldman finally gets to enter the page of Devon Archer’s testimony into the record. That testimony completely contradicts Jordan and others characterization of what Archer said […]
Jordan has just decided he doesn’t even have to recognize points of order.
Goldman: “The rules require …”
Jordan: “No!”
Jordan then tells Democrats to be quiet and they’ll hear evidence. Goldman tries to point out that he wants to introduce evidence. Jordan pouts.
[…] Rep. Mike Turner spends most of his time praising the wisdom of Jonathan Turley. And again, we’re going down the road to Burisma.
Turner brings up the fact that the attorney general has a special prosecutor looking ino classified materials that Biden already turned over and strings a new conspiracy theory that Hunter Biden was selling classified info. So that’s at least a fun new unsupported line of BS.
[…] Rep. Stephen Lynch points out that not one of the witnesses Republicans brought has any knowledge of any wrongdoing by President Biden, any evidence about Hunter Biden, or anything really to contribute to this processes.
Lynch points out that O’Conner’s article “You’d go to prison for what Biden did” was actually “You’d go to prison for what Hunter Biden did.”
[…] Note that is is Democrats who are actually asking for witnesses to the Burisma deal to be called, while Republicans are quickly shutting down that effort. Because Republicans want to use the claims against President Biden without any threat of the truth getting in the way.
[…] Raskin asks Gerhardt for a theory that Trump didn’t deserve to be impeached for Jan. 6, but Biden does deserve to be impeached for … whatever. Gerhardt says he cannot.
Jordan starts off with the $250,000 that was sent to Hunter Biden by wire which used Joe Biden’s home address which was insta-debunked after Republicans tried to spring this yesterday.
So, Jordan is now asking Dubinsky about how this matches his experience of fraudsters, which is exactly why Dubinsky is there. So that every theory that Jordan, Comer, or Smith wants to posit can be supported.
Then Jordan turns to Turley, who has handily prepared for Republicans a list of crimes they might consider using to impeach President Biden, since they don’t have anything. This whole back and forth with Turley is fantastic, because it amounts to Turley flat-out advising the Republicans on how to conduct their case.
[…] Raskin once again goes through the steps showing that the firing of Shokin was part of a fight against corruption in Ukraine that was backed by multiple governments and by Republicans in the U.S. Senate. It wasn’t until years after the event that the whole “Biden did it to help Burisma” scheme was concocted by Giuliani and Trump. […]
Still more chaos, still more anti-Ukraine action from the Putin wing of the Republican Party:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s plan to pass the defense appropriations bill—historically the least problematic thing Congress does—was temporarily derailed again Wednesday while amendments were being considered. A small group of Republican nihilists, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, insisted that the relatively small amount of aid to Ukraine had to be stripped out of the bill, even though there was bipartisan support for keeping it in. So McCarthy took the extremely unusual move of sending the bill back to the Rules Committee to have the funding stripped out and put into a stand-alone bill.
That’s how things are going for McCarthy right now. His plan has been to pass four appropriations bills to soften up the opposition and get them to agree to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open past Saturday night, arguing that the Senate would have to accept the House’s stopgap bill. Defense is the easiest of the four bills to pass, and he can’t get that done without a fight. That fight, by the way, included the House agreeing to an amendment to reduce the secretary of defense’s salary to $1, an amendment that would be DOA in the Senate.
The second-easiest bill for the House to pass should be appropriations to the Department of Agriculture, but that bill’s passage looks dubious as well. Meanwhile, passing any of these four bills would not keep the government from running out of funding at midnight on Sept. 30, anyway. About 10 hard-liners insist they will never vote for a continuing resolution, making this entire week of House nonsense futile.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has offered an out to McCarthy and to any less nihilistic Republicans who don’t want to be blamed for a shutdown. “We are calling for an up-or-down vote when the Senate sends over a bipartisan continuing resolution to fund the government and meet the needs of the American people,” Jeffries said on MSNBC Wednesday. “And if that happens, we will provide a substantial number of votes—the lion’s share of votes—and all we will need is a handful of so-called traditional Republicans to join with us in the best interest of the American people and avoid an extreme MAGA Republican shutdown that will … hurt everyone.”
[…] Congress is going to miss its midnight deadline on Saturday. The only question is how long Republicans will let a shutdown last.
THE PHILOSOPHER Gianni Vattimo died on September 19 at the age of 87. I spoke with him just over a decade ago in his office in the European Parliament…
Seven of the already-losing Republican presidential candidates gathered last night at the Ronald Reagan Souvenir Shoppe And Grenada Invasion Memorial in Simi Valley, California for a completely forgettable debate on Fox Business. Like the previous Fox News debate, and all foreseeable GOP primary debates, the ordained nominee Donald Trump was not there, which may have been the only good thing about the spectacle.
The candidates all bickered and talked over each other even more than has been the norm at these things, resulting in this magnificent clip of pure chaos that MSNBC has been having fun circulating. It’s less than half a minute of unintelligible crosstalk, but seems interminable. You can shut it off after it cuts to the Morning Joe discussion segment, or watch the whole piece for more idiocy. [video at the link]
Nobody had any serious policy proposals, although Mike Pence did suggest a solution for school shootings: an expedited death penalty that would sidestep the Constitution to execute perpetrators within a few months, which would apparently be better than keeping guns out of the hands of would be mass shooters. (It also ignores the little detail where most such shooters expect to either kill themselves or be shot by cops.)
But golly, they sure had some zingers! You won’t remember any of them, either, although we suppose Chris Christie may end up on some highlight reel of the saddest attempts at an applause line ever. (It’s not even a “Please clap.”) Attacking Trump for not showing up for the Seamy Valley Follies, Christie — who had clearly practiced the bit all day — looked right into the camera and pretended to get tough on Trump. It was not successful: [video at the link]
I want to look at the camera right now and tell you, Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself. I know you’re watching, okay? And you’re not here tonight not because of polls and not because of your indictments. You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on this stage and defending your record.
You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen, you keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore, we’re gonna call you “Donald Duck.”
And by Jiminy, all you could hear from the audience was Crickets.
Ron DeSantis and others went after Trump as well, but only for his not being at the debate. Nobody — not even the Fox moderators — thought to criticize Trump for his recent call for the literal execution of Gen. Mark Milley, so we’ll just have to assume that’s one more thing Republicans are fine with.
Vivek Ramaswamy offered his unfailing charm again with a strange argument for ending military aid to Ukraine, saying that “Just because Putin’s an evil dictator does not mean Ukraine is good,” which might have been his most nose-punchable moment of the evening, although any other time his mouth was open might do.
Ron DeSantis, whose state is such a climate disaster that insurers are abandoning it, didn’t bother answering a question about that, instead blaming “Bidenomics” and “rules and regulations” without actually acknowledging that major insurers are no longer writing new policies in Florida. He also didn’t answer a specific question about why 2.5 million Floridians lack health insurance, because the answer is that DeSantis, the GOP-dominated Legislature, and previous Republican governor Rick Scott have blocked Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, so hooray for “freedom.”
He also insisted that new state history standards saying enslaved people learned useful skills were actually just “a hoax that was perpetuated by Kamala Harris,” and that the authors of those standards were descendants of slaves themselves, so all is well.
And during a discussion of how China is literally using TikTok to spy on Americans and make them do stupid shit for attention — a previously unknown behavior among Our People — Nikki Haley unleashed what was generally considered one of the highlights of the evening, telling Ramaswamy, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.” Yep, a riff on a line from the 1995 Adam Sandler movie Billy Madison was the most inventive thing anyone came up with last night. We award the Republican primary field no points, and may God have mercy on our souls.
The candidates mostly agreed that the United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three automakers is stupid and bad, and that unions are for lazy slackers, so that ought to appeal to the working class voters who Republicans insist they represent far better than Joe Biden does.
As for Trump, he spoke at that non-union auto parts maker we told you about, and wow, that was a dog’s breakfast, too. He told the anti-union autoworkers that none of the people running against him will become his VP, probably, but maybe some might become “Secretary of Something,” who can say?
For the striking UAW autoworkers not in the room, Trump said, “I don’t care what you get in the next two weeks, or three weeks, or five weeks,” because they’ll all be forced out of work by the electric vehicles that Joe Biden is personally forcing the worldwide auto industry to transition to building. But despite not giving a shit what the UAW wants, he also asked UAW leader Shawn Fain to endorse him because it would be a change from how unions always endorse Democrats for some stupid reason.
He went on to lie about how everyone who buys EVs starts to “panic” as soon as they get them home and realize EVs have no range at all, other than the 200 to over 400 miles generally available in current models. But at least he came up with a new, hilariously bad lie about the energy transition that’s already underway, claiming that electric motors can never be used in boats, because if they sink everyone onboard would be electrocuted. We sure hope someone lets manufacturers of electric boat motors — which use sealed batteries — know this. […]
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #387…
I was mulling over the various suggestions I’ve seen about what the House Democrats should do with regard the budget disaster the House Republicans are foisting on everyone. A solution occurred to me that is a bit different than most suggested.
The House Democratic leaders should go to McCarthy when the Senate delivers their continuing resolution and say, “Bring the Senate CR to the floor or we will file a motion to vacate. Once you’ve done that, we’ll support you continuing as Speaker through one vote.” Then repeat as needed for each of the actual appropriations bills. basically saying that, so long as needed (clean) legislation is brought to a vote, you get to keep your job. Double cross us, and you’re toast. Take your pick.
birgerjohanssonsays
Acknowledging the inevitable and preparing for it.
From The Guardian
‘At what are should you start Swedish “Death cleaning”? Forty-seven sounds about right”
Should be “age ” not are.
And the Guardian seems to dislike me adding links, as I cannot locate a flaw in the link.
If you are interested in the topic, Google the headline and you should arrive at the site.
The Texas A&M University Student Senate voted 35-15 Wednesday night to impeach and remove student body President Hudson Kraus from office, according to The Battalion, the student newspaper.
The student Senate brought a motion to impeach Kraus earlier this month after some members of the Senate claimed he misused his office to benefit his younger brother, also a student at the university. The impeachment trial was conducted in executive session. Kraus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The controversy began when a student senator revealed that Kraus had edited the job description for a cabinet position to fit his younger brother’s qualifications on the same day the student Senate was set to vote on filling the position. The student Senate then blocked Kraus’ brother from being appointed to a cabinet position…
New York’s $250 million fraud trial against Donald Trump and his real-estate empire will force four Trumps to the witness stand in the coming weeks, starting with Ivanka Trump and followed, toward its end, by the former president and his two eldest sons, a new witness list reveals.
State Attorney General Letitia James’ final list of “Witnesses to be Called” in her case against the Trump Organization was filed late Thursday morning…
What trial? I thought the judge had declared summary judgment.
The upcoming trial will determine monetary penalties, and whether Trump and his two eldest sons will be forever banned from running a business in New York state, as James has requested.
The trial will determine whether the other defendants, including Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., a Trump Org executive vice president and trustee, are also liable for fraud.
It will also determine if the plaintiffs are liable for specific violations of state law, including falsification of business records, issuing false financial statements, and insurance fraud.
Details.
johnson catmansays
re Reginald Selkirk @393: I wonder if the Texas A&M student president is a registered voter, and if so, whether he is registered as a republican? Being Texas, I would speculate “yes”, but with the recent reveal about Senator Bob from NJ, there is some wiggle room there.
The House Democratic leaders should go to McCarthy when the Senate delivers their continuing resolution and say, “Bring the Senate CR to the floor or we will file a motion to vacate. Once you’ve done that, we’ll support you continuing as Speaker through one vote.” […]
I think that as soon as McCarthy brings the CR to the floor, the bonkers rightwing doofuses in the Republican House caucus will file a motion to vacate. I don’t know enough about the House rules to say how that fight would go.
I don’t see how McCarthy can keep his job as Speaker. I think he is finished no matter what he does, and I think that in way he has given up. The Putin wing of the Republican Party will cause a shutdown. McCarthy will lose his job one way or another, and then the “moderate” Republicans and the Democrats will manage somehow to fund the government.
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #394…
The judge granted a summary judgement on ONE of SEVEN charges. They still have to try to other six, and then determine damages on all seven. And it’s a bench trial, so no fun and games to baffle a jury.
Followup to comment 396, I also think it likely that the bonkers rightwing doofuses in the Republican House caucus would get wind of McCarthy’s attempt to brink the CR to the floor, and they would not let it get that far. They would preempt him by filing a motion to vacate the Speakers office.
Marjorie Taylor Greene pushed a measure to lower Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1. Making matters worse, it was added to a GOP spending bill.
[…] Thanks to the GOP majority, the spending bill for the military has already been changed to prohibit the Pentagon from implementing climate-related policies from the White House, and removing funding for the Defense Department’s office of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
But as The New York Times noted, there was one other amendment that stood out as notable.
The Republican-led House voted on Wednesday to reduce the salary of Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to $1, as right-wing lawmakers tried to transform a Pentagon spending bill and a series of other funding measures into weapons to take aim at President Biden, his agenda and his top officials.
To be sure, there’s no reason to believe the nation’s first Black defense secretary will have to work for an annual salary of $1, but as the Times’ report added, the measure, championed by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, “reflected the intensity of the right-wing drive to make the military into a political issue.”
It also comes against a backdrop of a GOP effort to impeach Austin, though I’ve struggled to keep up with why, exactly, Republicans have made the cabinet secretary a target of such partisan ire. […]
The House Democratic minority doesn’t much care if the Republican majority makes its spending bill even more outlandish because it will create even greater challenges for GOP members from competitive districts once it’s time to vote, up or down, on final passage.
So, where does this leave us? The House is working on trying to advance four appropriations bills, including the defense spending bill, before the weekend. There’s no reason to assume any of the four will pass, but with the government shutdown deadline in mind, it doesn’t much matter either way: Even if the appropriations bills were to somehow clear the lower chamber, they’d be rejected by the Democratic-led Senate and Democratic White House.
Or put another way, these theatrics amount to little more than a tantrum that does little more than make the House GOP majority look even more extreme.
It’s among the reasons Austin probably isn’t too worried about a dramatic pay cut.
[…] What’s gotten much less attention is that a substantial number of the “auto workers” and “union members” in the audience appear to have been phonies produced by the Trump campaign. The Detroit News found at least one actual, self-identified auto worker in the crowd, 55 year old Doug King, who works for Stellantis. The paper also reported that a retired auto worker named Brian Pannebecker said he helped recruit people to come to the event. But the paper seemed to have a hard time finding real auto workers or union members in the crowd of between 400 and 500 people.
From The Detroit News …
One individual in the crowd who held a sign that said “union members for Trump,” acknowledged that she wasn’t a union member when approached by a Detroit News reporter after the event. Another person with a sign that read “auto workers for Trump” said he wasn’t an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn’t provide their names.
Anyone who knows campaign work knows that the sometimes “home made” signs held by attendees in the crowd are seldom made by the folks holding them. […] That’s always the case when it’s professional designed and produced campaign signs like the ones people were holding up here. That’s just two people. But the piece makes it sound like that’s most of what the reporter came up with.
The Detroit Free Press also found at least one actual union autoworker at the event, 50 year old Chris Vitale who works at Chrysler. Were there more? But aside from him it was apparently just the attendees lined up around risers surrounding Trump holding “Union Members for Trump” signs. Maybe some of them were the two phonies the Detroit News talked to?
Given the demographics of the UAW it shouldn’t be that hard to find enough actual autoworkers to show up for Trump at a small venue in Detroit. But it seems like a lot of the “union members” and “auto workers” there were phonies. While the Detroit News reported on it the fact doesn’t seem to have seeped into any of the coverage from the big agenda setting outlets like Axios, Politico, the Post or the Times. […]
Here are some excerpts of Mark Sumner’s Part II of the Republicans holding an impeachment hearing. See the link for more details:
[…] Rep. Glenn Ivey keeps everything extremely calm and cool while pointing out, again, that dismissing Shokin was something that was wanted by the U.S., the U.K., the IMF, and Republicans in the Senate. There was no Burisma investigation. Shokin was removed because he was corrupt and ineffective.
”There’s really no linkage there between the president and derailing any investigation.”
Ivey also repeats Archer’s definitive statement President Biden had no knowledge or involvement in Hunter Biden’s business.
Finally, Ivey also points out that Weiss was appointed by Trump, and that Weiss was allowed to stay after Biden’s election at the request of Republicans.
Jordan is really irritated that Goldman keep reintroducing the Devon Archer testimony because the actual testimony contradicts Republican claims. This byplay is one of the few fun things in this long day.
Rep. Lauren Boebert is up, so what does she do? Show the same section of Devon Archer’s testimony that we’ve already seen, and talk about a dinner we’ve already heard about.
Boebert says all this as if it’s a great revelation, even though we just heard it literally five minutes ago.
Again, every one of these Republicans is doing their questioning as if the only possible concern is how it will look when clipped for Newsmax. If that means just going through exactly the same things, in exactly the same order as a dozen other Republicans, that’s cool. They’re not trying to build a case or make progress. The whole day is just about their five minutes.
[…] Rep. Jared Moskowitz is thrilled with how this hearing is going “As a former director of emergency management, I know a disaster when I see one.”
[…] And Greene is finally up. She is shocked, shocked, by how the DOJ hasn’t acted on claims she sent about unsupported claims that she sent about human trafficking by Hunter Biden. And because it was done in 2020, by the Trump DOJ, it was election interference. By Trump-appointed officials against Trump.
If you thought Greene was going to say or ask anything reasonable … no, sorry. You never thought that. Apologies.
[…] Joe Biden is 80. Every tax form he’s written since the Stone Age is public record. All his homes and bank accounts are on record. Do the Republicans think Biden is waiting until he’s 88 to retire and live it up on all the secret money?
Rep. William Timmons says he’s going to “make it simple” for the American people by bringing it down to “What did Joe Biden know, and when.”
Now we’re down to “a Biden” as well “the Biden family.”
Now we’re in Kazakhstan. And Burisma. And the CCP. Because Hunter Biden is not only the smartest man in business, but able to predict the future actions of world leaders. Honestly, Hunter should be a billionaire if he was capable of half what the Republicans are accusing him of. [That’s a good example of Republicans substituting “Biden family” or simply “Biden” when they are actually talking about Hunter Biden. Most of the Republicans did that.]
[…] Rep. Jasmine Crockett points out that the form 1023 that Republicans keep citing has been “repeatedly debunked” including by the person who brought it to the FBI originally. The FBI investigated the claims and closed the investiation.
“Repeating the same lies will not turn them into truth. Kind of like the election that he lost.”
Crockett asks to enter into the record a fact sheet from Congressional Integrity Project, Comer and Jordan object.
Crockett: “Of course y’all gonna object, but we gonna talk about it.” Crockett then proceeds to read a list of Trump activities in China that dwarf anything that Republicans have even tried to throw at Biden.
Crockett then goes to Gerhardt to see how many times Republicans have said “if” in regard to the claims against Biden. Gerhardt “has been keeping a tally.” The number is 35.
Crockett holds up a picture of classified documents being stored in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago and delivers the quote of the day.
“These are our national secrets. Looks like in the shitter to me”
[…] Fallon halls out the 1023. The unverified 1023. The widely debunked 1023 that is based on the repeatedly debunked Burisma conspiracy theory.
And now we’re deep into Shokin territory. Really, that leaning on this five years later is kind of astounding.
Goldman enters the letter that Fallon was talking about, which actually shows that Shokin was not investigating Burisma. It won’t make a dent in Republican’s claims. […]
Economist Thomas Sowell portrays himself (and is portrayed by others) as a fearless defender of Cold Hard Fact against leftist idealogues. His work is a pseudoscholarly sham, and he peddles mindless, factually unreliable free market dogma…
t might not be obvious, but the war in Ukraine has always been an issue of utmost domestic importance to the United States.
Ukraine was at the center of Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and featured heavily in internal Republican machinations. Remember, the one change that the Trump camp made to the 2016 Republican Party platform was watering down support for Ukraine.
And then there are the strategic considerations. Russia is a big part of the reason that the United States’ defense budget is north of $800 billion … and fast approaching $900 billion. Not only does Russia’s battlefield defeat have budgetary implications, but it will inform whether we have to fight a hot war against either China or North Korea that would cost trillions of dollars, claim untold lives, and destroy the world economy.
This is all quite clear to Democrats and old-guard Republicans. But Trump’s MAGA cult has lined up behind their authoritarian pro-Putin leader, rupturing the Republican Party and leading to a seemingly inevitable government shutdown at midnight on Sept. 30.
Posted by readers of the article:
Remember that Koch Industries refused to disinvest from Russia when the U.S. ratcheted up sanctions. So no Ukraine support, no global warming despite all evidence to the contrary, etc.. They are horrible people.
—————————
I can very highly recommend this book by Rachel Maddow: “Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth”
—————————-
Have you gotten to the part where Putin appoints Igor Sechin, aka Darth Vader, as head of Rosneft, stolen from imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky? This despite Sechin having no business background — he was a Putin apparatchik.
Here’s a quotation from the book: “When Sechin did smile, he looked like a fairy-tale ogre who had just swallowed a small tasty child.”
– Rachel Maddow in “Blowout”, 2019
—————————–
A loud, obnoxious minority of Republicans oppose aid to Ukraine and stand with Russia. Everyone else stands with Ukraine and defending democracy.
Those idiot Republicans siding with Russia should be ashamed of themselves. They claim to be Reagan Republicans. But Reagan, like John McCain, would be fully supporting Ukraine.
—————————–
There are two primary issues before the electorate:
Defense of democracy at home and abroad
Climate change
————————
Yes, and the two things are very much linked. The same forces that are trying to perpetuate the use of fossil fuels are also trying to end democratic governance.
—————————
Cultists are humans by definition, so MAGA away at them.
The rule is against referring to people as less than human. Perhaps the three most prominent reasons not to do that are Nazi Germany, Rwanda in 1994, and racists in the US pretty much constantly.
But otherwise there is no rule against insulting people.
I’m with you on investigating the folks who ‘celebrated’ July 4th with Putin.
birgerjohanssonsays
A lighter topic.
An American reacts to the Volvo terrängbil 6×6 truck.
Recent news about my fave superluminous superlative star and the almost byut not quote supeernova explosion tht amde it briefly thesecond brightest inou rnight skies -despiet being seven thousand five hundred light years away :
Chandra Discovers New Details about ‘Great Eruption’ of Eta Carinae
Sep 27, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro
Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers are tracking the expansion of the X-ray nebula around Eta Carinae, a luminous binary system that contains two massive stars (one is about 90 times the mass of the Sun and the other is believed to be about 30 times the Sun’s mass). In the middle of the 19th century, Eta Carinae was observed to experience a huge explosion that astronomers have dubbed the ‘Great Eruption.’
I swear my computer switches letters around on me.. & I swear at it then too. For clarity :
Recent news about my fave superluminous superlative star and the almost but not quite supernova explosion that made it briefly the second brightest in our night skies -despite being seven thousand five hundred light years away.
Yelp has sued Texas’ Attorney General Ken Paxton to prevent him from punishing the reviews website for labeling Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) to indicate that they do not actually offer abortion services…
The Lockheed Martin X-59 is probably the strangest airplane ever designed. Its razor-sharp nose takes half of the airplane’s length; there’s no cockpit in sight; the wings are tiny compared to the entire fuselage; and its oversized tail engine looks like a weird hump about to fall off. Of course, there’s a method to this madness. The design is the secret sauce that has produced a true unicorn: a supersonic jet that doesn’t boom the hell out of people and buildings on the ground…
The X-59, developed alongside NASA, is designed as an experimental jet that NASA will use to test just how big of a boom people on the ground are willing to accept from a supersonic aircraft. According to Dave Richardson, the program director for X-59 at Lockheed Martin, with this new design, people shouldn’t expect much of a boom at all.
The X-59’s “quiet” supersonic boom isn’t made possible by expensive magical materials or exotic engines, Richardson explains. “There is no radical technology in the airplane itself. It really is just the shape of the aircraft.” And if the shape looks more like an anime alien spaceship than an actual vehicle created by human beings, that’s because it was dreamed up in another dimension—by computers and humans—through special software created by the Bethesda, Maryland, company’s engineers…
Georgia’s Republican Senate Caucus is suspending a GOP state senator who attacked them for opposing his plan to impeach Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for indicting former President Donald Trump.
The caucus announced Thursday that it was indefinitely suspending state Sen.
of Trenton, who represents a district in Georgia’s northwest corner.
“Sen. Moore has a right to his opinion,” the caucus said in a statement. “However, during his advocacy for his ill-conceived proposal, Sen. Moore has knowingly misled people across Georgia and our nation, causing unnecessary tension and hostility, while putting his caucus colleagues and their families at risk of personal harm,” said the group, which has 32 of the Georgia Senate’s 56 members…
birgerjohanssonsays
Senator Dianne Feinstein has died.
She was 90 years old.
The fact that some congressional Republicans are opposed to additional U.S. aid for Ukraine is not new. What is new, however, is the fact that this GOP contingent continues to grow significantly larger. NBC News reported:
An amendment to the defense funding bill by Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to prohibit all military assistance to Ukraine won 93 Republican votes Wednesday, as 126 Republicans and all 213 Democrats voted against it. That’s up from 70 Republicans who voted for a similar measure by Gaetz in July.
For a full list of the 93 House Republicans who voted for the measure, the roll call is online.
A separate proposal, from Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, would’ve slashed U.S. military aid to Ukraine in the defense spending bill, and it received 104 votes. Like Gaetz’s measure, all of the members supporting the proposal came from the GOP conference.
It’s worth emphasizing that while both amendments failed, the far-right members who championed them ended up getting their way, at least in the short term. NBC News’ report added, “Both amendments failed in lopsided votes, but the GOP opponents succeeded in getting leadership to strip out the Ukraine funding and try to pass it as a separate bill anyway.”
[…] About a year ago, as Congress approved a series of measures related to supporting Ukraine, the number of Republicans opposing the bills was quite small. […] the House voted overwhelmingly to ban oil imports from Russia, for example, only 15 House Republicans opposed the measure. A week earlier, the House easily passed a non-binding resolution in support of Ukrainians, which only three Republicans opposed.
