Big Pharma spent more than any other industry to lobby Congress and federal agencies this year, a Reuters analysis shows, but is still on course for a major defeat by failing to stop a bill that allows the government to negotiate prices on select drugs…. [Enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act] would represent a rare legislative defeat for the pharmaceutical industry and set a new precedent for curbing drug prices in the world’s most lucrative market for medicines, according to congressional and industry officials.
The ex-president took to his fake Twitter app, TRUTH Social, on Sunday to demand that the feds return the White House records he’d stashed away at his Mar-a-Lago resort that the FBI took back in a raid last week [snipped Trump’s post on Truth Social, screenshot available at the link]
Trump’s likely referring to this Fox News report claiming that some of the documents the FBI took were, in Fox’s terms, “covered by attorney-client privilege and potentially executive privilege.”
The ex-president’s dumbass request (“By copy of this TRUTH” lol) is almost certainly inspired by Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” strategy, but you gotta love the “Oh great!” opener. Oh bother, the classified records I pilfered that the FBI seized seems to have been privileged and I want it back! Ah jeez!
This is a summary of the recent attacks by Russia on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. There is one key fact that is new here. In particular, as a result of the attack, emergency protection was activated in one of the ZNPP power units. As a result, one of the three operating power units is now disconnected. […]
You expect rank incompetence from basic Russian troops, but Wagner mercenaries have proven some of the most valuable forces on the Russian side. They were instrumental in the conquest of along every single major Russian victory in the last several months—Popasna, Severodonetsk, Lysychansk, and their (modest) advances around Bakhmut.
A few days ago, this was posted: [Tweet with photos at the link]
Prigozhin is an oligarch, close confidant of Vladimir Putin (originally his chef!), and the head of Wagner Group. This was originally posted on the small Telegram of a Wagner commander named Sreda, then reposted on Wagner’s Grey Zone Mercenary Community Telegram channel, with over a quarter million subscribers.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned this war, is that there are savants in the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) community who can geolocate anything. Here’s some dirt and a rusty bucket? Someone will find it! Except that in this case, that wasn’t even necessary: [Tweets showing photo that contains sign with the building address are available at the link.]
They literally posted a picture with the address of the building!
Not only did the pictures show a large number of Wagner mercenaries at the location, clearly a headquarters of some sort, but the visit by their top executive clarified that it was a particularly high-value location. Oligarchs don’t visit scrubs in the trenches. Wagner itself published on VK (the Russian Facebook) that Progozhin was meeting with top commanders:
The staff also remained in the vk group of the press service of Prigozhin’s Concord company. In a publication on behalf of Yevgeny Prigozhin, it is reported that he was “walking through the forest” and met the Wagner PMC and the military commissar Sreda.
With the address in hand, and a location determined, HIMARS got to work. […]
Russian sources published photos of Wagner mercenaries carrying out dead and wounded from the building. [Tweet with photos at the link]
While Russia officially shrugged off losses, Wagner itself was more direct. [Screenshot at the link]
Not sure how they think they can “take action” when it comes to HIMARS, but maybe they can take action against their idiot comrades who gifted Ukraine their location.
After the publication of the news about the attack on the headquarters of Wagner PMCs, military commander Sreda deleted the post with photos of their base from his channel. According to the Ukrainian media, it was thanks to these photos that the Armed Forces of Ukraine were able to determine the location and strike.
[…] As for Prigozhin, one Russian Telegram account with nearly half a million followers says that people who work for Prigozhin haven’t seen him since the attack, and that “Everyone is in a mild panic.” But the same channel also says Wagner fighters told them that Prigozhin was alive. Given that the attack came at least five days after the images floated online, odds are good the asshole is still alive. Would be odd for Prigozhin to stay in the field for several days so close to the front. Still, given the rampant speculation on the Russian side, a proof of life picture or video will need to come out to put speculation and rumor-mongering to rest.
As delicious as it would be to kill Prigozhin, someone who has wrought unbelievable amount of death and destruction in Ukraine, Syria, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, and elsewhere, the real value in this strike is the elimination of their most effective and experienced commanders. It is a legit blow to Russia’s operations in the Bakhmut direction. Really, there’s just basic human rights value to any dead Wagner mercenaries. [Tweet concerning massacre in Mali is available at the link]
This Kamil Galeev thread [link at the main link] goes into some of Wagner’s atrocities, including some horrific pictures, so think through before you click through—think beheadings, sledgehammering and burning prisoners alive, horrific stuff like that. Remember hearing about Russia recruiting new cannon fodder from Russia’s prisons? That’s Wagner as well. They are a criminal enterprise staffed with war criminals. These are the worst of the worst scum.
HIMARS did the world a solid by taking out however many Wagner commanders in this attack. May there be many more in the months ahead. And if Prigozhin happens to eat it, even better. […]
Wonkette: “Fox News Dullard Pretty Sure Trump Can Bend Law To His Will, Just Like Presidential Hero Richard Nixon”
[…] Trump’s buddies at “Fox & Friends” were gullible enough to accept what he said at face value, and host Will Cain asked guest Andrew McCarthy, a former US attorney, if Trump could “get his property back” right away.
McCarthy said Trump’s lawyers could file a motion, but warned, “I’d be a little leery to do that if I thought they were investigating me because if you take a position and then they charge you, you’re kind of locked into what you said. So if he doesn’t absolutely need that material back, I think I’d lay low in the tall grass for a while and see what they do.”
Trump is a singularly graceless liar, whose story keeps changing like a child explaining why a vase is broken or why the family’s nuclear secrets are missing. He doesn’t want to get “locked into” any official statements because that’s a good way to get locked into a cell. […]
CAIN: You’ve been around, you’ve covered and been within administrations for quite some decades.
Bennett was Ronald Reagan’s garbage secretary of education and led the failed War on Drugs under George H.W. Bush. He reportedly spoke on the phone with Trump just before he incited an attack on the Capitol. These aren’t great credentials.
CAIN: You know, if I listen to alternative media today, oh, classified documents, no one is above the law, right? The rule of law applies to everyone. I’m curious. When it comes to classified documents, famously, President Nixon said, that if the president does it, that it is not illegal. Is that not truly the standard when it comes to classified documents? The president has the ability to at any time declassify anything.
Oh my God, this guy’s the biggest fool who ever fooled on a fool-focused network. During Richard Nixon’s 1977 interview with David Frost, he was asked if the president could unilaterally decide that “it’s in the best interests of the nation, and do something illegal?” Nixon replied, “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
However, this was hardly considered a definitive statement about presidential powers, and even Nixon himself realized he’d fucked up good and tried to clean up after himself in a Washington Star op-ed.
“First, I do not believe and would not argue that a President is above the law. Of course he is not. The question is what is the law and how is it to be applied with respect to the President in fulfilling the duties of his office.
“Precedents over the years have sanctioned some degree of latitude in the use by presidents of emergency situations. I believe such latitude is necessary, and at times vital. My insistence that this latitude does not place president above the law is not a semantic quibble. To me, it is a vital distinction which goes to he heart of our constitutional system.”
Perhaps Cain was sick the day they taught history in history class, but Nixon resigned in disgrace. He accepted a pardon from his successor, so it’s not as if he wanted to test his imperial presidency theory in court. However, Nixon agreed that it was “absurd” to argue anything a president might do is per se legal.
There’s a process to presidential declassification of documents. They aren’t just declassified for the president specifically, but the public in general, so it’s something you need to track. The president also can’t declassify nuclear secrets on his own. Congress passed a law, the Atomic Energy Act, in 1946 that established a process for downgrading those protections.
This is a silly debate, considering Republicans and Fox News repeatedly declared Barack Obama a “lawless” wannabe Caesar when he enacted DACA through executive order, which was perfectly legal and not light treason.
Anyway, can’t believe we have to say this, but Richard Nixon is not a positive presidential model.”
Prigozhin, someone who has wrought unbelievable amount of death and destruction in Ukraine, Syria, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, and elsewhere
“BREAKING: Rudy Giuliani has been told that he is a target of the criminal investigation in Georgia into election interference. He is scheduled to testify in Atlanta later this week.”
Oggie: Mathomsays
I wonder how Trump’s idiots feel about Oz buying crudites (including salsa and guacamole?!?!?!?!)? And you can tell, watching that, that Oz has almost never been in a grocery store. An elitist shopping. Again, who thought that was a good idea?
The wingers are really taking the piss on this Mar-a-Lago raid. Or perhaps they are drinking it, laced with a potent mix of PCP and anabolic steroids? Allegedly?
How else to explain this insane rant from MAGA loon Sebastian Gorka on Steve Bannon’s podcast? [video at the link]
“Let me share this with you, nobody’s heard this. I spoke to a guy who had 23 years in the Bureau today, in every division. In Crim, in CI, in CT, who said to me this today, Steve,” the Hungarian Nazi shouted, poking his finger wildly at the camera. “Given the amount of equipment they rolled in to Mar-a-Lago, and the fact they spent nine hours there, he believes the Bureau left surveillance equipment — bugs — inside the president’s residence. That’s in America, Steve! They’ve declared war on 74 million Americans!”
Well, that settles it. If Gorka’s very real girlfriend who was recently in Canada the FBI says the agents must have planted bugs at the former president’s Florida trash palace, then it must be true.
“Why else do you demand the security cameras be switched off? Skullduggery!” he ranted later in the interview, which you can watch in its entirety on Rumble if you are struggling with unwanted feelings of sexual arousal and would like to feel nothing of the kind for a solid month at least.
This was before the storyline switched to “we watched the whole thing on security cameras” — no doubt The Gorkster will feel real dumb when that camera footage comes out and shows nothing of the kind.
“The FBI has become the Gestapo of the United States,” he screamed. And it seemed like he actually meant that like it was something he wouldn’t like.
Later he reported a “secretary” at the FBI supposedly messaged him saying, “I’m so ashamed of my agency, but I have to pay the rent.”
“You know what I responded, Steve?” he said, barely pausing for air, much less a response. “Then you are complicit in treason. If you don’t walk out of the building now, you are complicit in treason! What did our Founding Fathers pledge their lives, their treasure, and their sacred honor to? So that you could pick up a paycheck and get a pension after 22 years?”
Why yes, this was five seconds after boasting about all the work he’s done and continues to do with the Defense Department.
Gorka, who was fired from his White House job in May of 2017, was reportedly unable to get a security clearance beyond the one temporarily granted to new employees, thanks to his 2016 arrest after he got caught with a 9mm handgun at Reagan National Airport. He was similarly denied a security clearance in Hungary in 2002, which effectively ended his hopes of a career in government there and caused the native Briton to set forth for America’s shores. […]
“You’ve had a clearance. You had a clearance in the Navy, I had a secret clearance in the British army, I had a TS/SCI in the White House like you did,” he said, glossing over the other unpleasant business and insisting that “I still have my clearance because of some stuff I do for the DOD.”
He then went on to insist that all classification authority flows from the president, and so it is fine actually if a guy who has been out of office for 18 months keeps classified documents he stole from the White House in a closet near the pool in a commercial establishment where he charges people an entry fee and employs a rotating cast of foreign nationals.
“If he was keeping documents in his safe, who cares? He’s the former president, Steve!” he shouted, envisioning himself and Steve as brave FBI agents, who, if asked to “bust down the president’s door,” would have had the manly virtue to say “take your badge, and take my stinking gun, I am not your Gestapo.”
“This is the collapse of the Republic, the FBI has to be dismantled,” he ranted, adding that “they have tried to kill the king six times, and as the saying goes, if you try to kill the king, you better kill him.”
Yes, that is exactly how that saying goes.
“We, the hobbits in the shire, the real patriots have to get him back in the White House,” Bilbo Gorkins insisted before being shuffled off to rant somewhere else because even Steve Bannon has his limits.
Anyway, take it from a retired FBI agent and a secretary, both of whom 100 percent totally exist. The FBI just bugged Trump’s toilet, therefore we’ll all be hearing him say goodnight to those Big Macs and Sean Hannity real soon.
Josh Dawsey reported this on Twitter: In Donald Trump’s latest fundraising pitch, the former president is telling would-be donors, “THEY BROKE INTO MY HOME — the home of the 45th President of the United States. I could really use your help right now. Can I count on YOU to rush in a donation by the end of the day? Your support cannot wait.”
Nobody broke in. Trump’s “home” is a members-only club. Trump is grifting off his most recently-revealed crime(s).
As Steve Benen reported:
In the state of Washington, Joe Kent, fresh off his Republican congressional primary victory, said last week, in reference to the FBI’s search at Mar-a-Lago, “This just shows everyone what many of us have been saying for a very long time. We’re at war.”
To open an email from former President Donald Trump’s Save America committee is to be berated, flattered, dismissed and forgiven, sometimes all in one message.
The emails take readers from the depths of reproach — “Today is the FINAL Day to reach our End-of-Month goal – where have you been?” — to the sweet relief of needy embrace — “Before I go on stage to speak, I must know if I have YOUR SUPPORT.”
Emotions spike with all-caps countdowns, as some unspecified deadline rushes near: “My son, Don, emailed you. Team Trump emailed you. And now I’m emailing you one more time.”
Or the missives burst with urgent, giddy revelations: “I just couldn’t wait any longer to tell you this EXCITING NEWS. MY FATHER JUST RELEASED OFFICIAL TRUMP-EDITION GOLF BALLS,” Donald Trump Jr. purportedly hollars.
Amid this flood of amped-up entreaties — and I do mean flood; on August 5, a random Friday, I got 15 of these emails — one specific tactic appears repeatedly.
It follows the same format: If you donate in x timeframe (an hour, a day), we will multiply your contribution by x amount. One recent message promises that donations will be increased by 1000 percent, another by 10x.
Such a promise, if it were being substantiated, would almost certainly run afoul of contribution limits. The Save America joint fundraising committee (which is comprised of two PACs, Save America and Make America Great Again) allows a $5,000 contribution max from either an individual or another PAC — in line with the annual cap on such donations under the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Under Trump’s 10x matching scheme, any contribution above $500 would create issues, assuming a single wealthy donor was matching the contribution. Instead, the committee would have to have a bunch of different wealthy donors lined up — wealthy donors who hadn’t yet contributed — to circumvent that $5,000 donation cap. That’d be logistically intensely difficult, and even more so when these offers hit the inboxes of Trump acolytes every few days.
So what’s going on here? Is there actually a matching donor? A cast of many wealthy matching donors who rotate through annually? The Save America committee did not respond to TPM’s questions.
The matching model makes more sense in the charity and nonprofit world, where it’s often used, and where donations are far less regulated. Without contribution limits, one very rich donor could plop down a lump sum, and smaller donors could realistically be promised a match for their donations.
[…] “Everyone has used this matching thing,” Brett Kappel, a lawyer at Harmon Curran who specializes in campaign finance, told TPM. “Trump just did it on a larger scale.”
[…] “When the RNC or Trump campaign or whoever else puts out an email that in the next 12 hours, someone will match — I don’t think anybody regulates or verifies that,” Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, told TPM. “It is deceptive but I’m not even sure it’s fraud — it’s just unscrupulous to make a promise and use that to get people to part with their money without verifying that you’re following through.”
There is some evidence that that may change, though.
A Nevada man pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud last year after the Department of Justice found he had run scam PACs, which appeared to support the candidacies of Trump and then-candidate Joe Biden, respectively. Scammer James Bell made false filings with the FEC, the DOJ said, in which he claimed that he’d made expenditures on behalf of the campaigns. But most interestingly, the DOJ specifically mentioned Bell’s practice of promising nonexistent donation matches.
“The solicitations promised that individual donations would be ‘5x matched’ by Bell’s PACs,” the press release said, adding: “However, none of the individual donations was ever ‘5x matched’ by Bell or anyone else.”
The DOJ’s choice to single out the practice caught the eye of experts and politicians alike. […] “It was a clear warning that you cannot materially misrepresent to donors whether or not there’s gonna be a match.”
The Bell case was part of a flurry of DOJ crackdowns on scam PACS. So far, the scams the department has focused on have been more sprawling than just deceptive matching promises alone. And other misleading practices — like a Trump gambit that tricked many ardent supporters into accidentally agreeing to sometimes financially ruinous recurring donations — have gotten more attention.
[…] And the FEC — though frequently stalemated along partisan lines — has asked Congress for more authority to defend donors from “scam PACs or committees that defraud their contributors.”
Right now, the toolbox is fairly sparse.
[…] “The former President has many, many other more important legal issues facing him than mail and wire fraud,” Kappel quipped.
Lynna @ #9 and Oggie @ #13, I haven’t seen anyone mention it but it’s driving me crazy that he doesn’t have a basket or a cart. He has no idea what he’s doing. And he seems to think it’s Mexican or something.
It is a cold night in Vienna. The moon shines harshly on frosted Baroque palaces as the Russian diplomat hurries by, his breath painting the air with furtive clouds, he pauses to send a message to his contact when a noise behind him makes him freeze in terror. A man watches from afar as his dogs tear the diplomat apart.
An international incident? A dark tale from the Cold War?
No. A recent event on Twitter when Mikhail Ulyanov, permanent representative of Russia in Vienna, found himself unable to use his Twitter account due to being harangued by hundreds of cartoon dogs, or doges.
Ulyanov was a victim of NAFO, the North Atlantic Fellas Organization, a loose online collective united only by their Shiba Inu avatars and their hatred of ‘Vatniks’.
What’s a Vatnik?
‘Vatnik’ is a name coined in ex-Soviet states for those who blindly follow or spout Russian propaganda. It’s a modern version of the ‘Tankie’ label that was applied to westerners who unquestioningly defended the Soviet Union, even as Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary.
A ‘fella’ is a character loosely based around the Shiba Inu dogs so popular in meme culture. Importantly ‘fella’ is gender neutral: there are male, female and non-binary fellas. Louise Mensch got quite upset about that recently.
Why is Mensch arguing about cartoon dogs? Because NAFO is an online phenomenon. In three months, they have gone from a single goofy character drawn by NAFO president @Kama_Kamilia, to an online movement that has raised thousands of dollars for Ukrainian military and humanitarian causes.
…
I imagine you’re thinking: ‘Wow. I bet the Ukrainian soldiers under 24-hour bombardment by Smerch rockets really appreciate that folks in the comfortable West are prepared to step up and post cartoon dogs on the Russian ambassador’s social media. That’s a lot of help’, but actually, social media is a key battlefield in Russia’s information war.
The Russian tactic of ‘act, deny, deflect’ requires that accounts exist that are able to spread Russian denials and counter-narratives from seemingly neutral actors. One counter-intelligence technique is to have informed people engage with and counter these narratives with facts. Not only is this technique hugely labour intensive, but it also dignifies the hostile narrative as a point of view worthy of debate.
When a Russian story explaining how the Ukrainians bomb their own cities is met with hundreds of small dogs shouting ‘Vatnik nonsense! *BONK*!!!’ It denies the Russians the opportunity to engage and promote. The clownishness of the attacks exposes the clownishness of the narrative….
President Joe Biden will tomorrow sign into law the Inflation Reduction Act, his marquee plan to lower both America’s carbon emissions and costs for health care.
Tomorrow’s event will take place in the White House State Dining Room, the Biden administration announced. In the coming weeks, Biden “will host a Cabinet meeting focused on implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, will travel across the country to highlight how the bill will help the American people, and will host an event to celebrate the enactment of the bill at the White House on September 6.”
The act’s passage came after more than a year of negotiations among Democrats, who set out to pass what the Biden administration hoped would be transformational legislation addressing a range of issues from the high costs of child and elder case, to the nationwide housing shortage, to immigration reform. But Republicans refused to support the bill, and the party’s razor-thin margin of control in Congress meant many of those proposals were stripped out of the bill, chiefly due to opposition from conservative Democratic senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.
The Senate Republican campaign fund is slashing its ad purchases in three crucial states, The New York Times reports.
The cuts made in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona total about $10 million, and are a sign of lackluster fundraising for the GOP’s attempt to retake the upper chamber of Congress, where it needs only one additional seat to create a majority.
The Republican candidates in Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, and in Arizona, Blake Masters, are both down in the polls, according to FiveThirtyEight, although incumbent Republican Ron Johnson is leading in Wisconsin.
In several interviews, Kash Patel confirms the stolen top secret & classified docs Trump stole were never declassified & some pertain to “major national security matters”
In 2019 Trump installed Kash Patel at NSC & then DOD. During his time at NSC & DOD
– Kash helped Trump blackmail Ukraine,
– Kash blocked Biden’s transition team from access to DOD,
– Kash deleted his phone records that related to January 6, and
– In 2021, Kash became under investigation for leaking Classified documents.
In January 2022, National Archives (NARA) got back 15 boxes of top secret & classified documents. Since that time, Kash Patel has stated several times that the Top Secret & Classified documents Trump stole were never declassified.
In a May 5, 2022 interview (below) Kash Patel confirms that some of the stolen documents pertain to “major national security matters.”
July 2022:
July 4: In video interview Kash Patel said that the stolen documents were never declassified.
Kash Patel: “… we did this big declass at the end of the Trump administration. And his cronies actually bureaucratically stopped the declassification process … [Trump] said ‘declassify this mountain of documents’ he walked out and his cronies were like ‘well, we’re not going to do that.’
[video at the link]
Kash goes on to say that he is personally going to go to the National Archives and demand they declassify the stolen documents they recovered in January. [WTF?!]
There ya’ have it. The 35+ boxes of classified & top secret documents Trump stole were never declassified — but they’re still tryin’ — they’re still “on it.”
June 2022:
June 3, Three FBI agents and DOJ’s top counterintelligence official, Jay I. Bratt, visit Magat Lago about the stolen TS/classified documents;
June 19: Trump suddenly designates Kash Patel & Jon Solomon as his NARA representative;
June 22:
FBI sent a subpoena to Trump for surveillance footage of Mara Lago.
Kash Patel says that the stolen classified documents that NARA got in January were never declassified so he is going to force NARA to declassify them
KASH PATEL: “I can tell you now that I am now officially a representative for Donald Trump at the National Archives. And I’m going to march down there — I’ve never told anyone this, because it just happened, and I’m going to identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified at the National Archives and we are going to start putting that information out the next week.
May 2022
May 5: In interview with Breitbarf blog, Kash Patel said the classified document were never declassified.
KASH PATEL: “Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves. The White House counsel failed to generate the paperwork to change the classification markings, but that doesn’t mean the information wasn’t declassified. I was there with President Trump when he said ‘We are declassifying this information.’”
Notice: Kash says the documents maintained their classified “classification markings” because the “White House counsel” did not get any of the documents declassified.
Kash Patel went on to tell Breitbarf blog that the classified documents pertain to “major national security matter.”
KASH PATEL: “It’s information that Trump felt spoke to matters regarding everything from Russiagate to the Ukraine impeachment fiasco to major national security matters of great public importance — anything the president felt the American people had a right to know is in there and more.”
Yes, Kash Patel confirms, Trump stole 42 boxes of classified & top secret documents of which some pertain to “major national security matters.”
So now the unanswered questions remain: Did Trump sell classified documents to foreign countries? How much money did Trump make off selling those documents?
USDA regulations do not require religious educational institutions to submit a written request for a Title IX exemption in order to claim one, the department said.
Story at a glance
– Religious schools will continue to receive federal meal funding even if they do not adhere to new Title IX requirements, according to USDA guidance published Friday.
– USDA in May said it would expand its definition of sex-based discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity, and schools would have to adjust their nondiscrimination policies to receive funding from the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), including for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).
– The Biden administration granted a religious exemption to a private Christian school in Florida last week following a lawsuit. […]
Shit is GOING DOWN today in the plot to overthrow American democracy by dint of substituting a bunch of cosplay weirdos for Joe Biden’s electors. Every one of these stories deserves its own post, but by the time we got finished typing, them, it would be Thursday. So let’s run ’em down quicklike before God only knows what else breaks, shall we?
Spill It, Lindsey!
First up, the worst senator from South Carolina got absolutely dick-kicked by a federal judge today. You love to see it.
US District Judge Leigh Martin May ordered Graham to get his skinny ass to Atlanta and start talking for the grand jury empaneled by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. The grand jury is investigating the Trump campaign’s efforts to ratfuck the state and steal it from Biden, including Graham’s calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his deputy Gabriel Sterling in which he reportedly pressured them to invalidate enough mail-in ballots to flip the state to Trump.
Graham moved the case to federal court and tried to get the subpoena quashed based on the Speech or Debate clause, arguing that he was just doing his legislative duty to ensure that the ballots were correctly tabulated.
Judge May said NFW, on the ground that that’s now how speech or debate works, asshole. Well, more or less.
How You Livin’, Rudy?
Rudy Giuliani, the president’s pro bono lawyer, was due to testify today before the same Atlanta grand jury after losing his bid to get a health waiver due to a recent chram surgery. (Allegedly!) Giuliani famously pushed lies about election workers, painting a target on the back of mother and daughter Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, subjecting them to months of harassment and death threats.
Today Giuliani’s lawyers say he was informed he is now a TARGET of this investigation. As in not a subject, and not a witness, but the guy who winds up winning the grand prize* in the end. And the grand prize is an indictment.
Mazal tov, Mister Mayor! And peace be upon your fellow attorneys Jenna Ellis, Cleta Mitchell, John Eastman, and Ken Chesebro, who also got subpoenas from this grand jury.
*Prize not guaranteed, terms and conditions may apply.
Merrick Garland Takes Time Out from Ruining Trump’s Shit to Ruin Trump’s Shit Some More
Meanwhile, the attorney general took a break from raiding Trump’s trash barn in Florida to drop a federal grand jury subpoena on former White House advisor Eric Herschmann. You know, this dude. [Tweet and video available at the link]
[…] Herschmann is no one’s idea of a nice guy. He worked hard to defend Trump in the first impeachment hearing by sliming Joe and Hunter Biden, and tried to feed stolen emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop to the Wall Street Journal in an effort to get Trump re-elected.
But he did have the sense to realize the efforts to overturn the election were insanely illegal. And he’s been a lot less reticent about saying so than former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who was also subpoenaed earlier this month. […]
And Then There’s Sidney Powell. GIRL …
The Washington Post just dropped a long story about Team Kraken’s efforts to prove the election was stolen by virtue of rigged voting machines. That effort included paying a forensic data firm to get inside local election systems’ servers and voting machines to find the algorithms, or Chinese bluetooth thermostats, or gremlins who supposedly stole the election from Trump.
In most instances, it appears they gained access to the sensitive equipment via court order or with the connivance of local officials. It looks like election supervisors in Georgia’s Coffee County just gave them carte blanche to look at everything, something that was already under investigation for possible violation of Georgia law.
Moreover, it’s not clear whether the attorneys abided by court strictures to keep the results of their bogus audits confidential:
The Michigan judge’s order granting access to the machines had barred the “use, distribution or manipulation of the forensic images and/or other information gleaned from the forensic investigation without further order of this court.”
The new records show that after SullivanStrickler investigators copied the hard drive of an elections server in Antrim on Dec. 6, 2020, Maggio emailed Powell and Penrose, who were not involved in the local lawsuit. Maggio told them the Antrim files would be madeavailable to download from a secure online folder once the firm was paid.
The Antrim data was later publicized during the same Lindell symposium where the Nevada data was shared.
That is NOT GREAT, BOB. Luckily, there’s already a pending investigation of unlawful breach of Michigan’s voting machines involving some of the same characters.
[Gab founder/CEO Andrew] Torba talks a big game about Christian nationalist secession and a “parallel” society, but will not hesitate to narc out his users if the alternative is experiencing even the slightest inconvenience or repercussion.
blfsays
I watched the Drquack Oz crudités alleged-shopping video (sound off). From other comments (in this thread and elsewhere), some people seem surprised there’s a Mexican-influenced version of the dish.
There is, albeit I’ve never heard it referred to as crudités (except, possibly, in Mexican(-ish) restaurants here in France (cannot recall, nor the Spanish name)). And yes, the dips would usually include guacamole and salsa (also various cheese dips), and typically served with some sort of crisps and / or tortillas. In some cases, in addition to assorted raw veggies, edible insects are also available.
There are also other cultural variants — whilst the name is French, dishes of the sort are widely known — I’ve had wonderful crudités in Portugal, and in Greek restaurants here in France.
None of which is to say quack Oz has any idea what he is doing. Other than an probably excessive amount of carrots (and the lack of a basket and presence of a camera operator), I didn’t see anything weird in that video per se (but again, I wasn’t listening to his burbling). I myself would make my own guacamole — but probably not salsa (which I find trickier to do) — that’s a matter of time, preference, etc., but would probably be more inclined to do the French(-ish) version, with olive oil, vinegar (probably balsamic), and mustard — and of course cheese — dips. And I would have — season allowing — tomatoes and cucumbers, at least, possibly also chilies, MUSHROOMS!, and maybe some olives, câpres, and / or artichoke hearts, and perhaps other items which caught my fancy at the (usually outdoor) market. (Yes, my crudités tend to be more of a main dish than an appetizer / starter.)
some people seem surprised there’s a Mexican-influenced version of the dish
OK, here in the northeastern US – I have no idea what percentage of the population I speak for – we do actually use the word, but we call the whole thing a crudité or crudité platter. They sell them pre-made, often labeled as such. They’re sliced raw vegetables with a dip or dips, and I think the general idea is that they’re Mediterranean – so you’ll have a standard herby dip but also maybe hummus andor a tapenade. Guac could be there, because it’s delicious, but it’s borderline. (Not to be confused with the wonderful mezze platter…which can and should be vegan.) He’s Turkish and so should be aware of the appropriate dips.