Soon after, the House voted to suspend normal trade relations with Russia, and that measure was opposed by only eight Republicans.
When the House passed a bill directing the Biden administration to collect evidence of Russian war crimes, only six Republicans opposed the measure. When the House passed the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, only 10 GOP members voted no. The same week, the House passed a largely symbolic measure, pressing the White House to support Ukraine through confiscated Russian oligarchs’ assets, and four Republicans opposed it.
It wasn’t long before this GOP contingent picked up some unflattering nicknames. Then-Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, for example, labeled them the Republican Party’s “Putin wing.” The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called them the “GOP’s pro-Putin faction.” A Washington Post report added that these Republicans have formed “what some Democrats (and even critics on the right) have labeled ‘Putin’s Caucus.’”
[…] a year later, this faction is noticeably larger. We’re no longer talking about a handful of fringe figures: Gaetz’s proposal would’ve blocked all U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, and roughly 42% of the House Republican conference went on the record in support of the change.
The GOP’s so-called “Putin wing,” in other words, appears to be getting incrementally bigger.
[The 9.3 million people who tuned in to the second Republican presidential primary debate] represents — by a significant margin — the lowest TV audience for any Republican presidential debate since the start of the 2016 cycle.
[…] California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month and indicated that he would not choose among the candidates already running for her [Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s] seat.
“Yes. Interim appointment. I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” Newsom said. “It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off. That primary is just a matter of months away. I don’t want to tip the balance of that.” […]
The impeachment inquiry that Republicans started on Thursday was demonstrably without merit and initiated in violation of House rules and precedent. At the end of the day, after hearing from three Republican non-fact witnesses chosen because of their commentary in right-wing media, not a single hint of evidence was produced to justify the inquiry.
Even so, the hearing was extremely revealing—only that most of what it revealed was how ready Republicans were to manufacture false claims and wheel out conspiracy theories that have been widely debunked for years. This was partly because they had nothing else. Mostly, it was because every single Republican treated their five minutes of camera time as if they were doing a one-person play for Newsmax.
Through the course of the day, not only did Republicans showcase their lack of interest in facts, they also demonstrated that they are absolutely terrified of anything that looks like a fact witness.
Here are five highlights […]
5. REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ CALLS OUT MANUFACTURED IMAGES
During his five minutes, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds trotted out a series of images that were reportedly messages from Hunter Biden. They appeared to be screenshots of phone messages, complete with little green bubbles. However, these images, many of which came straight out of sites associated with QAnon, were neither actual screenshots nor at all accurate.
It fell to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to call out one of the worst.
AOC: That screenshot of what appeared to be a text message was a fabricated image. It was a fabricated image […]
In the actual message, Hunter Biden is worried about his ability to pay his alimony and is planning how he can get his life back together as he recovers from both drug addiction and a divorce, while hoping to find a way to pay back what he owes to members of his family. A friend replies offering Hunter a place to stay and help in planning his next steps.
But Donalds showed scraps of this conversation pasted together, which were meant to make it seem as if one of Hunter’s business partners was scheming to make a payment to President Joe Biden. It was about as close to the actual message as a ransom note generated though cutting words out of magazines.
And you can see exactly how concerned Donalds was about being caught committing absolute fraud. [Tweet and image of Byron Donalds looking smug.]
Why wasn’t he concerned? As Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, everyone in the room other than the witnesses were protected by the “speech and debate clause” of the Constitution. That allows members of Congress to lie with impunity, and Republicans put that ability into heavy rotation during this hearing. [JFC]
4. REP. JAMIE RASKIN SHOWS THAT REPUBLICANS ARE ALLERGIC TO FACTS
Throughout the day, Republicans returned again and again to one claim: While serving as vice president, Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to dismiss prosecutor Viktor Shokin to protect the company Burisma, where Hunter Biden was on the board. That claim wasn’t simply an item on a list, it was the only claim that many of the Republican members talked about. That includes Rep. Jim Jordan, who used it both as his opening and in his sweaty, ranty closing remarks.
The problem with this claim is that it’s simply a lie. It’s a lie that was debunked literally within two weeks of when it first appeared, in 2019. The story did not exist before Giuliani brought it to The New York Times. It was immediately shot down. It was the basis of the phone call that Donald Trump placed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an attempt to blackmail him into producing false claims about Joe Biden. It has been debunked by everyone involved in every way possible.
Now Republicans are wedded to this baseless lie as the heart of their “inquiry.” That leaves them fighting desperately to prevent any facts about these events from entering the hearing room. That even extends to preventing Republican witnesses from appearing. [Tweet and video at the link]
The biggest chuckle of the whole thing is how Jordan tries to pretend that somehow the Burisma lie can exist independent of Giuliani when everyone involved confirms that the story did not even exist until Giuliani began shopping it around in 2019. Everything that they are leaning on now, including that infamous FBI form 1023, was created in an effort to prop up Giuliani’s massive lie.
3. REP. ROBERT GARCIA SHOWS WHAT ACTUAL CORRUPTION LOOKS LIKE
Over and over throughout the day, it became obvious that there was one name missing from the “evidence” that Republicans kept repeating: the name of the guy they were supposedly investigating, Joe Biden. Republicans showed charts of an array of businesses. They went through stacks of phone texts and emails. They detailed meals almost down to the menu. But what was missing from 99.9% of the things they brought up was any whiff of the president.
Here’s Jordan’s tweet from last week that practically represents a summary of the hearing. [Tweet/list at the link, not worth repeating.]
Unable to find anything that Joe Biden has done, Republicans declared that there was a Biden “brand” that they could then use as a proxy for Joe Biden. What does this mean? Were there license agreements? Biden water? Biden steaks? Maybe big gold letters spelling “BIDEN” above the doors of hotels actually owned by foreign corporations? None of that.
What the “Biden brand” and “the Biden family” really translates to is “We have nothing on Joe Biden.” But in case Republicans had forgotten what real corruption looked like, Rep. Robert Garcia came complete with pictures of someone who genuinely had worked in the White House, visited with foreign leaders on official business, then collected $2 billion from those leaders the day after Trump left office. [Tweet and video at the link]
2. REP. JASMINE CROCKETT DELIVERS ONE OF MANY FANTASTIC TAKEDOWNS
The whole affair was such a shambles that as the day wore on, Democrats in the hearing were clearly having fun. Whether it was Raskin’s opening remarks that made it clear exactly what was going to happen, or Rep. Daniel Goldman repeatedly forcing a clearly exasperated Jordan to accept documents on the record following Republicans lying about those documents, there was a good deal of fun to be had from this pointless farce of a hearing.
Just watch Rep. Jared Moskowitz. [video at the link]
Almost from the opening bell, things went so poorly for the Republicans that it was obvious why even Fox had relegated this thing to their business channel. Five years of investigating the same false claims had not brought them even a speck of evidence.
On any ordinary day, Moskowitz delivering the line, “As a former director of emergency management, I know a disaster when I see one,” would be a sure winner. But sorry, Rep. Moskowitz, that moment has to take second place to Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s remarks.
First, Crockett tried to enter a fact sheet into the record. When Jordan and Rep. James Comer objected, Crockett wasn’t even phased. “Of course y’all gonna object,” she said smoothly, “but we gon’ talk about it.” Then she moved on to a moment of absolute destruction.
Not only did Crockett absolutely slay Republicans over the idea that nothing they were talking about showed any connection to Joe Biden, but also she took the time to review some of the genuine threats raised by actions of Donald Trump. That included waving some of the images that were taken during the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where boxes of classified documents were stacked in a bathroom. [video at the link]
Crockett: “When we start talking about things that look like evidence, they [Republicans] want to act like they’re blind. They don’t know what this is. These are our national secrets! Looks like in the shitter to me.”
1. REP. GREG CASAR BLOWS APART THE ENTIRE BASIS OF THE REPUBLICAN ‘INQUIRY’
Throughout the day, in their hundreds of mentions of Hunter Biden, Republicans kept insisting that they were all about “equal treatment under the law,” and that Joe Biden’s son was getting off too lightly because of that “Biden brand.”
But when it came right down to it, Casar simply blew away that claim—as well as any claim that Republicans were concerned about justice at all—with one simple action. [Tweet and video at the link]
Casar: “Will members of the Oversight Committee please raise your hand if you believe both Hunter and Trump should be held accountable for any of the indictments against them if convicted by a jury of their peers?”
Casar’s hand went up. The other Democrats on the committee raised their hands. Not one single Republican joined them.
In 30 seconds, Casar demonstrated absolutely that far from being about “equal justice,” Republicans are there to ensure unequal justice and to do the bidding of Donald Trump. It was a masterclass in simply calling on people to put up or shut up. And it should be an example that is not forgotten.
A member of the Proud Boys extremist group who disappeared days before he was supposed to be sentenced for his role in the U.S. Capitol riot was found unconscious by federal agents after he tried to “covertly return” to his home, the FBI said on Friday.
Christopher Worrell, of Naples, Florida, was taken to a hospital where he remained on Friday, according to the FBI’s Tampa office. The FBI did not provide further details about his condition.
Authorities had been searching for weeks for Worrell, who had been on house arrest when he went missing last month ahead of his sentencing in Washington. Prosecutors had been seeking 14 years in prison for Worrell on convictions for assault, obstruction of Congress and other offenses.
The FBI said that agents quickly surrounded and entered Worrell’s home on Thursday after he returned, found the man unconscious and “immediately provided medical attention.” Authorities say agents found night-vision goggles, $4,000 in cash, and survivalist gear in his home…
I wonder if the ‘unconscious’ aspect implies a suicide attempt.
The Texas Supreme Court has sided with former top deputies of Attorney General Ken Paxton and cleared the way for their whistleblower lawsuit to move forward.
The all-Republican Supreme Court on Friday rejected Paxton’s request to dismiss the lawsuit after the case had been on pause pending a possible settlement with the whistleblowers. The decisions came four days after the whistleblowers asked the court to reinstate the case — and about two weeks after Paxton was acquitted in his impeachment trial before the Texas Senate.
The lawsuit will return to a Travis County trial court…
[…] As September got underway, the to-do list was daunting, and even a competent and capable Congress would’ve found it challenging to get everything done. Lawmakers, facing inflexible deadlines, had to, among other things:
– fund federal operations and prevent a government shutdown;
– approve a new farm bill;
– reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA);
– pass additional military aid to our Ukrainian allies;
– approve disaster relief in the wake of Maui fires and Hurricane Idalia;
– prevent steep cuts in pay for wildland firefighters;
– and reauthorize PEPFAR, the United States’ highly effective global HIV/AIDS program.
As September comes to an end, how many of these priorities have check marks next to them? Literally none.
If recent history is any guide, the public will soon see headlines about “Congress” — as in “Congress failed to prevent a shutdown” and “Congress struggles to get work done.”
Those headlines, however, will only tell part of a larger story. Yes, it was up to the legislative branch to complete these tasks, but the fact remains that the one group of officials standing in the way of completing these tasks were congressional Republicans, most notably in the House.
Indeed, it was just a few days ago when the Senate bipartisan leadership — Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — unveiled a compromise stopgap bill that would’ve addressed most of the aforementioned list. It was the same legislation that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rejected soon after.
As for what to expect, the House’s GOP majority is moving forward with plans to vote on a right-wing stopgap bill of its own — called a “continuing resolution” or “CR” — that’s designed to extend federal funding for a month, while imposing 30% spending cuts across much of the government.
It might not pass — some House Republicans oppose continuing resolutions on principle, others don’t want to be on the hook for having supported such a radically regressive bill — but if it did, it wouldn’t much matter because there’s no way a Democratic-led Senate would approve such legislation.
September’s to-do list, in other words, is poised to become the latest evidence of congressional Republicans’ inability to govern. GOP members began a pointless, evidence-free impeachment inquiry, but they failed to do what they were supposed to do.
Update: About an hour after I published this, the House Republican leadership’s stopgap bill failed in the face of bipartisan opposition. As best as I can tell, the GOP leadership in the chamber doesn’t have a Plan B.
There can never be too much chaos for Rep. Matt Gaetz and his malignant cohorts. With this weekend’s government shutdown now seeming inevitable, the Florida Republican and some of his unnamed compatriots are plotting to try to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as early as next week, according to The Washington Post.
A shutdown isn’t enough disruption, nor is their trainwreck of an impeachment inquiry inquiry, so these hard-liners want to make the House an even more ridiculously dysfunctional place. There’s a real underpants-gnome vibe to the endeavor, with phase two of the plot—whom they’ll replace McCarthy with—currently a mystery. The only name seriously floated to the Post is Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who told the Post, “I fully support Speaker McCarthy. He knows that and I know that. … I have zero interest in palace intrigue. End of discussion.”
The other question is whether they’re capable of pulling it off. The House procedure is called a “motion to vacate,” and it has been voted on only once in American history—and it failed. In 1910, Speaker Joseph Cannon survived the vote, though his leadership was weakened. Later, in 1997, rebels plotting against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich talked about using it, but they never filed the motion. The only other time the motion has been filed was in 2015, when then-Rep. Mark Meadows (yeah, that Mark Meadows) filed it against then-Speaker John Boehner, but it was never deployed. Boehner ultimately resigned.
A successful motion to vacate is clearly not an easy thing to pull off. Is this the crew that will make history and be the first to succeed? It’s just possible that McCarthy and team are hapless enough that it could happen. But what the hard-liners should worry about are the potential consequences: empowered Democrats.
McCarthy has brushed off any suggestion of getting help from Democrats to save his speakership, and in turn, Democrats aren’t in a hurry to rush to his defense. “I cannot imagine him paying the price that it would take for us to bail him out,” Rep. Jared Huffman of California told Axios.
That price would be steep. “We want to get disaster aid out, we want to continue our support for Ukraine, and we want them to end this sham of an impeachment inquiry,” Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts told Politico last week. “If Kevin McCarthy chooses to … get back to work for the American people, to do the right thing, we’re going to be there to, you know, meet and compromise with him.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is playing it very cool. He rejected “the notion that any of us would be dealing with inside parlor games when we’re trying to stop the extreme MAGA Republicans,” according to Axios. […]
McCarthy needs 217 votes out of his current 221-seat majority to save his speakership. (There are two vacancies in the House.) Presuming Gaetz can count, he won’t bring the motion to vacate unless he’s got four Republican members on his side willing to abandon McCarthy so the ploy can potentially succeed. However, Gaetz can’t and shouldn’t count on Democrats to help him—they can sit this one out by voting “present,” or they can vote to keep McCarthy.
That puts a lot of power into the hands of the 212 Democrats and the “Biden 18”—the freshmen Republicans in districts President Joe Biden won in 2020. If just four of them play their cards right—and cross the aisle on a vote—they could find themselves in a fairly comfortable position with Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. At the very least, they wouldn’t be blamed for the next government shutdown.
It’s a long shot that any of this ends with a Democratic speaker, but the only thing that’s predictable amid the chaos in the House is the unpredictable.
Their insatiable lust for power is only equaled by their incurable impotence in exercising it. ~Winston Churchill
Reginald Selkirksays
@420 – Do not feel sorry for the ‘moderate’ Republicans who are now being pestered by the extremely dumb free-dumb caucus. They invited this dysfunction and weirdness into their party. They have consistently failed to disqualify, exclude or even speak up against MAGA, QAnon and other dumbfuckery; with the few exceptions who did speak up being driven from the party.
On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to decide if two laws crafted by Republicans in Florida and Texas run afoul of the First Amendment because the laws force platforms to explain all their content moderation decisions to users.
Both laws, passed in 2021 after several major platforms banned Donald Trump, seemingly were a way for Republicans to fight back and prevent supposedly liberal-leaning platforms from allegedly censoring conservative viewpoints.
The laws are designed to stop the most popular platforms from inconsistently censoring content by requiring platforms to provide detailed explanations to users whenever their posts are removed or their accounts are banned or “shadowbanned” (deprioritized or restricted from feeds by platforms’ algorithms). The Texas law also requires platforms to provide clear paths to timely appeal censored content, and both laws require platforms to publicly disclose standards for when and why they censor users…
A federal judge in Atlanta has shot down former Trump DOJ official Jeff Clark’s attempt to remove his RICO prosecution to federal court in a Friday ruling.
The decision means that Clark will be prosecuted for his efforts to reverse Trump’s loss in the 2020 election in state court in Fulton County.
Clark has the dubious distinction of being the sole high-ranking DOJ official to attempt to enlist the full force of the Justice Department in Trump’s effort to muddy the election result and declare victory. Clark, who was acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division at the time, sought to have the DOJ send a letter declaring that fraud had impacted the election result and advising state legislatures to consider sending different electors to Congress.
At the most dramatic point in the scheme, Trump initially agreed to appoint Clark as acting attorney general. Threats to resign from the entire senior DOJ leadership and White House counsel’s office dissuaded Trump from doing that.
Clark had argued that his actions formed part of his official duties within the Justice Department, and that the case should therefore be moved to federal court where it could be dismissed.
Former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made and lost a similar argument, though legal experts believe that a live question remains in that case.
Clark faces a RICO conspiracy charge and a false statements charge in the indictment brought by Fulton County DA Fani Willis. The federal judge found that none the actions which led to his indictment on the charges could not have been part of his duties at the Justice Department.
Clark had attempted to argue that Trump delegated him the task of drafting the letter and working on the election, but the judge said he found “no evidence that the President directed Clark to work on election-related matters generally or to write the December 28 letter.”
The judge also found that the work Clark was trying to do ” would have been outside the scope of DOJ more broadly.”
[…] House Speaker Kevin McCarthy lost again Friday afternoon when he put a stopgap funding bill on the floor […] No Democrat voted for the bill and it lost 198-232.
Even if it had passed in the House it would have been dead on arrival in the Senate. The White House has already said President Joe Biden would veto it. The bill is unacceptable because of the draconian cuts McCarthy agreed to in order to appease the hard-liners, some of whom didn’t vote for the damned thing anyway.
[Jeff Stein posted]:
House GOP [tried to] advance bill that cuts by at least 30%:
– Housing subsidies 4 poor
– Medical research 4 cancer etc
– SSA offices
– Nutrition aid 4 pregnant moms
– Head Start
– EPA
– NASA
– Justice Dept
– LIHEAP
– Toxic waste cleanup
– & much more
Those are cuts that even moderate Republicans shouldn’t be able to swallow. On top of that, it’s unacceptable to the Senate and White House because it has elements of the racist immigration bill the House passed in May, including the finishing of Donald Trump’s border wall, cutting off asylum to refugees at the border, and other policy changes the White House rejected months ago.
The Senate took another step on its own stopgap bill Thursday, but there’s still work to be done on it, including on border security. A handful of Republicans in the Senate are trying to support McCarthy on his immigration demands, but they are unlikely to get actual policy changes into the bill against Democratic opposition. Working out those demands and the amendment votes they require will delay the Senate’s passage of the bill, possibly until Sunday when the shutdown will have begun.
The shutdown is happening. McCarthy has guaranteed it. He agreed to the demands of the hard-liners and put devastating budget cuts and intolerable immigration provisions in this bill. He put that bill on the floor knowing that a core group of those same hard-liners wouldn’t vote for it anyway.
That was the extent of his plan: capitulating to the hard-liners and then letting them beat him up again, forcing the government to shut down. Asked after the vote whether he had a Plan B, McCarthy replied, “Nothing right now.”
In a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday, snappily titled “To Consider the Nomination of Demetrios L. Kouzoukas, to be a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Supplementary Medical, Hospital Insurance, Old-Age and Survivors Insurance,, and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren got a wee bit feisty with the nominee in her usual, extremely satisfying way.
Now, sure, Demetrios Kouzoukas is a Biden nominee, but there are reasons why we have these hearings in the first place and don’t just go straight to a vote. Things are revealed that might not have come up previously.
For instance, in the personal testimony offered by Kouzoukas, he neglected to mention that he has a paid seat on the board of Clover Health, a for-profit health insurance company that insures seniors as part of Medicare Advantage. Warren brought this up, pointing out that “a big factor influencing Medicare solvency today is the growth of Medicare Advantage, a program that allows for-profit insurance companies to sell Medicare coverage that experts say is on target this year to charge —overcharge the government by $75 billion.” For-profit insurance companies like Clover Health.
Warren then asked Kouzoukas how much he was paid to sit on Clover’s board, and after several attempts to answer the very direct question in a very roundabout way, he finally settled on $100,000 as the number. She then asked him if he planned to quit the board if nominated — but after four straight attempts to not answer that question either, Sen. Warren said she could probably assume that he did not, in fact, plan to quit his paid position on the board.
It was at this point that she very helpfully explained that this would create a massive conflict of interest, because no matter what he chose to do about addressing the problem of Medicare fraud, with regard to Medicare Advantage, he would either be screwing over the people of this country or screwing over the company he works for and the legal obligation he has to maximize its profits.
This, you see, is why it is generally frowned upon for someone who is literally on the payroll of a private insurance company to sit on this particular board. [video at the link]
[…] Mr. Kouzoukas, as we both know, as a member of the board, corporate law requires you to help Clover to maximize its profits. So, for example, if you highlighted the amount of fraud that Medicare Advantage undergoes every year and how that fraud is undermining the solvency of Medicare, that could lead to policies that might limit the Medicare Advantage program. And if that happened, Mr. Kouzoukas, would limiting the Medicare Advantage program undercut the profitability of Clover, the company that bylaw, you are supposed to be watching out for?
[SILENCE]
[…] Let’s be clear. If Mr. Kouzoukas ignores the fraud, he helps Clover. If he focuses on the fraud, he hurts Clover. The conflict of interest here is so big and so pervasive that there is no action that Mr. Kouzoukas can take that doesn’t either help or hurt Clover, the company that pays him $100,000 a year to sit on its board and watch out for the company. And there is no waiver that can change that fact. This kind of conflict is shocking and it is deeply unethical. Not a single other trustee has ever received compensation from an insurance company while acting as a Medicare trustee.
And if you won’t step down from the Clover board, then you should withdraw your nomination. And if you do not withdraw, given the clear conflicts posed by your board service, I will strongly oppose your nomination and I will encourage every other senator in this body to do so as well.
I know there are gonna be some people who will feel a little huffy about Warren straight up homiciding a Biden nominee like that (and possibly about me writing it up) because “Democracy is at stake!” — and trust me, I get it. But she’s doing Biden a favor here, because this is a situation that could go very wrong down the road, what with that very glaring conflict of interest and what have you. In fact, she’s doing Kouzoukas a favor. This way, he can pick which board he would like to be on and avoid any impropriety. Everyone wins! Especially me, because I really enjoy watching Elizabeth Warren absolutely smash for-profit health insurance guys. […]
A co-defendant in the sweeping Georgia election interference case involving former President Trump has become the first to plead guilty in the case.
Scott Hall, a bail bond business owner, after reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties before Judge Scott McAfee at an impromptu hearing Friday afternoon.
Hall was sentenced to five years probation, a $5,000 fine and 200 hours of community service. He also cannot participate in any “polling activities” while on probation, must write a letter of apology to Georgia citizens and must testify honestly in any future proceedings in the case…
A teenage girl who was struck by lightning while hunting with her father in the US state of Florida has died.
Baylee Holbrook, 16, and her father were both hit after lightning hit a tree on Tuesday, Putnam County officials said.
Her father lost consciousness but later woke up to find his daughter in a critical condition and not breathing.
Ms Holbrook was then rushed to hospital, where she died two days later on Thursday morning, officials said.
More at the link.
Looks like Zeus doesn’t much care for guns…
wzrd1says
CNN persists in paying attention to pseudoscience industry group, whose “studies” are for hire. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/health/zero-calorie-sweetener-heart-attack-stroke-wellness/index.html
This week, again a hatchet job in favor of Big Sugar, proclaiming an ingredient, erythritol in stevia clogs arteries.
Interesting, given it’s in the lens of the eye and plasma naturally, to name only two of several systems in the human body.
So, to wade through things, CNN contacted pseudoscience pushing sweetener industry groups – to include a leader who torpedoed stevia for a decade, on behalf of Domino Sugar (I wish that I was joking).
But, PubPeer had some interesting things to say about the entire cloistersmurf: https://pubpeer.com/publications/D95A440ACD75C062695FFE1421694C
I miss the old days, when our media outlets actually consulted real experts, who specialized in the fields of study and retained scientific and medical consultants and rejected bullshit, rather than giving equal weight to fact and bullshit.
Or maybe the random association study is right and we need to pluck out our eyes and drain our blood, lest it clog our arteries. To give just as much equal weight to bullshit.
Nah, I’ll leave the bullshit to compost out in the pasture, where it belongs.
wzrd1says
Got a chuckle over the “impeachment hearing”. One, it being referred to as a “Seinfeld impeachment, an impeachment over nothing” and MTG jumping up like a child and proclaiming that the Democratic Party is forcing the government to shut down. A strange thing to say, given it’s the GOP hardliners that are refusing to release a federal budget.
And Tubby, erm, Tuberville going on about diversity, saying nearly verbatim the same bullshit that anti-desegregationists said when Eisenhower further desegregated the military in 1957, after Truman started it off in 1948. So, we apparently need to debate a nearly 75 year old policy today, in his dim witted view of the universe. I imagine he’ll also want to discuss whether or not to allow T. Rex to become extinct next.
Well, probably right after he suggests we cease singing “God Save The King” as our anthem or something equally brilliant…
Yes, it does sound like something we’ve heard before, but this contains details from a different source.
You’re allowed to not know who Mike Davis is, but the short version is that he’s a particularly well-connected member of the conservative campaign to fill federal court benches with hard-right judges willing to scrub out a century or two of societal progress. A probably self-written Federalist Society write-up boasts about his work with then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley to push through “record” numbers of Donald Trump-appointed judges, including Justice Brett “I Like Beer” Kavanaugh, and his work “opposing Cancel Culture and fighting back against the woke mob.”
When that last line is how the guy sells himself, it’s a good reminder that many of the people stacking the federal bench with “constitutionalist” judges have whackjob readings only barely below a full Paul Gosar.