I’ve never seen a Mexican crudité, and the thought of dipping carrots in salsa or broccoli in guacamole is quite odd. The introduction of chips or significant bread in my view just makes it a dips platter and no longer a crudité.
In any case, I don’t think he has in mind a Mexican version. I think he thinks the word is Spanish and it’s a Mexican dish – hence the reference to tequila.
I myself would make my own guacamole
Literally just made some.
I imagine it’s cheaper to make your own dips and buy pre-cut vegetables – especially “baby” carrots, which are made for this! The thought of peeling and slicing those giant-ass carrots and piling them on a platter next to some salsa is funny.
I didn’t see anything weird in that video per se
he doesn’t know the name of the store
he has no basket or cart
he doesn’t know how to read the prices
he thinks this is some man-of-the-people shit
the proportions are weird
the dips are weird
those prices aren’t even very high (he just doesn’t know what anything costs)
it has nothing to do with tequila WTF.
I think: he asked his wife what sort of dish he could use as a pretext for a Biden attack ad and she suggested a crudité platter and he for some reason thinks that’s a Spanish word and Mexican dish. And hasn’t done real shopping in a supermarket in years.
Oggie: Mathomsays
Just a quick question (er, series of questions) in re #17 above:
I know that Trump has a PAC in order to raise money (and siphon it away from the RNC and CPAC), but does he have an exploratory committee to raise money specifically for his campaign?
Can a PAC raise money for a specific campaign, or are they limited to fund raising only for amorphous issues (which we all know is code for ‘candidates who are willing to kiss our asses)?
Can an exploratory committee raise funds for a campaign?
Is Trump actually asking for campaign contributions, or is he avoiding that word so it can all go into his slush fund? Errrr. Campaign Fund?
I know non-candidates have gotten into trouble for misusing PACs and other campaign/political monetary systems, but has a candidate, or campaign, at the national level ever gotten into serious, like jail-time, trouble for fucking about with PACs and other devices?
I know that a whole world of search engines is out there. I have spent the last hour (well, minus the time I spent making stuffed zucchini, Amaretto peaches, and grilled tuna for dinner) searching and cannot find the answers to these. I keep heading into a rabbit hole of right-wing idiocy.
Okay, I have to add a question 6:
Is it possible to make a search involving politics which does not go down the right-wing tunnel of lies?
Oggie: Mathomsays
I think: he asked his wife what sort of dish he could use as a pretext for a Biden attack ad
No, his wife would have provided a list. This was from one of his just-out-of-college campaign aids. Probably.
I imagine it’s cheaper to make your own dips and buy pre-cut vegetables – especially “baby” carrots, which are made for this!
Hmmmph. Real American men do NOT make their own dips. We buy premade. But we make sure we get the real thing. None of this sissy pansy-pants fresh-made-in-the-store. Hello, no! We want the real stuff. Old El Paso or nothing! Well, maybe Tostito’s salsa if things are really desperate.
And BABY CARROTS???!?!?!??!?! Real American men know that when it come to vegetables, bigger is always better. Always.
And you can trust me on that.
Why?
I’m white, older (57), retired, white, male, white, a grandfather, and a white male.
And BABY CARROTS???!?!?!??!?! Real American men know that when it come to vegetables, bigger is always better. Always.
LOL.
In related news, I just had one of my favorite dishes: a tofu scramble (extra firm tofu, pressed; Vegenaise, turmeric; nooch; salt) with guacamole. I fry the scramble up and add the guacamole towards the end, serving it with tortilla chips. The colors are lovely and it’s very flavorful!
On the Mad in America podcast this week, we hear from the co-authors of a paper published in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry which documents the mass murder of a quarter of a million people, mostly diagnosed as “schizophrenic” in Europe during the Second World War.
Later, we hear from Dr. Jeffrey Masson, who is an author and a scholar of Sanskrit and psychoanalysis. But first, we talk with professor of psychology John Read. Regular visitors to Mad in America will know of John’s work. For those that don’t know, John worked for nearly 20 years as a clinical psychologist and manager of mental health services in the UK and the USA, before joining the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994, where he worked until 2013. He has served as director of the clinical psychology professional graduate programmes at both Auckland and, more recently, the University of Liverpool. He currently works in the School of Psychology at the University of East London.
John has many research interests, including critical appraisals of the use of psychiatric drugs and electroconvulsive therapy.
We discussed how John and Jeffrey came to write a paper which examines a grim period in psychiatric history….
Featuring Kojo Koram on his brilliant book Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire. How neoliberalism reorganized colonial capitalist plunder to survive the Third Worldist challenge, and then boomeranged back into the British metropole—a history obscured by rendering “decolonization” into a symbolic culture war battle.
A Leeds University PhD candidate focused on healthcare and mother of two has been sentenced to 34 years in Saudi Arabian prison, the longest sentence ever given to a women’s rights defender in the kingdom, researchers and activists say.
Salma al-Shehab was on holiday in Saudi Arabia in January 2021 and had planned to return to the United Kingdom when she was detained, according to the Freedom Initiative, a Washington-based human rights organisation.
Al-Shehab was originally sentenced to six years in prison over tweets she posted calling for rights in the kingdom. But on an appeal last week, Saudi Arabia’s Specialised Criminal Court increased the sentence to 34 years, along with a 34-year travel ban.
She may not be alone: since going public about Al-Shehab’s sentencing on Friday, The Freedom Initiative’s Saudi case manager Bethany Alhaidari said she’s heard credible reports of several others whose sentences were also increased dramatically during recent appeals in Saudi Arabian courts.
Additionally, at the time of Al-Shehab’s arrest in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, Alhaidari said, there were reports of hundreds of young women who were also detained. It is unclear if they were charged or what those charges were, but there are indications that many were detained over their use of social media, including retweets or using hashtags, she said.
Observers say the ruling in Al-Shehab’s case is a marked escalation in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s crackdown on dissent and reflects a worsening situation for women’s rights despite headline-grabbing reforms in recent years.
“This is irrational, heartbreaking, and disastrous for the hundreds of women detained or to be detained in similar charges of supporting rights or freedom,” tweeted Hala Dosari, a Saudi Arabian activist and scholar. “This is also reflective of an increased regime insecurity, both domestically and abroad.”
Shehab, who has two sons aged four and six, said during a 2014 interview she gave at the Riyadh International Book Fair that young people should consider how they could best serve their country with their studies.
“Don’t just think how you can serve yourself. Think how you can serve society based on what society needs,” said Shehab, who was studying for a masters in dentistry at the time.
More recently, she was supportive on social media of women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was released from prison in February 2021, shortly after Shehab was detained….
ravensays
Another right wingnut arrested by the FBI for threats.
Death threats are felonies.
They are also so common that unless you are famous and/or a politician or FBI agent, the police won’t do anything.
This guy doesn’t seem very coherent mentally. He is an antivaxxer which isn’t a good sign. He is waiting for all the vaccinated people to drop dead. It isn’t going to happen.
Enraged Anti-Vaxxer Arrested for Vile FBI Threats in Wake of Trump Raid
‘IT’S OPEN SEASON’
On Friday, Adam Bies wrote, “Come and get me you piece of shit feds.” On Monday, he was in handcuffs.
Justin Rohrlich Updated Aug. 15, 2022 9:27PM ET Published Aug. 15, 2022 5:27PM ET
thedailybeast (deleted most of it as repetetive)
On Friday, a Pennsylvania anti-vaxxer enraged over the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort allegedly vowed to murder as many federal agents as possible before they got him.
“Come and get me you piece of shit feds,” he wrote on social media. “I am going to fucking slaughter you.”
On Monday, 46-year-old Adam Bies found himself in handcuffs, instead.
“Every single piece of shit who works for the FBI in any capacity, from the director down to the janitor who cleans their fucking toilets deserves to die,” Bies posted Aug. 10 on far-right social network Gab, under the screenname “BlankFocus,” the complaint states. “You’ve declared war on us and now it’s open season on YOU.”In another post that day, Bies allegedly wrote: “HEY FEDS. We the people cannot WAIT to water the trees of liberty with your blood. I’ll be waiting for you to kick down my door.”
Another warned, “I sincerely believe that if you work for the FBI, then you deserve to DIE.”
The FBI immediately subpoenaed Gab for the subscriber information associated with the account, which was linked to the email address “[email protected].” But a chat log that Gab provided to the FBI put aside any doubt this was an alias used by Bies, the complaint says.
“I use a fake name for my photography and Gab so that corporate Murica’ can’t google me out of a job,” Bies naively said in one conversation, according to the complaint.
“It’s perfectly OK for the government to constantly tell you that they intend to murder you, but when we decide we’ve had enough and tell them we are going to slaughter THEM, you get banned from Gab.
In addition to the chat logs, Gab furnished investigators with the IP addresses used to sign into the account, which led agents directly to Bies’ front door in Mercer, Pennsylvania.
“I threw away my 25-year career in software and marketing after refusing the vaccine, in order to pursue a career as an internet troll funded by my own art,” Bies’ now-deleted Gab profile said, hawking prints of his photos.
Gab
The Daily Beast reviewed other posts by Bies, as BlankFocus, before his account was removed on Monday afternoon.
In another, he wrote, “I will never treat you scumbag democrats with respect, or be friends with you in any way for the rest of my life. I cannot wait to see all of you stupid pieces of shit drop dead from your vaccine side effects.”
Federal prosecutors have asked for Bies to remain detained pending trial. He is charged with influencing, impeding or retaliating against federal law enforcement officers.
President Vladimir Putin says Moscow’s weaponry is years ahead of rivals […]
Russia is ready to sell advanced weapons to allies globally and cooperate in developing military technology, President Vladimir Putin said, adding its latest arms are far superior to those of rival nations.
With the Russian leader’s forces beaten back from Ukraine’s two biggest cities and making slow headway at a heavy cost in the east, the five-month war in Ukraine has so far not proved to be a convincing showcase for Russia’s weapons industry. [Al Jazeera snarks!]
[… T]he Kremlin leader, addressing an arms show outside Moscow, insisted Russian armaments were years ahead of the competition.
Russia cherishes its strong ties with Latin America, Asia and Africa, and is ready to offer partners and allies the most modern types of weapons — from small arms to armoured vehicles and artillery, combat aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles, said Putin.
“Almost all of them have been used more than once in real combat operations,” he added. [somewhat plausible, hence the lack of eejit quotes –blf]
He said Russia could offer new models and systems: We are talking about high-precision weapons and robotics, about combat systems based on new physical principles. [they go “pew! pK-BOOM!eeeeeowwwww…”] Many of them are years, or maybe decades ahead of their foreign counterparts, and in terms of tactical and technical characteristics they are significantly superior to them. [they reliably detonate by smoking nearby]
[…] Putin said the forces of Russia and its proxies in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine were fulfilling all their tasks.
Step by step, they are liberating the land of Donbas, he said.
The speech formed part of a pattern of statements since the February 24 invasion in which Putin and Sergey Lavrov, his foreign minister, have talked up the potential for Russia to cooperate with allies such as China, India, Iran and others to build a new international order no longer dominated by the US.
[… Putin:] We highly appreciate the fact that our country has many like-minded allies and partners on different continents. These are the states that do not succumb to the so-called hegemon. Their leaders show a real masculine character and do not bend. [misogyny bingo!]
blfsays
Meduza has an article about that Yale (Sonnenfeld, et al.) paper claiming Russia’s economy has suffered significantly since (and as a result of) Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, ‘A commendable effort’ — A widely cited report predicting doom for the Russian economy has come under scrutiny from economists. The article — which I won’t attempt to excerpt — points out several inconsistencies, etc., have been found in the paper. However, the overall conclusion is perhaps still broadly sound (Meduza edits in {curly braces}), “[Alexander Isakov, the head of Bloomberg’s economics team:] ‘Understanding conditions on the ground in {Russia} is more important than ever,’ he concluded, ‘and {the} report is a commendable effort to do just that.'”
blfsays
All of mainland France is currently under warnings (most Yellow, such as where I live, some Orange, slightly to the West of here) for severe thunderstorms, rain, and flash floods starting tonight(-ish) and continuing to (possibly into) the weekend. This won’t do much to alleviate the drought — the water will largely run off the parched hard soil — but it does break the heatwave, perhaps until next week, when it is forecast to return. I presume lightening strikes could start some new fires, but also presume the rain will help keep them contained. Locally, I anticipate the only(?) immediate problem is I may have to close the skylights.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 34
Helloooooo… Democrats? Biden? There seems to be a large and growing army of well-armed, racist, Christo-fascist shitkickers in the so-called Red States who are fixing to start an insurgency. Some of them control whole state governments. They got a lot of friends in our military and law enforcement too. They might be a–you know–problem. You might want to do something about them.
Oh, I forgot. Joe still pins for the days when he could site down and talk with his old segregationist buddies. He’ll work something out if he just talks with them. That and it might scare off those “undecided” voters and conservative Dems they think are so fucking important.
rorschachsays
@38,
” There seems to be a large and growing army of well-armed, racist, Christo-fascist shitkickers in the so-called Red States who are fixing to start an insurgency.”
Biden seems to be sleepwalking into the next election steal attempt, and this time the christofascists already have had some practice, and had enough time to install so many more criminal MAGA fanatics as to make the whole idea of “free and fair elections” a farce. Well, 400 years is a half decent run for an empire, not quite as long as the Anasazi, but hey, if you base your country’s foundational values on religious lunatics, what can you expect. The nukes are a bit of a worry for when DeSantis takes over.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 39
The mainstream Dems/liberals live in a rose-tinted world. They never took the Christian dominionist, white-supremacist, and militia-kook right as a serious threat. They thought democracy, the process, the system, and the constitution would protect them. They thought that all the racial and sexual progress we’ve made were all resolved issues that would never be challenged or reversed.
Time to take off the pink-colored shades and see the true ugliness that infects this stinking country.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Russia’s Black Sea fleet is struggling to exercise effective sea control, with patrols generally limited to the waters within sight of the Crimean coast, according to the latest British intelligence report. The Black Sea fleet continues to use long-range cruise missiles to support ground offensives but is keeping a defensive posture, the British Ministry of Defence said in its daily intelligence bulletin.
Explosions have rocked an ammunition depot in Crimea, severely disrupting railway services , reports Reuters. Moscow’s senior representative in the region, Sergei Aksyonov, confirmed that two people were wounded, railway traffic halted and about 2,000 people evacuated from a village near the military depot – but he skirted talk of a cause. Ukraine hinted at involvement but has not explicitly said it was them. It comes after another reported explosion at a substation, also in Crimea.
Explosions reported at second location in Crimea
There are now reports of explosions in Simferopol toward the south of the Crimea, about 58 miles (93km) away from the explosion at the ammunition depot that damaged a railway line in the north near Dzhankoi.
The attacks on Russian-occupied Crimea appear to be escalating. The first took place at an ammunitions depot near Dzhankoi in the north, damaging a railway station and wounding two.
Next, there were reports of an explosion about 58 miles (93km) south in Simferopol.
Now, there are reports of explosions and black smoke at a military airbase in Gvardeyskoye, near the middle of the region…
Ukraine is being very coy at the moment on whether its armed forces are behind these attacks. Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff for Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is hinting that they are: “Operation ‘demilitarisation’ in the jewellery style of the armed forces will continue until the complete de-occupation of Ukrainian territories.”
BBC’s Ukraine correspondent James Waterhouse noted that by “jewellery”, Yermak meant “precise” in this instance. [hee]
The Ukrainian air force has tweeted a video of the explosion at the ammunition depot near Dzhankoi in Russian-occupied Crimea, in yet another coy hint that Ukraine was behind the attack but not quite taking responsibility.
Missiles strike the Zhytomyr region
With explosions in Russian-occupied Crimea – which Ukraine is hinting that its armed forces are responsible for, but not yet accepting responsibility for them – Russian forces have struck back, with missile attacks reported in the northern Zhytomyr region.
Another attack in Russian-occupied territory: it appears unidentified individuals have blown up a railway in the Kursk oblast. The railway was only used for freight trains.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
Today is a day Joe Biden has been anticipating since perhaps the start of his presidency. This afternoon, he will sign a marquee spending plan that emerged after a year of stop-and-start negotiations, which at times looked like they would ended up achieving nothing. Dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, the measure marks Washington’s most forceful attempt yet to slash emissions, and is also meant to lower prescription drug prices. The White House hopes it will mark a turning point for Biden’s beleaguered presidency and boost Democrats in November’s midterms.
Alaska and Wyoming hold primary elections today, where Republicans in the latter state will likely end, for now, the political career of congresswoman Liz Cheney, whose condemnation of Donald Trump alienated her from the GOP. In Alaska, former governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin could make her return to national politics if she wins the open seat in the House of Representatives.
First lady Jill Biden has tested positive for Covid-19, the White House announced. Her husband Joe Biden recently recovered from the virus, after an initial infection he appeared to overcome, only to test positive again days later.
The White House says Jill Biden is currently isolating in South Carolina, where the Bidens had been on vacation.
With several Republican Senate candidates stumbling, Adam Gabbatt looks into the party’s strategy of nominating celebrities to Congress – which they may come to regret:
In Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and JD Vance, the Republican party has three celebrities running for Senate in November.
The only problem? At the moment, each of them looks as though they might lose.
Oz, a television stalwart better known as Dr Oz to millions of Americans, is trailing his opponent in Pennsylvania by double digits.
Vance, a bestselling author and conservative commentator, is behind in his race in Ohio, an increasingly red state that many expected Republicans to win. So far the most notable point of his campaign was when Vance appeared to suggest women should stay in violent marriages.
It’s not just celebrity Republican candidates who may be in trouble.
A University of North Florida poll released today showed Val Demings, a Democratic House lawmaker who is considered the frontrunner for the party’s Senate nomination, beating incumbent Republican Marco Rubio with 48 percent of the vote compared to his 44 percent. Democrats have struggled to win statewide office in Florida lately, and unseating Rubio could help them maintain control of the Senate in the November midterms.
However, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor who is considered a potential candidate for president, maintains an advantage in his battle to lead the state. He wins the support of 50 percent of registered voters against both Democratic frontrunners for the party’s nomination to challenge him.
rorschachsays
@40,
“They thought democracy, the process, the system, and the constitution would protect them.”
I think the US constitution did not account for someone like Trump to come along, in combination with foreign controlled assets like McConnell or Manafort, or for a situation where facts and truth itself are no longer binding, and up for debate and feelings and interpretation after decades of declining education standards and the rise of Facebook disinformation.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee launched its first general election ad campaign in Arizona. The ad reminds voters that Republican Blake Masters’ proposed privatizing Social Security
Ron Johnson [a Republican doofus], who chaired the Senate Homeland Security Committee for six years, said Mar-a-Lago is “a pretty safe place” and “a secure location.” It’s not.
There was never any doubt that Sen. Ron Johnson would come up with some kind of defense for Donald Trump improperly taking classified materials to his glorified country club and then refusing to give them back. It was more a question of how the Wisconsin Republican would support the former president, not whether.
With this in mind, WISN in Milwaukee asked the senator about last week’s developments, and Johnson began by saying he’s against “raiding a former president’s house.” That wasn’t a good start: There was no “raid” and Mar-a-Lago is a business, not a “house.”
But then the controversial GOP senator went a little further.
“First of all, I think Mar-a-Lago is a pretty safe place. It has Secret Service protection, sounds like these documents might have been in a safe. So no, I’m not overly concerned about some top-secret information getting leaked out,” Johnson said.
As part of the same comments, the Republican added that while he’s concerned about the security of classified documents in general, he’s also satisfied that Mar-a-Lago is “a secure location.” [Yikes! What a load of bullshit.]
So, a couple of things.
First, as a legal matter, the condition of security protocols at the Trump-owned property is not the central question. The former president allegedly took highly sensitive national security secrets that didn’t belong to him, and when asked to return them, he didn’t. Trump could’ve hired armed guards to stand over the materials 24 hours a day, surrounded by sharks with lasers attached to their heads, and that wouldn’t necessarily affect the underlying controversy.
Second, for Johnson — the former chairman of the Senate Homeland Security committee — to see Mar-a-Lago as “a pretty safe place” and “a secure location” is quite odd.
In 2017, for example, just months into Trump’s presidency, Politico reported, “President Donald Trump relishes the comforts of his Mar-a-Lago estate for repeated weekends away from Washington, but former Secret Service and intelligence officials say the resort is a security nightmare vulnerable to both casual and professional spies.”
A few months later, ProPublica tested security measures at the private club and marveled at how vulnerable it was. The piece quoted one cybersecurity expert who said hackers could use Mar-a-Lago’s network to remotely turn on the microphones and cameras of devices connected to the network. “What you’re describing is typical hotel security,” he said, but “it’s pretty concerning” that an attacker could listen to sensitive national security conversations.
Two years later, a Chinese citizen was allowed to enter Mar-a-Lago because part of her name matched that of a member of the club. As Rachel noted on the show, the woman was carrying four cell phones, an external hard drive, a laptop, and a thumb drive that the Secret Service discovered was infected with some sort of malware — all while the sitting president was on the premises.
This is the venue where Trump kept highly classified national security secrets that he wasn’t supposed to have.
After learning about this, Johnson — just to reiterate, a man who chaired the Senate Homeland Security Committee for six years, overseeing the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Secret Service — concluded that the possible felonies just aren’t that important. After all, he said, the golf club is “a pretty safe place” and “a secure location.”
A quick follow-up question for the senator: Why exactly do you think this?
Akira MacKenziesays
I think the US constitution did not account for someone like Trump to come along…
Which is another problem with the American constitution: It’s out of date and written by men who thought that the prosperity of white, male property-owners (and that property often included other human beings) was evidence that the system worked and didn’t need changing. Therefore, it’s meant to be vague, open to interpretation, and extremely difficult to amend, update, and clarify. Defenders will point to the fact that the document has been amended 27 times. but that’s nearly enough and I seriously doubt we’ll ever be able to do it again–especially in this political climate. (Remember what happened to the ERA?)
Reginald @44 and SC @45, yeah, Putin can claim to have lots of friends and allies, but in reality he is being shunned by most of the world. No matter how much military hardware Putin promises to sell to his friends, he cannot overcome the overwhelming condemnation he has earned by invading Ukraine. (Also, Russian military weapons have been proven to be inferior. Battle tested … and the proof is in.)
The Ohio Republican claims to have secret sources inside the FBI who’ve confirmed Republican conspiracy theories. Some skepticism is in order.
It’s no secret that the United States has struggled with domestic terrorist violence. FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers last year that domestic terrorism was “metastasizing around the country,” as the number of cases soared.
But that’s not quite how one prominent House Republican sees it. The conservative Washington Times reported a few weeks ago that Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that whistleblowers have told him that FBI employees were pressured to reclassify crimes as domestic terrorism as part of some kind of political agenda intended to exaggerate the problem. [Bullshit, also trumpian propaganda.]
Rep. Jim Jordan, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said the FBI “pressured” agents to get cases into the domestic violent extremist category. “These whistleblower allegations that the FBI is padding its domestic violent extremist data cheapens actual examples of violent extremism,” Mr. Jordan said in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
The conservative Ohioan said he learned of the conspiracy by way of “multiple FBI employees from different field offices.”
Over the weekend, Jordan took a related message to Fox News, telling former Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, who’s now a host at the network, “Fourteen FBI agents have come to our office as whistleblowers, and they are good people. There are lots of good people in the FBI. It’s the top that is the problem. Some of these good agents are coming to us, telling us what is baloney, what’s going on — the political nature now of the Justice Department, God bless them for doing it.”
The Ohioan added, “It is becoming a well-worn trail of agents who say, ‘This has got to stop.’ And thank goodness for them.”
In other words, the GOP congressman is confident that his party’s condemnations of federal law enforcement are fair, thanks in part to secret sources within the bureau who’ve generously bolstered Republican talking points.
All of this, of course, leads to a few possibilities. Maybe there are real whistleblowers who are aware of actual wrongdoing at the FBI, and all of this will lead to consequential revelations about federal law enforcement.
Or maybe Jordan, whose track record as a serious lawmaker does not exist, has fallen for dubious claims from charlatans. Or perhaps he’s made all of this up out of whole cloth.
While we wait for answers on this front, let’s not forget that there is a process in place for FBI employees to report wrongdoing, including the option of reaching out to the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office. There’s also a formal process in place for whistleblowers throughout the executive branch.
At this point, however, Jordan appears to be describing something more informal: A group of supposed FBI employees, we’re being asked to believe, quietly circumvented official channels, went to a relatively powerless member of the House minority, and confirmed his party’s conspiracy theories about federal law enforcement. [Not bloody likely.]
[…] I’m not saying it’s impossible that the controversial congressman has learned important insights from reliable sources within FBI, but at this point, it would appear some skepticism is in order.
Maybe Jim Jordan’s imaginary FBI friends are the same people talking inside Trump’s head?
UK ministers who backed sending asylum seekers to Rwanda were warned by their own adviser that its government tortures and kills political opponents.
The warning came weeks before the British government tried to send asylum seekers to the African nation.
The adviser raised concerns about the tone and accuracy of an official note on Rwanda’s human rights record.
There is an ongoing legal challenge against government attempts to keep more of the comments secret.
Migrants, identified for the aborted flight, and three media organisations – BBC News, the Times and the Guardian newspapers – are seeking disclosure of the material.
The first Rwanda flight was grounded in June after the European Court of Human Rights said the High Court in London must first fully examine whether the removals policy is lawful. A hearing is scheduled for next month.
On Tuesday, the government asked the High Court to rule that the case should not include 11 specific comments about Rwanda from an unnamed Foreign Office (FCDO) official, who had been asked for their view.
The court heard that FCDO bosses had asked the unnamed official, who had some expertise in African affairs, to look at a draft of the Rwanda “Country Policy and Information Note”.
This is an official and public document on the country and its human rights record – and it was being updated while the Rwanda flights plan was being thrashed out.
In an email sent to colleagues on 26 April – two weeks after the plan became public – the reviewer questioned the tone of the report and whether it accurately reflected the situation in the country.
High Court judge Lord Justice Lewis was told the official had written in a covering email: “There are state control, security, surveillance structures from the national level down… political opposition is not tolerated and arbitrary detention, torture and even killings are accepted methods of enforcing control too”.
Jude Bunting QC, appearing for the media organisations, told the court the withheld evidence from the reviewer was likely to be the most critical material about the Rwanda affair.
“The sensitivity of this policy cannot be understated,” he said.
“The public needs to understand the material that was available to the [government] at the time the decisions under challenge were taken, the evidence that is said to weigh against, as well as to justify, this flagship policy, and the reasons why the [government] decided to proceed.”
Lord Justice Lewis will rule in the coming days on whether any of the material should be kept secret.
Last month the High Court heard that Whitehall officials had initially excluded Rwanda on human rights grounds from the list of potential partners for asylum transfers.
The court was told that Dominic Raab, the then-foreign secretary, had been warned that a deal with Rwanda would force the UK to constrain what it said to the nation about its record….
Zelenskiy’s adviser: Ukraine’s military strategy is to ‘create chaos’
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said there could be more attacks in the “next two or three months” similar to today’s mysterious strikes on a railway junction and airbase in Crimea.
Though Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the attacks – and Russia said a fire on Tuesday had set off explosions at the ammunitions depot in the Dzhankoi district – Podolyak called the Dzhankoi incident a “reminder” that “Crimea occupied by Russians is about warehouse explosions and high risk of death for invaders and thieves”.
“Our strategy is to destroy the logistics, the supply lines and the ammunition depots and other objects of military infrastructure. It’s creating a chaos within their own forces,” Podolyak said.
The bridge from Crimea has seen record traffic as tens of thousands of Russians leave.
On Tuesday, there were reports of at least two large explosions in occupied Crimea, well beyond the range of Ukrainian artillery or of any HIMARS ammunition known to be in Ukrainian hands. This time the primary target appears to have been a stockpile of ammunition and equipment near a railway, and if that description makes it seem less significant than previous strikes on warehouses and buildings, videos of the site indicate otherwise. Russia appears to have a lot—a lot—of materiel, from ammunition to vehicles, sitting right beside the tracks at a site near of the city of Dzhankoi. [map at the link] [Tweet and video showing Russian ammunition next to the railway in Dzankhoy also available at the link.]
A second explosion appears to have taken out an electrical substation in the same area. The railway leading south into Crimea is electrified, so taking out this electrical station may have been targeted at preventing trains from moving in a large section of Crimea.
The distance of these explosions from the nearest area of Ukrainian control, like a previous strike in Crimea, generated immediate speculation on just how Ukraine accomplished this blow. Russian-related sources initially attributed the explosion to a drone attack. Others immediately jumped to the conclusion that Ukraine is in possession of longer-range HIMARS rockets. At roughly 200 kilometers from the nearest areas under solid control by Ukraine, this new explosion is twice as far inside Russian territory as a previous explosion which devastated a Russian air base at Novofedorivka last week. This would still be in the range of the ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System), which can be fired from HIMARS, but despite widespread speculation, there is still no evidence that Ukraine has been sent any of these missiles.
If this was a drone strike this far into Russian territory, the major signal it sends is simple: Russian air defenses are ****ed. Good luck to Vladimir Putin in his recently announced initiative to sell more Russian weapons systems if this is the level of protection they provide. [LOL] [videos at the link]
However, The New York Times is quoting a Ukrainian official in giving a cause that should be even more frightening to both the Russian military and all Russians in occupied territories. According to the unnamed official, the explosions were generated by “an elite Ukrainian military unit operating behind enemy lines.” Russia’s state news agency seems to agree, as they’ve now labeled the explosion “an act of sabotage.”
If Ukrainian military units are operating deep in Crimea, striking Russian infrastructure, supply depots, and even bases … then exactly what does that say about the area supposedly under Russian control? Crimea was Russia’s primary target back in 2014, and was immediately annexed by Putin following that previous invasion. But these attacks make it seem as if Russia not only can’t halt partisan attacks in areas like occupied Kherson, they can’t even secure the territory they’ve claimed for the last eight years as part of Russia.
There is no way of looking at this which isn’t bad for Russia.
For nearly a month now, Ukraine has been engaged in a campaign of striking Russian supply depots, command centers, and transportation hubs. They’ve engaged a number of different systems—HIMARS, drones, artillery, and even Ukraine’s miraculously still operating air force—to hit high-value targets in Russian territory.
These attacks have not only generated some highly significant losses for Russia, like most of an air wing, but they’ve also created shortages and logistical issues that have measurably slowed Russia’s advance in the Donbas and limited its ability to attack elsewhere. Russia has responded to Ukraine’s strategic actions by flinging more missiles into civilian areas of Ukrainian cities, which has absolutely increased the death, destruction, and general misery affecting the people of Ukraine. However, this doesn’t seem to have altered Ukraine’s ongoing campaign to disrupt Russian operations.
It seems that wherever Russia tries to stack more than a few boxes of shells, or park a few vehicles, Ukraine is capable of finding them. And destroying them. No matter how far they are in Russian occupied territory. […] Russia’s control over these regions seems a lot less solid than it did a few weeks ago.
Which is why, south of the latest explosions at the Crimean city of Simeropol, Russians seem to have decided that this is a very good time to end their summer holidays. Though, with that electrical station down, it’s not clear how long they’ll be waiting for a train. [tweet and video at the link]
However, if any of them are trying to get out of the region using a car or the bus, that also brings with it some special hazards. [tweet and video at the link]
In the last few minutes, there have been reports of what appears to be another explosion or series of explosions. If accurate, this would be even deeper in supposed Russian territory than the attack at Dzankhoi. According to sources on Telegram, multiple explosions were heard from the Russian air base in Gvardeyskoe, west of the city of Simferopol. Again, the initial attacks report a drone as the source of the attack, but there are likely to be competing claims within the hour. [tweet and map at the link]
[…] Russia has made some advances along the line between Bakhmut and Siversk, and active fighting is underway east of both towns.
But the biggest thing happening in Ukraine right now isn’t likely to be capturing any particular town or village—it’s the effort to gut Russian efforts well away from the line of combat. By attacking concentrations of planes, equipment, ammo, and commanders, Ukraine is exacting much higher costs from Russia than they can in hammering it out at the line. And they’re showing Russia that the idea of “safe areas” is an illusion.
Every now and then in this conflict, I run into a little “I didn’t even know they had those” moment when it comes to weapons systems. Here is one of those at work.
The DM22 HEAT “directional mine” looks something like a tiny machine gun emplacement. It can be set up off to the side of a roadway and dangles a 40 meter thread of nearly invisible fiber optic line waiting for something to pass. When something hits that line, the “off route mine” fires a high explosive anti-tank shell. Watch for the little puff of smoke on the left side of the road right before this Russian truck slews to a halt. [tweet and video at the link]
Tweet with image showing damage to Crimean railway also available at the link.
German Protesters Block Train Tracks Demanding Halt to Construction of LNG Terminals
In Germany, police used batons, pepper spray and water cannons to attack about 150 climate justice advocates, who staged a nonviolent sit-in protest Saturday on a rail supply line leading to the harbor in Hamburg. The protesters are seeking to halt construction of new liquified natural gas terminals along Germany’s coast. This comes as German households face spiraling fuel costs that could see them spend hundreds of euros more per year to power their homes. This is protest spokesperson Charly Dietz.
Charly Dietz: “In Germany, too, the energy crisis is hitting those hardest who contributed the least, a crisis in which many bear the costs while the few corporations pocket billions in profits. It is explicitly not an energy crisis; it is a capitalist distribution crisis.”
Over 2,000 Mental Health Workers Begin Strike at Kaiser Permanente Clinics in California
In California, thousands of unionized mental healthcare providers in multiple cities have gone on strike, demanding the country’s largest nonprofit healthcare organization provide better care to people who desperately need services. Kaiser Permanente serves some 9 million people in California. According to the Union of Healthcare Workers, Kaiser has just one mental health provider for every 2,600 patients, forcing people to wait months for an appointment. Union members are also accusing Kaiser of violating treatment clinical guidelines and California state laws. The strike comes after a year of negotiations between the National Union of Healthcare Workers and Kaiser, which has rejected union proposals to expand the workforce and improve access to care.
State election officials approved a recount this week, on the condition that Kansas anti-abortion activist and election conspiracist Melissa Leavitt (who formally requested the recount) and her supporters pay the roughly $229,000 cost upfront, with a deadline set for 5 p.m. on Wednesday. Kansas Coalition for Life chairman Mark Gietzen “used a credit card to pay for all but $1,500 of the costs,” which Leavitt will cover herself. According to the Kansas Reflector, Gietzen offered to “put up his home to secure the bond required to order a statewide recount.” By the end of Monday, he’d “dipped into a retirement account to support the effort.”
[…] Tucker Carlson is claiming there’s a coordinated Justice Department and FBI effort to take down Trump’s associates, listing a series of people who’ve been what he calls “victims” of “the new authoritarians.” In this telling, it’s not that Trump and Rudy Giuliani have associated with a lot of sketchy people doing shady things, it’s that there’s an illegitimate government vendetta against them. In this telling, it was also the CIA, not the FBI, that searched Mar-a-Lago, so …
CNN summed up the landscape in a newsletter: “Dan Bongino’s banner on Fox over the weekend: ‘FIRE EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE TRUMP RAID.’ Newsmax contributor/former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis on Twitter: ‘Democrats think you’re the enemy.’ Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point Action event: ‘The raid at Mar-a-Lago only makes me like Donald Trump even more.’ One of Monday’s Gateway Pundit headlines: ‘These People Are Lawless.’ The Federalist’s current lead story: The ‘raid’ was ‘to get Donald Trump, not documents.’”
The Republican response to Donald Trump being under investigation for taking classified nuclear information and refusing to give it back has already spurred one violent attack on the FBI, along with many other threats of violence. And they’re not stopping. The message is a constant stream of claims that Trump and by extension his supporters are unfairly under attack, and it’s hitting home with the people who tried to block the peaceful transition of power in early 2021 with a bloody attack on the U.S. Capitol. Their threats aren’t idle.
“Breaking: Chairs Thompson and Maloney say the Trump-appointed DHS IG has refused to cooperate with their inquiry into missing Secret Service texts — even blocking employees from testifying — and threaten to use ‘alternate measures’ to ensure compliance.”
Seem par for the libertarian course: If you get busted for pot or soliciting a hooker, you call for the legalization of drugs and prostitution. You found to have stolen classified documents, you legalize espionage.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 58
Once again, another part of the American government in open revolt and the Dems won’t do shit to punish them.
A record number of cars have crossed the Crimea bridge that links Crimea to Russia – which suggests that a number of Russian tourists and Russians who settled into the region after the annexation in 2014 are now fleeing. Russian state media is reporting that 38,297 cars crossed the Crimea bridge on 15 August.
The federal government may today announce water cuts in western states in an attempt to conserve resources amid the region’s “megadrought”, Richard Luscombe reports:
Water cuts are expected to be announced on Tuesday to western states in the grip of a severe “megadrought” that has dropped levels in the country’s largest two reservoirs to record lows.
The flow of the Colorado river, which provides water to more than 40 million people across seven states and Mexico, will be stemmed to reduce supply to Arizona and Nevada initially, if the federal government confirms the proposal.
The crisis, which has dropped levels in Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the US to an 80-year low of barely one-quarter its 28.9m acre-feet capacity, is threatening the future of the crucial river basin.
It has also led to potential disruption of water delivery and hydropower production, forcing the US Bureau of Reclamation to consider drastic action.
Indeed, the federal government has followed through on its plans to ration water as the west faces a “megadrought”, with the interior department announcing it will again cut water releases from the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams.
The two embankments create lakes Powell and Mead, which together provide water to 40 million people in the southwestern United States.
blfsays
More hilarious Ukrainian trolling (and I presume not staged), Як виглядає дронофобія (video) (What does dronephobia look like?). The music is not Yakety Sax (the Benny Hill closing theme), but it so easily could be.
blfsays
Akira MacKenzie@60, Again, NO, law enforcement is NOT what political parties do. You seem to keep making this very basic mistake, confusing enforcement of laws with enacting laws.
blfsays
Follow-up to @37, essentially all of the S.France (Mediterranean) coast — including where I live — is now under Orange alert for severe thunderstorms for at least the next 24-ish hours.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 64
No, governments handle law enforcement. Who supposedly is in charge of said government in the United States and has all kinds of police and military powers at his disposal to eliminate this threat once and for all? What was his name? White. Catholic. Old Fart. Likes to reminisce about his segregationists buddies?
The only way to have sustainable land use in this country, and avoid ecological breakdown, is to vastly reduce consumption of meat and dairy, according to the UK government’s food tsar.
Henry Dimbleby told the Guardian that although asking the public to eat less meat – supported by a mix of incentives and penalties – would be politically toxic, it was the only way to meet the country’s climate and biodiversity targets.
“It’s an incredibly inefficient use of land to grow crops, feed them to a ruminant or pig or chicken which then over its lifecycle converts them into a very small amount of protein for us to eat,” he said.
Currently, 85% of agricultural land in England is used for pasture for grazing animals such as cows or to grow food which is then fed to livestock [!!!]. Dimbleby, the Leon restaurant chain co-founder and a respected voice in Conservative circles, believes a 30% meat reduction over 10 years is required for land to be used sustainably in England. Others go much further: Greenpeace, for example, say we must reduce our meat intake by 70%.
“If we fail on this,” Dimbleby said, “we will fail to meet our biodiversity or climate goals in this country. We also have a huge opportunity to show thought leadership worldwide, and show them that this can be done, that we can farm sustainably and still feed people.”
Dimbleby has authored two government-commissioned reports into the UK’s food system but the white paper that followed, published by Boris Johnson’s government in June, was widely criticised for watering down his key recommendations and contained few new measures to tackle the soaring cost of food, childhood hunger, obesity or the climate emergency….
The Michigan Supreme Court issued a series of critical decisions in late July that will provide new protections to youth who face harsh treatment in the criminal legal system. In repeatedly interpreting the state constitution’s ban on “cruel or unusual” punishments, the court restricted who can get life sentences, and imposed new steps on courts and prosecutors to ensure that kids are actually treated as kids.
Three of the court’s four rulings came down in narrow 4-3 decisions, all along party lines with the four Democratic justices banding together and the three Republicans dissenting. (One Republican crossed over in the final case.) Each of the Democrats wrote for the majority in one of the four rulings, signaling their broad agreement that state practices are in need of change.
This shake up highlighted the importance of Michigan’s upcoming Supreme Court elections, which could flip the court’s partisan balance. Democrats currently enjoy a 4-3 advantage on the court, but one justice from each party is running for re-election in November. The Republican justice on the ballot, Brian Zahra, dissented in all four cases and made it clear in his opinions the lengths to which he would go to make punishment harsher in Michigan.
The decisions come as some progressives look to state courts as one possible workaround for the conservative control of the federal bench. On matters ranging from abortion to criminal justice, state courts can provide greater protections than those the U.S. Supreme Court finds in the federal constitution by turning to state statutes or state constitutional provisions.
Michigan’s court decided the four cases by building on U.S. Supreme Court decisions, but they relied on the Michigan Constitution and Michigan laws to go further than the U.S. Supreme Court has gone—and has signaled it will go with its current membership.
…
Democrats need only to win one of the two seats to maintain the majority, while Republicans must sweep both to flip the court. Hundreds of court cases involving minors are working their way through Michigan courts, and the high court signaled its interest in bringing new scrutiny to how youth are being treated. But whether that interest lasts beyond 2022, and perhaps pushes into new directions, now hangs in the balance.
Much more at the link. Informative.
tomhsays
Most Democrats, or at least anti-Republicans, know Liz Cheney is a committed conservative whose one saving grace is her attitude (and actions) on Trump. Who’s about to replace her? Well, let’s see.
Representative Liz Cheney has drawn most of the attention in the race for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat thanks to her vocal denunciations of former President Donald J. Trump and what she describes as the threats to democracy posed by his far-right followers.
But the challenger who appears poised to unseat her in Tuesday’s Republican primary, Harriet Hageman, has a track record in Wyoming of fierce advocacy on issues particularly relevant to the state’s ranchers, energy and mining interests.
She spent decades as a trial lawyer fighting environmentalists in America’s least populated state and opposing federal rules protecting land, water and endangered species. Her most far-reaching case was a successful challenge of Clinton-era federal regulations to protect millions of acres of National Forests from road-building, mining and other development. A federal judge placed an injunction on the regulations in 2003.
Ms. Hageman also represented groups that sought to remove protections for the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act and allow the state to manage hunting. As an unsuccessful candidate for governor in 2018, she suggested transferring one million acres of federal land to the state, which opponents warned would have lead to selling off prized hunting, fishing and hiking areas.
“She has a long reputation among the conservation and sportsman groups of being an anti-federalist, particularly when it comes to ownership of land,” said Dan Smitherman, the Wyoming state director at the Wilderness Society. “Most of the main conservation groups and probably 50 to 60 percent of the sportsman groups assume we’ll be playing defense against her when it comes to public land issues and perhaps some issues like wolves and bears.”
At a luncheon last week for the Chamber of Commerce of Rock Springs, a community built on fossil-fuel extraction, Ms. Hageman promised to be a champion in Washington for those industries if elected.
“I think we need to make the federal government largely irrelevant to our everyday lives,” Ms. Hageman told the audience.
And she warned that Democrats’ climate and tax bill would be “devastating” to Wyoming, after stating that coal was an “affordable, clean, acceptable resource that we all should be using.”
A spokesman for Ms. Hageman, Tim Murtaugh, said on Tuesday that, if elected, “Harriet Hageman will make fighting against the administrative state her signature issue in Congress, because Wyoming is often targeted by the federal government, which attacks its resource industries and controls too much of its land.”
Before the primary, Ms. Hageman, 59, had a lead of nearly 30 points in recent polls, a reflection of the Republican loyalty to Mr. Trump in a state he won with 70 percent of the vote in 2020.
Ms. Cheney, 56, has infuriated the former president and much of her party’s base by serving as co-chairwoman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol. Of the House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the mob that day, she is the last to face primary voters. Four of the 10 House Republicans who voted against the former president retired, three lost their primaries and two survived to make it to the general election this fall.“We’re fed up with the Jan. 6 committee,” Ms. Hageman said at a rally in Casper in late May that Mr. Trump headlined. “And we’re fed up with Liz Cheney.”
It wasn’t always so. Ms. Hageman is a former close ally of Ms. Cheney’s. She introduced Ms. Cheney at a state party convention in 2016 as a “courageous constitutional conservative.” That year, Ms. Hageman also called Mr. Trump “racist and xenophobic.”
But, like many officials and aspiring candidates in the Republican Party, Ms. Hageman experienced a conversion in which she came to support Mr. Trump enthusiastically. By 2020, when she campaigned in and won an internal party race to be one of Wyoming’s members of the National Republican Committee, Ms. Hageman openly supported Mr. Trump. She explained that she had been misled earlier by “lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media” told about Mr. Trump.As her campaign gained momentum this year, she grew bolder in embracing Mr. Trump’s false claims that he was robbed of re-election. “Absolutely the election was rigged,” Ms. Hageman said recently at a forum in Casper. “What happened in 2020 is a travesty.” (There is no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020.)
At the single debate of the campaign, in June, Ms. Hageman bristled after the first two questions zeroed in on Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol, the subject of the House investigation whose prime-time hearings have prominently featured Ms. Cheney.
“The J-6 situation,” as Ms. Hageman called it, is “not what the people in Wyoming are talking about.” She added: “What they’re talking about is the gas crisis. They’re talking about food prices.”
[…]
Despite Ms. Cheney’s own Wyoming roots — her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and her mother, Lynne, were high school sweethearts in Casper — Ms. Hageman portrayed her rival, a three-term congresswoman, as a disloyal outsider and a captive of Washington.
“I am going to reclaim Wyoming’s lone congressional seat from that Virginian who currently holds it,” she said at the rally with Mr. Trump.
[…]
Eleven months ago, Mr. Trump endorsed Ms. Hageman after interviewing and vetting potential candidates at his golf club in New Jersey. By then, she had completed her full reversal on Mr. Trump’s fitness for office, declaring him “the greatest president of my lifetime.”
Zelensky: We need to do everything, so Russia is tired of fighting.
In a video address, President Volodymyr Zelensky, called on Ukrainians to continue all efforts to tire Russia out, politically, economically, and militarily, until it can’t continue waging its war in Ukraine.
“Do everything for Ukraine as you have been doing. And even more, because the Russian leadership expects that Ukrainians, Europeans and the whole world will start to feel tired of this war,” Zelensky said.
(LOL, from the responses: “It’s only crudité if it comes from the crudités region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling Wegners veggie tray.”)
blfsays
No, governments handle law enforcement. Who supposedly is in charge of said government in the United States and has all kinds of police and military powers at his disposal to eliminate this threat once and for all? What was his name? White. Catholic. Old Fart. Likes to reminisce about his segregationists buddies?
NO. If the quoted nonsense was true, then you are perfectly happy with hair furor and / or the thugs (republicans) deciding who to prosecute and for what, with hair furor et al. using the military — without much of anything in terms of legal basis — to deal with, e.g., BLM protestors. You are perfectly happy with hair furor tricking General Miller into marching with him — after having protestors violently cleared away — to a staged pseudo-religious photo-op. And numerous other cases of abusing various real and imagined powers.
FECK OFF. I’m not buying your nazi(? Putin?) worship now, previously, or in the future. You far too often appear to have neither a concept nor an understanding of civil society or rule-of-law. Hint: Rule-of-law does not mean the party / coalition in power decides on prosecutions, punishments, etc.
Akira MacKenziesays
An anti-fascist socialist being accused of fascism. That sounds familiar. Are you sure your not an American right-winger yourself?
tomhsays
If you’re wondering what Trump’s plans are for a second term, the Washington Post is here to help you.
For the first time since leaving office, former president Donald Trump has started getting specific about what he would do if he wins a second term in the White House.
The pitches he’s made onstage over the past month in speeches from D.C. to Dallas to Las Vegas are a stark contrast from ordinary stump speeches. He promises a break from American history if elected, with a federal government stacked with loyalists and unleashed to harm his perceived enemies.
There has never been a potential candidate like Trump: a defeated former president whose followers attacked the Capitol, who still insists he never lost, and who openly pledges revenge on those he views as having wronged him.
[…]
Here are six specific proposals that have recently surfaced in Trump’s speeches — and what each plan might look like if he pursued it from the White House.
Execute drug dealers
“If you look at countries all throughout the world, no matter where you go, the only ones that don’t have a drug problem are those that institute the death penalty for drug dealers,” Trump said at a law-and-order-themed speech in Las Vegas in July. In the Washington speech, he elaborated by calling for a joint task force of the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to dismantle gangs and organized street crime.
A slight majority of U.S. adults support the death penalty for convicted murderers, a level that has held steady since 2017 and is lower than at any other time since 1972, according to Gallup polls. Capital punishment is more popular with Republicans, 77 percent of whom support it.
Move homeless people to outlying ‘tent cities’
“The only way you’re going to remove the homeless encampments and reclaim our downtowns is to open up large parcels, large tracts, of relatively inexpensive land on the outer skirts of the various cities and bring in medical professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists and drug rehab specialists and create tent cities,” Trump said on Aug. 6 at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. “You don’t have time to build buildings, you can do that later, but you have to get the people off the street. We have to bring back, we have to reclaim our cities.”
Deploy federal force against crime, unrest and protests
During the social justice protests that followed George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Trump pressured governors to respond more forcefully to demonstrations that were largely peaceful but at times erupted into clashes with police or resulted in property damage. Trump threatened to deploy the military unless state and local officials cracked down harder on the protests.
In recent speeches, Trump has said he showed too much deference to local leaders and wished he’d ordered more federal intervention. Trump indicated he wouldn’t hesitate in the future.
Strip job protections for federal workers
In October 2020, Trump signed an executive order reclassifying tens of thousands of federal workers to remove their employment protections and make them easier to fire. The National Treasury Employees Union sued to stop the change, and before a court could rule on the challenge, Biden took office and revoked the order.
Though overhauling the civil service by reclassifying employees under a new category called “Schedule F” may sound geeky, it’s become a consistent applause line in Trump’s speeches and even the basis for fundraising appeals.
“I told you I would DRAIN THE SWAMP and purge Washington of woke bureaucrats, and that’s exactly what Schedule F accomplishes,” an Aug. 9 email to supporters said.
Eliminate the Education Department
Since last year, Republican candidates have tried to capitalize on some parents’ objections to instruction about racism, sexual orientation and gender identity. Much of the activism has focused on local school boards, where many policy decisions affecting public schools are made. But Trump recently floated an additional leverage point at the federal level.
“Across the country, we need to implement strict prohibitions on teaching inappropriate racial, sexual and political material to America’s schoolchildren in any form whatsoever,” Trump said at CPAC, “and if federal bureaucrats are going to push this radicalism, we should abolish the Department of Education.”
The Education Department, created in 1980, has about 4,400 employees and a discretionary budget of more than $78 billion. Most of the money goes to grants for local agencies to serve disadvantaged or disabled students and to financial aid or loan subsidies for college students.
Restrict voting to one day using paper ballots
Trump’s grievances over losing the 2020 election and baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud have inspired Republican state lawmakers across the country to propose and adopt new voting restrictions.
Trump has recently added a demand for same-day voting using paper ballots. “That should be our goal,” he said at CPAC. The proposal echoes his false claims blaming mail ballots and electronic voting machines for his loss in 2020.
Much more detail from Trump’s speeches and allies, filling out these proposals, at the link.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Russian military leaders are likely to be “increasingly concerned” about security in Crimea after reported explosions yesterday, a British intelligence update said. Posting on Twitter, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said that both Russian and Ukrainian authorities admitted that an ammunition dump exploded on Tuesday near Dzhankoi in the north of the region and that a nearby railway and sub-station were also damaged. The update said that the Russian media also reported smoke rising near the Gvardeyskoye Airbase. And while the “the cause of these incidents and the extent of the damage is not yet clear”, Russian commanders are likely to be “increasingly concerned” with security in the region that Russia annexed in 2014.
The mayor of the village of Verkhnyo Rogachytsk in the Kherson region has been kidnapped, the deputy chair of the regional council has said.
Writing on Telegram, Yuri Sobolevsky said Svitlana Ivanivna was taken from her home at around 11am on Tuesday.
He said it was not known where she had been taken, though speculated it would be the nearby port city of Kakhovka.
“She rejected all offers to cooperate with the orcs,” he added.
Explosions have been heard near a Russian command centre in the occupied city of Melitopol, according to the city’s mayor.
Writing on Telegram, Ivan Fedorov said that a “loud explosion rang out near the enemy’s lair” in the centre of the city.
“Let me remind you that one of the commandant’s offices of the occupiers is located here,” he said.
“The earth will burn under the occupiers – this unshakable truth is proven every day by our soldiers from the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the south of Ukraine.”
Melitopol is located in the southern Zaporizhzhia region near Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.
Fedorov added that he was still waiting for further details of any losses sustained by Russian forces.
Russia has not yet commented on the explosions and the Guardian was not able to independently verify the claims.
StevoRsays
Items in Things I learnt today, so I guess everyone knows about the Humpback Whale but did folks know there’s also a Humpback Dolphin – in fact a whole category of different Humpback Dolphin species? See :
A “freeze” of the conflict in Ukraine of the sort that followed the Russian occupation in Donbas is currently not possible, the Ukrainian defence minister has said.
Speaking to the Ukrainian-language arm of US outlet Voice of America, Oleksiy Reznikov said: “I don’t think that the option of freezing is possible.
“The option of reducing activity is possible, depending on the season. And again, modern war is a war of resources.
“Resources, of course, are being depleted on both sides. And, accordingly, each side needs time to recover.”
Reznikov also claimed that Russian forces had lost at least a third of their combat capacity since the start of the invasion in February.
At least 12 Russians killed in strike on base, says Ukraine
At least 12 Russians have been killed in a strike on a base in the occupied city of Nova Kakhovka, according to the Ukrainian military.
Footage posted to Telegram by the State Border Guard Service showed numerous burnt out trucks, collapsed buildings, and debris.
“The base of the occupiers was destroyed in Nova Kakhovka,” the post read. “At least 12 Rashists [supporters of Russian militarism] were liquidated.”
The seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by Russia has raised the risk of a nuclear incident at the site, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said.
The area around the plant, situated in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, has been under Russian control since March. The plant remains near the front lines and has been hit by shells multiple times in recent weeks.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Serbian Presdie Aleksandar Vučić, Stoltenberg said: “The seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by Russian forces poses a serious threat to the safety and the security of this facility, raises the risks of a nuclear accident or incident, and endangers the population of Ukraine, of neighbouring countries, and of the international community.
“It is urgent to allow the inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency and to ensure the withdrawal of all Russian forces.”
StevoRsays
Meanwhile, in space explotration news NASA is preparing its new SLS rocket, the successor to the Saturn V for its first ever launch here :
Imagine looking at the landscape and concluding that one of the problems with our politics is that Americans are able to elect their own senators.
New Hampshire’s Republican U.S. Senate candidates participated in a debate over the weekend, it was a rather odd affair. For example, one of the candidates called for abolishing the FBI, and when one of his rivals disagreed, the audience booed.
But it was this tidbit from an NBC News report that stood out for me:
[Retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc and cryptocurrency investor Bruce Fenton] also said they support repealing the 17th Amendment, which allowed for the direct election of senators. Before that amendment was enacted, state legislators chose who would represent the state in the Senate.
In case this isn’t obvious, Bolduc isn’t necessarily a fringe figure: Recent polling suggests he’s likely to win the GOP nomination in this Senate race.
And that makes it all the more curious that he endorsed scrapping the 17th Amendment: Bolduc was effectively urging New Hampshire voters to elect him to the U.S. Senate, where he could advocate for a constitutional change that would prevent them from ever electing anyone to the Senate ever again.
[…] “The old saying used to be that all politics is local, but today — thanks to the internet, 24/7 cable news and a cottage industry dedicated to political addiction — politics is polarized and national,” the Nebraska Republican wrote. “That would change if state legislatures had direct control over who serves in the Senate.”
To be sure, such talk almost certainly won’t lead to constitutional changes, at least not anytime soon. But that doesn’t make it any less unusual that there are still some Republicans who believe one of the problems with our politics is that Americans are able to elect their own senators.
Mike Pence’s team is quietly letting us know: The former vice president was careful not to take materials that didn’t belong to him — unlike some people.
As former Vice President Mike Pence makes plans for his political future, he continues to walk a political tightrope when it comes to his former boss. On the one hand, the Republican Hoosier wants to establish his own political identity, separate from Donald Trump and his scandals. Pence has, for example, endorsed GOP candidates opposed by Trump, and occasionally conceded that the former president was “wrong“ in the wake of his 2020 defeat.
On the other hand, Pence also apparently expects to be a competitive presidential candidate in the near future, and he’ll need the support of a Republican Party that remains in the control of a man who not only put Pence’s life in danger on Jan. 6, but who also continues to condemn him publicly.
[…] Pence and his team continue to quietly draw relevant contrasts. The New York Times reported this week, for example, on the chaotic conditions in the White House in early January 2021, as Team Trump “focused on settling political grievances and personal grudges,” instead of organizing materials for the National Archives, as most presidents do before leaving office.
The article added this gem:
As Mr. Trump sought to hold on to power, two of Mr. Pence’s senior aides — Marc Short, his chief of staff, and Greg Jacob, his counsel — indexed and boxed all of his government papers, according to three former officials with knowledge of the work. Mr. Jacob spent the bulk of his final few days in government preparing the final boxes, with the goal of ensuring that Mr. Pence left office without a single paper that did not belong to him, one of the officials said.
It’s difficult to say with confidence whether this was intended to be brutal, but to my eyes, it certainly came across that way.
Team Pence effectively told the newspaper that the former vice president, unlike some others who will remain nameless, acted responsibly early last year and took great care not to improperly take official government documents.
In other words, no one should expect FBI agents to execute a search warrant at the Pence household — because some people know not to take highly classified national security secrets with them after leaving office.
[…] As sycophantic Republicans scramble to come up with lazy excuses — some have actually coalesced around the idea that the former president was so busy with his coup attempt that he didn’t have time to pack his stuff in a responsible way — there’s Pence’s team, letting the public and its party know that it didn’t have to be this way.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 80
Looks like a certain gutless, Bible-humping wonder is groveling for the Oval Office.
Democracy is the problem that capital is always striving to solve. To maintain its rates of profit, it seeks to drive down the taxes it must pay and annul the regulations that defend the living world, workers and consumers. This tends to be unpopular. Governments that permit beautiful places to be trashed, workers’ lives to be endangered and consumers to be conned might find themselves voted out of office. So fixes need to be found.