Davis, whose recent shticks include helping Trump target the judge presiding over one of Trump’s criminal prosecutions, has been making a hard play for a position in a new and fascist Trump White House. [Well that’s a scary thought.] Here he is on multiply disgraced Turning Point USA bozo Benny Johnson’s far-far-right podcast, where the Guy Who Helped Bring You Supreme Court Justice Beer Guy has all sorts of plans for what Trump can do on his triumphant return. Via Media Matters:
[…] [Guy talking like he is sort of pretending to be joking, but not really] But during my three week reign of terror as Trump acting attorney general, before I get chased out of town with my Trump pardon, I will rain hell on Washington, D.C. We’ve talked about this, Ben. I have five lists, ready to go and they’re growing.
List number one, we’re gonna fire. We’re gonna fire a lot of people in the executive branch, in the deep state.
Number two, we’re gonna indict. We’re gonna indict Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and James Biden and every other scumball, sleazeball, Biden, except for the five year old granddaughter who they refused to acknowledge for five years until the political pressure got to Joe Biden.
Number three, we’re gonna deport. We’re gonna deport a lot of people, 10 million people and growing – anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents. We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.
And list number five, I’m gonna recommend a lot of pardons. Every January 6th defendant is gonna get a pardon, especially my hero horn man. He is definitely at the top of the pardon list.
Tee-hee, putting kids in cages is so funny! And conservatives wonder why conservative “comedy” shows always fall so flat.
Well, we know this isn’t satire because this dude landed a Federalist Society biography, but behind his trying-not-to-laugh half-giggles, he succinctly sums up the top three points of the agenda of the people who control nominations to our federal courts:
Purge the government of those not loyal to Trump.
Indict political enemies (the specific charges aren’t important).
Deport not just “anchor babies” but “10 million people,” […]
And fourth, everyone who committed violence or engaged in fraud on Dear Leader’s behalf gets sprung from jail because Republicans love that stuff. Love it.
This is pretty cleanly a fascist agenda, and it is so nice these two boils on society’s ass can giggle about it. And no, Mike Davis will probably not land a Trump attorney general gig even for a few weeks. That plum will likely go to whoever can pay Trump the most cash. Davis looks like a suit-off-the-rack sort of fascist, not the “has his own Garden of Evil” kind.
Posted by readers of the article:
This sounds a lot like Project2025 sponsored by the Federalist Society. Imagine Social Security, Medcare, and the VA taken over by Trump appointees. Imagine the pillage that will occur before SCOTUS declares these programs unconstitutional. However, we will witness a battle between Trump loyalists to see who gets the cushiest job. […]
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his guy is insane. Glad he is letting his freak fly so we can all see clearly to fucking shut him down however we can.
There’s a moment in an episode of Ken Burns’ documentary on the American Civil War that focuses on the epic battle between the first ironclad ships. The small but extremely innovative USS Monitor has been slowly towed toward Hampton Roads, and nearly lost in a storm along the way. The larger, but much less nimble CSS Virginia (nee Merrimack) is there to meet it. The battle extends into part of the next two days.
That fight, which is generally said to have ended in a stalemate but had devastating consequences for Confederate hopes of breaking the Union blockade, has been romanticized far too often. I’m not going to indulge in either praising the genius of Theodore Timby’s revolving turret or detailing the “Mission: Impossible”-level plot behind salvaging the sunken Merrimack in an effort to create an unstoppable weapon.
Instead, I want to consider just one line from Burns’ documentary: the line that says, “From the moment the two ships opened fire that Sunday morning, every other navy in the world was obsolete.” Because what’s happening in Ukraine may not be happening in a single instant, but it is redefining warfare—on both land and sea—just as profoundly as the events that took place where the Nansemond River meets the James.
The two armies now facing each other across the defenses of the so-called Surovikin line bear only a passing resemblance to the armies that Ukraine and Russia held when dictator Vladimir Putin ordered his forces across the border on Feb. 24, 2022.
That Russian army consisted of massive numbers of tanks, transports, and other vehicles put into place over a period of months. That lengthy build-up largely offset the deficits of Russia’s miserable logistics, though it couldn’t hide the issues with the poor maintenance and corruption that rendered a significant fraction of Russia’s military force semi-disabled before the first shot was fired. Still, Russia came into Ukraine from multiple directions, including the famous “40-mile convoy” driving down from Belarus, with thousands of tanks, many thousands more artillery guns, and dress uniforms so its victorious troops could go straight to that victory march through Kyiv.
Those resources are expended, and those vehicles largely gone.
The Ukrainian army that met them was much smaller, equipped mostly with aging Soviet systems, and unable to halt the Russian advance short of major population centers. Though Ukraine was able to drastically alter the course of the war with heroic individual action and anti-tank weapons along the highway (and an incredible series of events at Hostomel Airport), the truth is, it was a close thing. A few more tanks successfully making their way along the P02 highway, or some of the nearly two dozen Il-76 strategic airlifters on their way to Kyiv making it successfully to the runway at Hostomel, and Putin might well have made his victory lap around Freedom Square.
Without underplaying Ukraine’s genuinely resourceful and tough defense, Russia’s inability to sustain an army in the field away from transportation hubs played a large role in its withdrawal from the area around Kyiv.
Both armies have since received big infusions of new troops, with training levels varying widely. Ukraine has also received a plethora of Western equipment, but far from all of it is new. Russia has been forced to scrounge more and more diligently through scrap yards and warehouses, bringing in gear that is decades older than the tanks and vehicles that made up that ill-fated convoy.
The difference in troop training, quality of equipment, competence of leadership, availability of intelligence, and sheer morale has made a difference. It has now been over a year since Russia was able to sustain anything like a substantive advance. Yes, they took Bakhmut in May, but that was only through the concentration of a huge amount of its force, and the willingness of the now dead Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group mercenaries to send “zerg waves” of prisoner-troops out to die by the tens of thousands.
The days when Russia could advance into a new area under a screen of artillery, as they did at Severodonetsk during the first summer of the war, are over. Ukraine is the one advancing now, because Ukraine has the advantage.
Over the past several months, Russia tried to make advances at Svatove, quickly capturing a series of villages. That attack fizzled within days, and a week later Ukraine recaptured all the territory it had lost. Something similar happened at Kupyansk, where Russia was reportedly massing over 100,000 troops to drive Ukraine back across the Oskil River. Ukraine is still on the east side of the Oskil, and still in Kupyansk. And Russia’s efforts in the area failed after a very small advance. Last week there were reports that Russia was about to mount another massive attack in the north. It didn’t happen. Now Russia has reportedly slowed its operations in the area. [Those are good examples]
Russia has tried to advance north of Bakhmut. That failed. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, Russia tried again to retake areas around recently liberated Klishchiivka and Andriivka on Thursday—and failed. [Tweet and video at the link]
In the south, they’ve been trying to retake Robotyne. And failing. Yesterday, they attempted to retake an area east of Urozhaine. Another failure. [Tweets and videos at the link]
At the moment, Ukraine appears capable of successfully capturing areas it targets and holding them against multiple Russian assaults. However, Ukraine isn’t racing forward because its military, like Russia’s military, is obsolete.
But then, so is China’s. And every military in Europe. And the U.S. military.
That’s not to say that any of these militaries are useless. Obviously, they are not. But what’s happening in Ukraine right now is a kind of “punctuated equilibrium” in the evolution of military operations. In Ukraine, drones—both aerial and aquatic—have reached such numbers and demonstrated such widespread capabilities, that many traditional weapons systems have become limited in their roles.
Here are a pair of tanks east of Klishchiivka being taken out this week with FPV drones. [Tweets, video and images at the link: Russian T-80 and T-90 tanks got hit by crowdfunded kamikaze drones in cooperation of Asgard aerial reconnaissance, 93rd brigade (‘Hans’ unit?) and Kryla drone unit of the 3rd Azov Assault Brigade south of Bakhmut.]
And here’s where those losses happened on the map. [map at the link]
That’s between 6 kilometers and 8 kilometers east of the current front line. Only … is it? Right now we generally regard the front line as the area where infantry is engaged. But if soldiers in VR headsets can project force sufficient to stop a tank 7 km away, then pick up another $1,000 drone and do it again minutes later, where is the real front line?
Sure, this could have been done with precision weapons like HIMARS at even greater range. But that requires much more expense, more setup, and much greater levels of support. We’ve written many times about the vast logistical train that extends back from a weapon like a HIMARS launcher on a M1 Abrams tank. Everything it takes to support a DJI quadcopter is sitting on my desk. And there is still plenty of room for my keyboard.
Is it having your infantry in the trenches that represents control? Or your tanks in the fields? Or do you control the area you can patrol with drones?
It’s always been fuzzy. Now it’s just fuzzier.
Early in the war, drones took over many of the roles that were played by traditional aircraft and missiles. Now they’re also performing the roles of artillery, mortars, and MLRS. They are precision systems with a level of precision that no shell can match. And they deliver that value at not just a lower price, but with lower burdens of transport, maintenance, training—you name it.
Here’s the latest in Andrew Perpetua’s list of losses and causes. Most Russian losses were due to drones. Every Ukrainian loss was drone-related. [Tweet and list at the link]
Drones haven’t yet replaced every piece of equipment on the field, because that equipment still has some edge in range or destructive power. But the cost-benefit ratio of drones is incredibly high and the possibility they will push some of the traditional kit completely off the field is extremely high.
Right now, Ukraine has a likely advantage in drones. That’s not just because of greater access to more kinds of off-the-shelf systems and military kamikaze drones from other countries, but because they’ve been exceptionally clever about adapting and designing their own. They’ve also brought in large numbers of troops that have been able to leverage hobby drone experience.
But Russia has not been a slouch. They’ve gone from dependency on imports that supplemented their own clumsy surveillance drones to using FPV drones and quadcopters extremely effectively. In fact, Russia has a lot to gain from drones. Because drones largely bypass the two things that Russia does badly: logistics and training.
You don’t need to get a million shells to the front if you can get a thousand drones—and better than half of them hit their target. […]
On the other hand, Ukraine’s mishmash of Soviet and Western systems, which has represented both a logistical and a tactical challenge, gives them flexibility in determining the best way to meet the challenge of drone warfare. Which is the magic everyone is looking for right now. What it will take to put this genie even partway back in the bottle is not clear—but there are a lot of traditional arms manufacturers with many billions of dollars worth of incentives to find some solution.
Here’s one prediction: If the answer to drones comes in the form of electronic warfare that blocks control signals, the result will be an increasing reliance on drones that don’t need that signal—drones that operate partially, or completely, based on AI. There are already weapons out there, like the Switchblade drones, that can evaluate targets, lock on, and limit human involvement to either a go-ahead or a wave-off. Enough pressure from electronic warfare is likely to sever that last link to human control.
Right now, drones are like the ironclads on that Sunday at Hampton Roads. Shots have been fired, yet the battle remains a standoff and no one is quite sure how to move forward.
But things are definitely not going back.
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None of this is to say that other systems aren’t extremely useful. [Tweet and video of HIMARS strike]
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Hard to know how anyone can find this tank under that sophisticated camo, which makes it completely drone-proof. [/sarcasm] [Tweet and video at the link]
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Lots of teeth. No dragon. [Tweet and video of Ukrainian troops smashing through Russian dragon teeth.]
U.S. presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will announce he is running as an independent instead of pursuing his long-shot bid to oust President Biden as the Democratic Party nominee, a shift that could complicate the 2024 election…
Ukrainian police say they have turned over an undisclosed number of air defense missiles to the military after uncovering a plot by two people to hide a Tor air defense system they found after the Russians left it behind in the Chernihiv region as they evacuated in the spring of 2022…
Pierce R. Butlersays
Lynna… @ # 206, quoting Daily Kos: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, whom DeSantis appointed, is an infamous hoax-promoting anti-vaccine quack, one who engaged in scientific fraud to justify his claims of alleged vaccine dangers. The whole of Florida’s vaccine recommendations are scientifically fraudulent, not merely controversial. That’s already been established, and DeSantis and Ladapo are lying.
“I really look at Dr. Ladapo as more being a political figure than a Surgeon General at this point,” (Dem. state Rep. Anna) Eskamani said.
Eskamani said the DeSantis administration has continuously misled the public with its stance on COVID-19 research.
“I’m very concerned that conservatives in particular have hand-picked data,” Eskamani said. “They intentionally misinterpret information to feed into a political agenda and all of us should be very cautious and skeptical of guidance that comes out of this administration.” …
Matt Hitchings, a UF assistant professor of biostatistics, is skeptical of the Florida Department of Health’s 2022 study of COVID-19 vaccine risks.
Ladapo altered the state-driven study to suggest that some doses pose a significantly higher health risk for young men than had been established by the broader medical community, according to documents obtained by Politico.
Hitchings, along with three other UF professors, authored a Tampa Bay Times op-ed last year detailing potential limitations and concerning scientific analyses conducted within the study.
The researchers wrote that certain analyses should have been completed, but it was revealed later by public records requests that these analyses were removed, Hitchings said.
I suspect Ladapo’s version of “critical evaluation” will rely on penetrating questions such as, “Were you there?”
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:
Scientists have witnessed brain patterns in dying patients that may correlate to commonly reported “near-death” experiences (NDEs) such as lucid visions, out-of-body sensations, a review of one’s own life, and other “dimensions of reality,” reports a new study. The results offer the first comprehensive evidence that patient recollections and brain waves point to universal elements of NDEs. During an expansive multi-year study led by Sam Parnia…
Sam Parnia is a ‘true believer.’ You can expect that his data will be interpreted in the most credulous way possible.
Also, “experiencing” something doesn’t mean it is true. Now that AR and VR are common, more people should realize that.
Congressman Jeff Duncan’s personal life is under public scrutiny following accusations of extramarital relationships.
Duncan said Wednesday on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that he would not comment on a deeply personal matter and was focused on legislating as a potential government shutdown draws closer.
The 3rd Congressional District Congressman further said he was proud to have one of the most conservative voting records in Congress.
Accusations began swirling when Duncan’s wife, Melody, filed for divorce citing infidelity Sept. 22, 2023. In court records, first published by the Index Journal, Duncan was accused of adulterous relationships with a lobbyist and one other woman…
“The focus should be on my party’s inability to govern, not my personal hypocrisy.” Doesn’t seem like a real winning position there.
In the wake of yet another round of legal troubles for former President Donald Trump, after a New York state judge determined this week that he committed fraud by substantially exaggerating his wealth for business dealings, Melania is reportedly taking precautions. Page Six reports that the former first lady has renegotiated her marital prenup with Trump to protect the financial interests of her son, 17-year-old, 6’7” Barron, as her husband’s legal troubles and bills pile up. Per the tabloid’s source, this is “at least the third time” Melania has renegotiated her prenup with the former president.
“Melania is most concerned about maintaining and increasing a substantial trust for their son, Barron,” a source said, as she hoped to secure “a specific amount at minimum” for the very tall teen. Sources specified that Melania wanted the prenup to get her more money and property as well, and that a new “agreement was necessary because of the current legal battles” and the strain they put on Trump’s wealth…
A New York Times report on Thursday reveals the bleak message that Win It Back, a conservative anti-Donald Trump PAC, delivered to its donors. The group tested more than 40 ads, spent $6 million, and found that just about nothing made Republican voters abandon Dear Leader.
[…] “All attempts to undermine [Trump’s] conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective,” writes McIntosh. “Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it.”
We’ve been saying this for years, but now $6 million in research hammers it home: Republican voters do not care what Trump says, what he does, or whether he makes an ass of himself on the world stage. Republicanism is a cult.
[…] Republicans liked him more after being reminded that Trump tried to topple the government.
[…] he can be damaged by focusing on what frightens him most. He sells himself as an ultra-masculine, successful thug. Anti-Trump ads need to attack that image. Present testimonials of past business partners saying things like, “He cheats at everything,” “He lies as easily as he breathes,” “He’s afraid of stairs,” or “He says he’s a billionaire, but he’s faking the whole thing.” Carving him up on those specific points—rather than trying to prod Republican voters into caring about their self-proclaimed beliefs […]
Republicans are drawn to Trump because his public performances are seen as enraging non-Republicans and “elites.” But if anti-Trump Republicans portray him as a laughingstock […]
Show the man as he appears on the golf course, not in his suit and tie. Mock him for being revealed as a business failure. Have former members of his administration who now oppose him laugh on camera […] Show him as a weak and pitiful figure whose best days have passed him by, a man who can’t keep up with his own lies—an object of derision. Mock him so viciously that Trump’s shallow, lib-owning base voters feel like suckers.
If ads like these were prolonged enough, Republican voters might not be able to brush them off so easily.
Posted by readers of the article:
Republicans are so fond of photoshops showing him with an Arnold Schwarzenegger body, leading troops into battle, that kind of thing — they need to have their fantasies stroked because deep down, they know it’s all fake.
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Cadet Bone Spurs leading “suckers” into battle?
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There is also the weird pity effect. My mother-in-law said, “look how they’ve hurt that wonderful man” so even when they see the weakness they don’t see as him but what “the commies on the left” have done to him.
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Trump supporters (the bulk of the Republican Party and voters) are anti-democratic cultists who despise democracy. ie. Republicans are anti-American.
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authoritarians need to worship a strong leader, not a laughingstock. […] they care not a wit for policy but everything for appearance. So f*** with the appearance. Pull back the curtain and laugh at the man
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I would also add messaging that emphasizes the grift: that they are being seduced by a con man — as have many before them. Research shows that the beliefs of cultists are extremely difficult to dislodge. I believe the Democrats need to focus on getting out the vote, and on a combination of a messaging a positive vision, and the threat of the MAGA branch of the Republican Party to democracy; that Trumps retribution will have a disastrous effect on YOUR life, but the Democrats offer a bright future of prosperity — targeted at swing voters. Democrats need to own the frame, not responding to Trump and his enablers, but attacking Trump for the con man he is, and pointing the way to better governance and vigorous democracy.
Trying to change the minds of the MAGA cult is a waste of resources. They are addicted to outrage
tomhsays
Lots of activity in the House ahead of the MAGA promoted shutdown. NBC News live updates are here.
On the brink of a federal government shutdown, the House on Saturday swiftly approved a 45-day funding bill to keep federal agencies open as Speaker Kevin McCarthy dropped demands for steep spending cuts and relied on Democratic votes for passage to send the package to the Senate.
The new approach would leave behind aid to Ukraine, a White House priority opposed by a growing number of GOP lawmakers, but the plan would increase federal disaster assistance by $16 billion, meeting President Joe Biden’s full request. The package was approved 335-91, with most Republicans and almost all Democrats supporting…
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building on Saturday ahead of the House passing a stopgap measure to fund the government ahead of the midnight deadline, causing the building to be evacuated.
Republicans are accusing Bowman of intentionally trying to sabotage the vote, launching an investigation into the incident and preparing legislation to expel him from the House.
But Bowman says it was an accident.
“Congressman Bowman did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote,” a Bowman spokesperson said in a statement to The Hill. “The Congressman regrets any confusion.”
Bowman later said that he thought pulling the alarm would open the door, Axios and other outlets reported…
Regardless of whether you see the Ukrainian counteroffensive as promising or disheartening, one thing is abundantly clear: Ukraine and Russia are locked in a battle of attrition, drawing comparisons to World War I.
If we must compare World War I to the Russo-Ukrainian War, it is helpful to remember two things:
– World War I ended in a decisive Allied victory, not in an inconclusive stalemate; and
– World War I ended in four years and 106 days, compared to World War II, which lasted six years and one day.
I’ve written this before, but battles of attrition do not imply endless stalemates, or endless deadlocks. They most certainly do not imply wars without end. And one of the most decisive battles of attrition ever fought was the Allies’ gradual and grinding efforts to wear down German defenses around Normandy in late summer 1944, during World War II, before steamrolling the Germans all the way through France.
Battles of attrition differ significantly from battles of maneuver.
In a battle of maneuver, the attacker ignores and accepts short-term heavy losses to make positional gains. The point is to press the defender into an increasingly compromised position, surrounding the enemy or threatening their lines of supply, to make territorial gains in strategic and operation positions that compromise the enemy.
But in a battle of attrition, the attacker’s short-term objective is to minimize losses while inflicting maximal losses upon the enemy, to degrade their ability to fight by destroying the army. Only in the long term, after the enemy’s ability to resist is decimated, does the victor begin an inexorable march towards its territorial objectives.
Particularly in an age of satellite observation and ubiquitous geolocated drone footage of combat, successful and unsuccessful attempts of maneuver warfare are fairly easy to discern as they happen in real time.
During the Kharkiv counteroffensive back in September 2022, the Ukrainian counteroffensive was easy to see unfolding in real time, as Ukrainian troops advanced deeply behind Russian lines, capturing key logistical strongholds like Kupiansk and Izium, and driving the Russian forces back 100 km in a few weeks.
By its nature, maneuver warfare is defined by territory gained—even if the attacker loses significantly more troops on the offensive than the defender, it is largely beside the point. So long as the territory gained was worth the price paid, the attacker willingly pays the cost.
A battle of attrition is more difficult to evaluate. There is no objective measure like “square kilometers gained” to measure progress. With both sides hiding the extent of their losses, and both sides claiming to destroy huge quantities of the enemy’s resources, how can one judge which combatant is gaining the upper hand, and which side is heading toward collapse?
TERRITORY GAINED IS A POOR MEASURE OF ATTRITIONAL WARFARE
Claiming the war is currently at a stalemate, The New York Times used territory gained and lost as its primary determinant of progress in the war. [map at the link]
The Times noted that little territory had changed hands between Russia and Ukraine during 2023; owing to gains predominantly around Bakhmut, Russia had made a small net gain of 188 square miles since Jan. 1. The Times was careful to note this was a miniscule 0.08% of Ukraine’s territory, but noted Ukraine had failed to make substantial territorial gains […]
Yet as noted above, territorial gains are poor measures of attritional success.
For example, from 1916-1917, Russia launched two major offensives during WWI. The first of these offensives, the Brusilov offensive of June 1916 (named after Russian Gen. Aleksei Brusilov), proved to be tactically and operationally successful, breaching Austro-Hungarian lines and advancing 75 km deep along a 20 km wide front.
In a span of 10 weeks, Russia gained 25,000 sq. km (almost 10,000 square miles) of territory.
However, poor performance and coordination among other Russian commanders prevented Brusilov from capitalizing on these advances to make major strategic gains. Brusilov inflicted such severe damage on the Austro-Hungarian army that they ceased to be much of a military force for the final two years of the war, but Russia was also so weakened that when the Brusilov offensive proved indecisive, the Russian army began to crumble. When Russia attempted a new offensive the following June […] the Russian army all but disintegrated, leading its de facto surrender by December 1917.
The Brusilov offensive initially appeared to be major turn of fortune in favor of Russia; it was the single largest territorial gain from an offensive during World War I. However, when Russia failed to properly capitalize upon that operational success, those territorial gains proved so costly that it presaged the collapse of the Russian war effort.
[…] By contrast, even territorial losses may represent strategic gains, if the territorial losses are
– not strategically decisive, and
– are traded for strategically significant amounts of enemy combat power.
Territory gained or lost is a simple, verifiable, and easy metric to measure progress in war. It just so happens to be lazy and largely worthless as a metric of military progress in an attritional conflict. [Yep. And The New York Times was lazy.]
Rather, the pertinent question would be “is one side significantly weakening relative its opponent?”
POPULATION COMPARISONS HOLD ALMOST NO VALUE AS MEASURES OF ATTRITIONAL WARFARE
[…] some people point to Russia’s relative population: Because Russia can send more soldiers to the front than Ukraine, Ukraine cannot hope to win a war of attrition.
The problem with this argument is that in modern military conflicts, number of soldiers is not a particularly important metric of military strength.
For example, the North Korean army counts 1.3 million personnel. The U.S. Army has 482,000 personnel. Is there a single person on earth who seriously thinks the U.S. Army is weaker than the North Korean army because it’s outnumbered? (Note: Including the other service branches, they are roughly the same size, albeit with the U.S. military deployed across much of the globe.)
Compared to the battlefields of two or three centuries ago, numbers mean far less because military formations are forced to spread out much more thinly. As recently as 70 years ago, groups as large as hundreds of men would charge across fields in massed and concentrated attacks. But even with Wagner and Russian assault battalions reviving old ideas of “disposable” infantry, there has been no revival of true human wave assault tactics.
The accuracy of modern Infantry Fighting Vehicles’ autocannons, as well as modern artillery and mortar systems, have made clustering large groups of infantry entirely obsolete. Even if an army cares little for the human costs, the logistical costs of supporting infantry units at the front preclude throwing them away for no added benefit.
Russian meatgrinder tactics have utilized disposable infantry in probing attacks to expose Ukrainian defensive positions. The disposable infantry advance until they hit Ukrainian defenses, likely getting killed in the process. Thus identified, Russian artillery hits that position until it is compromised, and elite Russian assault units attack—forcing a short Ukrainian retreat to the next line of defense. The process repeats.
Backed by Russian artillery superiority, and paired with well-equipped, elite Wagner assault units, Russia used these meatgrinder tactics to make minor territorial gains in the Bakhmut front in the first half of this year. But they advanced less than 20km in over six months, exposing the limits of that strategy. […]
RUSSIAN TROOP QUALITY CONTINUES TO DEGRADE
Moreover, Russian losses in personnel have led to a degradation in troop quality since the opening of the conflict.
For historical, political, and organizational reasons, the Russian military does not have a true non-commissioned officer corps. The U.S. Army, for example, relies on experienced drill sergeants to provide training to new recruits, while young lieutenants first entering the army learn from frontline sergeants with vastly more experience.
[…] the Russian military, particularly during wartime, has provided precious little training to its conscripts and mobilized personnel. Training has amounted to as little as a few days, to at most eight weeks. This is in contrast to Ukrainian regular army personnel who receive 6 months or more of training.
Thus the Russian military is particularly reliant on frontline officers to provide “on the job” training to recruits to make them combat-ready. However, there are two major problems:
– Russia has stopped rotating frontline units due to a lack of reserves, meaning replacement troops arriving on the front never have an opportunity to receive additional training.
– The Russian low-level officer corps has been decimated after 17 months of war, and experienced frontline officers are increasingly rare.
Losses among Russia’s elite troops, such as the VDV (paratroopers) and Spetsnaz special forces, have been particularly acute, with some units having been reconstituted as many as six times. Well-connected Russian military blogger Rybar commented on a live broadcast that Russian VDV units had suffered around 50% casualties by September 2022.
Replacement soldiers in these units cannot receive the same extensive training program and on-job training that VDV soldiers regularly receive in peacetime. Many units thus have gradually become “elite” only in fielding better equipment—not in the quality of their soldiers.
Russia committed its last relatively intact elite military unit, the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, to Tokmak in early September. There are no others left. All that’s left are freshly constituted units, and those have been an unmitigated disaster.
Last year, the newly formed Third Army Corps was given some of Russia’s finest remaining military equipment—the most advanced tanks and artillery systems previously used for military parades in Moscow. Although its training was rushed, it was trumpeted as a powerful new 20,000-strong force, arriving in Ukraine to turn the tide of the war. It then was promptly devastated during Ukraine’s Kharkiv Fall 2022 counterattack. As Russia’s primary operational reserves in the area, it utterly failed in its task. Entire units were annihilated.
The Third Army Corps was then deployed to Kherson, where it was subsequently defeated at the Battle of Kherson. Replenished with fresh troops this year, it was tasked with defending southern Bakhmut, where it was again repeatedly defeated, losing the critical heights west of Klischiivka a couple of weeks ago, before VDV reinforcements arrived to try to stabilize the front. Without a core of veterans to hold a unit together, Russian military units simply cannot function.
Russia recently rushed another new military unit to the front, the 25th Combined Arms Army, arriving at the front understaffed, under-equipped, and with barely any training. To say Russia’s standards of training and staffing have declined is a major understatement.
RUSSIAN MILITARY HARDWARE HAS DETERIORATED
The deterioration of Russia’s armored forces has been well documented, with Ukraine having claimed to have destroyed over 4,000 tanks and 8,000 infantry fighting vehicles. Of those claimed, 2,329 tanks and around 4,000 infantry armored vehicles have been visually confirmed as destroyed. Russia has been reduced to sending 60-to-70-year old T-62 and T-55 tanks to the frontlines. Rather than the relatively advanced BMP3, or the 1980s era BMP2 IFVs, Russia has increasingly turned to the 1960s era BMP1 IFVs to continue equipping its frontline units.
[…] crippling Russian losses are beginning to impact other aspects of Russia’s military abilities.
Russian air defense and electronic warfare abilities have been a high priority for Ukrainian forces.
The steady degradation of Russian mid- and short-range air defenses has been revealed to be serious, as Ukrainian Bayarktar TB1s drones (highly vulnerable to well-prepared Russian air defenses) have begun operating near the frontlines again, and Ukrainian reconnaissance drones have been flying freely over much of the frontlines near Tokmak.
Russia began the war by positioning five of its most advanced long ranged S-400 air defense systems in Crimea, partly to help ensure air superiority over southern Ukraine and the Black Sea. In the span of two weeks, Ukraine destroyed two of them. Russia has not been able to replace either one.
But arguably the most devastating has been the degradation of Russian artillery. Russian military doctrine assumes artillery firepower superiority. But Russia’s artillery arms have been suffering devastating losses, losing between three to four artillery systems for every Ukrainian loss since the start of the counteroffensive. Russian miliary bloggers have called it an artillery “genocide.”
Early Russian tactics relied on placing artillery units just 2-3 km behind the contact line for maximal firepower deep into enemy lines, but fiercely effective Ukrainian counterbattery fire from longer-ranged howitzers and HIMARS/M270 rocket artillery—strengthened by modern anti-artillery radar, precision munitions, and DPICM cluster munitions—have pushed Russian artillery back, where it is far less effective. While Ukrainian artillery regularly ventures within 10 km of the frontlines, Russian units must stay 15-20 km behind the frontlines.
Heavy Russian losses have forced Russia to reach for older and older artillery systems to attempt to maintain their firepower.
The Birds of Magyar Ukrainian drone group just released drone footage from a suicide drone attacking a Russian 85mm D-44 antitank gun. Based on the drone group’s past known locations, the attack was believed to have happened somewhere close to the Velyka Novosilka front in south central Ukraine (northeast of Tokmak). [Image at the link]
Remarkably, the D-44 is even older than Russia’s ancient T-54s and T-55s. The first prototypes for the D-44 were produced in 1944, literally designed to fight Nazi German tanks during World War II.
It’s difficult to explain just how archaic the D-44 is. As a theoretical light short-range howitzer, it is a rough analogue of the American M119 105 mm howitzer, designed to support infantry close to the frontlines.
However, the D-44’s gun alone weighs over 1,900 kg, which was considered overly heavy for a “light gun”—even in the late 1940s. By contrast, the M119 weighs a third of that, just 630 kg.
The D-44 has a theoretical range of 15 km, but its archaic gun sight can only effectively target enemy units below 2 km. The M119 has a maximum range of 19.5 km with deadly accuracy.
To put it lightly, there have been many advances in artillery technology since the D-44 was first designed. If Russia had any available alternatives, Russia would not be using artillery pieces produced nearly a decade before the birth of its septuagenarian dictator.
UKRAINE IS MORE THAN SUSTAINING ITS LOSSES
Ukraine has not only maintained its number of Western tanks since the start of the counteroffensive, its numbers have grown substantially within weeks.
Ukraine began the counteroffensive with around 85 modern Western tanks, 71 Leopard 2s and 14 Challenger 2 tanks. Since then, only seven such tanks have been visually confirmed lost. (With their own drone coverage, Russia is happy to publicize all their kills.)
Meanwhile, Switzerland has agreed to deliver 25 Leopard 2A4 tanks to German arms manufacturer Rheinmetal, under the condition that they are not sent to Ukraine. However, Germany or another Leopard 2A4 operator can swap out their own tanks for these, sending their own to Ukraine.
Ukraine is also gaining 31 American Abrams tanks, the first of which may have already reached the front. White House officials are already quietly acknowledging a further 30 Abrams are under consideration for Ukraine.
These 56 additional Western tanks should bring Ukraine’s Western tank forces at the front to an operating strength of above 100 tanks, even accounting for tanks presently in repair. Additionally, the first of 178 Leopard 1A5 tanks from Belgium, Denmark, and Germany began arriving in Ukraine this month.
To help Ukraine keep the flow of spare parts for its numerous and varied armored vehicles at the front lines, the U.S. provided seven multi-million dollar Spee3D industrial 3-D metal printers that can replicate rare or difficult to find spare parts of almost any material in short order. [Highlighted, because this is new information to me.]
Furthermore, Ukraine has received commitments of nearly 200 Bradleys, 200 Strykesr, 100 Marder IFVs, and 200 Polish Rosomak Wolverine IFVs, of which it is known to have lost just 61. That’s around 700 modern Western IFVs that Ukraine has received since December.
The U.S. Army has over 2,000 M2 and M3 Bradleys in storage. They are obsolete for U.S. use, as they lack sufficient power supply to equip the new active protection systems that have become standard on frontline Bradley models. And with plans to replace the Bradleys with the new XM30 IFV beginning in 2029, there is little reason the U.S. needs to maintain a massive stock of thousands of unused Bradleys that do not meet its requirements for frontline units. As such, there is little reason to believe that Ukraine cannot continue to receive large shipments of Bradleys into the indefinite future.
Meanwhile, Western allies continue to provide invaluable training. Operation Interflex, the largest NATO training program for Ukrainian troops, includes over 1,000 instructors from the UK, Canada, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden, among others, and graduates 2,000 regular army soldiers every month from its five-week training program. This is enough to fully staff an entire Ukrainian brigade every month. German, Poland, Estonia, and Sweden host additional training programs.
As such, the quality of Ukraine’s armed forces is increasing, while Russia’s is in continuous decline.
FIREPOWER IS A DIRECT MEASURE OF MODERN MILITARY STRENGTH
A reader may note that much of this analysis is subjective. The Russian army may be rushing 70-year-old tanks, and thousands of new ones to the front. Ukraine’s NATO training might so bad or so short that it is qualitatively no better than what Russian conscripts receive. And we certainly don’t know the exact number of destroyed equipment on both sides.
Here is some cold hard objective data confirming Ukraine’s growing advantage. [Graph at the link]
This chart was compiled by The Economist’s staff, using data from NASA’s FIRMS satellites, which track fires from space, and further analyzed by artificial intelligence. To their graph, I added my own annotations, indicating the time when certain key events occurred. FIRMS was designed to track forest fires, but has been invaluable in observing the intensity of artillery bombardment in the war in Ukraine. [map at the link]
The Economist’s AI sorted military fire data into “military fires on Russian-controlled territory” (in red) and “fires on Ukrainian -ontrolled territory” (in blue). Since Ukraine would be shooting at Russian territory, the red Russian territorial fires effectively represent Ukrainian firepower, while the blue represents Russian firepower. Here is the chart again so you don’t have to scroll up: [chart at the link]
The chart is impacted by the arrival of new weapons systems and various major battles, but what emerges is a picture of ever-increasing Ukrainian firepower.
The key inflection point occurred in early August, as we saw an explosive rise in Ukrainian firepower as Ukraine, flush with new cluster munitions, pushed through Robotyne.
A slight lull followed while Ukraine consolidated its gains, before Ukraine breached the Surovikin Line around Verbove with its armored vehicles in mid-September; now we see Ukrainian firepower reaching unprecedented heights.
This data proves two things:
Ukraine’s growing artillery advantage is no mirage. Since August, there is a huge disparity between fires in Russian-held territory compared to fires in Ukrainian territory. Ukraine is throwing several orders of magnitude greater firepower at Russian positions.
Providing Ukraine with 155 mm DPICM cluster munition shells may have been one of the most important decisions of the war. The first month of the offensive shows Ukraine with barely any firepower advantage at all compared to Russia. After DPICM shells began arriving in mid- to late July, Ukraine’s mass of firepower climbed, and climbed, and climbed.
This makes objective sense. Ukraine had been suffering from a widely acknowledged shell shortage, with new Western production of 155 mm shells falling well short of the 250,000 shells Ukraine said it needed at a time in mid-July when Ukraine was only using 4,000 shells per day.
However, the U.S. has over three million DPICM shells in storage, and has not used a single cluster munition shell in over 20 years.
Even at 140,000 DPICM shells per month (to increase Ukraine from 110,000 to 250,000 monthly shells, or over 8,000 shells per day), it would take nearly two years for Ukraine to exhaust U.S. stocks.
Furthermore, due to their wide area of effect, a DPICM shell requires only an average of 1.7 shells per target struck, vs. 13.6 conventional HE shells required. Thus DPICM shells are dramatically more efficient per shell than traditional shells, further multiplying their effectiveness.
The arrival of hundreds of thousands of DPICM shells freed Ukraine from its ammunition constraints—and this shows up very obviously and apparently in the data.
UKRAINE IS GROWING STRONGER, AND RUSSIA WEAKER
There is abundant evidence that Ukraine’s military strength is growing, while Russia’s weakens. While Russia rushes 60-year-old tanks and 80-year-old World War II-era artillery guns to the front lines, Ukraine is expanding its Western armored fighting vehicle fleet, and fielding the best battle tanks in the world. While Russia races barely trained new soldiers to the front with minimal equipment, Ukraine receives a continuous supply of better-trained soldiers.
However, Ukraine’s greatest advantage may be the one that is most easily measured: artillery.
An estimated 80% of all combat casualties in Ukraine are caused by artillery, according Ukrainian Supreme Commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s staff. While tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, drones, and the old-fashioned assault rifle all have important roles to play in fighting the enemy, artillery remains the overwhelmingly most common cause of human death in this war.
FIRMS data suggests that Ukraine owns a firepower advantage that dwarfs any advantage either side has held to this point. Ukraine’s systematic destruction of forward Russian artillery positions and ammunition dumps will likely [consolidate the Ukrainian advantage.]
There is little reason to believe that the fall mud season will slow Ukraine’s offensive, and Ukraine has more than enough artillery ammunition to continue pressing the attack.
Ukraine should be expected to continue hammering Russian positions in the south until next spring. The question is whether Russia’s troops can maintain enough strength to continue to hold their positions.
Victories in wars of attrition happen slowly … then suddenly.
[…] You may have already seen that Donald John Trump gave a “speech” to the California GOP Friday night. And it was bad. Really bad. Even by Trump standards. It was like gaping into a yawning Icelandic hellmouth—or a chupacabra’s eyes as it takes a dump on your lawn.
Take your pick. It defies easy description—perhaps that’s why so few media outlets are bothering to describe it.
Here’s a short list of the lowlights from Trump’s Anaheim adventure, courtesy of the enemy of our enemy, Republicans against Trump.
Imagine if Biden in just one speech:
– Mocked a Republican who was assaulted and got badly injured
– Said “MotherFu*ker”
– Said that people in OH smell
– Said he could win a state where he lost by 30%
– Claimed to have a solution to the fires in CA: “Dampen Your Forests”.
– Promised to prosecute his political opponents.
Why is the media not covering it as a huge story?
Where’s the wall-to-wall coverage of Trump’s threatening to execute General Milley?
The media is failing to do its job. Just like in 2016. [video at the link]
[…] Those are actual things the actual former president of the United States actually said. In public. To fawning applause from some of the very same folks who perseverate about Biden’s supposed mental decline over copious servings of bleach tea and blueberry-ivermectin scones.
But hey, seeing is believing, right? And this really needs to be seen to be believed. [video at the link of Trump speaking in California]
(Partial) transcript!
TRUMP: “We’re not going to lose by 5 [points]. We’re going to win, we would win. I don’t believe it when they say it, but the state is rigged. It’s a rigged election, it’s a horrible thing, and we have to turn it back. This is a state that the right Republican can win and I think actually win easily. … No way we lose this state in a real election. If this was a real election, there’s no way. If we had a real election with the real polling booths, if you had real polling—you don’t have any polling booths. You have people signing something and dropping it in the mail, and who the hell knows what happens after that? It’s ridiculous.”
He goes on, but you get the point. Of course, he is right about one thing. The right Republican can win California—and that Republican is George H.W. Bush in 1988. However, in 2020, Biden won the state by nearly 30 points, or roughly 5 million votes. Also—and check me if I’m wrong about this, as I’m not a California resident—but I’m fairly certain the state has polling booths.
[…] [video snippet of Trump, which Aaron Rupar describes as "beyond parody." True.]
Transcript:
TRUMP: “All the currently dry canals will be brimming and used to irrigate everything, including your own homes and bathrooms and everything. You’re going to be happy, and I’m going to get it done fast. They say that there’s so much water up north that I want to have the overflow areas go into your forests and dampen your forests. Because if you dampen your forests you’re not going to have these forest fires that are burning at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”
[snipped tweet history of Trump suggesting that flying water tankers should be used to put out the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, to which the French replied: “Dropping water by plane on this type of building could indeed lead to the collapse of the entire structure.”]
But Trump wasn’t done making promises to the Golden State’s redhats. Why stop at stealing even more water from “up north? when there are shoplifters to get off the streets? [video at the link]
Transcript:
TRUMP: “And we will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. Very simply, if you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store. Shot!” [Bloodthirsty weirdos in the crowd scream wildly […]]
[…] [Trump mimicking Biden in video available at the link] Transcript:
TRUMP: “If you don’t like somebody, or if somebody’s beating you by 10, 15, or 20 points like we’re doing with Crooked Joe Biden, let’s indict the motherfucker! Let’s indict them.”
[snipped examples of Trump calling for prosecution of his enemies, and also some past whining from Pence]
A former president also just dropped the word “motherfucker” into a stump speech! And while that might not seem like much of an insult to Pence, it sure is to everyone else. Where the fuck are these pearl-clutching motherfuckers now?
Trump also made a really funny joke about Nancy Pelosi’s husband getting violently assaulted with a hammer. And by “funny,” I of course mean “deplorable and unhinged.” [video at the link]
Transcript:
TRUMP: “And we’ll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi, who ruined San Francisco. How’s her husband doing, by the way? Anybody know? And she’s against building a wall at our border even though she has a wall around her house—which obviously didn’t do a very good job.”
[…] So, yeah, maybe the media could start to highlight the fact that the GOP’s presidential frontrunner is clearly unwell.
Or maybe CNN could just set a day or two aside to show this video on a loop:
Montage of 33 clips of the stupidest, most vile, insane, weirdest, addled dementia-ridden, psychotic statements made by Trump over the past two weeks.
[…] The big picture: House Republicans first demanded huge spending cuts. They then decided to shift to demanding miscellaneous border related abuses to get their prized shutdown. In fact they could never agree what to demand. […] In the end they agreed to give up all their demands and settled for giving Vladimir Putin a big sloppy kiss in the form of killing any new aid to Ukraine in this continuing resolution. This was the sweetener that made the capitulation possible. It’s a telling but unsurprising signal. For the Trumpist Right today, Ukrainians are just Democrats with a funny alphabet. Doing Putin a solid provided enough psychic satisfaction to make this happen.
This keeps the government funded for 45 more days – in essence, until Thanksgiving.
One point Kate Riga made during our most recent podcast has stuck with me: the hangup thoughout was that McCarthy wouldn’t put any continuing resolution up for a vote that required Democratic votes. But the fact that McCarthy wouldn’t rely on Democratic votes to prevent a shutdown was sort of beside the point since he would certainly need them to end a shutdown, to reopen the government. It was really just a question of when he was going to pull that trigger. He decided to do it now.
[Yes, that’s correct. Today, McCarthy relied on a lot of Democratic votes.]
The stakes in the government shutdown were nothing like the debt ceiling standoff. But they were still large. Republicans likely would have caught almost all the immediate political damage. But the economic impact could have been substantial. On that front, it was win-win for Republicans. […] there’s little reason to believe Democrats were ever going to allow any of the budget cuts House GOP hardliners are demanding. And the same goes for the border demands. Remember that this entire drama and fight was based on McCarthy breaking the deal he struck back in May with Biden.
[Yes, correct again. McCarthy made a deal with Biden. Then he broke that deal.]
On the Ukraine funding, my read is that Democrats and Senate Republicans figure they’ll come back and get this as a standalone. Either that or they’ll do some creative accounting at the Pentagon to keep the armaments moving. I don’t think this is the end of our picking up a substantial part of the tab for Ukraine’s War effort.
And as for McCarthy, will he now be ousted? Maybe. But I really doubt it. The House Freedom Caucus needs a nominal Speaker like McCarthy in order to exist. […] If they ousted McCarthy they’d simply need to find a new McCarthy. Indeed, if Matt Gaetz forced a vote on McCarthy’s ouster I wouldn’t be surprised if he were ousted and they eventually had to elect him again after another few days of votes like we saw back in January.
I went to Santa Fe, NM this week for a US Climate Action Network conference. During the conference we covered decolonization and how Santa Fe/NM has been stolen from Indigenous, first by Spaniards and then by Americans. Several of us decided to attend a rally in opposition to re-erecting a statue of Juan de Onate, a particularly odious Spanish Conquistador who massacred an entire pueblo and cut off the right foot of every able bodied male Native. His statue was taken down in 2020 by Indigenous activists but the county of Rio Arriba was supposed to take up, on 9/28/2023, an agenda item of re-erecting the statue. We USCAN folk, including my friend Jacob Johns who is Indigenous, showed up to support. It was a lovely, peaceful, prayerful rally. […]
For two hours I observed a Trumper in a MAGA hat harass, troll, and disrupt the rally. Toward the end of the rally, the speaker asked for all the children to gather. At that point the Trumper tried to charge the group. A scuffle broke out; they pushed him back behind a low stone wall; he jumped over the wall, pulled out a gun, and shot. My friend Jacob took a bullet to the chest […]
Jacob was rushed by ambulance to a local hospital and airlifted to Albuquerque. He had his spleen removed, but he’s young and strong with the heart of a warrior and was in stable condition undergoing surgery last I heard yesterday.
The Trumper was arrested and charged with attempted murder. We all gave statements to detectives, and one of my twitter pix is evidence showing that the Trumper was harassing us for two hours.
[…] USCAN is working with local Indigenous groups to amplify their voices, make sure this statue doesn’t go up again, and bring the shooter to justice. […]
Guardian link to the story of the MAGA man shooting an indigenous activist.
Excerpt:
[…] The suspected shooter – 23-year-old Ryan Martinez – was arrested by Española and Pojoaque Pueblo police and faces charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. On Friday, a judge ordered Martinez held without bond through at least the weekend.
According to Martinez’s arrest affidavit, he was smiling and laughing during an interview with investigators.
“Ryan, with a smirk on his face, asked if someone who attempted a murder would be allowed to walk out” of custody, the state police agent Shane Faulkner wrote in the affidavit. “When I advised Ryan that it was his right and up to the judge, Ryan replied that was crazy and stupid.” […]
a social media profile matching Martinez’s details featured the phrase “Fuck Joe Biden”. The profile also declared “Trump won”, echoing the false conspiracy theory that fraudsters robbed the former president of victory against Biden in the 2020 election.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #457…
Hmmm… Seems to me that someone should check to see of Mr. Martinez was in Washington, DC on 6 Jan. 2021. FBI might want a little chat with him.
All good … well, mostly good. But I don’t see why we had to go through all that folderol and chaos to get here.
Congress has averted a shutdown with just hours to spare, capping a dramatic day that started with a lapse in government funding appearing all but inevitable.
The Senate voted 88-9 to pass a “clean” continuing resolution (CR) that funds the government at current levels through Nov. 17 and gives the Biden administration $16 billion it requested to assist victims of natural disasters. The House had earlier passed the measure in a bipartisan 335-91 vote. [A 45-day measure.]
The CR notably lacks any funding for Ukraine, spending cuts or border policy changes.
The bill now heads to President Biden’s desk for his signature before midnight […]
Only nine Republicans voted against the funding bill in the Senate: Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Mike Braun (Ind.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Bill Hagerty (Tenn.), Mike Lee (Utah), Roger Marshall (Kansas), Rand Paul (Ky.), Eric Schmitt (Mo.) and J.D. Vance (Ohio).
[…] the fight over government funding is sure to continue as each chamber works to pass 12 full-year appropriations bills.
[…] Sen. Michael Bennet […] told reporters that he felt it was necessary to send the message that members are still fighting for Ukraine.
[…] Schumer said in his floor remarks that he and McConnell “have agreed to continue fighting for more economic and security aid for Ukraine.” […]
If I were President Zelenskyy, I would still be worried about support from the US Congress. He can count on President Biden, but he can’t count on a lot of Republicans in Congress.
[…] The legislation keeps the government funded at existing levels through Nov. 17 and authorizes additional disaster relief money, giving Congress more time to reach a full-year funding agreement. That will still be a towering challenge ahead of the new November deadline, but it avoids for now a shutdown that would have put pay for millions of Americans in jeopardy.
[…] “After trying to take our government hostage, MAGA Republicans won nothing,” Schumer continued. “So one more time: It is good Speaker McCarthy finally — finally — heeded our message that bipartisanship was and is the only way. He could have made this decision weeks ago.”
[…] Just ahead of the vote, Schumer reiterated the Senate’s commitment to providing additional aid for Ukraine, saying that he and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has championed funding for the country, have “agreed to continue fighting for more economic and security aid for Ukraine.”
“We support Ukraine’s efforts to defend its sovereignty against Putin’s aggression,” Schumer said.
McConnell followed, saying he is “confident” that the Senate will pass more “urgent assistance to Ukraine later this year. But let’s be clear,” noting that “the alternative,” a shutdown, “would not just pause our progress on these important priorities, it would actually set them back.”
Following the vote, Schumer, McConnell and other key Senate leaders from both parties issued a joint statement declaring their support for “sustained security and economic support for Ukraine.”
The Biden administration labeled the CR a “big victory” on funding levels and keeping the government open, according to a senior administration official. The White House was committed to standing firm in refusing to renege on the two-year budget deal struck in May with McCarthy.
[…] “But I want to be clear: we should never have been in this position in the first place,” Biden continued, noting that McCarthy and House Republicans backed out of the budget deal that was designed to avoid a shutdown fight.
The president said he expects that McCarthy “will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine” and pass aid for the country soon. […]
[…] Although the White House said Ukraine needed $20.6 billion in aid to fight Russia’s invasion, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) stripped all funds for the U.S. ally from the government spending bill, under immense pressure from a GOP caucus that has increasingly turned against Biden’s handling of the war. The Senate had advanced a bipartisan bill to send roughly $6 billion to Ukraine, but Democrats wary of being blamed for a government shutdown approved the House version with only hours to go before federal appropriations expired.
The rejection of the money — nine days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky flew to Washington and pleaded with lawmakers to maintain their support — reflects hardening GOP opposition to helping Ukraine, and will send immediate shock waves through European capitals and the government in Kyiv.
In the days leading up to the vote on the appropriations deal, top U.S. officials — including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd T. Austin, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — made a concerted effort to build support for the package among Republicans, only for it to fall into the maw of resistance among House conservatives, who have been emboldened by former president Donald Trump and other GOP figures to oppose additional support.
Ukraine’s supporters in the House, Senate and White House say they will not give up despite the defeat, emphasizing that most members of Congress still support the additional funding. They also note that the stopgap spending bill approved Saturday will only fund the government until mid-November, providing another opportunity for pushing again for money for Ukraine.
But the failure to push the aid through Saturday could still have consequences for the war effort, emboldening Russian President Vladimir Putin, giving America’s European allies an excuse to pare back their own financial commitments and widening Ukraine’s dangerously large budget deficit, analysts say.