Political funding often does the job: research from the US shows how, generally, the party that attracts the most money wins. Distraction works pretty well, especially when it takes the form of culture wars. The billionaire press does a sterling job at misrepresenting our choices – to favour the very rich. But you can never be too careful. It’s safer, if possible, to bypass democracy altogether.
How? One approach is to create places where the usual rules do not apply and citizens have less decision-making power. I’m talking about “freeports”. In crucial respects, these “special economic zones” operate as if they were outside a nation’s borders. They are the equivalent of the royal forests of medieval England. Forest derives from the Latin foris, which means outside. The forests were hunting estates where the king’s private interests overrode the rights of the common people, elevating them beyond the usual laws of the land. The Westminster government has so far designated eight freeports in England, and the Scottish government is considering bids for two.
Their objectives were set by an advisory panel chaired by the two most ardent supporters of freeports in the government: Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. The panel was composed of two public officials, two economists, five industry lobbyists, one cities advocate, one venture capitalist and two members of dark-money thinktanks (lobby groups that refuse to reveal who funds them). No trade unions, political rights, environmental or public interest groups were represented.
The new freeports will be run by “operators”, among whom are some highly controversial private companies. Companies using a freeport can claim a wide range of customs privileges and tax cuts. These include business rate relief, which deprives local authorities of income, and employers’ national insurance relief, which creates a two-tier workforce: cheap and even cheaper.
The government has also offered a radical curtailment of planning rules in these zones….
Another offer is a “simpler framework for environmental assessment”. “Simpler”, like “streamlined” and “flexible”, is government-speak for the removal of public protections….
A further freeport promise is to “identify opportunities for regulatory flexibility and new regulatory sandboxes”….
There is a further, extraordinary aspect, which is beginning to come to public attention. While the “tax sites” and “customs sites” in a freeport cover a maximum of a few hundred hectares, the operators are allowed to set an “outer boundary” with a diameter of up to 45km (28 miles). Where a “very strong case”, with a “clear economic rationale”, is made, the area can be even wider. There must have been some very strong cases, because some of these zones are 75km from point to point….
What these boundaries mean is, as always, clear as mud. When I asked the government to show me the “very strong cases”, its spokesperson told me “we don’t publish that information”, then refused to elaborate. Perhaps it’s because the government has told private operators that the information contained in their bids is “commercially sensitive”. This is another way in which they’re protected from democracy: they are not subject to the transparency and accountability required of public bodies.
…
Understandably, all this opacity is beginning to cause alarm. Some people have proposed an even more sinister agenda: the government wants to turn these places into “charter cities”, corporate fiefs in which environmental and workplace protections are almost entirely stripped away. There is, as yet, no evidence of this. But if any senior politician is biddable and extreme enough to extend the stupidities of freeports, it is Liz Truss. Last month she started promoting the idea of low-tax, low-regulation “investment zones”. As usual, she seemed to have little idea what she meant by this: the line was probably fed to her by some unaccountable thinktank. Is it a repackaging of freeports, or something else?
In any case, it will deliver nothing but harm. Freeports attract organised crime, money-laundering, drug-trafficking and terrorist finance, while bringing minimal benefits to the nations that host them. But this was never about improving our lives. On the contrary, it’s about subordinating our needs to those of favoured capital.
In Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation (Verso, 2022), Paris Marx identifies two convergent forces in the 20th century: the growth of the climate killing automobile industry and the rise of Silicon Valley with its California Ideology (a hypocritical self-rationalization). Their narrative shows how these two forces merged in the early 21st century with less-than-ideal, even deadly, results. Marx challenges many of the tech industry’s myths, misrepresentations, and lies and offers some suggestions for how we can build a better world. While Road to Nowhere is a book about our current crisis it situates our this mess in its historical context. Marx illustrates how many of the most problematic aspects of automobility are the consequences of specific policy decisions, often made in the interest of capital and not the social good. Marx is not shy about naming names, specifically calling out Elon Musk and Über.
The “QAnon Queen of Canada” sent her followers to arrest officers at a local police station. When a locked door foiled their plans to get inside, they yelled over megaphones asking the cops nicely to come out and be arrested.
…Experts have warned that Didulo is leading her followers toward confrontations with the public and state, and some have even taken to calling her community a cult. The group wears matching white uniforms and drives Didulo around from city to city where she hosts meet-and-greets with her followers in parking lots. Didulo has also advised her followers to stop paying their utility bills—because she decreed they were now free—and many of her followers are getting their power and water shut off. As they beg their queen for help, she ignores them.
When the arrests started Saturday, Didulo and her closest followers fled for the safety of her RV. And in royal tradition, the queen attempted to distance herself from the event she promoted and threw her followers under the bus. In a livestream from the RV with hundreds of viewers, she said she’d only come to watch.
“A gentle reminder that Her Royal Majesty Queen Romana Didulo Commander-in-Chief and Queen of the Kingdom of Canada was in Peterborough Ontario yesterday as an observer NOT participant,” she wrote Sunday….
]
UPDATE: An Ontario mayor made a statement on her Twitter in regards to the QAnon conspiracist’s citizen’s arrest party.
Once again, Donald Trump finds himself in need of a few good lawyers, and once again he can’t find them. As The Washington Post reports, his “current legal team includes a Florida insurance lawyer who’s never had a federal case, a past general counsel for a parking-garage company, and a former host at far-right One America News.”
He’s never been in greater need of a lot of lawyers on a lot of fronts, including criminal defense. Daily Kos’ Brandi Buchman notes that there are so many probes right now that he “needs a small army of attorneys.” He is “under scrutiny from nearly every angle, from the search of Mar-a-Lago for White House records to the Justice Department’s ongoing probe of Jan. 6 to the civil and criminal investigations of his taxes and real estate dealings under the Trump Organization banner.” And don’t forget Georgia, where he’s under investigation by District Attorney Fani Willis for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
“Everyone is saying no,” a prominent Republican lawyer told the Post. He needs some heavy-duty criminal defense representation, and they’re not touching him with a ten-foot pole. “Trump’s search is being hampered by his divisiveness, as well as his reputation for stiffing vendors and ignoring advice,” the Post explains. That’s making the people in his orbit who inexplicably remain on his side “extremely worried” because his “current stable of lawyers” is about as competent as the crew that latched onto him in all of his election challenges. […]
On Wednesday, more explosions have been reported in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol. This time, the site of the attack appears to be the Russian command center for the area. This follows attacks over the last two days that took out the Russian HQ that had been set up in Lysychansk, electrical infrastructure for Melitopol, the rail lines serving much of Crimea, two Russian air bases in Crimea, and a massive supply depot containing both ammo and vehicles. These attacks continued a Ukrainian strategy of striking well behind the lines to hit high-value targets. And in the case of Lysychansk, Ukraine had very precise targeting information. [Tweet and images at the link]
That location looks a little different following Ukraine’s latest exhibit on precision-controlled weaponry. [tweet and video at the link]
Meanwhile, Russia conducted an expanded campaign of both shelling and missile launches overnight. Both Kharkiv and the Zaporizhzhia area saw some of the heaviest attacks in weeks, with Russia lobbing longer-range MLRS missiles into the city of Kharkiv. The north side of the city, closest to the Russian area of control, has taken a particular beating again overnight. Russian ballistic missiles once again arced in on Ukrainian cities from sites inside Russia as well as Belarus.
However, for whatever reason, either lack of the necessary weapons or lack of even half decent intelligence, Russia continues to make what seems to be inaccurate blind swings, targeting population areas rather than striking high-value military targets. Six months into Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Russia has fired over 3,700 missiles into Ukrainian cities. That’s an absolutely astounding number, and it has generated some absolutely astounding levels of damage in places like Kharkiv—and even in cities like Kryvyi Rih and Odesa that are not on the front lines of the war. [Tweet and video available at the link. Russian missiles destroyed cottages and recreational facilities.]
But what may be most amazing is, 3,700 missiles later, the offices of the Ukrainian government in Kyiv are intact. Ukrainian military bases are still operating at many points around the country. Ukrainian planes are still flying from Ukrainian airfields. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is still openly walking the streets, greeting foreign dignitaries, and visiting sites around his nation, including some that are within miles of the front lines.
Look again at the image at the top of this page. The size of the crater is massive and represents the use of a significant weapon to … damage a few homes? There’s no indication that this attack struck any target that would have a measurable effect on the Ukrainian war effort, which makes it absolutely typical of how Russia has used literally thousands of missiles and bombs in this war.
At some point, it might have been possible to believe that Russia was, for some reason, holding back, but that point is way back there in the rearview. Russia isn’t taking out high-value targets in Ukraine because it can’t. Sure, they can occasionally manage to hit a shopping mall, and they’ve been dedicated shooters of hospitals. But they can’t take out the targets that allow the Ukrainian military to stay supplied, trained, and organized. They just can’t. Or they would have done it by now.
[snipped extended boxing metaphor]
In both real life and on film, there’s a frequent pairing that makes for a classic confrontation. On one side is the fearsome slugger. The guy who throws a punch that can take down an ox and whose scowling visage marks a ruthless, straight-ahead confidence that no one can stand against them. In the opposite corner is the boxer who can “stick and move,” but, more importantly, keep his brain engaged along with his fists. A few rounds later, the ox-feller is really confused about why this guy across from him just refuses to go down, and that other guy is just getting ready to attack.
That kind of seems like where we are with Ukraine. Russia continues to stagger forward, throwing only wild haymakers, while Ukraine jabs, sidesteps, and looks for an opening. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that Sonny Liston’s nickname was “the big bear.” Ali went into that fight an 8-1 underdog. Liston gave up in the seventh round. It’s not clear what round we’re in now, but it is clear that the pace of the action in Ukraine is no longer being dictated by Russia.
When it comes to action on the ground, in the Kharkiv area, Russia claimed to have captured the village of Udy, near the Russian border northwest of Kharkiv. However, Ukrainian military images from the site on Tuesday indicate that this is a thing-that-did-not-happen. […]
As has been true every day for the last several weeks, Russia launched attacks at multiple points along the line between Sivernsk and Bakhmut, but there don’t appear to be any major changes. Further south, the Ukrainian military reports that Russia achieved “partial success” near Novomykhailivka, but other Russian attacks south of Donetsk were repulsed.
By the end of today, I hope to have the maps updated so that the next Ukraine Update can reflect the current positions. Oh, and there are unconfirmed reports that Taiwan is sending 800(!) of these to Ukraine. [Tweet and video at the link]
Drones are playing an ever greater part in this war, and the various roles and types of drones are undergoing a fast evolution. It’s a very safe bet that the results in Ukraine are being carefully examined by every military in the world. From observation drones directing precision munitions, to large drones launching missiles at targets dozens or hundreds of kilometers behind enemy lines, to loitering munitions with varying levels of AI, to drones like the “revolver” that can drop explosives straight down on enemy troops and vehicles, the battlefield is becoming ever more dangerous. How all this stuff works is changing in real-time, and the winner of this war may well be the side that is nimble enough to incorporate these technologies in the best way.
That’s probably not the big bear [Russia].
(Side note: The current heavyweight champion of the world is Daniel Dubois, or Tyson Fury, or Oleksandr Usyk, depending on which organization you believe. Of all of these, Usyk may be the best known because, in February, he returned to his native Ukraine and spent a few months in the territorial defense forces, but he has now left to train for another match. Fury may be best known for comments in which he threatened to hang his sister, for warning that abortion was going to bring a “biblical reckoning,” and for a string of antisemitic as well as anti-LGBTQ statements.)
More drone footage available at the link. The operators have to be really good.
A key advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeated a call for the Crimean Bridge to be destroyed.
Writing on Twitter, Mykhailo Podolyak said Ukraine had never granted permission for the construction of the bridge and that it was an “illegal object”.
“It harms the peninsula’s ecology and therefore must be dismantled. Not important how – voluntary or not,” he said.
The Crimean Bridge, built following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, spans the Kerch Strait, connecting the peninsula to mainland Russia.
The bridge was closed overnight on Tuesday following a series of strikes on Russian bases and other infrastructure in Crimea. The closure is thought to have come amid fears that it would also be targeted.
Speaking to the Guardian this week, Podolyak signalled that Ukraine regarded the bridge as a legitimate military target.
“It’s an illegal construction and the main gateway to supply the Russian army in Crimea. Such objects should be destroyed,” he said.
I’m starting to see a disturbing increase in stories that tell me that it is in our best interests, and those of democracy, to pardon trump and the rest of his little henchmen. Mona Charen over at ‘The Bulwark’ appears to think we need to give trump a mulligan over his escapades. She cites the fact that 70+% of polled republicans said that they disapprove of the Mar-a-lago search. And gosh, people, if we don’t roll over and give in to all their screechy spleen-venting and their repugnant rethuglican demands, …it will be our fault when democracy craters. She/them seem to think we need to be the bigger people, as usual. “Justice may have to be sacrificed on the alter of order.” Shut up, Mona.
She isn’t the only one sounding like a collaborator, either. Is this what we’re to become? Vichy America? A client state to Russia, with a reinstalled ‘trump’ acting out the part of Marshal Petain? Screw this ‘pardon them all to save America’ bullshit! […]
Give them an inch on this and they’ll gleefully take another mile out of our hides forever more, laughing in our faces all along the way. Do these whey-faced apologists really think trump would be conciliatory? Do they think he will somehow slink off into the quiet shadows of some golf course bunker if he’s given a free pass? No! He’ll be back with a fury and a vengeance that will rival that of any of history’s vilest evil-doers. [I think this is true. In fact, I think the main reason Trump wants the affidavit associated with the search at Mar-a-Lago released is so that he will have a source that provides him the information he needs to wreak vengeance on people whom the FBI interviewed.]
Will a republican led house and senate suddenly embrace détente? Quid pro quo? Hands across the aisle? Nope, they won’t, and you know it. To steal a line from Jim Morrison’s ‘Peace Frog’: “There’s blood in the street, it’s up to my ankles…” and it will only get deeper if we let them off.
Republicans are counting on us for another Gerald Ford, “Our long national nightmare is over” moment; don’t give it to them. I’m so tired of turning the other cheek, screw the meek! They may be able to exist on a steady diet of political cake, but I can’t, not anymore. Good gawd, people… we must have the courage of our convictions, especially now.
[…] he grid is getting pushed to the brink, unless we PREPARE IN ADVANCE to help one another get safely through the afternoon and evening.
TONIGHT Californians PLEASE:
Pre-cool home by setting the thermostat to as low as 72 degrees
Use major appliances — o Washer and dryer o Dishwasher o Oven and stove for pre-cooking and preparing meals and doing household tasks in advance
Adjust blinds and drapes to cover windows
Fill clean waiting-to-recyle plastic bottles 9/10 full with water to fit all empty space in freezer and fridge, and put’em in.
Tomorrow, midday/early afternoon: Pre-cool again to 72 degrees.
BEFORE 3:30pm:
Set thermostat to 78 degrees or higher, if health permits
Prepare ice-chests with water, cold snacks, etc., so you can keep fridge and freezer shut in case a POWER OUTAGE does happen — it could go on for hours, or longer, and you don’t want those appliances losing cold and spoiling food from opening them until it’s safe (after a blackout, leave them shut a few hours to re-refridge if at all possible).
Prepare battery-power & rechargeable lanterns/flashlights (and portable emergency radios, if you have them, hand-crankable or otherwise) so you can move around safely if a blackout does happen … and so you can read a book or play board-games etc during this time period.
Shut off all possible remaining electrics … anything plugged into the wall, and shut off all unnecessary lights..
[…] People living in the northern part of the United States and Canada might be able to see the aurora borealis on Wednesday night.
Typically, the northern lights are not seen so far south, but they will be visible in the night sky after a number of recent explosions on the sun’s surface sent clouds of particles into space.
Those clouds are expected to hit the Earth’s magnetic field late Wednesday, resulting in the dazzling light display. […]
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on Tuesday that some people “equate Donald Trump with the person of Jesus Christ” in their hearts.
“To them, if you even come against this amazing man, Donald Trump, which obviously quite flawed, you are coming out against Jesus, against their Christian values,” he told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner. “And when you go after their religion, that violates the depth of who they are.”
Kinzinger made the remark in response to a question Wagner asked him about criticism he has received from his own family members in relation to opposing former President Trump.
The congressman, who is one of Trump’s fiercest critics in the GOP, received a letter signed by 11 members of his family after he called for Trump to be removed from office through the 25th Amendment to the Constitution in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
The letter says that Kinzinger is a “disappointment to us and to God.” The family members said they were once proud of his accomplishments, but he has gone against his “Christian principles” and joined the “devil’s army,” which they identify as Democrats and the “fake news media.”
Kinzinger told Wagner that people fear being kicked out of their own tribe, and Republicanism or Trumpism has become people’s identity. He said many pastors in the country are “failing” their congregations through refusing to talk about how “corrosive” Trumpism is.
“I’ve been kicked out of my tribe, and that’s OK,” Kinzinger said. […]
[…] Cheney is a terrible politician who ultimately stood up to her party’s fascism. We can kid ourselves and claim there’s no difference between Cheney-ism and Trump-ism but Cheney-ism doesn’t burn down your house when it loses an election. Most of us should remember the difference between 2012 and 2020. Whenever a Republican who opposes Trump is defeated, the party only becomes more radicalized and dangerous. You don’t have to like Liz Cheney to understand that’s bad news.
From Newsweek (about a week old, so it may have been mentioned before):
A Pentagon official has given a “ballpark” figure of Russia’s casualties since it started the war in Ukraine on February 24, in a sign of the high cost of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his own forces.
Colin Kahl, the Department of Defense undersecretary for policy, said at a briefing on Monday: “It’s safe to suggest that the Russians have probably taken 70 or 80,000 casualties in less than six months,” adding, “That is a combination of killed in action and wounded in action and that number might be a little lower, a little higher, but I think that’s kind of in the ballpark.”
He described the number of Russian casualties as “remarkable” given that Russia’s forces have “achieved none of Vladimir Putin’s objectives” since invading Ukraine.
Russia has, apparently, learned nothing. During World War II (sorry, the Great Patriotic War), the Soviets used massed artillery, massed armour (both tanks and self-propelled-guns), and massed infantry (sometimes to clear the minefields for the follow on infantry) to achieve breakthroughs in the relatively thin Wehrmacht lines. At that time, even tactical air strikes seldom hit anything more than 100km behind the opposition’s line. Anti-aircraft defenses were primitive. Anti-tank weapons were primitive. The German Army had a modest technological advantage (their glass and optics industry, based out of Dresden, was remarkable) over the Soviets. And that modest technological advantage, against the massed attacks of the Soviet Army, allowed Germany to hold on far longer than it should have on the Eastern Front. Short story, the Soviet steamroller succeeded. Eventually. Bloodily.
And the Soviets spent a great deal of time analyzing what went right during the war. And those lessons were adapted for an expected armour and nuclear war in Western Europe. Which never happened.
In Afghanistan, the Soviet military used conscript soldiers and tried to overwhelm the Afghans. Even later in the war, when the Soviets were trying to be more flexible, more pro-active, but it still ended up coming down to ‘how many troops can we get into that area.’ Whether the troops had the equipment or the training to actually do anything once they got there (and if they got there through the ambushes) had nothing to do with it. Helicopters seemed like a winner until modern anti-aircraft weapons arrived and, even against an enemy with no air force, the Soviets failed to achieve air superiority. The Soviet technological advantage was uneven — they had modern tanks and APCs, modern artillery, lots of trucks to supply the troops, but the mujahideen had decent anti-armour and anti-aircraft weapons. Short story, the Soviet steamroller failed.
And the Soviets spent a great deal of time analyzing what went wrong in Afghanistan. And the researchers at the General Staff pointed to things like poor signals security, poor security of supplies, poor security of command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) apparatus and locations, use of poorly trained troops in large numbers, artillery battalions and regiments parked almost wheel to wheel to supply fire support, inability of small unit commanders to use operational intelligence, rote tactics by almost all commanders up to, and including, colonels and generals, inability to coordinate combined arms tactics, and then the researchers pointed to what needed to be done (part of this was published in the West as a book called The Bear Went Over The Mountain).
And did the Soviet Army/Russian Army learn? It would appear not. They are still trying to use WWII tactics (the same ones which failed in Afghanistan) in Ukraine. They are making most of the mistakes that they made in Afghanistan. But now they are fighting a nation and an armed forces that has access to much of the advanced military technology that was been developed during and after the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq (and, yes, the US fell into some of the same behaviours that defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan).
So. The new Russian Army has managed, in Ukraine, to operate with poor signals security, poor security of supplies, poor security of command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) apparatus and locations, use of poorly trained troops in large numbers, artillery battalions and regiments parked almost wheel to wheel to supply fire support, inability of small unit commanders to use operational intelligence, rote tactics by almost all commanders up to, and including, colonels and generals, and an inability to coordinate combined arms tactics. And the Ukrainians are running rings around the Red Army/Soviet Army/Russian Army. Which is still fighting not the last war, but the war before that.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 91
“And when you go after their religion, that violates the depth of who they are.”
To paraphrase the Deteriorata:
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most theist souls
Would scarcely get your feet wet.
Akira MacKenziesays
Also @ 91
What did Kinzinger expect? His side of the spectrum has vilified anyone to the left of them as literal baby murders, child rapists, Stalinists, and Satanists from the start of the John Birch society, though Reagan and Dubya, culminating with Trump. Sooner or later, it was going to result with millions of Americans out to smite the great “evil” that dwells in in what should be a “Christian Nation.”
The left should have at least done the same in return (at least our accusations of misogyny, racism, superstition, and greed would be real) but nooooooooo. I’ve been told by certain liberals that fascists are people too and they just need hugs and Obamacare to make them right as rain.
[…] By the late eighties, America was in the grip of a sweepstakes mania. The industry had grown to an estimated value of a billion dollars […] Even Harvard University’s alumni magazine was offering ten thousand dollars in Sony electronics. C.B.S. had a unique business proposition: it would come up with the promotion, print the entry forms, and even deliver the prizes. Brands hoping to capitalize on America’s obsession would pay C.B.S. [C. B. Seidman Marketing Group] one fee for a turnkey operation.
One of those brands was Donald Trump. To entice larger crowds to his flagship casino, he had built a thirty-million-dollar parking garage. But not enough people were using it. Seidman suggested printing half a million promotional parking tickets. If visitors collected enough validation stickers, in the right combination, they could win prizes, including Walkmans, cash, an “Eternity of Vacations,” or even a Cadillac.
The Cadillac Allanté cost fifty-five thousand dollars, about as much as a family home in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, where James Parker, the man on crutches, lived. Parker was a hypnotist and a magician, and he spoke with a stutter. He greeted the parking attendant and handed over his ticket. “Look, why don’t you play?” the attendant said. “You only need one more sticker. Who knows. You might win!”
The attendant applied the final sticker, scratched off the gold coating, and offered his commiserations. Then he did a double take—Parker had won. He was ushered into a promotional booth, and, over the next twenty-four hours, Trump’s P.R. machine began to whir. […]
Parker was no lucky winner. He was part of a staggering scam that involved some of the biggest brands of the eighties: Ford, Holiday Inn, Nabisco, Royal Desserts. If you entered a sweepstakes competition in those years, it was likely run by C.B.S. You had no chance of winning—Seidman had built a sprawling network of “paper winners,” including a kung-fu master and a pet psychic, who helped him steal millions of dollars in cash and prizes, pulling off the biggest sweepstakes fraud the country had ever seen.
[…] Chuck Seidman had been forced to leave four separate high schools for showing up to class on drugs […] He became addicted to heroin and once was arrested during a methamphetamine sale […] “Chuck was the kind of narcissistic personality—you couldn’t tell him what to do,” Gross [Steven Gross, a friend of Seidman’s] said. He added, “Chuck was fun to hang around.”
[…] Seidman’s addictions consumed him. By twenty-five, he was spending three hundred dollars a day on cocaine. Dealers at a local Lebanese restaurant blackmailed him to steal prizes. “I stole a thousand-dollar game ticket from my father’s company to pay that cocaine debt,” he later confessed. “That was the first time.”
[Gross said,] “He felt like he was really under his father’s thumb.” Not long afterward, Seidman called Gross to pitch an idea. They would start their own sweepstakes company and beat his father at his own game.
[…] Out from under Jack’s [Seidman’s father] watchful eye, Seidman and Gross realized that they could pilfer some of the prizes. Gross conspired to rig a Royal Desserts competition to win ten supermarket-sweep trips to Toys R Us. At the time, there was little regulatory oversight for sweepstakes. No single set of laws governed contests, and the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission couldn’t make up their minds, or work together on enforcement. “To be honest, I looked at it as a victimless crime,” Gross told me. The brands still got their publicity.
[…] Seidman’s substance abuse accelerated.
[…] In desperation, his wife, Susan, dialled a random hypnotherapist from the Yellow Pages. It was James Parker. […] In May, 1987, he arrived at Seidman’s home. Parker put Seidman in a trance; when Seidman woke up, he announced that he was cured. […]
Seidman promised to make Parker the most famous hypnotist in America. He said that he’d book him on Oprah and Johnny Carson, and even get his image on the front of a Wheaties box. But, before all that, Seidman had a favor to ask. He needed Parker to pose as the lucky winner for the Trump Plaza sweepstakes. According to Parker, Seidman assured him that the scheme, though “not the most ethical,” was completely legal.
Parker had no problem taking from Trump. In the seventies, Trump and his father, who owned an enormous portfolio of rental buildings in New York City, had been accused of refusing to lease apartments to Black people. Parker’s mother was part of an investigative team assembled by the city’s human-rights division to expose the practice. “They would send a Black couple into a Trump property to rent something,” he told me. When the couple were told that there were no vacancies, a white employee would soon follow, and would be welcomed with open arms. Gross also found a way to justify the sweepstakes scheme. He knew that Trump “was screwing over all these people who worked on the casinos, and put a number of small businesses out of business,” he told me. “He was a con man.” […]
[…] Three days after Parker’s win, a catastrophic stock-market crash sent tremors through the American economy. Gross had instructed Parker to sell the Cadillac and open a new bank account to deposit the proceeds, but, after Black Monday, there were no buyers for a fifty-five-thousand-dollar luxury car […] Eventually, they sold it to a dealer for half off. Parker kept four thousand dollars, but, unbeknownst to him, he was on the hook for taxes on the entire prize value.
[…] In December, 1987, Seidman enlisted Parker to help rig another contest, the Coronet Great American Giveaway Game, for the paper manufacturer Georgia-Pacific, which offered winners Renaults and Jeep Cherokees.
[…] When Agent Daniel (Carl) Smires took a job at the United States Postal Inspection Service, in 1970, the organization was nearly two hundred years old. Smires felt that people underestimated the U.S.P.I.S., confusing its agents with mail carriers. Few knew that he carried a gun.
On the telephone was someone from the Assistant U.S. Attorney’s office, who had heard from a woman claiming to be involved in a sweepstakes fraud. This piqued Smires’s interest. […] he had recently won a medal for busting a series of supermarket-coupon frauds. He drove straight to the Assistant U.S. Attorney’s office, where he met Katherine Wojciechowicz, Louis Mazzio’s girlfriend.
She told Smires that Mazzio had arranged for her to win Alpo’s fiftieth-anniversary sweepstakes. “She was a young person who felt that she was aware of something that wasn’t right,” Smires told me. “Just concerned that she was involved in something that wasn’t on the up-and-up.” He agreed to investigate the company behind the promotion: C.B.S.
[…] He met Trump staffers involved with the Drive-In Dreamstakes—his first time setting foot inside a casino—and what he learned there was “eye-opening.” The gaming industry was fiercely regulated, yet these trips to Monte Carlo, the Cadillacs, the “Eternity of Vacations”—no one was making sure that the winners of these opulent prizes were legit.
[snipped details of Parker’s acquaintances, and Seidman’s acquaintances, who started to con both men out of the prizes and prize money —conning the con men]
Seidman was unravelling. When Gross discovered that Seidman had removed him as a signer on the company accounts, he reinstated himself. “That’s when he really started threatening to kill me,” Gross said.
[snipped details of other deals imploding, and of both companies and newspaper reporters beginning to reveal the truth about the scams] Seidman, Gross, Dandridge, Parker, and Mazzio were all charged with mail fraud. […] Attorneys estimated that Seidman and Gross stole nearly two million dollars in cash and prizes. (That would be worth more than twice as much today.)
[…] Seidman and Gross were banned for life from the sweepstakes industry, but Seidman couldn’t resist. By the time he was sent to prison, in 1990, he had already set up a new company, and he’d even brought back one of his old clients: Donald Trump. It is unclear how many competitions he ran for Trump, or how many were crooked. But, that year, before a Mike Tyson fight, Trump handed brand-new car keys to a lucky sweepstakes winner, Richard Surmick. Surmick was the president of LizRick tours, a bus company that Trump had used for an earlier contest, which involved picking up gamblers all over Pennsylvania and dropping them off at the casino in Atlantic City. Surmick later went to prison for running a three-million-dollar check-kiting scheme. […]
the F.T.C. and state agencies implemented tighter regulations and amended existing laws to make it more difficult to pull off scams.
[…] By 2011, Trump had driven his Atlantic City casinos into the ground, but he didn’t give up running sweepstakes. On the campaign trail, he’s awarded more than a hundred prizes in fund-raising contests. Supporters typically donate five or ten bucks for the chance to win a trip, all expenses paid, to meet him. Recently, his political-action committee sent an e-mail with a new offer: “Contribute ANY AMOUNT RIGHT NOW to be automatically entered to have dinner with President Trump in New Orleans.” He probably raised a lot of money; according to the Washington Post, similar contests have brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the trip to New Orleans came and went, and no winner was announced. A representative for Trump explained that there had been an “administrative error.”
Sleazy, pathetic scams … and Trump is still running them.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s status as Congress’s most ignorant member is at stake in Alaska’s special election, Greene’s aides have acknowledged.
Greene, who has fended off challenges to her crown of dimness from such formidable contenders as Lauren Boebert and Rand Paul, will face her stiffest test to date when Alaskans go to the polls.
An aide to Greene, Harland Dorrinson, said that the congresswoman will be watching the returns from Alaska “nervously.”
“Ignorance is Margie’s brand,” he said. “Obviously, she’s concerned about anything that could jeopardize that.”
In a sign that she does not intend to relinquish her title without a fight, Greene took to the floor of the House of Representatives and accused President Biden of possessing the nuclear codes.
Students who used federal loans to attend ITT Technical Institute as far back as 2005 will automatically get that debt canceled after authorities found ‘widespread and pervasive misrepresentations’ at the defunct for-profit college chain, the Biden administration announced Tuesday.
“Source confirms Allen Weisselberg will implicate the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corp when he pleads guilty to criminal tax fraud charges in the morning — and he will agree to testify against them at trial in October if called as a witness.”
There have been competing reports, but the most recent (past few hours) seem to converge on this. It’s seemed more likely to me, but I guess we’ll see.
Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to nearly 300 people in a long-running civil suit against the judges, writing the plaintiffs are “the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions.”
In what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal, Mark Ciavarella and another judge, Michael Conahan, shut down a county-run juvenile detention center and accepted $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of two for-profit lockups. Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, pushed a zero-tolerance policy that guaranteed large numbers of kids would be sent to PA Child Care and its sister facility, Western PA Child Care.
Ciavarella ordered children as young as 8 to detention, many of them first-time offenders deemed delinquent for petty theft, jaywalking, truancy, smoking on school grounds and other minor infractions. The judge often ordered youths he had found delinquent to be immediately shackled, handcuffed and taken away without giving them a chance to put up a defense or even say goodbye to their families.
[…] The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out some 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 kids after the scheme was uncovered.
[…] Ciavarella, 72, is serving a 28-year prison sentence in Kentucky. His projected release date is 2035.
Conahan, 70, was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison but was released to home confinement in 2020 — with six years left on his sentence — because of the coronavirus pandemic.
[…] Another victim described how he shook uncontrollably during a routine traffic stop — a consequence of the traumatizing impact of his childhood detention — and had to show his mental health records in court to “explain why my behavior was so erratic.”
Several of the childhood victims who were part of the lawsuit when it began in 2009 have since died from overdoses or suicide, Conner said.
[…] Substantial punitive damages were warranted because the disgraced judges inflicted “unspeakable physical and emotional trauma” on children and adolescents, Conner wrote.
[…] Other major figures in the case settled years ago, including the builder and the owner of the private lockups and their companies, in payouts totaling about $25 million.
The Saudi woman who was sentenced to 34 years in prison for a tweet appears to have been denounced to Saudi authorities through a crime-reporting app that users in the kingdom can download to Apple and Android phones.
A review of Leeds PhD student Salma al-Shehab’s tweets and interactions shows she was messaged by a person using a Saudi account on 15 November, 2020 after she posted a mildly critical tweet in response to a Saudi government post about a new public transportation contract.
The user told Shehab that he had reported her on the Saudi app, which is called Kollona Amn, or We Are All Security. It is not clear whether the Saudi officials responded directly to the report, but the 34-year-old mother was arrested two months later.
Shehab’s case has been condemned by human rights groups and other pro-democracy outlets who said the draconian sentence against her was more evidence of the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s relentless crackdown on dissent.
A University of Leeds spokesperson on Wednesday said: “We are deeply concerned to learn of this recent development in Salma’s case and we are seeking advice on whether there is anything we can do to support her. Our thoughts remain with Salma, her family, and her friends among our close-knit community of postgraduate researchers.” Shehab’s research focused on improving dental treatment for patients with disabilities.
Shehab was still working on completing her PhD in the UK in December 2020 when she returned home to Saudi to visit her family. A few weeks into her visit, she was summoned to report to Saudi authorities who arrested and tried her for her use of Twitter.
Her alleged crimes including using a website to “cause public unrest” and “assisting those who seek to cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security by following their Twitter accounts” and by retweeting their tweets.
Shehab had about 2,000 followers. An examination of her account’s activity shows that on 8 October 2019, Shehab responded to a tweet by a verified Saudi account that reports on developments in the kingdom’s infrastructure projects. When the account tweeted about the launch of a new network of buses, she tweeted the word “finally!”.
More than a year later, on 15 November 2020, a Saudi account with about 200 followers – which shows a man’s face and uses the name Faisal OTB – responded to her tweet with abuse. The user wrote that he had been intrigued by Shehab’s Twitter account because it displayed both the Saudi and Palestinian flags and denounced her for posting “rubbish”. The account user then said he had taken screenshots of some of Shehab’s Twitter activity and reported it on Kollona Amn – adding that he hoped she would be deported to Palestine.
Shehab’s response – which was posted shortly before she left the UK to return to Saudi – was defiant. She said in a short response that it would not be that bad to go to Palestine, where she could visit the Holy Mosque in Jerusalem and that he should do as he wished.
On official Saudi websites, Kollona Amn – which also has a Twitter account – is described as an app that allows citizens and expatriates to submit security and criminal reports related to personal life attacks, threats, impersonation, extortion, penetration of social media accounts, defamation, fraud and other criminal offences and security reports.
Noura Aljizawi, a researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which identifies digital threats against civil society, said the use of such applications – which can be downloaded via app stores for iPhone and Android users – represented a “new phase of digital authoritarianism”.
“It used to be that this kind of censorship was conducted by security intelligence forces, but now having these applications and encouraging citizens to report on each other, is opening the door to massive censorship,” she said.
“It is very concerning because people who post something cannot predict the risk or who is going to report them, and who is going to go back and search their feed for posts that don’t align with government propaganda,” Aljizawi said. Recalling her own experience in Syria, Aljizawi described the phenomenon of citizens being unable to trust their own neighbours.
“Sometimes people find themselves in trouble. They need a promotion or need to prove their loyalty to the state, so they do something like this. It’s enough to just take a screenshot and report it,” she said.
Apple and Google did not immediately respond to questions by the Guardian about whether they would review allowing Kollona Amn to be downloaded in light of Shehab’s sentence….
Lynna @ #101, I remember reading about that story when it was first emerging. It should be getting so much more media attention.
ravensays
Florida is going to force a pregnant 16 year old to give birth.
Because she isn’t mature enough to make a decision about her own body and life.
The absurdity of this court ruling is obvious.
She isn’t mature enough to decide to get an abortion but she is mature enough to give birth and become a mother? There is a contradiction here.
She also lives in some sort of highly dysfunctional environment. Her parents don’t exist any more, a close friend died recently, she isn’t in school although she is in a GED program, and she doesn’t have a legal guardian.
Doesn’t look like a good place to…be a teenage mother.
A Florida courts rules teen is not ‘mature’ enough to get an abortion
by KHALID LAWS | The National DeskWednesday, August 17th 2022
WASHINGTON (TND) — A pregnant teenager in Florida may be forced into giving birth after an appeals court ruled that she was “not mature enough” to have an abortion, according to NBC News.
The parentless 16-year-old was appealing a decision made by a Florida judge that blocked her from having an abortion without a parent’s consent, as required by the state’s laws.
Ruling against the teen, the three-judge panel stated that she “had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.”
“Having reviewed the record, we affirm the trial court’s decision under the deferential standard of appellate review set out (in the consent law),” the panel said.
However, one judge wrote that the appeals court should send the case back to the original judge for possible further consideration.
“The trial judge apparently sees this matter as a very close call, finding that the minor was ‘credible,’ ‘open’ with the judge, and nonevasive,” Judge Scott Makar wrote. “The trial judge must have been contemplating that the minor — who was 10 weeks pregnant at the time — would potentially be returning before long — given the statutory time constraints at play — to shore up any lingering doubt the trial court harbored.”
Makar noted that the teen lives with relatives and also has an appointed guardian. Makar added that the teen was savvy enough to do research “to gain an understanding about her medical options and their consequences.”
“She is pursuing a GED with involvement in a program designed to assist young women who have experienced trauma in their lives by providing educational support and counseling,” Makar wrote. “The minor experienced renewed trauma (the death of a friend) shortly before she decided to seek termination of her pregnancy.”
In 2020, Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., signed legislation into law that requires written consent from a minor’s parent or legal guardian for an abortion.
“Thanks to Ron DeSantis, Florida is now forcing a teenager to give birth against her will,” Florida Democratic Party spokesman Travis Reuther told NBC News. “That is an appalling and dangerous overreach by the Governor, who claims to represent the ‘free state of Florida,’ but wants to make women’s healthcare decisions for them.”
The Russians hit a civilian object with missiles again. This time it was a dormitory. The number of casualties is still unclear, but there are dead and wounded.
Russia is a terrorist state. A murderer country.
Video at the (Twitter) link. The death toll is rising.
…And here we are now, all discussing Ukraine’s possible way to retake Kherson and Melitopol and witnessing Russian airfields in Crimea wiped out by Ukrainian attacks on a daily basis.
That’s quite someprogress since February.
And yet now it’s all over social media again: “Ukraine may not make it.”
Why? Because Russia is still strong, it has taken another small town in Donbas, and it’s reinforcing its Kherson garrison and “mobilizing” more mercenaries.
Yes, this war is hard at any possible level. It’s bloody, and it’s ugly.
It is true that Ukrainian soldiers and officers write Facebook posts that are full of desperation and grief for all the hell and destruction they’ve been through.
They are angry at their commanders for not doing a good job, for not providing enough artillery support, and for making their soldiers hold the ground in conditions few human beings can survive.
Ukraine has mobilized hundreds of thousands of personnel, but many are undertrained and underequipped, and their commanders are very often under-qualified.
Due to the lack of manpower for the 1,000-kilometer front line, the Ukrainian command is forced into plugging holes with Territorial Defense units — basically lightly-armed yesterday’s taxi drivers and software developers led by yesterday’s military clerks with no battlefield leadership experience.
It is also true that Ukrainian counter-battery activities are barely effective in stripping Russia of its most powerful weapon of advancement — overwhelming artillery with a vast stock of munitions available.
Ukraine still finds it hard to do anything about it. It lacks long-range artillery pieces, it lacks competent battlefield leaders, and the munitions supply coming from the West is still not enough.
Ukraine is extremely dependent on Western military supplies, and it finds it hard to get enough weapons and hardware to arm its new brigades and regiments.
The Russian wall of fire still destroys everything in its way, Ukrainian cities and defensive lines alike.
The Ukrainian infantry in trenches has to carry this terrible load on its shoulders and pay with its blood for every single day we’re not seeing any significant Russian progress. When this is over, we will spend a decade mourning our dead.
And the Ukrainian command, with its limited resources, too often makes a bid on the persistence and combat heroism of their soldiers, bringing them to extreme exhaustion.
The Ukrainian death toll is horrifying. We do not know the exact number, but based on estimates confirmed by Ukrainian officials, it’s way over 10,000 killed in action at this point. The price behind the relatively stable present situation now is beyond imaginable.
This war is a mess.
It’s foolish to imagine it as a tale of a shining knight slaying the evil dragon in just one strike with a magic sword.
Yet, it’s even more foolish to fall into despair now — given all the progress Ukraine has already made.
Over these months, we’ve made our way from the West not giving us a chance against Russia and providing us with weapons for guerrilla warfare — to the West talking about the war until victory and sending us advanced artillery, air defense, missiles, kamikaze drones, and vehicles worth billions of dollars.
We’ve made the way from Russia standing just at the gate of Kyiv to Russia hastily recruiting convicts as cannon fodder and forming poorly-trained “volunteer battalions” motivated by nothing but a chance to earn at least some money.
Russia’s offensive potential has been degraded to the point of being able to gain just very marginal, painfully slow, and barely meaningful territorial gains in some sections of the Donbas front line, where it can still create a heavy concentration of manpower and artillery.
The Battle of Donbas has been the very focus of Russia’s war effort for over four months now. Nonetheless, it’s not even close to completing the seizure of the whole region.
So no — when Russia spends weeks and enormous resources to push the Ukrainian military out of Pisky, a small ruined town outside of Donetsk — it does not mean “the Ukrainian front is collapsing,” as some would say.
And no — when the Ukrainian military decides to retreat to yet another local defensive line following a long battle, this does not mean that “Russia is winning this war.”
Because victory comes as your enemy’s military force is defeated and destroyed to the point of being unable to keep on fighting — not when you occupy a useless heap of ruins and ashes that used to be a city.
Foreign military assistance is indeed still far from enough to surely win this war. But six months ago, we could only dream of having M142 HIMARS systems. Right now, they continue wiping out Russian ammo dumps and mercenary headquarters all along the front line.
It is the blood of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that has made a difference. Along with the effort of so many other people in Ukraine and beyond who are bringing us closer to ultimate success.
So, in other words — stop whining about this war.
Whining does not help. We have already come very far, and much more is yet to be done. A lot of artillery pieces and tons of munitions are yet to be agreed on and delivered, and a lot of issues within the Ukrainian war effort are yet to be exposed and fixed.
Ukraine now has an increasingly good chance to prevail, unless we decide to dive deep into self-inflicted hopelessness.
Be a part of a solution in any way you can, or get out of the way.
ravensays
After DeathSantis removed an elected DA, a lot of people thought there was something drastically wrong here. There is.
.1. Warren didn’t actually do anything!!! He said some stuff about the Florida Forced Birther law. This is making speech and thoughts a crime.
.2. DeathSantis doesn’t have the authority to remove an elected DA according to people who know Florida law.
This has to be done by the state legislature.
Since the legislature is controlled by the GOP, they may well remove Warren anyway, but so far, due process hasn’t been followed.
Suspended Florida prosecutor sues Gov. Ron DeSantis to get his job back
August 17, 202212:52 PM ET GREG ALLEN
MIAMI — A Florida prosecutor is suing Gov. Ron DeSantis for removing him from office.
The state attorney from Tampa, Andrew Warren, was ousted earlier this month by DeSantis. The Republican governor said he acted because of statements Warren had signed pledging not to prosecute people for violating abortion restrictions or a law prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors.
Warren filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, saying that the governor violated his First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Although he spoke in favor of abortion rights and gender-affirming medical care, Warren had not taken any action on those issues and his office had no cases pending. Warren was twice elected as state attorney, and Warren says DeSantis violated his right to freedom of speech and by his actions overturned an election.
Florida Gov. DeSantis takes aim at what he sees as indoctrination in schools
Florida’s governor signs controversial law opponents dubbed ‘Don’t Say Gay’
“There’s so much more at stake here than my job,” Warren said at a news conference in Tallahassee.
Warren says DeSantis also violated Florida law by improperly removing him from office for political reasons.
“The governor’s authority is not unlimited,” Warren said.
He’s asking the court to rescind DeSantis’ order and reinstate him as state attorney. And he’s set up a legal defense fund.
DeSantis appointed a county judge to replace Warren, at least temporarily.
The governor has dismissed other Democratic elected officials, including the sheriff of Broward County, Scott Israel, for failings in his department’s response to the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four years ago.
Six years ago, then-Gov. Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator, took a few dozen capital cases away from the state attorney in Orlando after she announced she would not seek the death penalty. But he did not remove her from office.
DeSantis’ office hasn’t responded to Warren’s lawsuit. Depending on what happens in court, Warren’s removal from office may also be reviewed by the state Senate. Florida’s Senate is likely to defer action until after the court proceedings.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 109
Warren didn’t actually do anything!!!
Average American Wingnut: “HE WAS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR BY (((GEORGE SORSOS))) TO PUNISH PATRIOTS AND CHRISTIANS TO BRING ABOUT THE WILL OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER!!!”
Yes, that’s exactly what Alex Jones has been claiming lately and I’m sure that DeSantis is pandering to that very group if he doesn’t actually believe it himself. Also, demographics may have changed since my youth, but doesn’t Florida have a significantly large Jewish population that wouldn’t stand such obvious antisemitism, or have they died off only to be replaced by the Trumpist old fart gentiles living in The Villages and the equally fascist Cuban exile community who is still pining for the return of Batista?
Initially, Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, pleaded not guilty to tax fraud. Today, he changed his mind.
It was last summer when Donald Trump faced a rather brutal legal setback. A New York district attorney’s office brought charges against the former president’s business, the Trump Organization, as well as Allen Weisselberg, the Republican’s long-serving and trusted chief financial officer, alleging widespread tax fraud.
Initially, Weisselberg pleaded not guilty. This morning, as NBC News reported, he came to the opposite conclusion.
[…] Weisselberg pleaded guilty Thursday to criminal charges tied to his indictment in a tax fraud case involving the company’s business dealings. He admitted to all of the counts in the indictment against him, filed last July. The judge said Weisselberg, 75, agreed to pay $1,994,321 in taxes, interest, and penalties as part of his guilty plea and to serve five months in jail.
Weisselberg’s name may not be familiar to national audiences, but when it comes to the former president’s business, few players are as important. The Wall Street Journal reported a while back that Weisselberg was described by a person close to the company as “the most senior person in the organization that’s not a Trump.”
NBC News’ Katy Tur spoke to a former Trump Organization employee who added that Weisselberg “knows where all financial bodies are buried within the Trump Organization.”
With this in mind, it’s of interest that Weisselberg didn’t just plead guilty to all 15 charges pending against him — including multiple felonies — according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the former executive will also have to “testify truthfully in the upcoming criminal trial of the Trump Organization.”
That’s coming up fairly soon: Jury selection in the Trump Organization trial is scheduled to begin October 24.
Whether that testimony causes problems for the former president remains to be seen.
But in the meantime, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the “culture of lawlessness“ surrounding Trump — which, as regular readers know, continues to get worse.
Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former campaign vice chairman, Rick Gates, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former adviser and former campaign aide, Roger Stone, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former White House national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was charged and convicted.
Trump’s former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was charged with wire fraud and money laundering.
Trump’s former inaugural committee chair, Tom Barrack, was charged last year with illegally lobbying Trump on behalf of a foreign government. (Elliot Broidy was the vice chair of Trump’s inaugural committee, and he found himself at the center of multiple controversies, and also pled guilty to federal charges related to illegal lobbying.)
And now the former CFO of Trump’s business has pleaded guilty to tax fraud.
To be sure, some of the aforementioned men were ultimately pardoned by the former president, who doled out pardons as party favors before exiting the White House, but this doesn’t change the “remarkable universe of criminality“ surrounding Trump.
What’s more, with multiple investigations ongoing, and Rudy Giuliani facing a possible indictment, this list may yet grow.
[…] this dynamic conflicts with the story Trump was eager to tell about himself. For years, the Republican presented himself as being aggressively “tough on crime,” which he frequently tried to incorporate into his political message.
In 2019, for example, while making the case for a border wall, the then-president declared, “The Democrats, which I’ve been saying all along, they don’t give a damn about crime. They don’t care about crime…. But I care about crime.”
Trump cared so much about crime that he apparently surrounded himself with criminals.
Steve Benen noted this bit of scary news (posted on Maddowblog):
The Washington Post ran a report yesterday that seemed hard to believe in a country with a free press: “Journalists hoping to cover a Republican rally featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Senate candidate J.D. Vance in Ohio will have to agree to give organizers access to any footage they take, and could face questions about what it will be used for.”
As Steve Benen noted, Chuck Grassley seems to be really confused:
On the campaign trail in Iowa, Sen. Chuck Grassley told a group of local voters this week that he supports a Democratic proposal to cap insulin costs. The Republican senator recently voted against this policy during the fight over the Inflation Reduction Act.
A new YouGov poll finds Americans overwhelmingly approve of the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago beach club to retrieve classified documents that he took from the White House, 54% to 36%.
Commentary:
[…] Kimberly Guilfoyle, identified as a senior advisor to Trump, took to the airwaves, making the case that the United States had rallied behind the former president.
The evidence suggests otherwise. Trump has seen his standing improve a bit [more like remaining steady] among Republican voters, and perhaps that’s all that matters to the former president and his team, but he doesn’t appear to be winning over anyone else.
And that hard core of Republican voters is also slowly shrinking. I would like to see Trump’s cult diminish more rapidly, but I’ll take holding the line for now.
Trump’s cult is noisy and persistent, but they are definitely not winning over any Democrats.
Far-right activists have unleashed a torrent of threatening calls and emails against Boston Children’s Hospital over its health care services for transgender youth — the latest in a broad effort against those who offer gender-affirming care.
The hospital is boosting security and working with law enforcement after receiving a barrage of online complaints and threats about its program for treating trans and nonbinary youth.
The program also offers genital surgeries for patients ages 18 and up. Far-right influencers and their followers are falsely claiming doctors are performing these surgeries on minors, particularly young children.
U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Rachael Rollins issued a statement saying the Department of Justice will ensure “equal protection of transgender people under the law,” and urged people to report potential hate crimes to the office’s new hotline, 1-83-END-H8-NOW.
Attacks on the hospital crescendoed after Libs of TikTok, a popular far-right social media account, posted a video last week to its 1.3 million followers falsely claiming the hospital “is now offering ‘gender-affirming hysterectomies’ for young girls.”
The hospital refuted those claims, and said in an email to Axios that the attention has sparked “hostile” online messages, “including threats of violence toward our clinicians and staff.”
Libs of TikTok has made similar claims about a Nebraska children’s hospital, and has since targeted Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
Massachusetts’ strong protections for transgender youth have made the state a target for people who oppose gender-affirming care at a time when other states have passed laws restricting such treatment.
Moira Szilagyi, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, wrote in a blog post last week that laws restricting gender-affirming care and criminalizing pediatricians who provide it have a “chilling effect” for those seeking and providing care.
“The people who suffer the most from this discrimination are of course the children and teens just trying to live their lives as their true selves,” she wrote.
“If there’s any place you would think is sacred in political or social life, it would be a children’s hospital that treats children with cancer and severe illnesses,” Alejandra Caraballo, an instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, told Axios. She added that the tactic is “exactly a page out of the anti-abortion playbook,” which she noted has led to abortion providers being murdered.
The American Medical Association and other major medical groups have endorsed gender-affirming care. The AMA asked governors last year to oppose legislation in their states limiting transgender health care for youth, calling it “medically-necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people.”
At least 16 studies through January 2022 suggest that gender-affirming medical care results in positive mental health outcomes.
Doctors do not perform genital surgeries on young children; patients seeking those surgeries must be at least 18 in nearly all cases.
Children approaching puberty might seek medicines (known as puberty blockers) that block testosterone and estrogen to delay their bodies from developing, but this is reversible.
Older teens who meet certain requirements can obtain cross-gender hormones (some have permanent effects, while others are reversible), an option that doctors typically turn to before considering gender-affirming surgeries.
Opponents of gender-affirming care have falsely said children are getting genital surgeries, which has snowballed into the far right claiming that “genital mutilation” and “grooming” are happening, said Jack Turban, incoming assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco.
“One political strategy has been to conflate what medical or surgical interventions are considered for different age groups or stages of development,” Turban told Axios.
Far-right accounts online falsely accused Boston Children’s Hospital of giving children vaginoplasties, a surgery used to construct a vagina for transgender women, and shared a factsheet about the procedure.
The factsheet stated patients between ages 17 and 35 are eligible, but Boston Children’s Hospital told Axios the document was outdated and unclear.
“For surgical consultation, you must be 17 years of age and between 18 and 35 years of age at the time of surgery,” the hospital said. It has since updated its website to reflect those protocols.
There’s an odd subplot to the story of former President Trump and the National Archives.
It involves National Archives records, it involves Trump, and it involves two of his associates: Kash Patel, the former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) staffer and transition-era Pentagon official, and John Solomon, the right-wing journalist who played a role in the first Trump impeachment.
Both Solomon and Patel have leapt to Trump’s defense since last week’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, where agents recovered boxes of classified information that the former President unlawfully took from the government at the end of his term and stashed away in the bowels of his South Florida beach club.
Trump designated Solomon and Patel as his representatives to the National Archives in June — an obscure but important role that gave them nearly unfettered access to records from his administration.
Both Solomon and Patel have said that they intended to use their access to publish records from the Trump White House — specifically those having to do with investigations into ties between Trump and Russia during the 2016 election […]
Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington told Politico at the time that the two “will work to make available to the American people previously declassified documents that reveal a clear conspiracy to unlawfully spy on candidate and then President Donald J. Trump — by the FBI, DOJ, and others — the largest state-sponsored criminality in American history.” [FFS]
[…] which records are we talking about?
Some records were taken unlawfully by Trump to Mar-a-Lago. The content of those documents may be different from those in the bulk archive of records held by the National Archives — the records that Patel and Solomon have access to in their role as Trump’s representatives to NARA.
Solomon and Patel, however, have offered differing accounts about which records they intended to publish.
Solomon issued a statement this week proclaiming that the records taken to Mar-a-Lago were completely separate from those that he accessed at NARA. […]
Solomon added in the statement that he used National Archives records for one story: a July article that accused the DOJ of “secretly thwarting” an eleventh hour attempt from Trump to declassify and release records relating to the Trump-Russia investigation.
Patel has made similar claims, accusing bureaucrats at the DOJ of blocking Trump’s attempt to declassify federal records.
Patel’s statements about records line up with Solomon’s to a point: he also said that Trump named him as his NARA rep “to try to get these documents out.” […]
In an appearance with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, Patel took it further. He suggested that some of the records at Mar-a-Lago may have been related to “Russiagate,” complaining that the FBI search would render them inaccessible, because they would be evidence in a grand jury investigation. […]
“No presidential records should be at Mar-a-Lago. Full stop. This remains true regardless of whether the records are classified, unclassified, subject to executive privilege or any other privilege that has been cited in defense of the records being held at the residence,” Baron [Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at NARA and a professor at the University of Maryland] said. “Not a single presidential record should be at Mar-a-Lago.”
Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen believes that the former president’s alleged possession of “sensitive” classified documents at Mar-a-Lago was kept deliberately as a “get out of jail free” card should he be arrested for potential felonies.
[…]
“The second they would put him in handcuffs, he would turn around and say I have the documentation showing, for example, where our nuclear launch pads are,” Cohen told CNN. “This is what I believe: He would use it and say, if you proceed with this, I’m telling you right now there are 20 of my loyal supporters, you don’t know who they are, but we will release that information to Russia, to Iran, to whoever it might be.”
Cohen added that Trump would carry out this plan because he “doesn’t care about this country.”
Over the last three weeks, attention has focused on the behind-the-lines attacks made by Ukraine on Russian bases, supply depots, and infrastructure.[…] These attacks, made with a combination of precision weapons—including possible Ukrainian forces on the ground many kilometers inside areas Russia considered “safe”—have changed the entire tone of the war.
Since it began hitting the bridges over the Dnipro River, Ukraine has taken charge of the southern theater in the invasion, causing Russia to make hurried deployments in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, and leaving them to struggle with fragile pontoon bridges and barge transports as a means of supplying forces on the west bank. […]
In the last few days, much of the attention has focused on Crimea. Ukraine has taken out two air bases in the long-occupied region, and taken out another Russian supply depot, and hit a power station that temporarily shut down rail travel in northern Crimea. The demonstration that Ukraine can reach literally hundreds of kilometers into territory that Russia “annexed” more than eight years ago has caused both panic and paranoia among Russians in the area. Thousands have been trying to escape across the Kerch Bridge into Russia. Meanwhile, Russian forces are reportedly conducting extensive and intrusive searches in the hopes of uncovering Ukrainian partisans.
Russia’s major response seems to have been to pick up the pace on both missiles and artillery. Rates of shelling in both Donetsk and Kharkiv have reached levels that haven’t been seen in over a month. […]
But there’s one other way Russia may be preparing to react to Ukraine’s recent actions, and it’s extremely concerning. On Wednesday, the spokesperson for the Russian military claimed that Ukraine is planning a “false flag provocation” in which “Russia will be blamed for a man-made catastrophe” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. [video at the link]
The Zaporizhzhia plant, located in the town of Enerhodar, was the site of that heart-stopping exchange back in early March in which Russian forces launched a night attack on the plant and the nearby town. In that assault, which included artillery and MLRS fire, security cameras showed Russian forces firing into the plant complex, setting fire to a training facility and back-up controls for the plant. The full extent of the damage remains unclear.
Since Russia fully occupied the area, there have been reports of engineers and scientists being forced to work endless shifts, and of Russia taking numerous actions that endanger the safety of the plant. Over the last month, as Ukraine has shown proficiency in erasing Russian supply depots many kilometers from the front line, Enerhodar has become a major ammunition depot. Russia has reasoned—probably correctly—that Ukraine would not risk firing into the area of the nuclear plant, even with high precision weaponry. […] [map at the link]
Russia has also reportedly used the Zaporizhzhia plant as the launching point for artillery and rocket attacks at other locations, that includes Ukrainian cities on the opposite side of the Dnipro River, as well as areas in both Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
[…] A nation that already plays host to the burned-out hulk of Chernobyl and the surrounding “dead zone” takes these things extremely seriously. They’re taking this threat seriously enough that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has renewed calls for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEI) and United Nations to assume control of the plant and ensure its safety.