[…] “We are engaged in a battle of life and death with Russia, and every little bit of support is helping destroy Putin,” said Sviatoslav Yurash, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and a soldier who returned in August from a humanitarian mission on the front lines in Donbas. Yurash, whose partner was killed in a Russian missile attack last year, said he and many of his colleagues closely tracked the news out of Congress. “This will give him a greater chance of killing more of my people and destroying more of my nation.” […]
So what? Is that supposed to be some sort of huge ‘gotcha’? Since fossil fuels are contributing to climate change, why should they be receiving any subsidies at all? This is comparable to suggesting Biden be impeached because Trump was, even though only one of them was guilty.
California Republicans on Saturday swiftly shut down a proposal that would have cut opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage from their platform, frustrating centrist members who had hoped a moderate approach would increase their chances of success in a state where they are continually falling behind…
Heat pumps are more than twice as efficient as fossil fuel heating systems in cold temperatures, research shows.
Even at temperatures approaching -30C, heat pumps outperform oil and gas heating systems, according to the research from Oxford University and the Regulatory Assistance Project thinktank…
Here’s what went down: we just won a clean 45 day gov extension, stripped GOP’s earlier 30% cuts to Social Security admin etc, staved off last minute anti-immigrant hijinks, and averted shutdown (for now).
People will get paychecks and MTG threw a tantrum on the way out. Win-win
Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats
Trumper Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is caught in a new scandal as reporters reveal that she spent a whopping $20,000 of taxpayer money on a podium that was never delivered — and then tried to cover it up by abusing her power.
It all started when it was revealed that she wasted $20,000 on the wooden podium. Then, the Arkansas Republican Party swooped in and paid for the podium in order to save her from the growing scandal — and Huckabee Sanders quickly got a law passed that would block the public from knowing what she had spent their money on.
Unfortunately for Huckabee Sanders, the scandal was only just beginning, and about to get MUCH worse for her, because a REPUBLICAN lawmaker smelled a rat and immediately demanded that the Legislative Audit of Arkansas initiate a full audit of her podium purchase — and every single another purchase that she had made with taxpayer dollars.
Now, reporters, auditors, and ethics organizations are accusing Huckabee Sanders of using the $20,000 of taxpayer money to pay a friend’s company — and that it appears that the podium was never even delivered. To make matters worse, they claim that Sanders used taxpayer money to fly her friend, who happens to be one of the organizers of Trump’s January 6 insurrection, to Paris to join her on a trip.
I’m other words, Huckabee-Sanders inflated the price of a wooden podium that appears to have never even been delivered, funneled the taxpayer money to an insurrectionist friend, and then tried to hide the purchase from taxpayers and reporters. Simply deplorable…
Ukraine’s government said on Sunday it was confident that the United States would continue to support it in its war against Russia, even after the House passed a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown that did not include any additional money for Kyiv.
The White House and leaders of both parties in the Senate had pushed for more Ukraine funding to be included in the bill, which passed late Saturday. Members of both parties said they were confident that further financial commitments would be agreed to, but the failure to do so on Saturday highlighted the decreasing willingness of some Republicans to fund Kyiv’s war effort.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had made the case for continued U.S. support during a visit to Washington last month, and his office suggested on Sunday that it was not unduly concerned.
“All key partners of Ukraine are determined to support our country until its victory in this war,” Andriy Yermak, the head of the president’s office, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app, adding that the Ukrainian government meets with both Republicans and Democrats. “The Ukrainian delegation returned from the United States of America with clear confidence that there are no changes in support.”
Although the stopgap bill did not contain additional support for Ukraine, it continues funding at current levels for 45 days and will not immediately affect the pipeline of U.S. military aid. The Pentagon still has the authority to draw about $5.6 billion in arms and equipment from existing stockpiles. And the bill keeps in place a program to send money to Ukraine for purposes including training troops.
President Biden — who welcomed passage of the stopgap bill but said that “we cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted” — has requested $24 billion in additional aid for Ukraine. That comes on top of about $113 billion in military, humanitarian and economic aid that Congress has already approved.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III urged Congress to honor its commitment to assist Ukraine. “America must live up to its word and continue to lead,” he said in a statement.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said that while the stopgap bill would “not stop the flow” of U.S. aid to Ukraine, a government shutdown could have a “negative impact” on current programs.
The Ukrainian government was “actively working with American partners” to ensure that the new budget includes more aid for Ukraine, the spokesman, Oleh Nikolenko, said in a statement on Facebook.
[…] Mr. Zelensky has sought to set the war in a long term perspective, and argued in an address on Sunday that Ukraine was at a “crossroads of history.”
“No one should and no one will manage to ‘switch off’ our resilience, endurance, grit and courage on either scheduled or emergency basis,” he said. “They have no ‘expiration date,’ ‘end date,’ or final point after which we would stop resisting and fighting, except for one — our victory.” […]
Everyone is fixated on American deliveries of ATACMS long-range missiles to Ukraine, but with limited numbers available in U.S. stocks, the impact of those deliveries might be welcome, but marginal. Ukraine’s biggest challenge at the moment is breaching Russian defensive lines, and they have a potent new weapon to make that happen on the way.
To get a sense of just how hard Ukraine’s slog is, this thread, translating a front-line report from a Ukrainian soldier, paints the picture.
This, dear friends, is one of the most complex strongholds located in the Robotyne-Novoprokopivka area. A complex system of trenches-tunnels, dugouts, firing positions, to which the Russian invaders cling with all their might. [image at the link]
What we see first. A system of trenches and firing positions. According to the results of observation and tracking of the movements of equipment and personnel of the occupiers, we confirm the routes of movement and approaches to the positions. [image at the link]
In general, these routes should be obvious, but of course all the information must be studied and the information verified. Therefore, such a formalism. Next, we see how these positions are equipped from above. We see that the dugouts are covered. [image at the link]
Some trenches are covered from above along a long length. Perhaps these are not tunnels in classical sense, but technically they are. This is actually a trench-tunnel. They were designed to hide the number of personnel and movement in the trenches. [image at the link]
With the help of aerial reconnaissance, we determine not only which route the occupiers enter/exit. We find the entrances/exists of this strongpoint/trench system. [image at the link, showing Ukrainian drone tracking Russian soldiers]
A little more about ‘tunnels.’ According to the soldiers of the frontline units, there is a classic tunnel here. Under the road that leads from Robotyne to Novoprokopivka. It connects both flanks of this system.
Moreover, we also know that dugouts have been dug here, which are actually a second subterranean floor, going deep into the ground. While we were waiting for shells, the occupiers were digging. And they dug long and deep.
After fierce battles and artillery shelling, our artillery ‘opened’ the dugouts and covered trenches. After that, it became clearer how much more difficult the task is. [image at the link]
What’s even more, in the area where the main entrance to these positions is located from the west, only after intense artillery fire it will become clear to the untrained eye how well some of the trenches-tunnels on this side were camouflaged. [image at the link]
Occupiers successfully used the windbreak to prepare and conceal these positions. It requires us to conduct very thorough and vigilant intelligence. They know what we are interested in and are making efforts so that we cannot conduct it well. [image at the link]
Here is the full video, in which those trenches are being targeted by both conventional and cluster artillery munitions: [video at the link]
In the video, you see three Russian soldiers enter the dugouts. It doesn’t take that many Russians to man these positions. And ferreting them out is costly whack-a-mole work. This is why it’s so bizarre that Russia insists on counterattacking lost territory out in the open, where it’s easy for Ukrainian defenses and artillery to mow down the invaders. A few soldiers hiding in these trenches, moving back and forth via underground tunnels to wherever Russian drones tell them Ukraine is advancing, is far more problematic for Ukraine than yet another Russian Zerg rush against Ukrainian positions.
ATACMS doesn’t solve these trenches. Those missiles will be helpful in attriting Russian logistics and command and control, but it doesn’t take much logistics to supply a handful of Russians huddled up in a trench. And it certainly requires no command and control to have them sit there.
F-16s also don’t solve those trenches. They’ll have other key benefits, but moving the front line forward won’t be one of them.
But there is a new weapon on its way, and it portends great things for Ukraine.
Every month, OSINT analyst Thomas Theiner digs through a monthly Pentagon supplemental report in which they request funding to replace equipment and munitions sent to Ukraine. This month’s report has over $600 million for M2 Bradleys, which at $5.5 million a pop, suggests Ukraine may be in line for another 110 Bradleys. There is $187.4 million listed for a classified missile delivery which likely refers to ATACMS. At a bit over $1 million each, that would mean Ukraine might be getting 150 or so of them. There are also a whole host of air defense radars for Ukraine that are likely bolstering defenses ahead of the expected Russian winter campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure.
But this is the most exciting notice in this month’s report: the Pentagon has signaled that Ukraine is receiving $134.5 million in M1147 rounds for Abrams tanks. Those are brand new Abrams munitions, specifically designed to either penetrate reinforced defensive positions or rain shrapnel on entrenched infantry. [video at the link]
I haven’t been able to find exactly how much each one of these rounds cost, but the most advanced and difficult to manufacture depleted-uranium rounds cost $10,000 each. More conventional rounds cost between $1,500 and $4,000 each. So let’s say, worst case, these new M1147 rounds cost $10,000, that is still 13,450 rounds. I would guess they cost less.
The US has committed 31 M1 Abrams to Ukraine, so we’re maybe talking 434 of these specialized rounds per tank? Frankly, that seems excessive. My guess is that this signals that more M1s are on the way. And while they may not be needed for non-existent tank-on-tank engagements, the ability to deliver this kind of specialized anti-trench fire from as far as three kilometers behind the front line will make them a deadly addition to Ukraine’s innovations on combined arms warfare—that is, Ukrainian artillery and armor soften up Russian defensive positions until their infantry can approach and hold.
————————–
He’s a real piece of shit: [Tweet from J.D. Vance: “A lot of the anti-russia obsession on the left has nothing to do with Ukraine. It’s a revenge fantasy over 2016. They blame Russia for Donald Trump’s election and they’ll bleed Ukraine dry for payback.”]
There is one side that is obsessed with Ukraine as a matter of revenge, and that is Donald Trump and his cult. You know conservatives—every statement is an admission. This is Vance admitting that his interest in supporting Russia over Ukraine is all about 2016.
And my glorious Senator Vance completely fails to understand one thing: Ukraine chose not to submit to a dictator. It isn’t “the left” that’s bleeding Ukraine; it’s Russia. Russia is bleeding Ukraine. Russia can stop the bleeding by going home. […]
———————
Unless the Russians have been constructing hardened shelters at its six airfields in Crimea, ATACMS could compel the evacuation of all tactical aircraft from the peninsula.
The multipurpose round for the Abrams may or may not prove effective against entrenched forces, but I imagine that they’ll offer an extra level of protection for the tanks themselves.
No matter what kind of threat appears: enemy tank, ATGM vehicle, bunker, or missile crew in a trench — the Abrams will be able to respond with the round currently loaded in the gun.
Hard-line Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz plans a vote this week to try and remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his role as punishment for McCarthy orchestrating a bipartisan stopgap government funding bill to stave off a shutdown, Gaetz said Sunday. […]
Removing McCarthy would essentially halt all legislative business in the House until a replacement is picked. It remains unclear if Gaetz currently has more than a handful of votes for such a dramatic move. McCarthy has dismissed the risk of a vacate motion.
“Bring it,” he has said.
On Sunday, Gaetz responded, “Kevin McCarthy’s going to get his wish.”
Commentary:
[…] Here’s Matt talking with Jonathan Karl of ABC’s “This Week” about his plans to shut down the House because Kevin didn’t agree to shut down the government: [video at the link]
KARL: “So you’re not accomplishing anything here.”
GAETZ: “That’s not true.”
KARL: “Well, you don’t have the votes to remove him.”
GAETZ: “Well, I—by the way, I don’t know until we have him, and by the way, I might not have him the first time, but I might have him before the 15th ballot. That’s the number of ballots Kevin McCarthy needed.”
KARL: “So are you going to do this every day like you suggested? Are you going to go through this process of voting over and over and over again?”
GAETZ: “I am relentless, and I will continue to pursue this objective. And if all the American people see is that it is a uniparty that governs them and that it is always the Biden-McCarthy-Jeffries government that makes dispositive decisions on spending, then I am seeding the fields of future primary contests to get better Republicans in Washington who will actually tackle these deficits and debts.”
[…] accomplishing nothing is kind of the whole point of Republicans, isn’t it? Matt is determined to hold the line on deficits when a Democrat is in the White House so he can choke the life out of the economy and return Dear Leader to his gilded throne. If he has to create unprecedented chaos to do so, that’s just gravy.
[…] McCarthy is still trying to blame Democrats for this 100% Republican-manufactured crisis. [video at the link]
BRENNAN: “Were you confident we wouldn’t shut down?”
MCCARTHY: “I was confident I could get something on the floor to make sure the option that we would not …”
BRENNAN: “But you weren’t sure it was going to pass.”
MCCARTHY: “Well, I wasn’t sure it was going to pass. You want to know why? Because the Democrats tried to do everything they can not to let it pass.”
BRENNAN: “Democrats were the ones who voted for this in a larger number than Republicans to keep the continuing resolution alive.”
MCCARTHY: “Did you watch the floor yesterday?”
BRENNAN: “Oh, yes, 90 Republicans voted against it.”
And … scene. […]
no matter how many different ways Republicans try to answer the question at the heart of their efforts—i.e., what did President Biden actually do that’s even remotely impeachable?—they still whiff every time. [video at the link]
BARTIROMO: “Have you been able to identify specific policy decisions that Joe Biden made that he was paid for?”
MACE: “I have not had the ability to research that. I’ve been looking more at the LLCs, the bank records, all of the lies that Joe Biden has told, and what evidence we have so far in meetings, dinners, appointments, White House records, etc., phone messages, text messages, emails, etc., connecting the dots with Joe Biden.”
Oh, look! More nothing! Wait, this is the same nothing we’ve already reported on. […]
President Joe Biden has warned that conservative rebels “will be back again” to try thwart the next funding deal after Congress voted to pass a stop-gap bill to keep the government funded, avoiding a shutdown with just hours left until the deadline.
“The last few days and weeks extreme MAGA Republicans tried to walk away from that deal,” Biden said during a press conference at the White House on Sunday. “Voting for deep, lasting spending cuts from 30 to 80% — that would have been devastating for millions of Americans.” […]
sked by a reporter whether he trusts that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy uphold his word on an agreement, Biden said: “We just made one about Ukraine. So we’ll find out.”
“I fully expect the Speaker to keep his commitment to secure the passage and support needed to help Ukraine as they defend themselves against aggression and brutality,” the president said.
After his remarks, a spokesperson for McCarthy said: “Speaker McCarthy has been clear and consistent: we have an obligation to fix the crisis at the border and to ensure any request for further aid to Ukraine is matched with a sound strategy and accountability. The House will continue to discuss these challenges in the weeks to come.” […]
Outrage over the state of the country’s waterways and the perceived impunity water companies is piling pressure on the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Plunging into the ice cold river water, the eight members of the Deben Bluetits swimming group shrieked as their bodies adjusted to the frigid temperature.
For Natasha Sonds, who founded Bluetits two years ago, so-called wild swimming is like nothing else.
“It’s euphoric,” she said. “It’s just peaceful. It’s a place I go to relax and get away from the stress of family life.”
Still, the group swims breaststroke, allowing them to talk but also keep their mouths above the glistening water, which could poison them with E. coli.
Earlier this year, parts of the river near Woodbridge failed to meet the criteria required to be declared a safe spot by the Environment Agency, the body tasked with protecting and improving Britain’s environment.
Woodbridge — which is represented in Parliament by Thérèse Coffey, who also heads up the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs — isn’t alone. Only 14% of English rivers are classed as having “good ecological status.” (Good ecological status means there is only a “slight” change from their natural state as a result of human impact, as opposed to moderate, major and severe categorizations.)
Outrage over the state of the country’s waterways and the perceived impunity of private sewage companies that are dumping untreated sewage into rivers and the ocean is piling pressure on the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for the seeming lack of political will to stem the flow of filthy water.
The cleanliness of the U.K.’s waterways ranks at the bottom of lists of European countries. In 2020, the last year Britain voluntarily submitted data to the European Environment Agency, it ranked worst for bathing water quality.
The Deben is a case in point. Data from environmental charity The Rivers Trust last year showed that sewage had spilled into the river at multiple points near Woodbridge, and that one sewage storm overflow — relief valves when a system is at risk of being overwhelmed — spilled into the river 33 times over the course of 2022. At another, less than a mile downstream, sewage spilled into the river for 19 hours in the same period. […]
The largest-ever criminal investigation into potential widespread breaches of environmental permit conditions at wastewater treatment plants run by water and sewage companies was launched in November 2021 by the Environment Agency and regulator The Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat).
While the investigation inches forward, locals still have to deal with ongoing sewage spillage. In Woodbridge, volunteers test the waters, taking water samples and screening them for E. coli. […]
“The beginning of the decline in effective regulation of our water industry” came after nationally owned water authorities in England and Wales were privatized by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1989, according to Tessa Wardley, a spokesperson for The Rivers Trust, a charity and umbrella organization for 60 organizations throughout the country.
Twenty years later, under a left-of-center Labour Party government, water companies were given permission to self-report and monitor their own sewage discharges. Since taking power in 2010, successive Conservative governments have cut the Environment Agency’s environmental protection grant from 170 million pounds ($207 million) in 2009-10 to 155 million pounds ($189 million) in 2021-22, according to the agency, having dropped to 94.3 million pounds ($115 million) the previous year.
Because of these budget cuts, the number of inspectors has fallen and oversight decreased, according to Alan Smith, a water industry consultant who served on the boards of several English water companies. […]
Compounding the problem caused by aging systems is the light-touch regulation of the companies in charge of water treatment, which allows companies to “self-report” discharge, said Jamie Woodward, a professor in Earth history and river science at the University of Manchester. This has been “catastrophic for the environment,” but so has cutting funds to the Environment Agency, he added. […]
That water companies pay millions of pounds in dividends to shareholders while hiking customers’ bills has also produced anger.[…]
“They pay the fines and continue to pollute. The fines are trivial compared to their revenue streams. Dumping sewage is part of a highly profitable business model — it has been for decades,” he said. “A CEO in any other industry would go to prison for dumping waste on this scale.” […]
Two people were found dead in a grizzly bear attack in Alberta’s Banff National Park, Parks Canada said in a statement.
Parks Canada in a statement Saturday night said it had received an alert late Friday from a GPS device indicating a bear attack originating from within Banff National Park, in the Red Deer River Valley west of Ya Ha Tinda Ranch.
Weather conditions at the time did not allow for helicopter use, leading the response team to travel by ground through the night to the location, it said.
The response team arrived on-site during the wee hours where they discovered two deceased individuals. The team later euthanized the bear after it displayed aggressive behavior, the agency said…
House GOP members are preparing a motion to expel Rep. Matt Gaetz, (R- FL), amid his renewed threat to pursue a motion to vacate House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The House Republican members will seek to expel Gaetz if the ethics committee report comes back with findings of guilt, Fox News has learned. One member told Fox News the report is mostly written but does not know what it contains. Yet following threats to vacate McCarthy, the member said of Gaetz, “No one can stand him at this point. A smart guy without morals.”
It takes a two-thirds vote to expel. And Republicans are treading on thin ice with their majority. The House is down to 433 members. It’s unclear where things stand with federally indicted Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y. If you were to have members expelled, retire or die, the majority could be right on the edge for the GOP…
There is no mention of what he is being investigated for.
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #477…
I think the ethics panel is looking into the same stuff the FBI died, various corruptions and trafficking under-age girls for immoral purposes.
Reginald Selkirksays
@478: Which is not the reason why the Republicans would now consider ousting him. Which is because he feels powerful because he can break things, but he cannot fix things or run things.
Set your watches! Scientists have set the clock ticking for the development of a new generation of timepieces with accuracy of up to 1 second in 300 billion years or about 22 times the age of the universe.
Researchers working at European XFEL X-ray have examined the potential of scandium as the basis for nuclear clocks, long seen as the next step forward in accuracy over the current generation of atomic clocks.
Most atomic clocks rely on oscillators such as caesium, which can oscillate at very reliable frequencies when excited by microwave radiation. For example, the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology’s NIST-F2 clock would neither gain nor lose one second in about 300 million years.
But scientists have held the ambition of going one step further by using the oscillation of the atomic nucleus – rather than the electron shell – to create the next level in timekeeping.
At the European XFEL X-ray laser, researchers have found a promising candidate in the element scandium. Readily available as a high-purity metal foil or as the compound scandium dioxide, the element’s atomic resonances are much more acute than those of electrons in the atomic shell…
Right Side Broadcasting Network’s Brian Glenn, who is dating far-right Rep.
(R-Ga.), went off on liberal women live on the air Sunday, claiming they are “the ugliest.”
“I believe that conservative and Republican people are better-looking people,” Glenn told Donald Trump attorney Christina Bobb before the former president’s campaign event in Iowa.
“They’re happy. They’re joyous. They exercise. They get outside. They enjoy the outdoors. They’re proud of themselves,” he continued. “Liberal women tend to be some of the ugliest women I’ve ever seen.” …
Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discoveries that enabled the creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 and that could be used to develop other shots in the future.
Hungarian-American Katalin Karikó and American Drew Weissman were cited for contributing “to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times,” according to the panel that awarded the prize in Stockholm.
WHAT IS THE NOBEL FOR?
The panel said the pair’s “groundbreaking findings … fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system.”…
In the history of the United States, a sitting House speaker has never been ousted. Today, that changed as Kevin McCarthy was stripped of his gavel.
It was roughly 24 hours ago when Rep. Matt Gaetz was asked whether he expected his effort to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to succeed. The Florida Republican was not especially optimistic, telling reporters that the incumbent GOP leader would “probably” survive the far-right effort, at least until the next time Gaetz and his cohorts tried.
As it turns out, the far-right Floridian was overly pessimistic.
In the history of the United States, a sitting House speaker has never been ousted. Today, that changed as Kevin McCarthy was stripped of his gavel. NBC News reported:
This has never happened in U.S. history: The House just voted to remove its own speaker. The House voted 216-210 to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., with a handful of conservatives joining Democrats to remove him. There were 7 members absent.
Going into the process, it was clear that McCarthy had a narrow margin and could only lose a handful of members. The California Republican ended up losing eight GOP representatives:
Andy Biggs of Arizona
Ken Buck of Colorado
Tim Burchett of Tennessee
Eli Crane of Arizona
Matt Gaetz of Florida
Bob Good of Virginia
Nancy Mace of South Carolina
Matt Rosendale of Montana
Members of the octet were joined by a unanimous House Democratic conference. In theory, members of the Democratic minority could’ve sided with the incumbent, but in practice, the ousted speaker sealed his fate incrementally over the course of the last 10 months, burning bridges with the Democrats who could’ve rescued him.
So, who’s in charge? For now, Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina alerted members to the fact that he’ll now serve as speaker pro tem.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
…
We asked leading experts to name their top discovery about COVID-19 from 2023 — since the public health emergency ended…
…
Jie Zhou, Anika Singanayagam and Wendy Barclay: the nose has a role in viral transmission
…
Kamlesh Khunti: nearly half of COVID-19 survivors have post-acute sequalae
…
Devi Sridhar: face masks work but mandates need nuance
…
Malik Peiris and Benjamin J. Cowling: correlates of protection are unreliable for some vaccines
…
Dan Barouch: T cell immune responses offer protection from severe disease
…
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #484…
Well, well, well…. So McCarthy has gone from Just Barely Speaker to Not Quite Speaker. What are popcorn futures doing?
When John Lyly wrote “all is fair in love and war” in 1578, war was a more brutal business where mass rape, mass starvation of civilians, and wholesale destruction of enemy towns and villages were simply an accepted part of warfare.
As more civilized sentiments took root in nations the world over, a gradual recognition took place that warfare where “all is fair” is to no one’s benefit, and civilized nations began pledging to protect innocent civilians from harm as much as possible.
Vladimir Putin’s government, in so many ways, has missed the memo.
The ground war has rightfully taken center stage in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The outcome of the battles north of Tokmak will play the greatest role in determining the victor of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
However, control of the Black Sea has become a new front in the overall war. In the long term, wresting full control of the Black Sea from Russia would have massive implications for a potential Ukrainian-Crimean campaign. But even now, Russia’s attempts to blockade Ukrainian trade threaten massive famine in developing nations through Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia.
And Putin is using that threat of starvation to gain one key concession from the West: to reconnect the Russian State Agricultural Bank to SWIFT, allowing Russia to use that bank as a conduit to evade Western financial sanctions. As such, the Russian Defense Ministry has declared that any commercial vessel headed for Ukrainian ports is subject to attack.
Offers to connect a small subsidiary of the State Agricultural Bank to process legitimate payment under the deal (which would have been far less prone to abuse) were refused by Russia, and, without this concession, Russia has refused to revive the Black Sea Grain Deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea.
There are two ways Ukraine can stop this potential man-made famine: accede to Russia’s demands, or drive the Russian navy’s influence out of the Western Black Sea to establish a secure corridor for commercial vessels.
UKRAINE’S ROLE IN THE GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLY
To understand the stakes in the Battle of the Black Sea, it’s necessary to understand the role that Ukrainian food exports plays in world markets.
Ukraine is renown for its fertile black soil that produces abundant wheat, corn, barley, soybean oil, sunflower oil, and numerous other food products. Between July 22, 2022, and July 1, 2023, under the Black Sea Grain Initiative Agreement brokered between Ukraine and Russia, over 1,000 ships moved 33 million tons of agricultural food products, most importantly wheat (8.9 million tons) and corn (16.9 million tons). Of that, 725,000 tons of wheat was shipped from Ukraine to Ethiopia, Somalia, and Yemen alone through the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). [Graphic at the link]
Then there’s the global nature of commodities markets.
When Ukrainian wheat is purchased in say, France, it is purchased because it is the cheapest available. If that wheat from Ukraine is unavailable, the French buyer buys the next cheapest ton of wheat—paying a few dollars more to ensure shipment.