One reason this is likely popping up now: the roads south of Enerhodar represent one of the major routes that Russia is now using to shuttle materiel back and forth in efforts to shore up its actions in Kherson and to respond to Ukrainian moves in Zaporizhzhia. Russia may be trying to leverage concern about the situation at the plant to protect critical crossroads less than 10 kilometers to the south.
In any case, considering that Russia has already blamed the explosion of some ammunition depots on “accidents,” the idea that they’ve stacked artillery shells and rockets around a nuclear plant is not a good thing.
It’s been some time since we’ve done an update on the state of the battlefield across Ukraine, so consider this a very quick update, touching on the highlights in each area. In Kherson, Russia has taken advantage of reduced Ukrainian forces at the southern end of the line to secure Stanislav and retake most of Olexsandrivka. Between that point and Snihurivka, both Ukraine and Russia have established salients and defensive positions, with a number of small villages changing hands over the last two weeks as the two forces jockey for position. […] Russian forces appear to be holding out, despite being largely isolated from resupply or relief.
On a more strategic level, both major bridges over the Dnipro River in the oblast are now considered impassable to vehicles, and Russia has been resorting to barges as the major means of supply. There have been reports of Russian leadership fleeing the area, and of Russian forces escaping by barge, but if any of those reports are true, the results don’t seem to be visible in terms of the area controlled on the ground. [map at the link]
In large part, the lines in the south are where they were two weeks ago […] [map at the link]
Russia’s major effort in the east continues to be the press toward Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. However, despite a resumption of high levels of artillery shelling, the points of contention haven’t moved a great deal from where they were two weeks ago. In general, Russia has had more success at the southern end of the line, with forces extending ever closer to Bakhmut. Pro-Russian sources have made multiple claims that Russia has occupied parts or all of Bakhmut over the last week. That doesn’t seem to be true. The level of artillery pounding many of these small towns and villages are receiving is intense, but so far, there doesn’t seem to be the kind of breakthrough that would allow Russia to make the kind of significant gains that came after Severodonetsk finally toppled.
A big part of why things are moving slowly on the eastern part of this front might be that there no longer is a western part. A month ago, there appeared to be a real threat that Slovyansk could be dealing with forces from both east and west, but that was before things took a big change around Izyum. [map at the link]
What happened to that threat from the west was Bohorodychne. For over two weeks, Russia was unable to dislodge Ukrainian forces that had moved into the hills above the town, and when Russian forces faltered, Ukraine surged back in. Since then, Russia has made multiple unsuccessful attempts to get back on the offensive. Instead, They appear to have lost control of both Dibrovne and Dolyna, locations that were the subject of hard fighting for weeks. On Thursday, there was word that Russia has actually abandoned the town of Dovhen’ke, whose capture was one of the biggest victories of the whole Izyum salient. However, Ukraine hasn’t moved into this area as Russia left behind a present in the form of a dense area of mines and other explosive devices.
If Russia has any good news in this area, it’s that they seem to have pushed Ukrainian forces from those pesky woods west of the city of Izyum, where a small group of Ukrainians had been operating almost with impunity for over a month. […] [map at the link]
If there’s any really bad news area over the last two weeks, it’s Kharkiv. As most of the focus has turned to other areas, Russia has sent more forces into the area. That force that Ukraine was able to maintain on the eastern side of the Siversky Donets River for over a month now appears to have been withdrawn or eliminated, with Russia back in control of Khotimlya and locations directly across the (still out) bridge at Staryi Saltiv. Russian forces have also turned the disputed areas around Rubiznhe and Ternova in their favor. Perhaps most importantly, Russia has pushed back to retake Vesele. That not only secures much of the access to their stronghold on the west side of Lyptsi, it gives them another area in artillery range of the north part of Kharkiv city.
To the west, Ukraine has actually had more success in securing previously disputed areas like Dementiivka and holding the line south of Kozacha Lopan. However, Russia has engaged in a curious strategy that seems designed to force Ukraine to draw off forces from this area. Over the last week, Russia has been sending small teams to harass, and in some cases hold, Ukrainian towns right along the Russian border. The extent of this action goes several kilometers beyond the western limit of this map. However, these actions appear to be more in the area of raids. Reports that Russia had taken Udy appear to be false, and the border actions appear to be happening in a strip just a kilometer or two wide.
Even if the action along the border doesn’t represent a serious threat, it seems likely that Ukraine will need to resume more forceful actions in the area, if only to push Russian forces back from positions that can be used to easily shell the city.
And that’s … it. A very high-level overview of where things stand and what’s been happening while all eyes have been turned toward exploding ammo dumps in Donetsk and air bases in Crimea.
Andrew Perpetua:
There is word that Russia is only going to allow the primary operators of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to enter the facility tomorrow. All others will be given an unplanned day off from work.
On the afternoon of February 1, 2016, as Iowa voters prepared for that evening’s caucuses, Bandy Lee sat by the bedside of her mother, who was terminally ill with cancer. An assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Yale, Lee had been too preoccupied with her mother’s condition to pay attention to the nascent presidential race, so she was taken aback when she saw footage of a Donald Trump rally airing on the hospital room’s small TV. What shocked her was the way Trump interacted with the crowd. “He said something about how his supporters should knock the crap out of hecklers,” she recalls, “and that if they did, he would pay their legal bills.”
His belligerent behavior meant more to Lee than it might to a casual viewer. As part of her clinical work in prison settings, she had evaluated and treated hundreds of violent offenders, including leaders of prison gangs. A native New Yorker, she had assumed that Trump “was just a shady businessman,” Lee told me, but “I suddenly realized that he had a lot in common” with those patients. “Trump was engaging in the predatory manipulation of his vulnerable followers.” In some cases, gang leaders might “ask their members to engage in violence and then issue bogus promises of protection. Like Trump, these leaders also often project extreme self-confidence, and that appeals to their followers, who tend to feel a deep emotional need for protection, connection, and identity.” […]
About 15 years ago, Lee and Gilligan began examining deaths by violence in America since 1900. As Lee sliced and diced their massive data set, she was shocked to find significantly higher national rates of violent death under Republican presidents than under Democratic ones. What’s more, murder and suicide rates were higher in states that had voted for Republican presidential candidates than in those that had voted for Democratic candidates. Their key findings were published as a 2011 monograph, Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous Than Others.
“Since 1900, every time a Republican president has taken over, economic inequality has increased and the country has become more violent,” says Gilligan [James Gilligan, one of Lee’s Harvard mentors[, now a professor of psychiatry at NYU. And as the government safety net has crumbled in recent decades, rates of murder, imprisonment, and poverty have been five to 10 times higher in the United States than in Western Europe, Canada, and Australasia. Lee and Gilligan had to circulate their data-driven paper on the political correlates of violent death rates for nearly seven years before they finally got it published in 2014 in a specialized journal, Aggression and Violent Behavior. “My sense is that our study kept getting rejected not because it was lousy science but because editors wanted to avoid appearing too political,” she says.
According to Lee, Trump’s extreme dangerousness puts him in a completely different category from previous Republican presidents, who merely endorsed a set of harsh economic policies that are associated with increased violence. In contrast to past presidents with likely personality disorders, she believes, Trump has a psychological profile that is common among violent offenders. “There is typically a developmental arrest caused by early trauma or abandonment,” Lee says. “As adults, they still act like children in the playground; convinced that might makes right, they often can’t stop bullying others. “Trump’s mother, Lee points out, became chronically ill when he turned two, and his father was cruel and emotionally unavailable, repeatedly urging his son to be “a killer.
Her clinical insights into the criminal mind draw on the stage theory of morality devised by Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg. In Kohlberg’s model, which is backed up by empirical research on children, perpetrators of violence tend to be frozen in an early developmental stage: Like young children, they rarely take into account the concerns of others and tend to obey only those whom they fear. “Such adults are incapable of any sophisticated moral calculus,” Lee says. “For Trump, the only reason not to do something—even something that is likely to harm others—is to avoid punishment. And since he has rarely been held accountable for any misdeeds, he has come to believe that he has a carte blanche to do whatever serves his immediate needs.””
Despite the scolding directed her way by influential psychiatrists, Lee contends that she has never broken the Goldwater Rule, which, as she wrote in 2017, “is the norm of ordinary practice I happen to agree with.” In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, she and her co-authors challenged Trump’s fitness to serve based on his behavior rather than on a diagnosis per se. “The issue that we are raising is not whether Trump is mentally ill,” Gilligan writes in his chapter. “It is whether he is dangerous.” As proof of the psychological peril at hand, the authors point to Trump’s angry tirades and verbal abuse of subordinates, his admiration of authoritarian leaders, conspiratorial fantasies, aversion to facts, and attraction to violence. […]
Here is a fuckbonkers hate preacher we don’t think we’ve met here at Ye Olde Wonkette!
His name is Jonathan Shelley and he is some Dallas-area hick redneck who thinks the gays should be executed and LGBTQ+ people are child molesters and also they hate children and they “hate Baptists, they hate Christianity, and they hate God.” Specifically he’s the pastor of the Stedfast Baptist Church in Watauga, Texas, which describes itself as an “independent fundamental King James Only Baptist church.” If you know anything about fundamentalist Christians, that type of church is truly where brain cells go to die.
He once did a sermon where he celebrated a 75-year-old man who was run over and died during a Pride parade in Wilton Manors, Florida. “I just can’t wait until you just go to Hell” is a thing he’s said about LGBT+ people.
He’s got a weird fixation with gays, as so many white conservative Christian men do. It’s like hey man, get a hobby, go hit a golf ball, learn how to cross-stitch your favorite Bible verses into warm homemade yarn underwear, read a book or something, Jesus fuckin’ Christ, dude.
But these weirdos are just like GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY all the time, swear to God they think more about gay fucking than any actual gays, except maybe gay porn stars, who have a job to do […]
Anyway, here’s your end of day video, which is Jonathan Shelley telling us wha’ happens if you let your kids go to public school and never punish them like it says in Bible. Got a kid in public school? Get ready for a bunch of CNN and STDs! [video at the link]
These are the things that happen, according to this man, who like so many others was groomed as a white boy child with lies like “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Your children will come back home to your house and this will be them:
They will be a “communist, leftist liberal.”
They will be “wanting to vote for Biden.”
They will “love CNN.”
They will be “obsessed with TikTok.”
They will be “dressed like a literal whore.”
They will be “a literal whore.”
They will “have all kinds of STDs.”
They will have “bastard children.”
They will “wanna get an abortion for their most recent knockup.”
They will have had “all their relationships [end] in disaster.”
Hate it when our kids become communists who love Joe Biden and CNN and TikTok […]
This has been a nice enjoyable video for us to watch together […]
This is a gross video and if there are any children present in the room, you should not play it before sending them out. We honestly don’t know what prolonged exposure to Tucker Carlson giggling his special giggle about Liz Cheney getting “spanked” in Tuesday night’s primary could do to an innocent child, but it can’t be good. [video at the link]
It’s not a sound people on this planet make, at least not when they’re genuinely laughing. It’s like a hybrid of the Mozart giggle in Amadeus and Patrick Bateman in American Psycho doing his best impression of a person who has a soul behind their eyes.
Anyway, Tucker was so excited to report Wednesday night that “Liz Cheney is America’s foremost defender of democracy, but democracy SPANKED HER HARD LAST NIGHT!” There’s that Tucker-style misogyny, which is probably directly related to his well-documented masculinity issues. And then he made his laugh, like it was written in the script.
He continued, “But it didn’t decrease her arrogance! She compared herself to Abraham Lincoln! We’re gonna have a gloat-a-thon, we’re just gonna say it, we’re gonna have a gloat-a-thon over the defeat of Liz Cheney, and we’re gonna enjoy the hell out of it, and we hope you will too!”
Uh, OK.
Likewise, here is Eric Trump on Newsmax, bragging on how his daddy “killed another political dynasty.” Because “he first killed the Bushes, then he killed the Clintons, and last night he killed the Cheneys.” We’d focus more on how little Eric said his daddy “killed” those people, but look, it’s already rock bottom for Donald Trump to be your father and to have to brag on him. We imagine he desperately needs to believe his daddy killed all those people, like PEW PEW PEW! [video at the link]
This comes after Tuesday night on Fox News, as the results were coming in, when they were gloating about Cheney’s completed expected loss in real time. […]
It’s all so stupid, because Liz Cheney knew this was going to happen, that in the modern authoritarian shithole version of the Republican Party, that if you act as a patriot, you will get primaried and you will lose. She did it anyway. (Yes, we hear all those of you reminding us that the Cheneys are bad and have a bad history of doing bad things. You are correct! Now go sit quietly in the special room we’ve set up for people who are correct.)
She knew she was going to lose, and she said on the record this month that if her fight for the Constitution requires it, losing her seat is worth it. “Now the real work begins,” she said in her concession speech that turned into more of a bonus, impromptu January 6 hearing.
You’d have to be a moron not to see that wherever Cheney goes next, she has more power now than she did before. So Tucker might want to jam a pacifier in his face to plug up those giggles, and Eric might need to stop laboring under the delusion he has a father he can be proud of. […]
As Media Matters notes, Fox News played a big part in creating Cheney’s political career. But she committed the unforgivable sins of acting as if Donald Trump does not deserve to be dictator-for-life and calling bullshit on his obvious lies about the election being stolen. She didn’t think it was OK for a president to incite a terrorist attack against his own country because he’s too thin-skinned and weak to accept that a giant majority of the country loathes the very air he exhales.
If you need to hear more of Tucker’s very natural man giggles about Liz Cheney, send your kids out of the room again and here you go: [video at the link]
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. Their most recent summary:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the United Nations must ensure the security of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant occupied by Russian forces after meeting the UN secretary general, Antònio Guterres and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Lviv.
Ukraine’s military intelligence believes that Russia is planning a “provocation” at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant tomorrow. “The occupiers announced an unexpected ‘day off’ at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. On 19 August, only operative personnel will be at the ZNPP. Entry to all other employees will be closed,” defence intelligence of Ukraine tweeted. Russia has warned it may shut down the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – the largest nuclear reactor in Europe – if Ukraine continues to shell the facility – a claim Kyiv has denied.
Authorities updated the death toll in the Kharkiv attacks that took place last night and this morning, bringing the total number of people killed to 15. Russian missiles that struck a residential area Wednesday night killed 12 while a strike early this morning killed three. Dozens more were injured.
Estonia has been hit by extensive cyber-attacks after removing a Soviet-era tank monument from a region whose population is predominantly ethnic Russian, its government has said.
The Russian military announced today that it has deployed warplanes armed with state-of-the-art hypersonic missiles to the country’s Kaliningrad region, a move that has been broadly interpreted as a response to the West arming Ukraine.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry updated the number of Russian casualties to at least 44,300. Meanwhile, Mediazona, an independent news organisation in Russia, has delved into the background of some of these deaths. Based on social media confirmation by relatives, reports in local media, and statements by the local authorities, Mediazona was able to confirm 5,185 deaths and found that the disproportionate majority of Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine came from poor and minority regions of Russia.
A Russian attack killed one person and injured two in Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine, said the Mykolaiv mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych.
The DOJ confirmed that the Mar-a-Lago investigation is in its “early stages” — a point that probably ought to cause Donald Trump considerable discomfort.
It was late last week when the public was first able to review some of the official documents related to the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago. If Republicans who demanded to see the materials thought they’d benefit Donald Trump, they were mistaken.
In fact, the opposite proved true: The released documents showed that federal law enforcement recovered extensive top secret and other heavily classified documents that the former president — for reasons that are still unknown — decided to keep in his glorified country club. What’s more, the unsealed warrant noted the relevant crimes the Justice Department believes may have been committed, and pointed to the Espionage Act, the Presidential Records Act, and alleged obstruction of justice.
And while this offered important insights into the investigation, it was only a partial peek behind the curtain. In the days that followed, a variety of parties — including news organizations and Trump himself — also called for the release of the probable cause affidavit used to secure a search warrant in the first place.
On this, the Justice Department was far more cautious, insisting that the affidavit included sensitive details that risked jeopardizing an ongoing probe. (For the former president, this was a feature, not a bug, of disclosure.) It led to an important court hearing today. As NBC News reported that the court is now inclined to unseal at least some of the affidavit.
“On my initial careful review … there are portions of it that can be unsealed,” Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart said after a hearing where a top government lawyer contended the document’s release could jeopardize an investigation that is still in its “early stages.” Reinhart said he would “give the government a full and fair opportunity” to make redactions to the document, and ordered them to turn in the redacted version by next Thursday.
Those wondering if they’ll see the document today can stand down: Reinhart will review the Justice Department’s proposed redactions next week and proceed from there. It appears likely that we’ll get to see some information next week, but how much remains to be seen.
[…] During today’s hour-long hearing, for example, Jay Bratt, a top counterintelligence and national security official at the Justice Department, confirmed that there’s evidence of obstruction, and investigators had reason to believe that evidence “would be found at Mar-a-Lago.”
Bratt added that the affidavit is a “detailed and reasonably lengthy” document that contains “substantial grand jury” information in a “unique” case with “national security overtones.”
As NBC News’ report added, the DOJ official went on to explain that federal law enforcement is “very concerned about the safety of the witnesses” in the case whose identities could become compromised if the affidavit is unsealed. Bratt pointed to “amateur sleuths on the internet” who could “maybe find personal information.”
Reinhart was inclined to release a redacted version of the document anyway — the redactions will presumably address the Justice Department’s stated concerns — but all of this tells us quite a bit. For example, we now know that the criminal investigation is in its “early stages” — a point that probably ought to cause considerable discomfort for the former president — and there are “several” witnesses with valuable information.
What’s more, let’s also not forget that the lawyers arguing for more disclosure represented news organizations, including NBC News, not Trump. Indeed, for all the all-caps outrage the former president expressed online this week, his lawyers had nothing to say today — they were not a party in this case — and made no court filings in the matter.
The disconnect was jarring: On his Twitter-like platform, [Trump] declared this week, “[I]n the interest of TRANSPARENCY, I call for the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit.” But Trump’s lawyers apparently didn’t share this perspective, and played the role of observers in court today, failing to echo their client’s call.
Carl Paladino was already one of the nation’s most controversial congressional candidates. Then he joked about the attorney general’s “execution.”
[…]Carl Paladino was already one of the nation’s most controversial congressional candidates this year. […] the New York Republican has a history of racism, homophobia, and utterly bonkers conspiracy theories.
[…] House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik quickly threw her support behind the far-right candidate.
Common sense suggests the far-right candidate might’ve tried to clean up his act, at least a little, in the hopes of impressing voters. And yet, Paladino apparently can’t help himself. The Buffalo News reported:
Republican congressional candidate Carl Paladino said on a radio show last week that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland “probably should be executed” following the raid of Donald Trump’s estate in Mar-a-Lago.
As part of his on-air appearance, the GOP candidate specifically said the attorney general “should not only be impeached, he probably should be executed.” […]
Look, at this point, we could explore in detail the fact that the attorney general didn’t do anything wrong. We could also flesh out all of the entirely legitimate reasons why Garland handled this matter by the book, and why the criticisms he’s facing are baseless.
But while those details are relevant, what really matters here is something more basic: A Republican congressional candidate, who enjoys the support of the House GOP conference chair, thought it’d be a good idea to talk publicly about the attorney general’s “execution”
[…] a couple of minutes later, Paladino said in the interview that he was “just being facetious” about Garland’s death, though the congressional candidate added, “The man should be removed from office.”
[Paladino] was “joking” about Garland’s “execution” while the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security raise the alarm about a spike in threats to federal law enforcement officials.
This comes two months after CNN reported on Paladino having argued that Black Americans were kept “dumb and hungry” so they could be conditioned to only vote for the Democratic Party, adding, “You can’t teach them differently.”
Two weeks earlier, the public also learned of an interview Paladino did last year in which he said that Adolf Hitler was “the kind of leader we need today.” (The candidate soon after tried to clarify matters, issuing a statement that he doesn’t actually support Hitler.)
More recently, [Paladino] shared a Facebook message claiming recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde were false flag operations. (The Republican soon after said he had “no idea” how the post appeared on his page.)
Paladino’s comments about the attorney general can now be added to a lengthy list.
[…] part of what makes these developments notable is the degree to which the New York Republican captures a larger political dynamic. NBC News’ Benjy Sarlin, for example, recently explained, “Paladino was an early canary in the coal mine for where politics was headed. He emailed out a bestiality video to his contact list (yes, you read that correctly) along with racist memes featuring the n-word and then won the gubernatorial nomination” in New York in 2010.
[…] As ridiculous as Donald Trump’s rise in GOP politics may have seemed, there were plenty of hints about radical shifts in attitudes among rank-and-file Republicans. The fact that Paladino could win a gubernatorial primary in a large blue state, after voters learned about his odious views, proved to be a sign of things to come.
[…] during Trump’s 2016 candidacy, his political operation tapped one man to oversee the campaign in the state of New York: Carl Paladino.
[…] Republican leaders, including Stefanik, have had all kinds of opportunities to denounce Paladino and reject his congressional candidacy.
I’ll be happy to update this post if that changes, but as of this afternoon, the total number of GOP leaders who’ve condemned Paladino is zero.
Oggie: Mathomsays
I know that I already know the answer to this. I know that. But I still have to point out the hypocrisy.
Hillary Clinton was subjected to seven (count them, SEVEN) investigations because of what happened at the temporary diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Seven congressional investigations. And the worst that can be said, officially, is that there were systemic failures (which are at least partly explained by the budget cuts for diplomatic security made by the GOP in congress (that’s added by me)) and poor performance by senior officials in two departments. One of the GOP congressmen involved in the investigation accidentally said, on camera, that they were continuing the investigations to keep it in the public eye for 2016.
Then there was the kerfluffle about the emails. Which is still brought up buy right wing news and GOP on a regular basis.
And one of the constant refrains from the right — news and GOP — is that ‘where there is smoke, there is fire.’ And all those investigations proved that Hillary Clinton was the most evilist commie socialist NAZI ever to be involved in US politics. But when Trump, the darling of the GOP (and (especially) the GOP hard-core voters) is under investigation for attempting to overthrow the US government, is under investigation for attempting to steal United States Government property, is under investigation for unlawful possession of classified materials, is the defender in a civil lawsuit regarding tax and real estate fraud in New York, has been accused of bank fraud regarding personal wealth and worth of real estate, is under investigation for tax and real estate fraud in New York, is under investigation for attempting to interfere with a legal election in Georgia, is under investigation for attempting to introduce illegal electoral college slates, and is the defender in a lawsuit charging him with responsibility for the death and injury of multiple law enforcement officers, these are all just dreamed up politically-based persecutions (yes, I know that some of these ‘under investigation’ (and one is still, as far as I know, only an accusation) are, at this point, not confirmed, but, well, damn!).
So. Why are self-admitted politically based investigations against Hillary Clinton regarding Benghazi treated as ‘well, all those investigations means that she did something wrong,’ while all of the investigations, NONE of them are investigations brought outside of the legal system (I have not listed the House January 6 Committee, so don’t go there), are treated as partisan witch hunts? This is not the same group of GOP congress-critters holding what were essentially the same hearings seven times. This is multiple investigations, in multiple jurisdictions, at multiple governmental levels.
So, I guess my real question is, are Republicans really that fucking stupid?
Oggie @127, in answer to your closing question, I would say “willfully ignorant.’
In other news, as posted by Axios:
The Biden administration is speeding up its monkeypox vaccine distribution effort, federal health officials said Thursday…. The Department of Health and Human Services will make an additional 1.8 million doses of the Jynneos vaccine available next week, allowing states and localities to start ordering more vaccine doses sooner than officials originally planned.
More than a week after they searched former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence, FBI agents are still sifting through the seized documents, two law enforcement officials briefed on the matter told NBC News.
So, yeah, expect a long timeline. It could be while before we see results.
New York Times: A Black family in Maryland had their home appraised at $472,000. Then they had a white man they knew pretend to be the house’s owner. Then the same house was valued at $750,000. (Other Black families have had the same experience elsewhere.)
Donald J. Trump became enraged after a visibly inebriated Rudolph Giuliani held a press conference in which he called the G.O.P. primary in Wyoming “rigged” and demanded a recount.
Trump had been celebrating the defeat of his nemesis, Representative Liz Cheney, when Giuliani popped up on TV, claiming “widespread fraud and abuse” in the Wyoming vote.
Giuliani, wobbling from side to side and slurring his words, made the allegations in the parking lot of Ritz-Carlton Total Cattle Feed, an establishment on the outskirts of Cheyenne.
As the former mayor of New York spewed his tirade, Trump threw a bottle of ketchup at the TV screen, turning Guiliani’s televised image into a hideous mélange of dripping red condiment and dark-brown hair dye.
Reportedly, the former President is now hoping that Georgia’s probe of the 2020 election will result in legal jeopardy for his erstwhile attorney. “Lock him up,” Trump was heard muttering.
Hillary Clinton was subjected to seven (count them, SEVEN) investigations because of what happened at the temporary diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Seven congressional investigations.
…
Then there was the kerfluffle about the emails. Which is still brought up buy right wing news and GOP on a regular basis.
In Finland we seem to have a homegrown version of the “but her emails” narrative, with the media and opposition wringing their hands about the partying habit of the Social Democratic prime minister Sanna Marin (a relatively young leftish woman leader, who has been in office for nearly three years and is facing an election months from now).
Just yesterday, another incident of Marin partying and being drunk on her free time (Gasp !!!!) was brought up, with a new added allegation about possible illicit drug use. Or allegation of partying with people who use illicit drugs. Or something. Frankly, this new twist is so far fetched it’s more akin to “Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth” or “Hunter Biden’s laptop”. Here’s a decent review of it in English:
Finnish media alleged a voice in the background could be heard shouting “the flour gang”, supposedly a reference to cocaine or amphetamines. Marin and other commentators denied this was the term used, however, and she said she did not know what it meant.
Now, there’s furious debate on Finnish social media on what the blurry words shouted on the video clip actually are, and whether “flour gang” (jauhojengi) is even a real slang reference to drugs, and whether some blurry white pixels seen on the video are a coke line laid on table or not. And there’s cringey demands from some opposition politicians like this (Kärnä is a noted contrarian populist):
Mikko Kärnä, a Centre party MP, tweeted that the prime minister should take a drugs test and publish the result. “The people are entitled to expect this from their prime minister,” he said.
Also, here’s an interesting Twitter thread in Finnish:
This isn’t getting any mainstream attention (yet), but it seems that the “Sanna Marin uses drugs” meme has been quietly cultivated on chan-type boards for months now, only to be turned into an active disinformation operation when there was something to give it the faintest plausibility. The smell of Russian information manipulation stinks to high heaven here. Finnish mainstream media jumped to the bait, and now some outlets are backtracking, while others are doubling down or quietly going back to wringing hands about mere alcohol-fueled partying.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
The US is readying about $800m of additional military aid to Ukraine and could announce it as soon as Friday, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday. President Joe Biden would authorise the assistance using his presidential drawdown authority, which allows the president to authorise the transfer of excess weapons from US stocks.
Russia has failed to gain ground in cyberspace against Ukraine, the head of Britain’s GCHQ intelligence service has said. “President Putin has comprehensively lost the information war in Ukraine and in the west,” Jeremy Fleming said in an op-ed in The Economist on Friday. “Just as with its land invasion, Russia’s initial online plans appear to have fallen short.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has urged Ukrainians to stay away from enemy command posts and logistics bases. “Do not approach the military objects of the Russian army,” he said after reports of explosions overnight in Russian-occupied Crimea. Speaking on Wednesday, Zelenskiy said Russians have realised that Crimea is “not a place for them” and hinted more attacks could lie ahead.
Fires and explosions have been reported at military targets inside Russia and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, in the latest of a string of apparent sabotage missions deep into Russian-held territory.
Two Russian villages were evacuated after a blaze at a munitions depot near the Ukrainian border in Belgorod province. “An ammunition depot caught fire near the village of Timonovo”, less than 50km from the border, the regional governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said in a statement, adding that no casualties were reported….
Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, will participate online in the second summit of the Crimea Platform, an international platform for work and cooperation on the liberation of Crimea. The summit, initiated by Ukraine, will be available to watch live on Nato’s website.
The Kyiv Independent reports that rescuers are searching for people and bodies under the rubble of a dormitory destroyed in attacks on the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
The head of Kharkiv Oblast police, Volodymyr Tymoshko, said there are currently 19 people confirmed dead, including a child, and 20 injured, with the death toll expected to rise after Russian rockets struck two hostel dormitories.
Three men, including a mafia hitman, have been charged in the 2018 prison killing of the notorious Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger.
Bulger’s death raised questions about why the known “snitch” was placed in the West Virginia prison’s general population instead of in more protective quarters.
The men – Fotios “Freddy” Geas, 55, Paul J DeCologero, 48, and Sean McKinnon, 36 – were charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Prosecutors allege Geas and DeCologero struck Bulger in the head multiple times, causing his death. McKinnon is charged separately with making false statements to a federal agent.
Bulger, who ran the largely Irish mob in Boston in the 70s and 80s, served as an FBI informant who ratted on his gang’s main rival, according to the bureau. He later became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives. Bulger strongly denied ever being a government informant.
Authorities have not revealed a possible motive for Bulger’s killing, which came hours after he was transferred to USP Hazelton in West Virginia from a prison in Florida. He had been serving a life sentence for 11 murders and other crimes.
…
DeCologero was part of an organised crime gang led by his uncle on Massachusetts’ North Shore called the “DeCologero Crew”.
He was convicted of buying heroin that was used to try to kill a teenage girl his uncle wanted dead because he feared she would betray the crew to police. The heroin didn’t kill her, so another man broke her neck, dismembered her and buried her remains in the woods, court records say.
Geas was a close associate of the mafia and acted as an enforcer, but was not an official “made” member because he is Greek, not Italian.
Geas and his brother were sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for their roles in several violent crimes, including the 2003 killing of Adolfo “Big Al” Bruno, a Genovese crime family boss in Springfield, Massachusetts. Another mobster ordered Bruno’s killing because he was upset he had talked to the FBI, prosecutors said.
Bulger fled Boston in late 1994 after his FBI handler, John Connolly Jr, warned him he was about to be indicted.
After more than 16 years on the run and with a $2m reward on his head, he was captured at age 81 in Santa Monica, California, where he had been living in a rent-controlled apartment near the beach with his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Greig.
His transfer to Hazelton was prompted by disciplinary issues, a federal law enforcement official said. In February 2018, Bulger threatened an assistant supervisor at the prison in Florida, telling her “your day of reckoning is coming”….
Italian newspapers have issued front-page warnings of alleged Russian interference in the upcoming election… This comes as a response to comments from Russia’s former president urging Europeans to ‘“punish” their “stupid” governments, AFP reports.
Former president and current deputy chair of Russia’s security council, Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday called for Europeans to be “not only outraged at the actions of their governments… but to hold them to account and punish them for their obvious stupidity”.
“Act, European neighbours! Don’t remain silent! Demand accountability!” he said on Telegram.
Following Medvedev’s comments, The Repubblica and Il Messaggero front pages on Friday wrote of Russian “interference”, while the Corriere della Sera said Russia was “agitating” political waters ahead of the vote due to be held on 25 September.
ravensays
Here is an unbiased evaluation of the war in Ukraine from CNN.
I spend time on Ukrainian websites and they sort of try to be objective but are definitely slanted.
.1. The Ukrainian assault to take Kherson isn’t going to happen soon. For good reasons.
The Russian tactics of war are the meatgrinder, throw bodies and tanks into the attack and take heavy casualties. They can do that because they don’t care about their soldiers, from poor areas and often minorities.
.2. Ukraine can’t do that. Their soldiers are representative of their society and often the best of it. They are taking heavy casualties right now as it is.
.3. So, their strategy is to sit back and selectively attack the Russians with guided long range equipment, guided artillery shells, Javelin etc.. anti-tank missiles, HIMARS, planes, etc..
This is going to slowly degrade the Russian’s war fighting ability.
.4. So what is going to happen next?
Who knows? It looks like more of the same, a war of attrition without much change in the lines between the two sides.
It gets cold in the winter in Ukraine. The Sea of Azov and the Black Sea even freeze over. Even in New England, the sea almost never freezes in winter.
Not a good time to camp out in a trench.
It is going to be a miserable, long winter for both the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.
A three-week drive around Ukraine’s front lines taught me this: The tide of the war is unlikely to turn any time soon
Analysis by Nic Robertson, CNN
Updated 11:06 PM ET, Sun August 14, 2022
CNN goes to town on fringes of Ukrainian control. See what it is like
Kramatorsk, Ukraine (CNN)There are many observations to be made about Ukraine. But on a recent road trip, one sticks out — just how vast the country is.
Three weeks of driving from south to east in this sprawling country through front line villages, towns, past trenches and along hedgerows which are this wars strategic equivalent of high ground, is an education, and one that Russian President Vladimir Putin could use.
Almost six months on, the disastrous war that he launched is stagnating. Scenes reminiscent of World War I trench warfare and its associated incremental gains and death are taking hold.
The almost 1,000-mile-long battle front Putin opened has hardened, but the country behind is deep, and for the most part unscathed.
Thirty miles from the front, city lawns are still being mowed, while many hundreds of miles away in the capital Kyiv, fancy restaurants have reopened, where fine wines and chilled champagnes are available, and fresh caught Mediterranean fish is on the menu.
This is a fat land, with fertile farms and proud crops rich from rain and sun. If strategic depth is what’s behind the front lines, Ukraine has an untapped wealth available.
Perhaps most striking is the number of military age males across the country who are not yet committed to the fight. Ukraine is at war, but not yet it seems, all in. Only some of Ukraine’s potential fighting force are in bunkers buried in tree lines overlooking Russian forces.
Cobblers, authors, artists, teachers, businessmen, journalists, even a former McDonalds franchise CEO, are holding back Putin’s push, but when the government needs it there are many more who can be called on.
The big takeaway is, that this is not a war that’s going to be over fast, not is even clear yet if the real defining fight has begun.
Reality on the ground
No front line position can really be measured day-by-day, but over weeks of travel and many many conversations, a reality emerges.
The war is settling into a slower phase where the contours of what’s contested are becoming clear, but the detail on any given day shifts. Tree lines that border the huge fields here are favored by both sides to stay hidden from drones and the strikes that follow once spotted, but the massive fields often dictate front lines a mile apart. The result less likelihood of positions shifting.
Troops on some fronts in the east told CNN they’d seen as many as half of Russia’s troops pulled out of the fight, yet just a handful of miles away amid a cacophony of artillery, grad rockets, anti-aircraft gunfire, heavy machine guns and small arms, Russia seems all in. And along lines in the south, Ukrainian troops told us they’d seen Russians bulking up, pushing more forces in.
Ukrainian officials say they’re expecting a Russian advance and have built up a counter-narrative they’ll retake Kherson, one of the first cities to fall in early March, as Russia ramps up strikes on Mykolaiv. Logically Kherson is the obvious first big grab, most Russian forces are on the other side of the Dniper river making it a vulnerable bridgehead valued by both sides.
But the reality on the ground is that we saw no buildup of Ukrainian forces. In fact, quite the opposite: huge expanses near the front were devoid of soldiers. They weren’t hiding in the trees either; roads seemed virtually untouched by heavy-tracked fighting vehicles or tanks, with no tell-tale mud on the road or any sign troops were moving in numbers.
Russia lied its way in to this war, lied to the world it wouldn’t invade, and lied to itself an easy victory awaited. It may now also be victim of a carefully curated lie, or information operation sowing false information about Ukrainian intentions. Hype about a Ukraine’s southern offensive maybe nothing more than that, a trick causing Russia to redeploy forces from the east to the south.
What hasn’t changed, despite the influx of Western weapon systems like the US HIMARS, and M777, British MLRS and Polish KRABS, Russia still outmans and outguns Ukraine by about five to one.
Soldiers fighting Russians have a new weapon. See what it can do 02:34
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky says there won’t be peace until Russia leaves all occupied territory including Crimea, which they annexed in 2014. He’ll need an army to do it, but not the hodge-podge of regulars and volunteers that he has at his disposal today.
Today cellphones often substitute for secure radios, flip flops for combat boots, friendships for formal command structures. One volunteer drone commander said he calls his artillery buddy on an unencrypted mobile phone, not a secure radio or data channel, when he spots a good target. In a more joined-up military structure the artillery commander would see the drone feed live.
Ukraine’s army won’t give up an inch without a fight, but while its volunteer army has impressed the world and surprised the invading forces with their determination and resilience, reclaiming lost territory would cost less blood with a more integrated and professional force.
Time and again along the front line troops told us when they lay down fire on Russian forces the enemy’s guns go silent. Western help is buying respite but not a lasting reprieve from the threat.
Soldiers’ pale faces and distant stares told us just how much time they spend sheltering in spade-dug, damp, claustrophobic holes wondering if the next incoming rocket will be their last.
Unless you’ve experienced this bombardment, it’s easy to understate how harrowing the constant danger is — for both soldiers and civilians. It eats into sleep, stretches time, collapses concentration. Senses shut down, many impervious to the detonations, only diving for cover when an explosion is particularly close.
That’s the life we found in many towns and villages in the wide ribbons of contested territory, the closer to the front the greater the danger.
Like scenes from WW1, citizens scavenge wood from bombed wreckage of neighbors’ houses, they cook outside because they have no gas, electricity or water. Imagine a winter like this? Soon, we won’t have to, the cold months are coming, hardships and deprivations will multiply.
Local hospitals are clearing wards ready to treat more victims. Russia is increasingly targeting civilians with illegal cluster bombs, significantly driving up the number of causalities and spreading terror. One victim told us he was sitting outside his home with friends when a cluster bomb struck, injuring three of them and breaking his leg, damaging his arm and peppering his body with tiny metal fragments.
An ugly world war throwback is wrapping a wreath around a ribbon of Ukraine. Putin’s hell has a lot more ugly tomorrows to come, and while the tide of Putin’s offensive has yet to turn conclusively for Ukraine, it is weakening in their favor.
For five horrific weeks after Christmas in 1831, Jamaica was convulsed by an uprising of its enslaved people. What started as a peaceful labor strike quickly turned into a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses in smoking ruins. By the time British troops had put down the rebels, more than a thousand Jamaicans lay dead from summary executions and extrajudicial murder.
While the rebels lost their military gamble, their sacrifice accelerated the larger struggle for freedom in the British Atlantic. The daring and suffering of the Jamaicans galvanized public opinion throughout the empire, triggering a decisive turn against slavery. For centuries bondage had fed Britain’s appetite for sugar. Within two years of the Christmas rebellion, slavery was formally abolished.
Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire (Harvard University Press, 2020) is a dramatic day-by-day account of this transformative uprising. A skillful storyteller, Tom Zoellner goes back to the primary sources to tell the intimate story of the men and women who rose up and tasted liberty for a few brief weeks. He provides the first full portrait of the rebellion’s enigmatic leader, Samuel Sharpe, and gives us a poignant glimpse of the struggles and dreams of the many Jamaicans who died for liberty.
About those competing claims concerning attacks, or planned attacks, on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant: a reporter interviewed on MSNBC says that launches of missiles can be tracked (seen?) and that the impact only 3 seconds later shows that missiles fired near the nuclear power plant are being fired by Russia, and those missiles target (land) near the power plant on purpose.
More:
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) appears to be setting information conditions to blame Ukrainian forces for future false flag operations at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP).
The chief of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, claimed in an August 18 briefing that Ukrainian forces are preparing for a provocation at the Zaporizhzhia NPP and that the provocation is meant to coincide with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ visit to Ukraine.
Kirillov accused Ukrainian forces of preparing to stage this provocation in order to blame Russia for causing a nuclear disaster and create a 30km-wide exclusion zone around the NPP. Kirillov’s briefing, which was amplified by the Russian MoD, coincides with reports that Russian authorities told Russian NPP employees to not come in to work tomorrow, August 19.
Leaked footage from within the plant shows five Russian trucks very close to one of the reactors at the NPP on an unspecified date, which may indicate the Russian forces are setting conditions to cause a provocation at the plant and to shift the information narrative to blame Ukraine for any kinetic events that occur on the territory of the plant.
There were no claimed or assessed Russian territorial gains in Ukraine on August 18, 2022 for the first time since July 6, 2022.
Russian sources reported a series of unidentified and unconfirmed explosions across Crimea on the night of August 18.
The Russian Ministry of Defense may be setting information conditions to blame Ukraine for a false flag attack at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Russian forces conducted ground assaults south of Siversk and northeast and south of Bakhmut.
Russian forces continued conducting offensive operations north, west, and southwest of Donetsk City.
Russian forces conducted an unsuccessful ground assault on the Zaporizhia axis.
Ukrainian officials confirmed additional strikes on a Russian military base and warehouse in Kherson Oblast.
The Kremlin is likely leveraging established Cossack organizations to support Russian force generation efforts.
Russian occupation officials continued preparations for the long-term integration of occupied territories of Ukraine into Russia.
For those whose only measure of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is where things stand on the map, this is the easiest update possible: Nothing happened yesterday. Neither Russia nor Ukraine gained or lost a single village. Update done.
Of course, it’s not that simple. Russia certainly tried to take Ukrainian positions. In Kherson, the Donbas, and Kharkiv, Russian forces made attempts to push Ukrainian troops out of villages and fortified positions. It’s just that all those attempts failed. They failed in an effort to dislodge Ukrainian forces from those positions on the east bank of the Inhulets River. They failed in an attempt to get closer to Siversk from the southeast. They failed in a pair of attacks near Avdiivka. They failed at Marinka and Blahodatne and Novomykhailivka. And if you don’t immediately know where all of those are it doesn’t really matter. Because nothing seriously changed.
There was a sight that got people out into the streets applauding as a Ukrainian jet dodged Russian missiles over the Donbas and made good its escape, but really, the biggest action didn’t take place with the armies moving during the day, but with the rockets flying at night.
Russia, as usual, flung more Tochka rockets and long-range MLRS fire into civilian areas. That includes a strike that hit a home for people with hearing disabilities at Staryi Saltiv, where at least 12 were killed. In the city of Zaporizhzhia, a missile struck an apartment building, killing one woman and wounding at least three others. In the poor battered city of Kharkiv, at least six died and more than 20 were wounded in at least three separate strikes. With Russian guns back at Vesele, as well as Lyptsi, Kharkiv is again subject to regular bombardment with cheap artillery shells as well as more expensive MLRS and missile strikes.
There were also very strange reports that volleys of artillery fire were launched from the area of the the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant at Enerhodar. These shells reportedly struck some target very nearby rather than shooting across the river at Ukrainian positions. What the purpose of all this was remains a mystery. However, there are now a number of images available showing how Russia is using buildings at the nuclear plant to store vehicles and supplies. [Tweet and photo at the link]
But it was the other explosions in the darkness that caught most of the attention on Thursday night. Those included at least four explosions at Belbek air base near Sevastopol, way down at the south end of Crimea. Belbek is the largest air base in Crimea and has been the primary site for Russian flights in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts. After surviving planes were located away from other bases following a series of Ukrainian strikes in the last weeks, Belbek may also be the only large air base remaining in Crimea. Russia is claiming that the explosions overnight caused no damage, and that Russian air defenses took out a drone involved in the attack. As of yet, there are no satellite images or other details to dispute that claim. However, on Wednesday Russia reportedly moved a large number of aircraft out of Crimea to bases inside Russia, showing the effectiveness of this series of attacks.
[…] There were also reports of an explosion in the Russian city of Stary Oskol, over 150 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. This may have been completely unrelated, though some reports suggest that it represents a missile that went up … then came right back down.
Some much more definite strikes occurred at Nova Kakhovka. There Ukraine seems to have given a fresh dose of pummeling to the bridge running across the top of the dam over the Dnipro River. The route already seemed impassible to vehicles. This may have been Ukraine simply doubling down to see that Russia didn’t get around to any repairs in the near future.
The biggest news from overnight has to be from the Russia city of Belgorod. Located just 30 kilometers from the Ukraine border and home to a large Russian military base, Belgorod has been a frequent staging area for Russian forces moving into Ukraine near Kharkiv. It’s also been the site of many of the missiles and long-range rocket fire that have raked Kharkiv almost daily since the war began. [map at the link]
Before the war, the border station on the E105 between Belgorod and Kharkiv was one of the two largest crossing points between Russia and Ukraine. Russia is currently supplying its forces north of Kharkiv along the same route, and many of the supplies and forces moving out of Russia now flow out of Belgorod to the smaller crossing point at Vovchansk. The critical nature of that crossing point is exactly why Russia has been pressing more forces into the area northeast of Kharkiv.
Back in April, Ukrainian helicopter pilots made a skillful raid into Belgorod, flying at treetop level, to take out a fuel depot. Now another depot has exploded, but it’s not in the Russian city itself. This time it’s farther to the east. It’s also not fuel going up. This time it’s ammunition. And it’s spectacular. [Tweet and video at the link]
More lengthy videos of the explosion shows that it just goes on and on and on. Just how much ammunition Russia lost in this event isn’t clear, but every one of those shells going up is a shell that can’t be launched at Ukrainian forces in the Donbas or at Ukrainian civilians in Kharkiv.
A previous round of Ukrainian strikes on ammunition storage facilities create a dramatic and measurable drop in Russia’s use of what has been its primary weapon throughout this invasion. However, in the last week Russia has resumed using artillery at levels approaching those during the assault on Severodonetsk. Which leads to this incredible chart. [Tweet and chart at the link]
By some estimates, Russia is lobbing more than 52,000 shells—and 2,400 tons of explosives—in Ukraine every day. That’s more throw weight per day than any army in World War I, and more than the Soviet Army fired in all but the final year of World War II. That’s an incredible level of destruction, and it’s all been directed at just a small area of one nation.
As usual, Ukraine’s first response to Moscow’s angry accusations concerning Belgorod is to issue a cheeky denial. In this case, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense sent Moscow a tweet warning about the dangers of smoking. But however that ammunition depot went up, it represents another large materiel loss to Russia … which is good, because tomorrow we’re going to cover the declining flow of Western weapons and supplies into Ukraine.
In the meantime, have another look. [Tweet and video at the link]
There are few things on Earth that Russia is better at producing than artillery shells. But maybe the losses at Belgorod and elsewhere will result in at least temporary respite.
The Washington Post has a story up today on the intelligence failures that led to Russia’s utter defeat in the Battle of Kyiv.
The overwhelming factor in everything that went wrong for Russia was simply hubris. Among other things:
Russian officers spent the last days before the invasion planning where they would live in Kyiv rather than making sure their forces were in order.
Russia had not one, but two, pro-Russian governments in their pocket for ready installation in Kyiv. Never let it be said that Russia always forgets to order spare parts.
For all the intelligence failures, Russia doesn’t seem to have done anything to replace the people in charge. Because competence is never a job requirement in an authoritarian oligarchy.
A federal judge in Atlanta Thursday upheld a provision in Georgia’s 2021 election overhaul forbidding people from handing out water, food and other gifts to people standing in line to vote, also known as line warming or line relief….
Georgians are banned from handing out items both in what is referred to as the “buffer zone,” 150 feet from the edge of the polling place, and the “supplemental zone,” 25 feet away from any voter in line.
United States District Judge J.P. Boulee found that enforcing the ban within 150 feet of the polling precinct is legally appropriate, but forbidding handouts within the supplemental zone could amount to an unreasonable restriction on free speech.
[…]
Restricting speech within a theoretically limitless distance of the polls would likely not pass constitutional muster, Boulee concluded.
Still, the judge refused to put a hold on the law with a major election only months away, ruling that doing so would require new training for poll workers and could confuse voters by requiring a different set of rules than what was applicable during the May primary elections.
You can find the opinion here.
I wonder how much training would be required to allow people to hand out water.
Followed by stories about fasting, drinking less water, eating moldy food, and the fun of blackouts. Yeah, everything’s fine. Twitter link
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 142
Watch, while handing out bottled water to people waiting in line will be declared a form of “buying votes,” armed Proud Boy “election watchers” menacing those same people WON’T be ruled as voter intimidation.
In a made-for-TV spectacle Thursday focused on the work of his new “election crimes” state law enforcement office, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) declared that 20 out of 11.1 million votes cast in the 2020 election in the state had been submitted by people allegedly voting illegally.
The event included all of the necessary law-and-order dress-up: Held in the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, DeSantis spoke in front of a wall of uniformed law enforcement officers and behind a podium labeled “ELECTION INTEGRITY.”
The governor’s remarks were punctuated by the cheers of an audience in the courtroom’s jury box and public gallery, which held up signs, distributed minutes earlier, that read “MY VOTE COUNTS.”
The Washington Post reported that a volunteer with the Palm Beach County Republican Party monitored who entered the room, and that the Democratic vice mayor of Fort Lauderdale — where the event was held – was denied entry.
Joe Scott, Broward County’s supervisor of elections, told The Miami Herald his office hadn’t received any advanced notice on the substance of the press event; rumors swirled ahead of time that DeSantis was coming down to announce Scott’s suspension.
“They were very mysterious about it, with everybody. Nobody really knew what it was about,” Scott told the Herald. “You’re making an election-related announcement in my backyard, and they didn’t tell me anything about it.”
[…] DeSantis didn’t go into detail about the alleged offenders, except to say that they had at some point been convicted of either murder or sexual assault, and then, at some time after that, “they went ahead and voted anyways.”
People with those convictions aren’t eligible to have their voting rights restored in Florida. But, as the Herald noted, the Florida Division of Elections is required to inform county supervisors of their findings of voter eligibility, and it’s not clear whether that occurred in these cases.
Though DeSantis said 20 people were being charged, a press release listed only 17 people, most in their 50s or 60s: The other three, Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesperson Gretl Plessinger told TPM, have not yet been taken into custody.
It’s not clear yet, because Plessinger did not make charging documents available, how much the defendants knew about their alleged criminal activity; in another recent case of alleged election crimes in Florida, an Alachua County election official registered several people in government custody to vote even though they were allegedly not eligible. The election official was cleared of wrongdoing, while the incarcerated would-be voters now face charges.
“They actually helped us fill out the voter rights registration forms,” one of the defendants in that case, John Rivers, told Fresh Take Florida. “They came in and recruited us to vote, and then you know, told us that we could vote and now they’re charging us for voting.”
“I don’t understand how I can be charged with voter misconduct,” said another defendant, Dedrick De’Ron Baldwin. “All I was doing was what they told me I had a right to do.”
On Thursday, DeSantis said the 20 voters he announced were facing charges had committed “election fraud.” But the Florida Department of Law Enforcement press release actually listed two alleged violations: “false affirmation – voting or elections,” and “voting as an unqualified elector,” both third-degree felonies.
More important than the details of the alleged violations, apparently, was praising Ron DeSantis. Ashley Moody, Florida’s attorney general, commended “our very detail-oriented governor.” And DeSantis himself paused at one point to note the source of all the hubbub.
As hurricane season creeps up on Atlantic coastal communities, New Orleans is flooding once again. Jezebel reported on Thursday that Louisiana’s Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry has once again pushed the Louisiana Bond Commission to “delay a $39 million future line of credit for the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board,” the first time being in July. According to Jezebel, the city issued a flood warning on Thursday, and a special weather statement due to excessive heat is still in effect at the time of this writing. This funding is necessary for critical flood mitigation and response, and is being withheld until the city—a Democratic stronghold and economic center in Louisiana—agrees to comply with the state’s abortion ban.
[…] Racism has always played a role in New Orleans’ ability to protect its population in the face of natural (or man-made) disasters, and the state’s use of environmental funding to rebuke the city over abortion will continue to put Black residents in harm’s way.
NOLA’s refusal to investigate or prosecute those seeking abortions is being used as yet another mechanism to make residents even more vulnerable to environmental threats. According to the Louisiana Illuminator, the $39 million dollars of credit was slated to build an updated power plant that would “power the city’s drinking water, drainage, and sewage system.” As climate change makes hurricane season increasingly violent, hazard mitigation is more urgent than ever.
Explaining his decision, Landry said in a public meeting, “This is not just about abortion. This is about the fact that there are elected officials not only in this state, but around this country, that seem to thumb their nose at the laws of the country and the states.” As if pregnant people—specifically women of color, who receive 72% of abortions in Louisiana—were not already in danger, those in New Orleans are also threatened by climate disaster.
[…] Again, we are reminded that the war on abortion is not a fight for children’s lives, dignity, or safety, but rather a guarantee that many more will live in poverty and neglect by their governments.
Now that she has beaten Liz Cheney in the Republican primary, we can pencil Harriet Hageman in as the next congresswoman from Wyoming, since whomever the Democrats nominated to oppose her in this reddest of red states will be crushed in November […]
In the meantime, we would like to pre-emptively nominate Hageman for the 118th Congress’s Michele “One L” Bachmann Craziest Eyes Memorial Award. Not just because she has, well, crazy eyes. But also because she pairs them with QAnon-themed talking points calling Joe Biden the worst human trafficker in American history: [video at the link, um ... OMFG]
Really? Is Joe Biden the worst human trafficker in the history of a nation that had legalized chattel slavery for the first 100 years of its existence? A country where you could find a slave market in every city and town at the rate at which today you can find a Starbucks?
If Hageman is reading this, and why wouldn’t she be, we’re assigning her some homework, and that is for her to look up who exactly built that giant Capitol building she’s going to be working in come January. Hint: It wasn’t the Chinese, you’re thinking of the Intercontinental Railroad. Different exploitation of labor.
We bring this up because we’ve been thinking that what with Hageman’s ascension and Louie Gohmert retiring to his asparagus ranch in Texas come January, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene seemingly have competition for loopiest member of the House of Representatives.
And this is before we even get to Sarah Palin possibly being in Congress next year. Lord, what a bounty You have provided.
Perhaps sensing she’s going to have to up her game, though, MGT went ahead and introduced a new bill that, while it won’t pass before 2025 at the earliest, could in our estimation take its place alongside the Fugitive Slave Act as one of the most morally abhorrent pieces of legislation that any representative has ever vomited up.
The bill is called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act. […] it makes providing gender affirming care to minors a class C felony, putting it on a par, legally speaking, with murder.
Here, let’s let old Marge explain it […] TRIGGER WARNING: This clip contains two chucklefuck Nazis [Tucker Carlson is one of them] who in a saner world would be broadcasting only to an audience of about 10 Aryan Nation lunatics on a shortwave radio from a cabin deep in the Yukon: [video at the link]
These people think about transitioning people more than transitioning people do.
Anyway, Lauren Boebert doesn’t seem to have signed on as a co-sponsor of this monstrosity as of this writing. We’ll assume she’s either busy helping her drunk husband threaten the neighbors or somewhere dreaming up an even crueler bill that will put her back in the lead in this contest that has no winners.
Here is your Culture Wars Nice Time story for today! In Meridian, Idaho, a “bedroom community” of Boise (where housing prices mean you’re lucky if you can afford an entire bedroom), Wednesday’s monthly Library Board meeting drew a far larger crowd than usual — upwards of 100 people, according to Boise State Public Radio, or around 200 people, according to local TV station KTVB. While there was a small group of organized rightwing protesters there to decry all the porn and Marxism they were sure are taking over Idaho (yes really), the vast majority of people at the meeting were there to show they appreciate the public library system and to make clear they don’t want fear and intimidation to change how the libraries operate.
For once I’m pretty darn proud to live in Idaho, at least in the People’s Socialist Republic of Boise.
When we first learned of the meeting via a Twitter post with video of the wingnuts, we were worried, because get a load of some of these loons with their bullshit “groomers!” chants and their complaints that the libraries are perverting young minds with tiny cartoon genitals — yes, the very tiny cartoon genitals that so vexed former SNL doofus Victoria Jackson years ago, albeit in a newer edition, with the same tiny cartoon genitals but 20 percent America-destroying, because pronouns. [video at the link]
One thing about calling publicly for a big Protect The Children From Books protest, though, is that there’s always the danger that a lot of people who are sick of all this Culture War crap will show up to say they like their library A LOT, which is what happened, HOORAY.
One of the Uptight Citizens Brigade members, who can be seen in the video, said she definitely didn’t want to ban any books, but simply wanted to
make sure the library conforms to the wishes of Concerned Citizens of Meridian, especially responsible parents who want to protect their children from Marxist indoctrination that seems to be sweeping our country. We believe this insidious growth that’s happening in our world must be stopped in its tracks and one way we intend to do that is by restricting the kinds of subversive materials available to our children in our libraries.
But not by banning books, just by restricting them, you see? She also explained that she didn’t want her tax money going to promote perversion and Penguin Lust. We bet she’d also say she doesn’t hate gay people, just the ones who “have no personality outside of gay,” which is all of them.
My money does not support grooming children, showing private parts in a library to five-year-olds. Men and women, men and men on top of each other. This has nothing to do with being gay. I know that is everything some of these people are about. They have no personality outside of gay. I just don’t like other people’s ideologies being crammed down my throat and them trying to force me to accept their evil behaviors.
We’re pretty sure she’s talking about the cartoony illustrations in It’s Perfectly Normal, which we should point out is aimed at fifth and sixth graders, but not kindergarteners, unless they’ve been left back a lot of grades. We should also note that none of the Meridian libraries actually carry the current edition (one branch has the parent-teacher guide of an older version), although you could certainly request it from other Boise-area libraries. Pretty sure not many kindergarteners are using interlibrary loan.
But let us not focus on the negative! Another audience member, Don Gelsomino, called out the bigots very directly:
I’m a proud Meridian citizen, I’m a Christian, I’m a conservative, I’m a parent, and I’m gay. […] The accusations of grooming, a common dog whistle by bigots, implying LGBTIQ is a choice, I can speak from personal, profound spiritual experience that it is not a choice.
Another member of the audience defended tiny cartoony genitals, even if they came from another library or a bookstore:
I use the library a lot with my children. We used the book It’s Perfectly Normal when my husband was deployed and I had to teach my children, my sons, about sex ed. It was not a very comfortable topic when it came up and my husband was on a ship, so I used the book.
Others talked about how essential libraries are to democracy and being an informed citizen, and about how developing a love of reading is just wonderful.
UPDATE: Somehow I missed this sequel video featuring defenders of the library. Some of them are simply wonderful. [video at the link]
Oh yes, also, the librarians pointed out that many of the books the groups had complained about just plain aren’t in the children’s sections, other than Perfectly Normal and the goofball Captain Underpants series, which are not in with the picture books for little tiny tots but are in the “Juvenile” section for older kids. Also yeesh, Captain Underpants bothers them? Do they think that were it not for that series, kids would not think underwear is hilarious?
In conclusion, hooray for good libraries, which are good for communities, and hooray for tiny cartoon genitals, too, the end.
I have met people who object to Dr. Suess’ ABCs because of ‘u’:
Big U, Little u, What begins with U? Uncle Ubb’s umbrella and his underwear, too.”