This creates a global chain reaction where the absence of that Ukrainian wheat in France results in higher-paying customers buying wheat that would’ve ended up in Egypt, which buys a ton of wheat that would’ve ended up in Nigeria, which buys a ton of wheat that would’ve ended in Ethiopia—and so on until (in a global shortage) buyers in the poorest nations are unable to afford any wheat at all.
[…] Developed countries may suffer from higher food costs, but they’ll always be able to afford more expensive wheat. Richer countries can pay more to avoid the consequences of shortages, while the poorest countries have no choice but to go hungry.
Thus, it’s important to understand that every bit of food that Ukraine exports is key to avoiding a global food shortage.
THE BLACK SEA GRAIN INITIATIVE
The Black Sea Grain Initiative (aka the Grain Deal) was a parallel set of agreements. One was between Russia, Turkey and the U.N., and another was between Ukraine, Turkey, and the U.N.
The goal was for Ukrainian and Russian food and fertilizer exports to travel through the Black Sea unimpeded, preventing the war from adversely affecting the food security of the developing world.
From July 22, 2022, to July 13, 2023, the Black Sea Grain Initiative protected any commercial vessels carrying Ukrainian foodstuff for export. These goods would be inspected by Russian inspectors in Turkey to ensure that contraband was not being secretly exported or imported.
In return, the U.N. entered into a parallel agreement, through which the Western allies lifted sanctions on two key sectors of Russian exports that impact developing nations’ food security: Russian food and chemical fertilizers. Payments for those exports would not be impeded by sanctions.
THE PROBLEM
Russia began signaling its discontentment with the deal almost from the outset, initially suspending its participation in the Grain Deal barely three months after it was first struck, in November 2022, only to resume three days later.
Russian noncompliance with the deal took a serious turn on April 29th, 2023, when Russia began ignoring its inspection duties in Turkey. Without inspections, freighters could not proceed to Ukrainian ports. Ukraine and the United States began protesting that Russia was violating the Grain Deal.
Why was Russia upset? It appears that Russia expected that to process payments for its food and fertilizer exports, the Russian State Agricultural Bank would be reconnected to SWIFT. SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, is a global network of banks and financial institutions that permit them to securely exchange information, such as payment instructions. Headquartered in Belgium, SWIFT is the primary means by which virtually all major financial institutions globally exchange payment processing information. Disconnection from SWIFT isolates financial institutions internationally, making it difficult for them to process international transactions.
Major Russian banking institutions were gradually banned from SWIFT transactions as part of western sanctions between late February and May 2022. Russian banks could then only engage in major international transactions by exchange of cash payments, slowing the verification of transactions and vastly increasing costs. So when Russia entered into the Grain Deal, it became clear that to Russia, “facilitating payment of Russian exports” meant reconnecting its banks to SWIFT.
To Russia’s great vexation, the U.N. instead contracted with JPMorgan Chase to craft a secure, bespoke payment processing system that would rapidly and securely process payments for Russian food and fertilizer exports—and only such payments. The U.N. and the U.S. were satisfied this system would meet the conditions of the grain agreement. Russia was unhappy it didn’t get the sanctions-busting abilities it wanted, arguing in late April that the JPMorgan payment system was “no substitute” for being reconnected to SWIFT. That is when Russia suspended its inspection duties.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and its allies characterized this Russian activity as “blackmail,” holding global food security hostage as a means for Russia to alleviate or evade Western sanctions, and to strengthen its war efforts. Talks broke down and the Grain Deal was permitted to expire entirely by Russia on July 17, 2023.
RUSSIA AIMS TO STARVE THE DEVELOPING WORLD
Within days of the deal’s expiration, Russia began to use its air and naval forces in a multipronged attempt to close the Black Sea to Ukrainian shipping, and to destroy existing infrastructure for storing or shipping Ukrainian foodstuffs for export.
Russia first opened with attacks on Ukrainian port infrastructure and Ukrainian grain storage silos and sites. A series of cruise missile strikes from the Russian navy and drone attacks from Crimea targeted facilities along the western Black Sea coastline and grain-export port hubs along the Danube River, such as port facilities at Reni and Izmail, destroying over 270,000 tons of grain, according to Ukrainian authorities. U.N. observers have confirmed the destruction of massive quantities of grain from Russian strikes. [images at the link]
Russian patrol boats have engaged in the interception and harassment of freighters. On Aug. 13, 2023, the Russian patrol ship Vasily Bykov fired warning shots at the Palau-flagged Turkish freighter Sukru Okan, which was traveling in international waters off the coast of Bulgaria in the western Black Sea, an act that Ukraine characterized as illegal “piracy.”
THERE ARE NO GOOD ALTERNATIVES TO BLACK SEA SHIPPING
There are not many economically viable alternative routes for Ukraine to bring its grain to market.
The profit margins are razor-thin when shipping low-cost commodities like grain. The Maritime Executive estimates the cost of rail transport per shipping container to be approximately $2.75 per mile, while it is only $0.80 per mile via maritime shipping. Train transport is by far the cheapest overland transportation method, yet it costs triple compared to maritime transport. One ton of wheat is worth only $345, so transportation over significant ground distances will rapidly consume any profit margin for grain suppliers, making overland transportation economically unviable.
[…] Russia need not destroy or interdict every freighter that attempts to enter Ukrainian ports to enforce a de facto embargo, all because of insurance.
Even small ocean-going cargo vessels cost around $17 million, so shipping companies will not risk losing their vessels without insurance against loss. Ordinary maritime insurance does not cover loss from acts of war, so Lloyds of London and other British insurance providers have played a vital role in providing insurance coverage against loss for ships at risk from Russian attack. However, those are market-based initiatives conducted in cooperation with the British government, and have been subject to market fluctuations from perceived insurance loss risks.
Keeping insurance costs reasonable can only be achieved by minimizing the risks from Russian naval and air attacks.
RUSSIAN OFFERS OF “FREE GRAIN” ARE NO REPLACEMENT
Russia cynically responded to American and Ukrainian criticisms that it is holding global food security hostage by offering what it called an African grain deal to “replace Ukrainian grain” and feed the developing world.
In reality, Putin’s offer was aimed at only six nations: Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic, and Eritrea—the same six African nations who did not vote to expel Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council and have diplomatically aligned themselves to Russian interests in Africa. [Sounds like a trumpian move.] For example, Mali, Zimbabwe, and Central African Republic host Wagner mercenary forces and make use of their services, while permitting those same forces to control profits from mineral rights (like gold mines).
[…] benefits been extended to numerous other developing nations that directly depend on Ukrainian grain or other food imports, such as Kazakhstan, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Oman, and Myanmar.
Russia is not proposing a major increase in their food exports to cover the shortfall of Ukrainian foodstuffs. Instead, it is proposing providing food that it would already export at a discount to nations that have chosen to embrace Russian influence, and to partially shield those nations from the effects of the coming famine.
A million tons of free or discounted grains is a tiny fraction of the combined 50 million+ tons of wheat and corn alone that Ukraine exported annually prior to the war.
STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS
Why does Russia want to trigger a humanitarian crisis? To obtain leverage and try to force the West to negotiate on Russian terms—aka the ceding of Ukrainian territory to Russia.
[…] The fact that this is a cynical and deliberate ploy on Russia’s part to murder thousands of innocent children and civilians by starving them of food is largely irrelevant.
Russia is already setting up to sell a very specific narrative.
– The war is causing disruptions to global food security, so only by ending the war can this famine be ended.
– Russia cannot be blamed for the famine, as Russia is providing free grain and trying its best to help the developing world.
– The Ukrainian grain deal meant shipping food mostly to Europe, and Russia’s cancellation of the grain deal isn’t to be blamed for the crisis.
– America and Europe should be blamed for triggering the crisis because of their outrageous refusal to abide by the conditions of the Grain Deal (which, according to Russia, means reconnecting its banking system to SWIFT).
Thus, Russia aims to “win” in one of two ways:
1. By triggering a massive humanitarian food crisis in the developing world that forces Ukraine and the West to the negotiating table, or
2. By forcing the West to lift some financial sanctions, reconnect Russia’s banking to SWIFT, and fuel Russia’s war efforts financially.
Even if the West were to meet Russian demands (reconnect the State Bank to SWIFT and lift financial sanctions on various products), Russia could then escalate its demands a few weeks or months later, leading to another round of lifting sanctions, or even Russian threats to starve the developing world.
The only alternative is a combination of military, financial, and information condition-setting efforts.
Ukraine needs to win the Battle of the Black Sea, and demonstratively prevent Russian air and naval assets from operating near or striking the western Black Sea. Ukraine needs the weapons and military assistance that can give them the capability to strike Russian air and naval assets in Crimea, preventing Russian forces from operating from within striking range of the western Black Sea.
Ukraine needs adequate air and drone defense systems to protect its Black Sea and Danuban grain port facilities against Russian attacks.
The West needs to support British insurers to facilitate (and, if necessary, subsidize) insurance on freighters against wartime losses to allow merchant vessels to provide shipping to Black Sea and Danuban grain ports.
If push comes to shove, the Western allies might consider an arrangement like that of the Merchant Marine during World War II, where the Allies temporarily leased private merchant shipping vessels.
Western allies could, in theory, fund the Ukrainian government’s temporary leases of private shipping vessels. Ukraine would take on the full financial risk of wartime loss while the ships traverse the Black Sea to obtain the grain. The temporary lease would expire when the ships return to the Bosporus, where private shipping companies would take on the remaining task of shipping the grain to their intended destinations—freeing shipping companies from the financial risks of wartime loss entirely.
Finally, the West needs to do a better job of communicating the reality of the story to the world. The truth of the Grain Deal is, as noted above, quite complicated. When the economic, diplomatic, and military situation is fully understood, the evil nature of Russia’s plan is quite apparent.
But the West needs to sell the justice of its cause in easy-to-understand soundbites that can be digested by the average person in 30 seconds or less. When it comes to this, the West is falling behind Russian disinformation yet again.
Whether it takes official government channels, the media, or social media groups like NAFO, I hope that the crucial moral, diplomatic, economic, and military necessity of Ukraine’s victory in the Black Sea is understood by all.
Former union leader and Democratic insider Laphonza Butler was sworn in as the newest member of the Senate on Tuesday, replacing California Sen. Dianne Feinstein after her death and becoming only the third Black female senator in history.
Butler was appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday, just two days after Feinstein died at her home in Washington. Butler is a longtime fundraiser and strategist in the state’s Democratic circles and was the head of Emily’s List, a national organization that raises money for women candidates who support abortion rights…
[…] This has never happened before. That’s a reflection of what a vacuous, unprincipled, incompetent “leader” McCarthy has been. But it’s also a reflection of the utter chaos, the disarray, the dangerous war within the Republican party. McCarthy deserved this, utterly. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a fraught time for the country.
One would like to think this will be a wake-up call to Republicans to start getting their proverbial house in order. Doesn’t seem likely.
McCarthy had no comment on his way from the Republican cloakroom to his soon-to-be-former office. […]
Donal Trump has been told to watch what he says and posts, or risk ending up behind bars for up to a month.
In the second day of the former POTUS’ financial fraud trial, Judge Arthur Engoron Tuesday just issued a limited gag order against everyone in the civil case to stop verbal and social media posted swipes at members of his staff…
[…] as McCarthy really needed to understand, he would be dependent on at least some Democratic support. They wouldn’t have to like him, necessarily, but they would have to trust and respect him enough to let him remain in office.
This was evident on Sunday, when McCarthy appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” but he nevertheless suggested that the government shutdown that his party nearly created should be blamed on the Democratic minority. […]
It was a striking moment: With a vote on his speakership poised to happen, Congress’ top Republican, knowing he’d need Democratic backing, thought it’d be a good idea to take a bizarre shot at his Democratic colleagues that was badly at odds with reality.
[…] McCarthy had 10 months to demonstrate to Democrats that he was a serious and honorable leader, even if they had substantive disagreements over policy.
We now know that he failed to do so.
The list of partisan transgressions is not short:
– McCarthy struck secret deals with his radical members to gain the gavel. He adopted a package of rules for this Congress designed to empower some of the same far-right members who tried to derail his leadership bid.
– He unfairly stripped several House Democrats of their committee assignments without cause. [!!]
– He made sensitive security footage available to a far-right media personality as part of a campaign to rewrite the story of the Jan. 6 attack.
– McCarthy orchestrated a debt ceiling standoff, threatening to crash the economy unless his party received some kind of reward. He also abandoned key elements of the debt ceiling agreement he struck as soon as it was politically convenient for him to do so.
– He pushed a historically rare censure resolution against Rep. Adam Schiff of California because the California Democrat told inconvenient truths the GOP didn’t want to hear. [Ugly politics for sure.]
– He launched an evidence-free impeachment inquiry that’s impossible to take seriously, while also opening the door to impeaching members of the White House cabinet after having said that he wouldn’t.
– He needlessly politicized the National Defense Authorization Act.
– He endorsed a ludicrous effort to “expunge” Donald Trump’s impeachment.
[…] McCarthy sealed his fate, not on Tuesday by failing to make credible offers, and not on Sunday with a dishonest interview, but incrementally over the course of the year. There were steps he could’ve taken to prevent this outcome, but he spent months prioritizing the whims of the same members who helped push him aside, burning bridges with the Democrats who could’ve rescued him.
whheydt @486, months of eye-popping, popcorn-worthy behavior from Kevin McCarthy and the Putin caucus of the Republican Party.
birgerjohanssonsays
Yes! The system has come back up again!
😊
Another unexpected data point about COVID.
A few % of women of all ages have some unexpected vaginal bleeding in weeks after taking the vaccine.
It is assumed to be connected to the spike protein somwhow.
This virus and its molecules do not give a damn about what the textbooks tell us to expect from an epidemic.
birgerjohanssonsays
About the war.
“Russia’s litter legacy: Trash, discipline and the hidden clues it reveals about the Russian army”
About the Nobel Prizes.
First, the mRNA vaccine researchers have literally saved millions of lives.
There were several competing vaccines, but it is my understanding that the mRNA vaccines have the best protection to the oldest, and are easy to update for new virus variants (also, my memory is unreliable but I think the mRNA vaccines were among the first).
.
Second, a fun detail about the Physics prize.
Of the three recipients, the professor who is working in Lund University* got the news in the middle of a lecture.
But she continued the lecture of respect for the students.
.
*literally the first university in Sweden, going back to the medieval time. But the medieval students did not commit as many murders as they did in the English universities of the era.
robrosays
Glad you’re back. Is there someone in management to talk to about these down times? I don’t know how to get through the morning without a dose of Pharyngula.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ 490, 492….
According to one report, the California House delegation asked for a recess long enough to attend Feinstein’s funeral in San Francisco. McCarthy refused to do so. So…in general, he spent 10 months stabbing the Democrats in the back and now wonders why they won’t help him. Hey, Kevin! Got a mirror? Your problem is right there.
The Food and Drug Administration is warning health care providers not to use probiotics containing live bacteria or yeast in preterm infants after the agency began investigating the July death of a preterm, low-weight infant given such a product in an unnamed hospital.
The infant developed sepsis from the bacterium in the probiotic product—Evivo with MCT Oil made by Infinant Health—and subsequently died…
On Friday, the FDA sent out its warning to health care providers about the dangers of probiotics in infants, particularly preterm infants that are highly vulnerable. The agency noted that the case isn’t the first of its kind; there have been previous reports of infections and sepsis in infants due to the use of probiotics containing bacteria and yeast.
“The FDA is also reminding healthcare providers that FDA has not approved any probiotic product for use as a drug or biological product in infants,” the agency wrote in the warning…
For the first time, a research team with the University of York has managed to send unhackable quantum information between Ireland and the UK. Leveraging ultra-low-loss fiber infrastructure capable of carrying “multiple terabits” of information, the researchers demonstrated how photonic qubits can already cover the 224 kilometers between the Irish Sea.
The feat – which included the collaboration of The Quantum Communications Hub and infrastructure provider euNetworks – simultaneously set a new record for longest-distance subsea quantum communication…
A Jan. 6 rioter was convicted and sentenced in secret. No one will say why
Totally cool CEO says governments need to punish workers with unemployment to make them less arrogant
WordPress blogs can now be followed in the fediverse, including Mastodon
I see that we have automatically rolled over to begin a new chapter of 500 comments on the Infinite Thread.
For the convenience of readers, here is a link back to one of the comments posted in the previous chapter:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/07/11/infinite-thread-xxviii/comment-page-6/#comment-2194657
@Reginald #483, @Lynna #486: Speaking of unbelievable, this is from Jul 25, during the trial, over bribery.
Video: Maddow – Unbelievable: Texas A.G.’s PAC makes [$3 million] donation to Lt. Gov. presiding over his impeachment trial
And who isn’t even up for reelection until 2026.
Cartoon: Mike Luckovich on the GOP dinosaur’s demise
Then there were 2: Minnesota brings next major constitutional challenge to Trump’s candidacy
Trump’s ridiculous response:
This week in (actual) fake news
Fact Checking:
Doesn’t matter how much Trump is fact-checked, even in real time by Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” he still has a platform on which to bloviate and lie his ass off. His base believes him. His base does not hear or see fact-checking. They tune it out. I am amazed that Trump is still getting away with this shit. I think that, for many people, it must be easier to believe him than it is to check the facts.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will host an all-senators meeting with Zelenskyy on Thursday.
The Nordic Way of Freedom
The Ken Paxton Verdict Is Not the Vindication Republicans Want, by Rachel Monroe
New Yorker link
The Texas attorney general was acquitted of corruption charges, but the trial further damaged the Republican brand.
More at the link. I snipped lot, and I just presented excerpts.
Ukraine Update: Give Ukraine everything it needs, and promise it all at once
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Anti-Vax Aaron Rodgers Thinks The Sounds Of Dolphins Boning Can Heal His Achilles Tendon
https://www.wonkette.com/p/anti-vax-aaron-rodgers-thinks-the
Thousands of climate activists march in NYC, calling on Biden to declare climate emergency
Followup to comment 10.
More Ukraine updates:
Link
TFG Admits Plans to Overturn Election Were His Own Plans
Followup to comment 15.
Posted by readers of the article:
textbook confirmation bias.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-18/energy-minister-says-nuclear-power-too-expensive/102868218
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-18/ato-whistleblower-richard-boyle-prosecution-to-test-protections/102860814
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-18/pinjarra-massacre-descendants-hope-voice-brings-healing/102845630
The Derna flood disaster: At least 10,000 dead.
[A very rich guy ] who owns a social media company accuses [ a famous Jew] of wanting to destroy western civilisation.
I leave it to you to figure out which people I am writing about.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer loosens Senate’s informal dress code
Hunter Biden sues the IRS over tax disclosures after agent testimony
North Carolina Republicans seek control over state and local election boards ahead of 2024
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Noel on Tafkat:
Video at the link.
Timothy Snyder in the Guardian – “Elon Musk likes to think he saved us from Armageddon. He’s just brought it closer”:
Guardian liveblog:
Donald Trump Wishes ‘Liberal Jews’ a Happy New Year by Accusing Them of Destroying America
Lauren Boebert’s ‘Beetlejuice’ Date Owns Bar That Hosts Drag Shows
Not news as such, but perhaps a picker-upper for our esteemed host:
How to be more productive? I am taking lessons from my eight-legged life coach.
Trump turns to Putin for validation (yes, again)
First, Donald Trump celebrated Vladimir Putin’s embrace of his election messaging. Now the two have linked arms on Trump’s rhetoric about Ukraine, too.
The Saudi-Russian (Trumpy) Alliance
Link
Cartoon: Bye-bye Mittens
Link
I think there is too much vengeance-against-NBC from Keith Olbermann in this essay. There are also too many unanswered, fundamental questions for this to count as good journalism. However, the point that NBC may have agreed to online-factchecking-only for the most part is a question that should be asked and answered. I do think that NBC gave Trump too cushy a platform for spewing lies, and I agree that the Peter Baker interview was not a good followup. I do also agree that even the online factchecking was not done in a timely manner.
I’ll just let that sit there with no comment.
Link
Assorted links:
Vanity Fair – “The Titan Submersible Disaster Was Years in the Making, New Details Reveal”:
(They have an article limit, but I’m not sure how many it is…)
Vanity Fair – “DeSantis Won’t Hesitate to Race Trump to the Bottom”:
France 24 – “En Espagne, la justice entend pour la première fois une victime du régime franquiste”:
Gizmodo – “Your Favorite TikTok Dietitian Might Be Paid Off by Big Food”:
Guardian liveblog:
Meduza – “Commander of Russian air assault brigade reportedly killed in Ukraine”:
Arab News – “Thousands join anti-regime rally in southern Syria despite violence”:
Reuters – “What are Republican U.S. presidential candidates saying about the UAW strike?”:
Nikki Haley:
Next paragraph:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-wishes-happy-new-year
I could not get a translation of the Yiddish? Hebrew?
Noel on Tafkat:
I just wanted to show an example to refute the stereotypical image of muslims. Even if I obviously do not buy into his religion, this guy is smarter than a bucketload of Xian fundies (the ‘dawah’ guys are a different matter-they are as dishonest as Creationists).
Mufti Abu Layth: “The role of reason in religion”
https://youtu.be/UuLDZkLvxvo
Crisis and Bailout: The Tortuous Cycle Stalking Nations in Debt
New York Times link
The government of Ghana is essentially bankrupt, and has turned to the International Monetary Fund for its 17th financial rescue since 1957.
From ABC on the Welker interview:
I saw the video clip of this. The man is almost 80. His petulant insistence that he “behaved so well” says so much about him psychologically. I might have to check in on Mary Trump’s podcast to see if she notes it.
SC @45, “petulant” is a good way to describe Trump.
Related to other news, (Ken Paxton), here is some satire written by Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Former GOP skeptics now support impeachment probe
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
Associated Press:
I watched the new film on Netflix El Conde. It’s not amazing, but it is quite engaging. Probably the only vampire movie I’ll ever see. I agree generally with this review, but I would go even further in praising the cinematography by Edward Lachman. It’s delightful to look at, and (with the production and costume design) visually conveys reaction/greed/despotism, draining them of power and grandeur. It has a Gothic feel, but in a way that doesn’t so much deploy the look as de-romanticize and lead you to reflect on it. I’m sure I’ll watch it again on mute just to take it all in.
Trudeau accuses India’s government of involvement in killing of Canadian Sikh leader
Matt Gaetz Is Reportedly Mulling a Run for Florida Governor
Movie notice
I have not seen this myself, so cannot recommend it, but it promotes a cause I support. The American Chestnut Foundation is involved in promoting the film, so you may presume it is not objective.
Clear Day Thunder
Ukraine update: Bakhmut is, once again, the hottest spot on the front lines, by Mark Sumner
Followup to comment 56.
Posted by readers of the article:
Trump used classified notecards to write to-do lists for his Mar-a-Lago assistant
Planned Parenthood resumes offering abortions in Wisconsin after more than a year
I was wondering if there were ground drones (which sounds like “land shark” and so makes me giggle), and apparently there are. I was thinking more like spy drones with tiny cameras andor microphones that looked and moved like small animals.
Lynna… @ # 58, quoting a Kossack: … she later recognized those notecards as sensitive White House materials — with visible classification markings — used to brief Trump while he was still in office about phone calls with foreign leaders or other international-related matters. … classified information printed out on notecards to act as cheat sheets during his phone calls—no doubt a standard White House practice.
Functionally (though maybe not legally) the equivalent of the (purportedly) most sensitive docs kept on Hillary Clinton’s server, described as talking points memos for meetings with heads of state; prob’ly for events already past. Many of us (including me) didn’t make that much of this in the former case, so don’t have much room for heavy indignation in the latter.
As for Trump’s hanging on to these cards, then treating them like junk – totally in keeping with his pervasive infantilism. He has his staff too thoroughly broken in for any of them to try more than once to remove anything he claims for his binkie.
SC, that sounds kind of like a combination drone and robot. I don’t remember where I read it, but apparently the Ukrainians have robots they can use to help rescue wounded soldiers.
Taken ’em long enough !
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-19/bom-officially-declares-el-nino-underway-2023/102495394
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
There are several reports of Ukrainians murdered in Russian air strikes on civilians, alongside various lies from the Russian propaganda machine. I would love to see an analysis of all of the Russian fact claims reported in the Guardian liveblogs since February 2022; I imagine the percentage that turned out to be true or accurate would be very small.
@60,62 drones
I have an idea for an anti-ship drone. It swims through the water to get to the ship, then climbs up thee side and moves to the most vulnerable location before setting off its charge. The idea is that if you can reach the right location, you probably don’t need as much explosive to disable a ship.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-19/jenni-hermoso-accuses-spanish-soccer-federation-of-intimidation/102876606
Spurce : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-19/elijah-schaffer-spoke-at-conservative-conference-730/102847128
Good, nicely explained clip on Signs of life on an ocean exoplanet? by Harry Cliff on youtube 7 minutes long here. About this discovery hinting at juuu-uust maaaay-be life in the vastness of the ocean of the Hycean (thick Hydrogen atmosphere over deep water ocean and hot high pressure ices mantle) exoplanet K2-18b ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K2-18b ) noted in this NASA news page here :
https://www.nasa.gov/goddard/2023/webb-discovers-methane-carbon-dioxide-in-atmosphere-of-k2-18b
World’s most powerful free-electron laser upgraded to fire a million X-rays per second
U.S President Biden addresses the U.N. General Assembly in New York City currently live, by i24NEWS English.
Rudy Giuliani sued by former lawyer, accused of failing to pay $1.36 million in legal bills
Twitter down: X stops working hours after Elon Musk announces he wants people to pay to use it
South Korea to supply Ukraine with two K600 Rhino anti-mine vehicles
@49
Officials find debris from F-35 fighter jet that crashed in South Carolina after pilot ejected
A detail of reportage – Specifying a distance in hours only makes sens if the mode of conveyance is clear. Is that two hours of F-35 jet flight, or a two hour drive by car?
Trump plans prime-time remarks to UAW workers in his second snub of a GOP debate
@74 I did some work with Google maps. Williamsburg County is about 1:45 driving a car from Joint Base Charleston, at a distance of > 70 miles.
@53
India expels Canadian diplomat in tit-for-tat move as spat over assassinated Sikh activist deepens
There’s a new $1 million ad campaign trying to get Republican members of Congress to support additional aid to Ukraine.
That comes as there’s been strong resistance in some GOP quarters to further aid.
Link
Classic case of “in a hole and still digging.”
Biden exhorts world leaders at the UN to stand up to Russia, warns not to let Ukraine ‘be carved up’
Link
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the floor: “Last night’s proposal in the House can be boiled down to two words: slapdash, reckless. Slapdash because it is not a serious proposal for avoiding a shutdown, and reckless because if passed it would cause immense harm to so many priorities that help the American people.”
Wonkette: LIVE: President Zelenskyy Is At The UN, So That’ll Piss Putin’s American FanboysOff
The Ex-‘South Park’ Writer Taking On Moms for Liberty
Zelenskyy: Russia is weaponizing food, energy and abducted children in its war against Ukraine
Followup to comment 84.
Posted by readers of the article:
Biden warns Trump is an existential threat to democracy. The media whiffs it
Lahaina’s Beloved Banyan Tree Sprouts New Leaves!
Photo at the link.
Telling AI model to “take a deep breath” causes math scores to soar in study
Guardian – “Justice for Neanderthals! What the debate about our long-dead cousins reveals about us”:
Tuberville to try going around his own blockade to confirm Marine commandant
Donald Trump was indicted in New York. Here’s what we know so far.
Trump makes an odd speech, even by his standards.
(As my phone cannot show the difference between l and I , I must try several links)
httos://youtu.be/P_xIkWIS5ms
httos://youtu.be/P_xIkWlS5ms
httos://youtu.be/P_xlkWIS5ms
https://youtu.be/P_xlkWlS5ms
Acting Temple University president JoAnne A. Epps dies after falling ill on stage
Re: SC (Salty Current) @ #89…
My late wife did secretarial work for a lab on the UC Berkeley campus at which Svante Paabo spent some time as a post-doc. So she met him before he became famous.
The basic mistake made with the Neanderthal type specimen is that he was an old man with arthritis. The mere fact that he lived long enough to get to that condition says quite a bit about Neanderthal society.
Tropics Update: Subtropical storm could develop off Florida. Here’s how it could affect your weather
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #90…
Democrats should insist on following normal procedure and bring up whatever group the Marine Commandant is part of on the consent calendar. Of course…someone might “object” to bringing up only that group and state that the objection will be released if the entire set of promotion lists groups are brought on the consent calendar and approved, e.g. by bringing the Marine Commandant last.
A question:
If placozoans are 800 million years old, does not that mean they pre-date the last ‘snowball Earth’ episode?
And -as they constitute several thousand cells and are less robust than single-celled animals, is not this a final evidence that open water must have existed even during the coldest periods?
The Neanderthal article @ #89 brought to mind the beautiful prologue to Giorgio Bassani’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis:
Here’s an article about it.
Guardian – “European governments shrinking railways in favour of road-building, report finds”:
Ukraine Update: Russians in Ukraine are having a very bad time
Lynna, OM @79
It’s worth reading the whole judgement, it is a delightful example of judge saying “stop pissing around in my court, in any court, and fuck right off, now fuck off a lot more” but viciously politely. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157/gov.uscourts.flsd.610157.284.0_1.pdf
Jazzlet, thanks for the link. It is delightful.
Followup to comment 100. Posted by readers of the article:
Re: Jazzlet @ #101…
That’s going to leave scorch marks.
The Curiosity rover ahs reached one of its toughest destinations Gediz Vallis Ridge which may wellteach us about ancient martian landslides – see :
https://www.space.com/nasa-curiosity-rover-mars-gediz-vallis-ridge
Camptosaurus skeleton for sale :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-20/barry-the-dinosaur-paris-sale-camptosaurus/102877790
Not going cheap and sadly probly not to science or museum?
Artemis 3 landing site imaged : https://www.space.com/moon-south-pole-shackleton-crater-photo
Source : https://phys.org/news/2023-09-rna-recovered-extinct-species.html
Evolution!
How bats evolved to avoid cancer.
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-evolved-cancer.html
Ohio Supreme Court rules ‘unborn child’ wording can remain in abortion ballot language
They’ve let us know who owns them.
Re: Reginald Selkirk 107
There’s a place to refer to the supporters and enablers of this as “the liars”. They have to use words that don’t apply beyond casual public and political use.
I’m thinking of a mocking series of observations that require the concept of the concepts > fetus to engage with. Things that I can use to demonstrate dishonesty through a legislative lie.
This one isn’t technically fetus puppetry, it’s fetus outfit play like with dolls put a child characteristics on a fetus, and then play puppets.
Some Republican Congresspersons are saying the truth out loud:
Link
House Republican chaos pushes U.S. closer to government shutdown
@109
But Republican voters have made it clear they prefer to be represented by lunatics.
News about Democratic Party candidates winning at the state level … good news:
https://twitter.com/MediumBuying/status/1704479015992447432
Cartoon: Mike Luckovich on Donald Trump’s oath of office
Was Trump Telling Aide To Lie When He Told Her To Lie? New York Times Helps ABC With The Hard Questions
https://www.wonkette.com/p/was-trump-telling-aide-to-lie-when
https://www.wonkette.com/p/wapo-shocker-clean-energy-is-clean
Alabama voters tell justices to stay out of election map dispute
By Amy Howe / Sep 19, 2023
ScotusBlog
There are over 3.5 million voters in Alabama. They all got together and hired lawyers? That article takes for granted that the Lawyers are representing the voters without identifying them. Is it some sort of public interest group?
It seems like the “Lawyers for Alabama voters” are on the side of good, but that is very sloppy reporting.
MAGA Lawyer Lin Wood Flips Against Trump in Georgia Racketeering Case
@ #118
Challengers to the map (voters) are represented by the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, the ACLU and others.
Musk’s Neuralink seeks volunteers for brain implants—who’s in?
@ Reginald Selkirk #118
You’re right that voters was a poor choice of words, it should have said voting rights advocates or something similar (on behalf of voters.) ‘Voters’ was an unnecessary shortcut. This wasn’t a general news story, though, but a blog that only follows the SC, so most readers would have realized that. I should have quoted the CNN story which used different terms. The SC filing is here if you’re interested.
@ 121
Why do I think this headline was ripped straight from the plot of some 80s cyberpunk thriller?
Re:Re: Reginald Selkirk 107
“How does a child get down a fallopian tube your dishonors?”
Link
Democrats pummel Republicans at Jim Jordan’s circus show
The more Donald Trump talks about the 25th Amendment, the clearer it becomes that he has no idea how it works — though he really should.
As far as Trump’s mind goes, it’s always worse than we thought.
Ex-Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson claims Rudy Giuliani groped her on January 6
Yuck.
Taylor Swift encourages her fans to register to vote:
Link
Biden uses executive power to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps
Here is an hour and a half interview of a former royal cop, among other things he is exposing Prince Andrew as a piece of sh*t.
https://youtu.be/fU26x3qe5_w
Schumer takes on Tuberville’s blockade, teeing up votes on top military picks
White House brings back free at-home COVID test orders
Democrat Taunts GOP Leader With Bill To Block Lawmaker Pay During Government Shutdown
While Trump’s Sunday interview was filled with lies, Zelenskyy’s was filled with hope</a
NBC News:
NBC News:
Senate gets around Tuberville to confirm Joint Chiefs chairman
Awww. Tiny violins. Actually, this is a good schadenfreude moment.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-wetting-his-britches-over-going
Poland Says It’s Cutting Off Arms to Ukraine Over Grain Dispute
DeSantis: Humans are ‘safer than ever’ from effects of climate change
Ukraine Update: At the United Nations, Ukraine is everything, Russia is just Russia, by Mark Sumner
Republican gripes that Merrick Garland didn’t respond to his letter about ‘World Naked Bike Ride’
Russian “motivation”:
Link
Satire written by Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
“Hidden in the Arctic, Sweden is quietly winning Europe’s next big space race”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/21/hidden-in-the-arctic-sweden-is-quietly-winning-europes-next-big-space-race
Sunak has resorted to sabotaging the UK’s “net zero” policies (already inadequate) in a desperate attempt to shift the polls that have been showing ~20% Labour leads for a year. I very much doubt this will work, but the effects will outlast Sunak’s remaining year-or-so in office, and I don’t trust Starmer to reverse the damage.
Rupert Murdoch to Step Down as Chair of Fox and News Corp After Seven-Decade Career
Mastodon’s latest release makes the open source Twitter alternative easier to use
A third party signed up 15,000 voters in Arizona. Democrats worry that’s enough for a Biden spoiler
Producing evidence is hard. Simply asserting that “everyone knows” how right you are is easy. Just ask House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.
To hear Ron DeSantis tell it, policies designed to address the climate crisis are “part of an agenda to control you.” That’s utterly bonkers.
GOP Contingent Throws Up Sound And Fury To More Ukraine Aid As Zelensky Visits
Followup to comment 153.
Posted by readers of the article:
Cartoon: Mike Luckovich on dress codes
Putin Republicans ready to rebuff Zelenskyy on aid to fight Russia
David Brooks gets brutally mocked after complaint about $78 airport meal
Followup to comment 153.
Link
Canadian Transphobes Thought Millions Would March For Them. It Didn’t Quite Work Out That Way.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/canadian-transphobes-thought-millions
Counter-protesters supporting trans rights vastly outnumbered them.
U.S. Will Allow Nearly 500,000 Venezuelan Migrants to Work Legally
New York Times link
NBC News:
Commentary from Steve Benen:
Re: Lynna 161
When you concentrate the irrational and defiant…
Brony @162, yes. That’s a good description.
In other news: Israel-Saudi Peace Deal: What The F… Is in It for the US?
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump electors: ‘fake’ or ‘contingent’?
Judge hears arguments from Trump electors seeking a move to federal court
By Bill Rankin and David Wickert / Sept 20, 2023
Republican congresswoman comes up with most bizarre defense yet for Jan. 6
#164 Fake electors
Supposing that, for the sake of argument, we accept their argument that they are ‘contingent electors’ rather than fakety fake electors. Wouldn’t that make them state officers, not federal?
Ukraine consolidates gains around Robotyne, and is primed for more
Interview with historian Andrew Downie.
“They gagged me: Exposing Andrew, Megan & Mountbatten”
https://youtu.be/vs1McKtcIRY
or
https://youtu.be/vs1McKtclRY
New York Times:
(It is the lower of the links that work, with lower case L at the end. )
Lynna, OM
I think we all know about Russian attitudes to terror bombing by now…
If they still had chemical weapons in their stockpiles, they would be using it.
Sheesh.
Link
Ex-Satanist?
https://www.wonkette.com/p/daily-wire-guy-very-concerned-about
Biden announces new aid package during Zelensky meeting
Washington Post link
Roysl media knfluence exposed by former Sky News boss.
https://youtu.be/DMmyXFz8OX8
While carbon has been discovered at the Jupiter moon Europa, the briny water in the subsurface ocean will hardly be hospitable for life.
Russel Brand ha done for.
More accusers are coming forth, and he has admitted things, this looks like a Jimmy Savile situation where a lot of people knew but protected a rich celebrity.
White House Taunts ‘Worst Person’ Matt Gaetz With A Well-Timed Meme
California sues anti-abortion organizations for unproven treatment to reverse medication abortions
Powerful interview between David Marr (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Marr_(journalist)) and Laura Tingle fromlast night’;s 7.30 Report here :
Plus this bit esp too :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-21/frontier-wars-david-marr/102887312
Note click on the trasncript button for, well, that.
See also : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_native_police
The new FineWoven iPhone cases are very bad
#177- Good. Just tragic that it took so long, of course. (Another Saville parallel.)
Real men do housework.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/22/danes-share-housework-british-family-friendly-policies
ProPublica:
Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events
by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski / Sept. 22, 2023
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1705219526529257555
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is simply saying, “Yes,” in replies to Republican candidates that are criticizing him over his prioritization of union jobs.
I like the ads that just let the Republicans hang themselves with their own words. Video at the link. Nikki Haley does not come off well in that video. Nor does Tim Scott. Joe Biden, on the other hand, looks really good to union workers,
Federal prosecutors indict Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez
UAW FILES LABOR COMPLAINT AGAINST SEN. TIM SCOTT FOR SAYING “YOU STRIKE, YOU’RE FIRED.”
https://theintercept.com/2023/09/21/uaw-strike-tim-scott/
“Telling workers they’ll be fired for striking is violating federal labor law, and that’s not something becoming of a senator.”
https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1704831285171261712
North Carolina Republicans Just Passed a Massive Power Grab to Seize Control of Elections
A new law could give the GOP legislature the ability to overturn results and cut early voting in Democratic areas.
Followup to comment 190.
Link
@184: Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events
Well, he didn’t really ‘participate’, he was just there as Ginny Thomas’ plus-one.
/s
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Dmitri on Tafkat earlier:
George Monbiot in the Guardian – “We are being poisoned every day, so why do we keep voting for more pollution? Ask a lobbyist”:
Guardian – “China fuels global surge in mpox cases as LGBTQ+ stigma hampers response”:
Also in today’s Guardian:
“South Africa launches ‘unprecedented’ investigation of Johnson & Johnson over TB drug prices”:
“Marine Le Pen should stand trial over alleged misuse of EU funds, say prosecutors”:
“No rides, but lots of rows: ‘reactionary’ French theme park plots expansion”:
“‘You could fill a museum with it’: the $963m Roman Abramovich art collection revealed”:
Noel on Tafkat:
Welp!
Tendar on Tafkat:
Followup to comment 186.
Aye, Fugheddaboutit.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/bob-menendez-officially-most-corrupt
More details at the link.
Office of Management and Budget to initiate process of preparing for a shutdown
Ukraine Update: Russian state TV is in raptures over Republican response to Zelenskyy visit
Howard Stern is woke
Video and screen grab at the link.
https://twitter.com/francis_scarr/status/1705157558590169494
This is from the BBC:
Link. Scroll down at the link.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1704827219942515012
DeSantis vows to end federal funding of COVID-19 vaccines
https://www.wonkette.com/p/joe-biden-keeps-coming-for-your-guns
UAW widens strike against GM and Stellantis but not Ford.
Washington Post link
Union President Shawn Fain said the UAW is broadening its strike to 38 warehouses in 20 states over lack of progress in contract talks.
Washington Post link
It’s a kayak with a grenade launcher. And it could be game-changer in Ukraine.
Dallas mayor switches parties, making the city the nation’s largest with a GOP mayor
Hoo boy, is he out of tune. Republicans these days are not about law and order and fiscal conservatism.
“Not even in the ballpark”: Judge dismisses three “obviously unqualified” Kari Lake witnesses
Consciousness theory slammed as ‘pseudoscience’ — sparking uproar
President Joe Biden:
Politico:
@ 191
Oh, you mean the wars YOUR side of the political spectrum demanded to fight “godless communism” and “Islamic terrorism?”
More blasts rock Sevastopol, smoke billows from oil depot near Russian Black Sea Fleet base
Oklahoma judge arrested in Texas capital, accused of shooting parked cars and causing collision
The Rapture Didn’t Happen Yesterday!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/sorry-the-rapture-didnt-happen-yesterday
Northern lights activity is sky-high, and scientists say more is yet to come
An increase in space weather could lead to the greatest display of the northern lights in the past two decades.
Link
Ukraine used US-provided Strykers to break through a key Russian defensive line littered with minefields and trenches
Opinion: Government isn’t broken. The Republicans are.
WaPo:
Misinformation research is buckling under GOP legal attacks
Naomi Nix, Cat Zakrzewski and Joseph Menn / September 23, 2023
Ukraine Update: Russia was unprepared for a modern artillery war
tomh @223, that is so deeply disturbing.
Jennifer Rubin:
Commentary:
Link. More at the link.
Barack Obama:
Why is there a giant metal T. Rex overlooking Okanagan Lake? (Canada)
Lynna @225: Re: Misinformation story, indeed it is. I left out a lot and now I see that no WaPo subscription is required to read the entire article, so for anyone that wants the rest it’s here.
Rep. Andy Kim Announces Primary Challenge To Indicted Sen. Bob Menendez
National Cathedral replaces windows honoring Confederacy with stained-glass homage to racial justice
Two House Republicans say they might work with Democrats to fund government
It would take a few more to get that done. According to Wikipedia, there are 221 Republicans in the House, 212 Democrats and 2 vacant positions. So 3 more defectors would do it.
Lawler: I didn’t come to Congress to ‘play stupid games’
Democrat Senator Joe Manchin to issue bipartisan resolution to reinstate dress code
I guess he considers that more important than overcoming Tommy Potato-head’s veto on military promotions.
This is not terribly relevant to current politics, but the Finnish public broadcaster Yle has just published the only known video material of Vladimir Putin taken in a private setting (ie. not orchestrated as PR for him). It was taken in the early 1990s while he was on a business trip in Finland as an assistant of Anatoli Sobchak, the newly elected mayor of the newly re-named St. Petersburg. The material wasn’t entirely unknown before; it’s unclear why Yle made a story on it right now.
Here’s an English language version of the original Finnish story:
https://yle.fi/a/74-20051353
The two men with their families were recreating as guests at a villa owned by a Finnish company that wanted to establish good business relations with the New Russia’s new ascending elite (a form of soft bribery). I gather that a lot of video was taken there for PR purposes, for either Sobchak or the host company. In some clips, Putin looks relaxed, apparently unaware of the camera. In others, he looks grumpy and tries to hide his face from the camera, in the deeply ingrained habit of a KGB agent. He plays ping pong in the yard, throws darts and goes fishing with Sobchak.
Yle has interviewed several people who were involved with the event, hiding their identities for safety reasons. There’s also some commentary from The Guardian’s Russia expert Luke Harding. The Finnish editors have repeated snide comments on how Putin dresses in a casual private setting – looking sloppy yet blingy in the latest Adidas sportswear, in stereotypic Russian noveau riche fashion. As an amusing detail, it is revealed that the 3.2 kg pike the men are shown bringing back from the fishing trip was caught beforehand. There’s obvious parallel to Putin’s more recent official vacation photos as president, for example a famous 2017 photo of him posing with a remarkably large perch he almost certainly didn’t catch on spot.
The story is mainly interesting as a summary of Putin’s career and of his approach to publicity. There’s the cringey “monster shows a human face” commentary, which isn’t the least interesting to anyone who knows that human can be monsters, and therefore monsters are often humans. It also shouldn’t be surprising that Putin has aged a lot in 30 years, despite all the Botox, though it’s worth pondering that he’s been Russia’s leader for most of that time.
AP:
Mississippi high court blocks appointment of some judges in majority-Black capital city and county
BY EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS / September 21, 2023
Cartoon: Mike Luckovich on Rupert’s retirement home
Sen. John Fetterman gives moving speech at disability hearing
Video available at the link.
Unhinged Navarro tweets about “pimp ladies” in the White House
Trump threw a tantrum a 2:30 AM. Apparently, there were no babysitters there to stop him.
Link
A NASA capsule carrying pieces of an asteroid successfully lands in Utah.
Washington Post link
Ukraine Update: Ukraine just had its best week of the year
Link. There are many video snippets available at the link.
Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa smashes women’s marathon world record in Berlin
A Russian reserve army of 15,000 soldiers is pinned down near Bakhmut and will be destroyed, says Ukraine’s spy chief
Fetterman becomes first Democratic senator to demand Bob Menendez resign over corruption charges
Democratic senators reluctant to join John Fetterman in calling for Bob Menendez’s resignation
Michigan GOP leader tells critics to “pound sand” amid pleas for unity at Mackinac
Machine gun-wielding judges fight off Russian drone attacks from Kyiv rooftops, report says
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-25/whyalla-hydrogen-export-hub-secures-federal-state-funding-deal/102896024
Writers Guild Reaches Tentative Agreement With Studios and Streamers
One of the people responsible for imprisoning & mistreating refugees in Australia is in trouble – not for that secuifically but still :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-25/mike-pezzullo-home-affairs-secretary-scott-briggs-text-messages/102896034
^Specifically dóh.
A New App Lets You Video Chat With The Cop Thats Pulling You over
@249. Reginald Selkirk : Phew! I hope so! I hope the Union wins and I’m really looking forward to having Colbert among others back on TV. Been missing that show – and I blame the bosses for every bit of this.
@249. Reginald Selkirk : Phew! I hope so! I hope the Union wins and I’m really looking forward to having Colbert among others back on TV. Been missing that show – and I blame the bosses for every bit of this.
Far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene ridiculed for Yom Kippur error
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
They link to a single source – Anton Gerashchenko – but they and other news outlets are reporting “Ukraine claims to have killed commander of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.” CNN attributes the claim to an update from Ukrainian Special Operations Forces:
This statement must exist since it’s quoted by other news organizations, but no one is linking to it. NBC says rumors that he was killed in the strike were circulating over the weekend.
Guardian photo feature – “‘Colours give comfort in these difficult times’: Ukraine’s Lego-inspired city – in pictures”:
A ransomware group claims to have breached ‘all Sony systems’
Guardian – “‘We defended our right to the land’: Brazil’s Indigenous people hail supreme court victory”:
Guardian liveblog:
Very rare Kelvin Helmholtz clouds formed over my home town Umeå. Also, at night there has been several opportunities to see northern lights.
A statue of the dead cardinal and bishop Frans Hengsbach has been removed in Germany. And if you speculate about the reason, it is exactly what you think.
Trump demands MSNBC owner be investigated for ‘treason’
More dangerous threats coming from Trump, and new threats also coming from Paul Gosar:
First up, let’s see what Paul Gosar has to say:
(Text from The Daily Beast.)
Commentary:
Link
And now we turn to Trump’s latest incendiary language. From The Atlantic:
What Trump wrote in his online posts:
Commentary:
More commentary from Steve Benen:
New York Times:
Trump posted last month:
Steve Benen:
Link
Hutchinson is scheduled to appear tonight on “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
Some related links:
NBN – “Padraic X. Scanlan, Slave Empire: How Slavery Built Modern Britain“:
Meredith Whittaker in Logic(s) – “Origin Stories: Plantations, Computers, and Industrial Control”:
The Whittaker piece led me to this from 2020 (YT link) – “Slavery and the Law: Accounting for Slavery, with Prof. Caitlin Rosenthal”:
NBN – “Charlotte Lydia Riley, Imperial Island: An Alternative History of the British Empire“:
NBN – “Erik Linstrum, Age of Emergency: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire“:
NBN – “Ian Sanjay Patel, We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire“:
A few more links:
Beyond the Noise with Dr. Paul Offit (YT link) – “Beyond the Noise #16: The Freedom to Harm”:
OHH – “Veganism in Taiwan and China w/ Gina Song Lopez”:
Drilled/DeSmog/TNR – “Meet the Shadowy Network Vilifying Climate Protestors”:
(This is the written version at DeSmog, but there’s also a Drilled podcast version.)
How to interview Donald Trump
More at the link.
How to order free Covid tests:
Link
(Google this if you are interested)
“Newly discovered deep-sea enzyme breaks down PET plastic”
The enzyme PET46
Also
“Waste colonies yield bacterium with 3 enzymes that may break down polyester”
Systemic cooling poverty:
A new facet of deprivation emerging in a warming planet
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-cooling-poverty-facet-deprivation-emerging.html
Blood tests used to investigate long Covid:
Link
Gossip, celebrity news, football stars, politics, and rightwing frothing madness: NFL star likes Bud Light, COVID shots, and Taylor Swift, and the right is raging
LOL. This is the US. People are 100% going to start trying that.
I’m doing that this week!
Sen. Menendez Claims People Want Him to Resign Because He’s Latino, Not Because He’s Corrupt
A judge has rewritten Missouri ballot summary language that described ‘dangerous’ abortions
SC @273:
Good. I have mine scheduled for the end of October. Trying to do the correct and reasonable things. :-)
Link
Text quoted from Talking Points Memo’s “Morning Memo.”
New York Times
AP Interview: Jennifer Granholm says US aims to create nuclear fusion facility within 10 years
Ten years to commercially-produced fusion energy? That sounds ambitious and probably unlikely. And fusion facilities are very expensive, so if you start building before experimentation indicates a clear direction, there could be expensive setbacks.
Fetterman wants to give back Menendez donations in ‘envelopes stuffed with $100 bills’
Followup to comments 174 and 241Zelensky: “Abrams’ are already in Ukraine”</>
Link
Re fall shots. My pharmacy appears to allow me to make an appointment for up to three vaccines. I’ll try to get Covid, flu, and RSV done in one try.
Re: Nerd of the Redhead @ #281…
That’s what I’m planning to do.
Ethnic Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh as Russia fails to uphold peace deal.
Washington Post link
@281:
Can COVID, Flu, and RSV Shots Be Given at the Same Time?
Amazon restricts authors from self-publishing more than three books a day after AI concerns
Three books a day! Crikey.
Reginald @284, good information. Thanks.
In other news, NBC News reports:
Weirdness, as reported by NBC News:
There are 17 colors. It’s a lovely display. Photo at the link.
Fox News host did not expect his Biden conspiracy to get blown apart on live TV
I should apologize for bolding so much text for emphasis, but I am well and heartily tired of hearing Fox News and Republicans repeating that particular set of lies. It was really nice to see Poroshenko be so blunt.
Ukraine Update: Abrams is in the house, by Mark Sumner.
News flash for Republicans:
Link
Hurting almost everyone, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and not accomplishing the Republican’s stated goal of “reining in” government spending. As good an example of shooting themselves in foot (feet?) as we’ve seen.
So now Ramaswamy is also a proven plagiarist: Vivek Ramaswamy Plagiarized (Word for Word) from 2019 Article in Foreign Policy Magazine, Plus More
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-bought-a-gun-jk-no-he-didnt
@292
No, Donald Trump did not buy a gun in South Carolina. Here’s what happened when he saw a Glock.
David McCallum, Star of ‘NCIS,’ ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,’ Dies at 90
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #294…
Randall Garrett in his book Too Many Magicians does some word play on that. There is a character named Neapeler Einzig living on the Isle of Man, who sends word to his niece using a Manxman named Colin MacDaffyd as a courier. It all ties in with the series that was MacCallum’s first big hit.
All of the segments of Rachel Maddow’s show were good tonight. Quite a bit of new information from Cassidy Hutchinson.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
Followup to comment 298.
Cassidy Hutchinson says it’s a ‘make or break moment’ for the Republican Party to stand against Trump
I’d say “complete and utter crap” is nearer the mark.
Supreme Court allows drawing of new Alabama congressional map to proceed, rejecting state’s plea
Ukraine’s Security Service directs HIMARS at meeting at Russians’ HQ near Kherson, 8 officers killed
A discussion of how Trump is really worse than he was in 2019, … and still going downhill:
Link
Scroll down at the link in comment 303 to view interviews with Cassidy Hutchinson.
She rejects Matt Gaetz’s claim that he dated her: “I have much higher standards in men.”
She describes the reckless and careless handling of classified materials during the Trump administration.
“Cass, I don’t want you to go to work on January 6th. Are you looking at the news? Crazy people are going to that rally.“ — Cassidy Hutchinson’s mom mastering open-source intelligence five days before Jan. 6.
Scroll down at the link in comment 303 to view “What’s Aileen Cannon Up To Now?”
Half of North America is one big delta island.
https://youtu.be/mN2flAvdQXU
Orinoco and the Amazon river are also connected to one of these bifurcated rivers.
Bifurcations are usually found at river deltas or at small river islands and very rarely elsewhere.
Previous Guy’s Clear and Present Danger affirmed by Cassidy Hutchinson
Posted by Aaron Rupar, with accompanying video snippet:
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1706487610204389393
EU warns Musk after X found to have highest rate of disinformation of all big social media platforms
EXCLUSIVE: 5th Circuit’s Craven Ruling In Biden Social Media Case Was A ‘Clerical Error’
Posted by readers of the article:
Biden becomes first sitting US president to visit labor strike picket line
Yep. All correct.
Posted by readers of the article:
Link
Yes, Rudy Giuliani is being hit with yet another lawsuit.
Link
How Many Senate Democrats Calling For Corrupt Bob Menendez’s Resignation? Almost All Of Them, Katie!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/how-many-senate-democrats-calling
Wonkette discusses more weird and misleading coverage of Joe Biden and age-related issues: “Axios Can Now Confidently Report That Joe Biden Wears Tennis Shoes.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/axios-can-now-confidently-report
We also have yet more repetition, repetition, repetition that Joe Biden is old. They are trying very hard to make this a major issue. One would think that they are having trouble landing any of their other accusations.
Link
Oh JFC.
Link
FCC details plan to restore the net neutrality rules repealed by Ajit Pai
Liberal group files open meetings lawsuit against secret panel studying Wisconsin justice’s impeachment
A famous ex-president claimed windmills drive whales batty, and seemed to confuse Jeb Bush with George W Bush.
@ 187, 200, 313 Menendez
So he’s just got a bunch of envelopes full of cash sitting around. Sounds entirely innocent‽
Is there any indication that this is from criminal activity?
U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, His Wife, And Three New Jersey Businessmen Charged With Bribery Offenses
Since these are serious prosecutors, when they say home furnishings or gold bars “were provided by either HANA or DAIBES” I expect they would be able to present specific evidence that is the case. And the DNA evidence is a nice touch.
‘Thwarted diabolical plot’: Man arrested minutes before mass shooting at Northern Virginia church, police say
Rep. Matt Gaetz wants to give up salary if government shuts down
Sounds like a noble gesture, but keep in mind that most members of Congress are relatively rich, either because only rich people can afford to run for office or because they have used their positions to enrich themselves. We don’t need a legislature where only millionaires need apply.
Key details behind Nord Stream pipeline blasts revealed by scientists
Russia seeks to rejoin UN Human Rights Council, a year after being removed
Good luck with that.
Zelensky rightly asks Trump to present his ‘peace plan’
Trump committed fraud in NY, judge finds
Reginald @326, yep, it looks like the Trump Organization is now toast. More details below:
Link
Panicking McCarthy asks Biden to bail him out
America Needs A New Canal To Connect The Atlantic And Pacific
New memoir alleges mass incompetence, corruption in Trump White House
Government shutdown update:
New York Times link
NBC News:
Associated Press:
NBC News:
Anti-viral drug backfires: COVID drug linked to viral mutations that spread
US judge throws out Texas ban on drag acts, calls it unconstitutional
Kevin McCarthy Wanted Bob Menendez To Resign Until Someone Mentioned George Santos
Re: #336
When you can’t get an anti-LGBTQ law past a conservative, Reagan-appointed, over 80 year old judge in Texas, you know it must be a seriously flawed piece of legislation.
DeSantis purposely dismantled a Black congressional district, attorney says as trial over map begins
Turkey will back Sweden’s NATO bid if U.S. keeps promise on F-16 sale -Erdogan
Ukraine update: Breakthrough vs. Breach
Bernie Sanders:
“Today, för the first time in American history, a president stood on a picket line ”
https://youtu.be/OnyQQDxFNYI
or possibly
https://youtu.be/OnyQQDxFNYl
North Korea says it will expel Travis King, the US soldier who crossed into the country in July
New video shows off Ukraine’s $433,000 underwater drone that could make life hell for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet
In other words, a torpedo
World’s 1st drug to regrow teeth enters clinical trials
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #343…
According to the BBC, he was sent to China and the Chinese government turned him over to US authorities.
Democrats call on Thomas to recuse himself from Chevron case over Koch network ties
Bipartisan Ohio commission unanimously approves new maps that favor Republican state legislators
As Steve Benen reports, the second Republican presidential debate is expected to be a bit of a dud:
Yeah, I don’t want to watch it either. I will probably watch MSNBC’s post-debate coverage. Rachel Maddow will be there and her intelligence will make the coverage bearable.
Another conveniently made-up Hunter Biden scandal
I blame McCarthy.
How I eliminated all campaign email, text phone spam WITHOUT stopping donations or leaving ACTBLUE
There’s good advice in this article.
And here’s one interesting side note:
Readers of the article posted additional advice in the comments section. It’s all quite useful.
The Daily Beast:
Commentary:
Link
More from The Daily Beast:
Commentary:
Trump Just Got The ‘Corporate Death Penalty’ In New York, And It Is HI-LARIOUS.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-just-got-the-corporate-death
Eric Trump Will Tweet Zillow Porn Until Mean Judge Agrees Saudi Arabia Could Buy Trump Trash Palace For One Billion Dollars
https://www.wonkette.com/p/eric-trump-will-tweet-zillow-porn
Yikes! FEMA delays $2.8 billion in disaster aid to keep from running out of money.
Washington Post link
The agency has paused aid for long-term disaster recovery in nearly every U.S. state and territory while scrambling to conserve cash in case a government shutdown collides with hurricane season.
Oh FFS.
Link
If McCarthy brought the Senate bill to the floor of the House for a vote, I think a combination of Democrats and “moderate” Republicans would pass it.
Satire written by Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
New Yorker link to a cartoon.
The cartoon, “Mr. Trump’s Stuff,” shows several items, including “used toothbrushes $347.50 each,” “Hair-color enhancer $1,985.50,” and “Tower $4.5 billion (or best offer).” There’s also a $5,000 coffee mug and a comb-over comb, etc.
Link
First-ever trilobite found with its stomach contents intact
NBC News:
Media Matters:
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-two-storylines
Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/were-not-liveblogging-the-republican
So bad it is good?
Neil Breen has a sixth film in the works.
He is the king of unwatchable vanity films (för instance the guy who made Champagne And Bullets only made one).
It would be great if the makers of bad Christian films that end up on Pureflix let Breen direct one of their films, then we would transcend Plan Nine From Outer Space.
Judge Chutkan denies Trump’s request to recuse herself in federal election subversion case
Costco is selling gold bars and they are selling out within a few hours
Who knew there were so many aspiring senators?
CERN on anti-Matter answers one thing and leaves much more mysterious :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-09-28/antimatter-gravity-graviational-repulsion-experiment-physics/102900592
Tesla Megapack Catches Fire at Australia Battery Project
Ukraine Update: Russia is literally retrenching around Tokmak
Link
Trump adds former federal prosecutor to his defense team
More shuffling of a losing deck
Senate unanimously passes formal dress code
It’s good to see they have their priorities straight, and are getting this settled before funding the government or clearing military promotions.
A QAnon ‘queen’ and the Canada town that wants her gone
Our 10-point scale will help you rate the biggest misinformation purveyors
Mysterious ‘fairy circles’ identified at hundreds of sites worldwide, new study says
Election denier Kari Lake to seek US Senate seat in Arizona
Punchbowl News:
Commentary:
Link
Since PZ has mentioned using them, I will presume that there is at least some small interest in Raspberry Pis. The next gen model has been announced, the Raspberry Pi 5…
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/
NFL issues statement in response to placement of its ads on white nationalist Twitter/X pages
Taiwan’s new home-grown submarine is a massive headache for China
And whom would they replace him with? The free-dumb caucus doesn’t have enough votes to put their own candidate in. If they choose to drag the country down that road, it probably means a period of chaos while they nominate a series of successors who cannot pull the votes necessary to win, and in the meantime the House fails to get anything done.
Which, in a sane world, means they wouldn’t do that; but we are not talking about sane people.
Republicans Yell, Interrupt, Make Uncomfortable Sex Jokes At Second Debate.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/live-blog/republican-second-debate
Josh Marshall, commenting on the Republican debate:
I’ll point out just one example: Pence said he would repeal the Green New Deal. That bill was never passed. There is no green new deal to repeal.
In Michigan, One Democrat Has Brought Abortion Reforms to a Maddening Halt
Link
Posted by a reader of the article:
Still more chaos, still more anti-Ukraine action from the Putin wing of the Republican Party:
Link
Thank God I’m an Atheist: A Conversation with Gianni Vattimo
Five National Security Policy Takeaways From The GOP Debate … Nah, It Was A Shitshow
https://www.wonkette.com/p/five-national-security-policy-takeaways
Re: Lynna, OM @ #387…
I was mulling over the various suggestions I’ve seen about what the House Democrats should do with regard the budget disaster the House Republicans are foisting on everyone. A solution occurred to me that is a bit different than most suggested.
The House Democratic leaders should go to McCarthy when the Senate delivers their continuing resolution and say, “Bring the Senate CR to the floor or we will file a motion to vacate. Once you’ve done that, we’ll support you continuing as Speaker through one vote.” Then repeat as needed for each of the actual appropriations bills. basically saying that, so long as needed (clean) legislation is brought to a vote, you get to keep your job. Double cross us, and you’re toast. Take your pick.
Acknowledging the inevitable and preparing for it.
From The Guardian
‘At what are should you start Swedish “Death cleaning”? Forty-seven sounds about right”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/09/28/ronnie-osullivans-spin-on-preparing-for-death-is-a-lesson-for-all-of-us
Should be “age ” not are.
And the Guardian seems to dislike me adding links, as I cannot locate a flaw in the link.
If you are interested in the topic, Google the headline and you should arrive at the site.
Texas A&M student president impeached, removed from office
Trump and his 3 eldest children will testify at his business-fraud trial. Here’s the whole list.
What trial? I thought the judge had declared summary judgment.
Details.
re Reginald Selkirk @393: I wonder if the Texas A&M student president is a registered voter, and if so, whether he is registered as a republican? Being Texas, I would speculate “yes”, but with the recent reveal about Senator Bob from NJ, there is some wiggle room there.
whheydt @390, interesting.
I think that as soon as McCarthy brings the CR to the floor, the bonkers rightwing doofuses in the Republican House caucus will file a motion to vacate. I don’t know enough about the House rules to say how that fight would go.
I don’t see how McCarthy can keep his job as Speaker. I think he is finished no matter what he does, and I think that in way he has given up. The Putin wing of the Republican Party will cause a shutdown. McCarthy will lose his job one way or another, and then the “moderate” Republicans and the Democrats will manage somehow to fund the government.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #394…
The judge granted a summary judgement on ONE of SEVEN charges. They still have to try to other six, and then determine damages on all seven. And it’s a bench trial, so no fun and games to baffle a jury.
Followup to comment 396, I also think it likely that the bonkers rightwing doofuses in the Republican House caucus would get wind of McCarthy’s attempt to brink the CR to the floor, and they would not let it get that far. They would preempt him by filing a motion to vacate the Speakers office.
Marjorie Taylor Greene pushed a measure to lower Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1. Making matters worse, it was added to a GOP spending bill.
Link
The Phony “Union Members” At Trump’s Event
Link
Followup to comment 386.
Here are some excerpts of Mark Sumner’s Part II of the Republicans holding an impeachment hearing. See the link for more details:
Link
Scathing Atheist 554 should available at Youtube within the next 24 hours.
Is Thomas Sowell a Legendary “Maverick” Intellectual or a Pseudo-Scholarly Propagandist?
Ukraine Update: The Ukraine War is a core American domestic political issue
Posted by readers of the article:
A lighter topic.
An American reacts to the Volvo terrängbil 6×6 truck.
https://youtu.be/FqsGqICI5kw
or
https://youtu.be/FqsGqICl5kw
https://youtu.be/FqsGqlCI5kw
https://youtu.be/FqsGqlCl5kw
Recent news about my fave superluminous superlative star and the almost byut not quote supeernova explosion tht amde it briefly thesecond brightest inou rnight skies -despiet being seven thousand five hundred light years away :
Source : https://www.sci.news/astronomy/chandra-great-eruption-eta-carinae-12301.html
I swear my computer switches letters around on me.. & I swear at it then too. For clarity :
Recent news about my fave superluminous superlative star and the almost but not quite supernova explosion that made it briefly the second brightest in our night skies -despite being seven thousand five hundred light years away.
Star wikipage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eta_Carinae
Five million times as bright as our Sun. Try just imagining that..
Here’s also this NASA page for it : https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/eta-carinae/
Plus an Animation zooming in from our night sky to close up Eta Carinae here – by ESA and one minute and ten seconds length.
Yelp sues Texas for right to publish actual accurate abortion info
How Lockheed Martin designed the X-59, the world’s weirdest, quietest supersonic jet
Georgia Republicans suspend state senator who wants to impeach DA for indicting Trump
Senator Dianne Feinstein has died.
She was 90 years old.
Re: birgerjohansson @ #411..
The BBC’s obit:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66963341
Republican opposition to aid for Ukraine keeps growing
NBC News:
Followup to comments 411 and 412.
Link
The 5 best moments of the House ‘impeachment inquiry’ farce
Proud Boy who disappeared ahead of his Jan. 6 sentencing was found unconscious by agents at his home
I wonder if the ‘unconscious’ aspect implies a suicide attempt.
Lawsuit by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s accusers can continue, Texas Supreme Court rules
Link
As expected, but still, FFS.
Link
Followup to comment 420.
Their insatiable lust for power is only equaled by their incurable impotence in exercising it. ~Winston Churchill
@420 – Do not feel sorry for the ‘moderate’ Republicans who are now being pestered by the extremely dumb free-dumb caucus. They invited this dysfunction and weirdness into their party. They have consistently failed to disqualify, exclude or even speak up against MAGA, QAnon and other dumbfuckery; with the few exceptions who did speak up being driven from the party.
SCOTUS to decide if Florida and Texas social media laws violate 1st Amendment
Jeff Clark Loses Bid To Remove Georgia RICO Case To Federal Court
Yes. Duh.
Followup to comment 419.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/elizabeth-warren-helpfully-identifies
First defendant in Trump Georgia case pleads guilty
The first domino falls
Mick Jagger says his kids ‘don’t need $500 million’ as he hints he may give away their inheritance
“Their” inheritance – note the assumption of ownership in that headline
A bit of fun
God Awful Movies has dug up another “classic”.
“Born Into Mafia 2”
https://youtu.be/7x_WYnz4FgM
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66953581
More at the link.
Looks like Zeus doesn’t much care for guns…
CNN persists in paying attention to pseudoscience industry group, whose “studies” are for hire.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/health/zero-calorie-sweetener-heart-attack-stroke-wellness/index.html
This week, again a hatchet job in favor of Big Sugar, proclaiming an ingredient, erythritol in stevia clogs arteries.
Interesting, given it’s in the lens of the eye and plasma naturally, to name only two of several systems in the human body.
So, to wade through things, CNN contacted pseudoscience pushing sweetener industry groups – to include a leader who torpedoed stevia for a decade, on behalf of Domino Sugar (I wish that I was joking).
But, PubPeer had some interesting things to say about the entire cloistersmurf:
https://pubpeer.com/publications/D95A440ACD75C062695FFE1421694C
I miss the old days, when our media outlets actually consulted real experts, who specialized in the fields of study and retained scientific and medical consultants and rejected bullshit, rather than giving equal weight to fact and bullshit.
Or maybe the random association study is right and we need to pluck out our eyes and drain our blood, lest it clog our arteries. To give just as much equal weight to bullshit.
Nah, I’ll leave the bullshit to compost out in the pasture, where it belongs.
Got a chuckle over the “impeachment hearing”. One, it being referred to as a “Seinfeld impeachment, an impeachment over nothing” and MTG jumping up like a child and proclaiming that the Democratic Party is forcing the government to shut down. A strange thing to say, given it’s the GOP hardliners that are refusing to release a federal budget.
And Tubby, erm, Tuberville going on about diversity, saying nearly verbatim the same bullshit that anti-desegregationists said when Eisenhower further desegregated the military in 1957, after Truman started it off in 1948. So, we apparently need to debate a nearly 75 year old policy today, in his dim witted view of the universe. I imagine he’ll also want to discuss whether or not to allow T. Rex to become extinct next.
Well, probably right after he suggests we cease singing “God Save The King” as our anthem or something equally brilliant…
Hard-right judicial activist spills Trump agenda: Firings, deportations, and fascism
Yes, it does sound like something we’ve heard before, but this contains details from a different source.
Posted by readers of the article:
See also : Mike Davis: “We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious.” That’s a Media Matters link. Photo of the banal doofus at the link.
Ukraine Update: Every army in the world is obsolete, by Mark Summer.
Robert Kennedy Jr to run as independent, could complicate Trump, Biden 2024 contest
Stolen Surface-To-Air Missiles Found In Kyiv Garage
Lynna… @ # 206, quoting Daily Kos: Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, whom DeSantis appointed, is an infamous hoax-promoting anti-vaccine quack, one who engaged in scientific fraud to justify his claims of alleged vaccine dangers. The whole of Florida’s vaccine recommendations are scientifically fraudulent, not merely controversial. That’s already been established, and DeSantis and Ladapo are lying.
Ladapo was also (very) fast-tracked into a tenured professorship at the University of Florida along with his state gov’t job, much to the disquiet of the medical faculty. He now proposes to launch a seminar/course on “critical evaluation of scientific evidence” (and has so far not answered any questions from the campus paper about the details of same).
I suspect Ladapo’s version of “critical evaluation” will rely on penetrating questions such as, “Were you there?”
People Experience ‘New Dimensions of Reality’ When Dying, Groundbreaking Study Reports
Sam Parnia is a ‘true believer.’ You can expect that his data will be interpreted in the most credulous way possible.
Also, “experiencing” something doesn’t mean it is true. Now that AR and VR are common, more people should realize that.
Tropical storms Philippe, Rina are colliding, creating the Fujiwhara Effect. What’s that?
Amid accusations of infidelity, Rep. Jeff Duncan says focus should be on government shutdown
“The focus should be on my party’s inability to govern, not my personal hypocrisy.” Doesn’t seem like a real winning position there.
Melania Trump Renegotiates Her Very Large Prenup to Protect Her Very Large Son’s Trust
To beat Trump, strip away ‘strongman’ veneer to show weak, befuddled man within
Posted by readers of the article:
Lots of activity in the House ahead of the MAGA promoted shutdown. NBC News live updates are here.
On the brink of a federal shutdown, the House passes a 45-day funding plan and sends it to Senate
Trump suggests bizarre plan to keep forests damp to prevent wildfires in California
Where does the water come from in desert country suffering from drought?
Judge denies three Georgia ‘fake electors’ attempts to move cases to federal court
Rep. Bowman under investigation for pulling fire alarm before government funding vote
The police chief who led a raid of a small Kansas newspaper has been suspended
It’s about bleeping time.
Ukraine Update: Data shows Ukraine is laying down the heaviest firestorm of artillery in the war
Slovakia elections: Liberals win against pro-Moscow party – exit polls
Link
Josh Marshall:
Link
Guy in MAGA hat shoots peaceful protestor:
Link
Additional links are available at the main link, including a link to donate to Jacob and his family, and a link to the Twitter presentation.
Followup to comment 456.
Guardian link to the story of the MAGA man shooting an indigenous activist.
Excerpt:
Re: Lynna, OM @ #457…
Hmmm… Seems to me that someone should check to see of Mr. Martinez was in Washington, DC on 6 Jan. 2021. FBI might want a little chat with him.
All good … well, mostly good. But I don’t see why we had to go through all that folderol and chaos to get here.
Link
If I were President Zelenskyy, I would still be worried about support from the US Congress. He can count on President Biden, but he can’t count on a lot of Republicans in Congress.
Followup to comment 459.
NBC News:
Followup to comments 459 and 460.
Washington Post:
Why NATO’s Biggest Internal Problem is Turkey by RealLIfe Lore youtube clip here – 1 hour long. Pretty intresting look at geopolitics and history with some pretty big implications here.
Government shutdown averted with little time to spare as Biden signs funding before midnight
FauxNews:
Biden admin quietly released study showing green energy receives far more subsidies than fossil fuels
So what? Is that supposed to be some sort of huge ‘gotcha’? Since fossil fuels are contributing to climate change, why should they be receiving any subsidies at all? This is comparable to suggesting Biden be impeached because Trump was, even though only one of them was guilty.
California GOP rejects effort to strip abortion, same sex marriage from platform
@453:
Slovakia elections: Populist party wins vote but needs allies for coalition
Heat pumps twice as efficient as fossil fuel systems in cold weather, study finds
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:
Typical trumpian shenanigans:
Link
New York Times:
Ukraine Update: A new weapon is making its way to Ukraine, and it’s better than ATACMS
Followup to comment 471.
Posted by readers of the update article:
ABC News:
Commentary:
Link
Biden warns MAGA Republicans will try to thwart the next funding deal
A ‘not fit for purpose’ sewage system puts U.K. swimmers at risk in filthy waterways
Outrage over the state of the country’s waterways and the perceived impunity water companies is piling pressure on the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
More at the link.
Grizzly bear attack in Canada’s Banff National Park leaves two dead
House GOP members seek to expel Gaetz amid renewed threat to vacate House Speaker McCarthy
There is no mention of what he is being investigated for.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #477…
I think the ethics panel is looking into the same stuff the FBI died, various corruptions and trafficking under-age girls for immoral purposes.
@478: Which is not the reason why the Republicans would now consider ousting him. Which is because he feels powerful because he can break things, but he cannot fix things or run things.
Scandium-based nuclear clocks promise punctuality for next 300 billion years
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Boyfriend Goes On Vile Rant About Liberal Women: ‘The Ugliest’
@ 481
Just like all a Stepford Wife should be, eh?
Nobel in medicine goes to 2 scientists whose work enabled creation of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19
In historic first, House votes to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker
In the history of the United States, a sitting House speaker has never been ousted. Today, that changed as Kevin McCarthy was stripped of his gavel.
Five discoveries about COVID-19 made since the public health emergency ended
Re: Lynna, OM @ #484…
Well, well, well…. So McCarthy has gone from Just Barely Speaker to Not Quite Speaker. What are popcorn futures doing?
Ukraine Update: Global food security depends on Ukraine winning the Battle of the Black Sea
U.S. Supreme Court will not hear challenge to Donald Trump’s ballot eligibility
Pack of originalists says “FU” to clear text of 14th amendment.
Butler sworn in as third Black female senator in US history, replaces late California Sen. Feinstein
Followup to comments 484 and 486.
Link
Trump Ordered To Shut Up Or Face 30 Days Behind Bars
Followup to comments 484, 486 and 490.
whheydt @486, months of eye-popping, popcorn-worthy behavior from Kevin McCarthy and the Putin caucus of the Republican Party.
Yes! The system has come back up again!
😊
Another unexpected data point about COVID.
A few % of women of all ages have some unexpected vaginal bleeding in weeks after taking the vaccine.
It is assumed to be connected to the spike protein somwhow.
This virus and its molecules do not give a damn about what the textbooks tell us to expect from an epidemic.
About the war.
“Russia’s litter legacy: Trash, discipline and the hidden clues it reveals about the Russian army”
https://youtu.be/VOtk6b_MQNI
or possibly
https://youtu.be/VOtk6b_MQNl
About the Nobel Prizes.
First, the mRNA vaccine researchers have literally saved millions of lives.
There were several competing vaccines, but it is my understanding that the mRNA vaccines have the best protection to the oldest, and are easy to update for new virus variants (also, my memory is unreliable but I think the mRNA vaccines were among the first).
.
Second, a fun detail about the Physics prize.
Of the three recipients, the professor who is working in Lund University* got the news in the middle of a lecture.
But she continued the lecture of respect for the students.
.
*literally the first university in Sweden, going back to the medieval time. But the medieval students did not commit as many murders as they did in the English universities of the era.
Glad you’re back. Is there someone in management to talk to about these down times? I don’t know how to get through the morning without a dose of Pharyngula.
Re: Lynna, OM @ 490, 492….
According to one report, the California House delegation asked for a recess long enough to attend Feinstein’s funeral in San Francisco. McCarthy refused to do so. So…in general, he spent 10 months stabbing the Democrats in the back and now wonders why they won’t help him. Hey, Kevin! Got a mirror? Your problem is right there.
God Awful Movies returneth.
“GAM 424 Pray ”
https://youtu.be/1-W9QOZavEM
Probiotic bacterium kills preterm infant; FDA blasts supplement maker
Quantum Communications Demoed Across Subsea Fiber Optics