My granddaughters’ favourite book. Well, that, and Green Eggs and Ham.
ravensays
Another abortion horror story in a Red State.
This woman is being forced to carry a headless, nonviable fetus to term. The abortion bans are weeks old and already it is getting hard to track the horror stories.
And they are just getting started.
“As horror stories of immeasurable suffering pour in on a near-daily basis, we can’t afford to become desensitized to any of it.”
In the coming years, the horror stories will be in the hundreds and thousands or more. And, yes, will be desensitized to them. They will only rarely make the news.
During the Bush disaster, bombings and fire bombings of family planning clinics were happening often. So often, that after a while they stopped making the national news and sometimes never even made the local news.
ABORTION Louisiana Woman Is Forced Carry Headless Fetus to Term or Travel to Florida for Legal Abortion
“It’s hard knowing that I’m carrying it to bury it,” Nancy Davis, already a mother of one child, said.
ByKylie Cheung Tuesday 1:25PM Jezebel.com edited for length
A pregnant woman in Louisiana says she’s being forced to choose between carrying a fetus that lacks a skull and the top of its head (as a result of a rare condition called acrania) to term, or traveling several states over for a legal abortion, since Louisiana has banned abortion with very narrow exceptions.
“It’s hard knowing that I’m carrying it to bury it,” Nancy Davis, who’s 13 weeks pregnant and is already the mother of one child, told local news station WAFB9 on Monday. A few weeks ago, she had her first ultrasound and was told the fetus wouldn’t survive—but that she would have to either carry and birth the nonviable fetus or travel to Florida, the closest state where abortion is still legal. Davis is running out of time to make her decision, however, because Florida bans the health service at 15 weeks.
Before Davis, one Louisiana doctor testified in an affidavit challenging the ban that her patient was forced to endure a “painful, hours-long labor to deliver a nonviable fetus, despite her wishes and best medical advice,” after the ban temporarily took effect last month.
The doctor, Valerie Williams, said her patient was “screaming—not from pain, but from the emotional trauma she was experiencing.” It took hours for the woman’s placenta to deliver, causing her to hemorrhage about a liter of blood which placed her own life in danger.
Davis is literally being forced to carry a fetus missing part of its head, and Williams’ patient’s life was endangered by the unsafe delivery of her nonviable fetus.
Doctors have previously pointed out that exceptions for threats to the pregnant person’s life are too ambiguous to actually help pregnant people. “How close to death must a patient be?” an attorney for Louisiana’s abortion providers asked last month.
The U.S. already leads wealthy nations in maternal mortality, particularly among people of color. I can’t imagine that doctors being forced to choose between prison and helping patients, or a Nebraska teen being charged with a felony for self-managing her abortion, will improve these conditions.
But this is our post-Roe world, where Republicans are pushing to ban birth control and IVF, hospitals are denying rape victims emergency contraception, top anti-abortion activists are romanticizing the new reality of 13-year-old forced parents, and in Louisiana, the state can force you to carry a headless fetus. As horror stories of immeasurable suffering pour in on a near-daily basis, we can’t afford to become desensitized to any of it.
CNN’s new CEO, Chris Licht, has been attending to an audience neglected by the network for the past several years: Republican lawmakers.
The network boss camped out in mid-July in a room on the first floor of the Senate side of the Capitol, S-120, where he asked GOP lawmakers to come talk with him privately. That arrangement avoided alerting the reporters who stalk the halls of the Capitol, sources said, and accommodated Republican lawmakers who preferred not to be seen hobnobbing with him.
Licht’s message, according to one of the lawmakers who sat down with him as well as to several sources briefed on the exchanges: “We want to win back your trust.”
What this moron fails to understand is that this is not about “being fair” to one side and not the other. At one point, when the Republican party stood for something and wasn’t a cult, you could have real arguments over ideology, policy, and even values. However, as a journalist, one thing you CANNOT do is ever give credence to lies.
When one party embraces a conspiracy theory that claims thousands of election officials, poll watchers, Republican governors, and Trump-appointed judges conspired with Joe Biden to create millions of bamboo ballots that marked him as president—but simultaneously marked Republicans down-ballot to throw people off the scent—there is no debate. There is no debate that Hillary and Obama didn’t run a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor in DC. There is no debate that the January 6th rioters weren’t tourists. There is no debate that climate change is happening. There is no debate that Trump wasn’t allowed to store nuclear secrets in his f’ing golf club basement.
[…] I get that CNN wants to be seen as “fair and balanced.” Yet the attacks from Trump and his cult didn’t happen because you were being unfair to him. They happened because you called him out on his B.S. You will never “regain trust” if you decide facts are partisan.
Do you really think having Sydney Powell or Mike Lindell on to rant without being challenged will save CNN? You will not convince one MAGA Republican to become a regular viewer without compromising your journalistic integrity. Period. What you will do is bleed the viewers you still have. If I want to be lied to, I can go to OAN, Newsmax, InfoWar, FoxNews, etc. They all have an agenda, and journalism isn’t it.
The GOP has devolved into a cult of personality that now justifies treason, insurrection and espionage. Promising QAnon and MAGA legislators a forum to spout nonsense and forbidding your hosts from challenging them serves no one, although that is what GOP legislators are asking for in return for considering to appear on CNN.
I know CNN’s ratings are suffering, but catering to right-wing extremists to feed their appetite for fake news won’t help you. Neither will killing shows like Reliable Sources. […]
Former President Donald Trump is considering filing a motion that calls for a “special master” to review the evidence seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago, his attorney said on Mark Levin’s radio show.
Trump’s attorney Jim Trusty told Levin that there needs to be a “special master” who can review the evidence as a third party to help “vindicate the Fourth Amendment rights of the president.”
“We have privilege issues that are extremely important here,” Trusty told Levin. “We do think that one of the benefits of the special master, if the master agrees with us, is we can stop DOJ in their tracks when it comes to inspecting these documents.”
He said the special master “won’t be the answer to everything.” Trump plans to object to the entire search warrant with the new motion, Trusty said.
The motion will claim that the FBI’s seizure of classified documents was “overbroad” and not narrow as the Fourth Amendment requires, Trusty said. He said the warrant had language that said the FBI could take any classified documents and any boxes around them, which suggests it is a more general search warrant and that there is “no limit” to the scope of the warrant.
Trump hinted at a potential motion in a post on Truth Social.
“A major motion pertaining to the Fourth Amendment will soon be filed concerning the illegal Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, right before the ever important Mid-Term Elections,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The filing could come before Monday morning, Trusty said.
“It’s probably going to be more like hours,” Trusty said Friday night. “It’s coming very soon.”
Ukraine’s position as one of the largest providers of exported grain has generated fears from the outset that Vladimir Putin’s illegal and unprovoked invasion would lead to food shortages in countries around the world. Those fears haven’t been helped by scenes of fields in the east of Ukraine pitted by thousands of artillery strikes, or news of farmers in the north dying after striking mines left behind by withdrawing Russian forces.
Despite all this, and the distraction of towing away captured Russian military hardware, Ukrainian farmers have continued to bring in a crop … only to have it stolen away in many cases. Just this week, two ships full of misappropriated Ukrainian grain reportedly went to Russian puppet state Syria. Ukrainian grain continues to flow out of Ukraine both on Russian ships and by rail, as Russia conducts its policies of looting on an industrial scale.
However, despite this, and despite attacks by Russia on Ukrainian ports, the Black Sea Grain Initiative that was signed back on July 22 is having an effect. The first ship left Odesa on August 1, and as of this week 27 ships of Ukrainian grain have reached the joint inspection team in Turkish waters.
This week, the United States announced that it will obtain 150,000 tons of Ukrainian grain in a $68 million purchase by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The food will go to the U.N. World Food Program and from there will likely be targeted to countries on the Horn of Africa, where 22 million people are currently experiencing “food instability” in part because of drought related to the man-made climate crisis. This is just a portion of the $4.8B that the U.S. has sent to the World Food Program this year, and expectations are that this purchase will not the last.
That 150,000 tons isn’t even 1% of the grain that Ukraine exported in the year before the Russian invasion, and with the total grain exported expected to be down by half this year, there is still a danger of severe food shortages in areas that are dependent on this grain.
But Russia has a solution to that hunger crisis … fewer Ukrainians. As Russian missiles continued to strike residential areas of Ukrainian cities on Friday night, a prominent Russian official made clear that the wholesale slaughter of civilians in this war was a feature, not a bug. [Tweet at the link]
The tweet came in response to a post from Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy thanking the United States for an aid package that President Joe Biden announced on Friday. The central feature of that package is expected to be additional ammunition for the weapon systems that have been sent so far. However, it will also expected to include long duration ScanEagle drones, and 105mm mortars for use in close range combat. This package brings the total of U.S. aid to Ukraine since the invasion began to $10.6 billion.
The call for genocide from Ambassador Ulyanov is especially striking because of his position. Ulyanov is the permanent ambassador for Russia to a number of international organizations and is on the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency. When it comes to things like working with the IAEA for possible inspections of the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Ulyanov is part of the group that makes the decision about whether and how such inspections take place.
In case you’re concerned, no, Ulyanov has not been suspended from Twitter. Instead he’s still on there, defending his statement and saying that attempts to brand his post as a call for genocide are “outrageous,” “dirty methods,” and a “sneaky interpretation.”
EUROPEAN AID TO UKRAINE IN DECLINE
Even as the U.S. announces a new plan for sending more equipment and ammo to Ukraine, there’s a concern that such announcements seem to be disappearing. The Ukraine Support Tracker updated by the Kiel Institute, indicates that overall European contributions to Ukraine have been on a more or less steady decline since April, and that in recent weeks the support has all but “dried up.”
The flow of new international support for Ukraine has dried up in July. No large EU country like Germany, France or Italy, has made significant new pledges. However, the gap between committed and disbursed aid has narrowed.
That last sentence may be the key to the first, as well as the reason that you’re not seeing an increase in Ukrainian calls for additional contributions. Many of the systems that were being sent to Ukraine took some time to prepare and dispatch. Some were older systems in need of servicing. Some were new systems were countries involved wanted to strip out some of their own communications or sensor tech. Some were complex systems that required Ukrainian troops to travel outside their country for training. Some simply took a long time because the distance between approving a system and getting it onto a train can sometimes be longer than, say, the distance from Berlin to Lviv.
Some of this may be just clearing the bottlenecks in both donor countries and at the Ukrainian border. Then there are big decisions to be made about how and where to deploy this equipment. When something like HIMARS or other long-range MLRS and artillery systems comes in, there’s little doubt that Ukraine wants to get it close enough to the front line to be effective. However, for example, Ukraine has now been sent large numbers of at least six different armored troop transports. Even where they are similar, like U.S. M113 to mostly similar to M113AS4 APCs from Australia and to the M113-dervived YPR-765 from the Netherlands, there are issues. All of these systems are part of the same “family,” but they have different electronics, different weaponry, even different engines. At the same time, Ukraine is facing questions like how best to integrate two dozen M109A3GN SPGs from Norway with dozens more Caesar SPGs from France and a handful of Dutch Panzerhaubitze 2000NL. Those guns can all fire the same shells, but that’s about it when it comes to shared parts.
[…] The demands on Ukraine right now in terms of integrating what’s been sent in a way that makes for an effective fighting force is extremely high, and there are still literally thousands of Ukrainian forces outside Ukraine at the moment being trained on the use of everything from guns to planes. […]
The biggest thing that Ukraine needs at the moment is probably the simplest: Ammunition. If Russia is pumping out artillery shells at World War II levels, which they are, Ukraine needs to be able to respond. Maybe not in the same numbers, but appropriately and effectively. Russia has millions of shells stockpiled, and they are not afraid to burn them.
[…] Still, there are some countries that are getting seriously called out on their failures, both in terms of promises made and promises kept. For example, this Oryx article on Belgium is scathing.
While many NATO member states have duly answered Ukraine’s call to supply it with heavy weaponry, for other countries President Zelensky’s plight has offered a stark realization what decades of defense cuts have come to. For no country is this true more than for Belgium, which in March 2022 had to come to the painful conclusion that it had no heavy weaponry to send from its own stocks. This staggering fact is the result of years of chronic underfunding that had eroded the Belgian Army to the point it could not even pay to operate man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) any longer, leaving an entire army without any form of ground-based air defenses.
Right now, the flow of systems and ammunition into Ukraine is not a crisis. But if the failure to provide more support continues into September, there could definitely be a crisis ahead.
THE MYSTERY WEAPON OF CRIMEA
On Friday night, Ukraine seemed to overfly multiple areas of Crimea with drones, triggering a response from air defense guns and missiles. That included areas as far south as Sevastopol, and as far east as the bridge at Kerch. The fact that these appeared to be single drones, and that there was no evidence any of them tried to fire a missile or drop any explosives, would suggest these flights were more in the nature of “feeling out” Russian defenses for possible action in the near future.
However, something has been striking targets—from air bases to electrical stations—deep in Crimea, and hundreds of kilometers from known Ukrainian firing positions. Russia has thrown up check points in Crimea and has been conducting frantic searches under the assumption that partisans may be behind some of these explosions, like the one that took out a ammunition depot south of Dzhankoi, but it’s clear that something else is behind the strikes that hit air bases farther south near Simferopol.
Recent video has indicated that Ukraine already has some of the longer range high precision Excalibur shells for the M777 howitzer. [video at the link]
But while those may well have been responsible for some of the strikes on bridges and other targets in the Kherson region, they have a limit of around 70km. That’s not nearly enough to account for all those planes left in wreckage in central Crimea. And while every explosion in Ukraine these days seems to bring a shout of “It’s HIMARS O’clock!” the truth is that standard HIMARS rockets can’t come anywhere close to the necessary range.
Unless, that is, those standard rockets have been replaced by something else. [Tweet and images at the link]
That flat plate on the end of the HIMARS system in the image is a little suspicious, because the U.S. has covers for ATACMS that mimic the standard “pod” of six rockets in order to make it hard for enemies to mark these longer-range threats. [tweet and image at the link]
There are also claims that Ukraine is using HIMARS with some as yet unannounced rockets that have ranges up to 210km. None of this is clear. But then, clearing up what is going on in Crimea is not in the Ukrainian military’s best interest. Right now, it’s a mystery. And that mystery is creating just the meme they want. [image at the link]
More at the link, including the official list of what is in the latest aid package; and there’s also a video of a “Russian” parade in downtown Kyiv (parade of lots of captured Russian vehicles, tanks, etc.).
ATLANTA — A federal judge on Friday turned down a request by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to avoid testifying next week before a special grand jury investigating attempts by former President Trump and his allies to overturn his November 2020 election loss in Georgia.
The order, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May, means that Mr. Graham, a South Carolina Republican and staunch Trump ally, is on track to appear in a closed-door session of the special grand jury on Tuesday at a downtown Atlanta courthouse. However, Mr. Graham already has taken his case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which has the ability to step in to postpone his appearance.
Judge May had earlier issued an order forcing the senator to give testimony, but Mr. Graham asked the judge to stay the order while he pursued his appeal in the case. On Friday, the judge wrote that “the public interest would not be served” by granting a stay and delaying Mr. Graham’s testimony.
“In this context, the public interest is well-served when a lawful investigation aimed at uncovering the facts and circumstances of alleged attempts to disrupt or influence Georgia’s elections is allowed to proceed without unnecessary encumbrances,” Judge May, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote.
Graham is still appealing for a delay to the 11th Circuit, one of the most conservative Circuit courts. Of the 11 judges, 6 were appointed by Trump, one by Bush, jr.
Nearing the two-year anniversary of the 2020 election that made Joe Biden the nation’s 46th president, Spanish-language videos falsely claiming otherwise are still up for countless people to watch on YouTube. Spanish-language misinformation has been a steady worry for both advocates and lawmakers, who pressed YouTube’s chief executive officer on the matter in a meeting this past April.
Media Matters for America said in a report this week that lie-riddled, Spanish-language videos falsely claiming Biden didn’t win remain a huge issue on the platform. By the platform’s own policies, they shouldn’t be there. “Many of the videos violate YouTube’s election misinformation policies,” Media Matters said […]
One such video is from the Spanish-language counterpart to the conspiracy theory outlet Epoch Times. Media Matters points to a January 2021 video falsely claiming that more than 430,000 votes were taken from the insurrectionist president’s tally in Pennsylvania. This did not happen. He lost that state fair and square. Media Matters further said that the outlet used a photo of Georgia campaign workers “to make the false claim that the workers [in Pennsylvania] snuck in fraudulent ballots in suitcases, giving President Joe Biden the lead in the state” […]
“Some Spanish-language videos from our review were given a banner (without explicitly stating that the video is misinformative) with a link to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or The Bipartisan Policy Center website, while others were not given a banner at all—indicating that even minimal content moderation efforts have been inconsistent,” the watchdog said.
This has been an ongoing, frustrating issue. NBC News reported last November that while tech companies flagged or removed posts featuring English-language disinformation, the same hasn’t happened for Spanish-language versions of those posts. This has been particularly dangerous in attempting to combat the novel coronavirus pandemic, with some rumors that spread among Spanish-language social media even claiming that children who test positive for the virus would be taken from their parents. “More recently, we’ve seen that Facebook will flag vaccine misinformation content in English, but the same content in Spanish takes days to get flagged, if it ever does,” Equis Research and Equis Labs co-founder Stephanie Valencia told The Washington Post last year.
“If YouTube does not start to address this content in earnest, we could easily see another wave of Spanish election misinformation on the platform this midterm cycle,” Media Matters said. […]
Wonkette: “Texas Schools Just Going Full Christian Nationalist Now”
Christian Nationalism is on the rise, as many lawmakers are making it increasingly clear that they want to live in a theocracy where everyone is forced to at least pretend to be a Christian. As such, many of them have been pushing for laws not only meant to drill holes through the wall between Church and State, but to push Christianity as a social norm that is intrinsic to the very fabric of The United States as a nation.
One such law is the one allowing Texas schools to prominently display signs reading “In God We Trust” as long as said signs are donated by an outside group.
The bill’s co-author, Rep. Tom Oliverson, a member of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, is trying to be somewhat careful of his wording in hopes that it won’t look super obvious that his intention here is to violate the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. He keeps going on and on about how “unifying” it is for “different faith traditions” to see the phrase prominently displayed in schools, which goes to show you exactly how little he knows about “different faith traditions.”
“I strongly believe that the proud and patriotic display of ‘In God We Trust’ can only have a beneficial effect on our communities and our schools,” he said in a statement to ABC13 this week. “I ask people of all faith traditions to join me in support of this unifying, positive, and powerful message.”
Beneficial to whom? Certainly not to those who belong to “faith traditions” that are not monotheistic or to atheists. Or even to Jewish people who think it is sacrilegious to write out the whole word “God.”
“I think it reminds us that we are a nation that believes in a power greater than ourselves,” Oliverson said to KHOU 11, clearly unaware of the fact that no American is obligated to “believe in a power greater than ourselves” and that trying to “remind” children of that is an act of coercion. It is meant to make those who do not believe in such a power feel left out. According to Pew Research polls, 10 percent of Americans do not, in fact, “believe in a power greater than ourselves” and it is very hard to say “we as a nation” about anything that 1 out of 10 Americans do not believe.
Others were less concerned about trying to make the new law seem like it is not explicitly Christian.
“The national motto, In God We Trust, asserts our collective trust in a sovereign God,” tweeted Sen. Bryan Hughes, who authored the Texas Senate version of the bill.
In a Facebook post, Patriot Mobile, a Conservative Christian cell phone company that is donating many of the signs, wrote that they are “honored to be part of bringing God back into our public schools!”
Naturally a lot of parents are not too happy about this.
“It seems like a clear aggression against the separation of church and state and I don’t know why it’s necessary,” one parent told ABC11. “I don’t understand what it’s for other than some kind of political stunt.”
It’s necessary to these people because they are trying to provide anecdotal evidence that the United States is a Christian nation — at least “culturally Christian.” They are spreading breadcrumbs wherever they can. They want to be able to say “See, we’re a Christian nation! Our schools have signs that say ‘In God We Trust’ everywhere and children grow up looking at that!,” just like they say “See, we are a Christian nation! Look at our money that has ‘In God We Trust’ written on it!”
It’s also necessary to them because the purpose is, as they like to say, “grooming” children. As Christians.
This nonsense, however, could very likely end up providing a pretty good basis for getting rid of “In God We Trust” entirely. Granted, we very much do not have the Supreme Court for it right now, but in more normal times, a challenge based on this statute in this day and age would make a stronger basis for a challenge than some we’ve seen before — particularly as Americans have grown increasingly irreligious.
The reason why courts have ruled that having “In God We Trust” as the national motto and printing it on our currency is okay and not a violation of the establishment clause is because it’s been considered to be what they call “ceremonial deism” — basically that it has no religious significance and is more about “tradition” than a literal God of any religion.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor explained this supposed “distinction” in Elk Grove School District vs. Newdow:
There are no de minimis violations of the Constitution – no constitutional harms so slight that the courts are obliged to ignore them. Given the values that the Establishment Clause was meant to serve, however, I believe that government can, in a discrete category of cases, acknowledge or refer to the divine without offending the Constitution. This category of “ceremonial deism” most clearly encompasses such things as the national motto (“In God We Trust”), religious references in traditional patriotic songs such as “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and the words with which the Marshal of this Court opens each of its sessions (“God save the United States and this honorable Court”). These references are not minor trespasses upon the Establishment Clause to which I turn a blind eye. Instead, their history, character, and context prevent them from being constitutional violations at all.
Of course, most of our “ceremonial deism,” rather than being a longstanding tradition, is something that popped up right around the Cold War for the specific purposes of differentiating ourselves from the “godless Commies.”
But the fact is, it absolutely does have religious significance for those putting these signs up, and many of them have been rather clear about that. These are not people or groups who would put up signs of devotion to some generic, insert-your-own-beliefs-here God. Doing something like that would be a mortal sin, or whatever the Protestant version of that is. I don’t know a lot about the Christian God, but it seems like he’s pretty specific about the way he’d like to be worshiped, and that very likely does not include in a way in which he is grouped together with other Gods of other faith traditions. He’s only supposed to be grouped together with his son and a bird and that’s it.
The fact that it is has true religious significance means that it’s not just ceremonial deism. The fact that it is meant to “[remind] us that we are a nation that believes in a power greater than ourselves” is coercion. Both of those things are violations of the Establishment clause.
“In God We Trust” should not be in schools and it should not be on our money. There is literally no reason to bring up God in schools in any way not related to an actual educational subject. It’s unnecessary.
KGsays
Daughter of Putin ally Alexander Dugin killed in car bomb in Moscow. Allegedly, the car belonged to her father and he was due to be with her, but changed his mind at the last moment. One of Putin’s puppet separatists in Ukraine has blamed the Ukrainian government, but on no evidence that I’ve heard of. I suppose it could be an attempt by the Ukranians to show Putin’s supporters they are not safe anywhere, but it seems unlikely the Ukranian government would risk branding themselves as terrorists. Could be domestic anti-Rascists, a dispute among Rascists, or an FSB false flag.
Dugin’s daughter wasn’t just an innocent bystander.
twitter
Sergej Sumlenny
@sumlenny
Darya Dugina was a top Nazi propagandist at the Dugin’s Nazi party, called for genocide of the Ukrainians, on her TG channel she urged “to produce fakes vs Ukraine”, visited Azovstal recently, wrote a book about the Z-war. She was not “a daughter” like “an innocent collateral”.
The Ukrainian government is saying they had nothing to do with the assassination.
It’s Russia. Human life is cheap and you can die any time someone with money or power wants you dead.
ravensays
I’d heard the name Alexandr Dugin before as the Russian Fascist theoretician.
That means something like the Marjorie Taylor Greene/Tucker Carlson of Russia. He is a troll and loon.
Wikipedia:
Eurasianism, fascism, and views on geopolitics
Dugin has espoused fascist views,[55][56][57][58] and has theorized the foundation of a “Euro-Asian empire” capable of fighting the US-led Western world.[55][56][59
and
According to Dugin, the whole Internet should be banned: “I think that Internet as such, as a phenomenon is worth prohibiting because it gives nobody anything good.”[125] In June 2012, Dugin said in a lecture that chemistry and physics are demonic sciences, and that all Orthodox Russians need to unite around the president of Russia in the last battle between good and evil, following the example of Iran and North Korea.[126] He added: “If we want to liberate ourselves from the West, it is needed to liberate ourselves from textbooks on physics and chemistry.”[126]
If you try to unpack and understand what Dugin wrote in his 30 books, it is mostly troll garbage that doesn’t make much sense.
A few examples:
.1. He wants to recreate the USSR empire and fight the West, meaning Europe, South America, and North America.
Rolls eyes. Because the USSR was such a success and pleasant place to live that they had to fence it in to keep everyone from running away.
And the Cold War, which lasted most of my life, was a great example of a pointless conflict that cost a huge amount and produced nothing worthwhile.
Russia has nothing we want or need all that much and nothing to offer the West. If they would just shut up and leave us alone, we would never think about them.
.2. He hates the internet.
It is a crucial part of our modern society, it has its downsides like Facebook and its upsides, as a channel for information flows.
.3. He hates chemistry and physics.
This is equivalent to hating reality.
Chemistry and physics are our best descriptions of the real world and have proven very useful in elevating our technology from stone tools to computers and cars.
There are page and pages of equally dumb troll assertions and ideas from this guy.
He is a philosopher like Elron Hubbard, Reverent Moon, or the Reverent Jim Jones were.
Wonkdette: “Florida Protects School Children From Dictionaries And All The Naughty Words Inside Them”
It is sure is a time to be a student in Florida.
Teachers can’t tell you about LGBTQ people or racism, and also your teachers can be soldiers with no prior experience who don’t even have a Bachelor’s degree. That is if and when you even have teachers, given the state’s massive teacher shortage. And if teachers can’t teach you anything, don’t think you’re going to go and become an autodidact or anything, because the state is also cracking down on books.
In order to comply with yet another kooky school-related bill, at least one Florida school district halting all donations and purchases of books entirely. This bill, HG 1467, requires that all books be pre-approved by “state-certified media specialists” to ensure that they are “age-appropriate” (ie: they do not mention LGBTQ people). Currently, there are no “state-certified media specialists” in the state to inspect any new books.
According to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is out of his goddamn mind, the bill will “increase transparency” and prevent “indoctrination.” It will also allow parents, and indeed, any county resident to petition that any book be removed from school libraries and reading lists. This, surely, will get interesting.
Sarasota County school district, which serves 45,000 students, has decided to bar all new books from coming into the district until January 1 of next year, which is when the DeSantis administration will first start training teachers to be able to approve the books.
This includes dictionaries. The Herald-Tribune reports:
Hundreds of dictionaries earmarked for donation from a Venice Rotary Club sit collecting dust, precluded from being given to Sarasota County students. Even dictionaries aren’t safe from the Sarasota Schools book freeze. […]
After donating about 300 dictionaries per year and about 4,000 to date, the club for the first time has been denied.
“I would suspect somebody, anyone, could approve a dictionary in less than one minute,” Reese said. “Why are we going through all this trouble?”
The club partners with an organization called the Dictionary Project, and Reese said he asked a representative from the group if there were any offensive or obscene words in the dictionaries the group donates. He said there were not.
A Rotary Club? What mischief are they up to, trying to expose Florida school children to … words? Words they could probably use to learn about things Ron DeSantis doesn’t want them to learn about! It’s best, probably, to keep the children as illiterate as possible, so that even as adults they do not run the risk of accidentally finding out about the existence of LGBTQ people or reading about the Civil War by people who don’t even have the decency to call it The War of Northern Aggression.
This is not the fault of the Sarasota County school district. They’re just doing what they have to do in order to not run afoul of a bizarre and extreme law put into place by their elected officials and governor — and given this extremity, one cannot use normal human judgment to determine what it is these people would potentially find “unsafe” or “offensive.” Clearly, either all the books will have to go or the law will.
ATLANTA — A federal appeals court temporarily blocked Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, on Sunday from testifying in the investigation into efforts by President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. The appeals court instructed a lower court to determine whether Mr. Graham should be exempt from answering certain kinds of questions, given his status as a federal lawmaker.
The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit gives a temporary reprieve to Mr. Graham, who has been fighting prosecutors’ efforts to bring him before a special grand jury. After a protracted bout of legal sparring, Mr. Graham, at the end of last week, appeared to have failed in his efforts to remain above the matter and had been expected to testify behind closed doors on Tuesday in a downtown Atlanta courthouse.
Mr. Graham has argued, among other things, that he should be exempt from testifying under the U.S. Constitution’s speech and debate clause, which prohibits asking lawmakers about their legitimate legislative functions. The appeals court laid out further steps on Sunday that must be taken before Mr. Graham gives any testimony.
First, the court ruled, a Federal District Court must determine whether Mr. Graham is “entitled to a partial quashal or modification of the subpoena to appear before the special purpose grand jury” based on the speech and debate clause issue. After that, the appeals court said, it will take up the issue “for further consideration.”
[…]
Lawyers for Mr. Graham have said that he was informed by Fulton County prosecutors that he was a witness, not a target, in the case.
Even so, prosecutors want Mr. Graham’s testimony for a number of reasons. Among them are two phone calls that he made just after the 2020 election to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, in which Mr. Graham inquired about ways to help Mr. Trump by invalidating certain mail-in votes.
They also want him to answer other questions about what they have called “the multistate, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.” Prosecutors have said in court documents that they expect Mr. Graham’s testimony “to reveal additional sources of information” related to their investigation.
The three-judge panel consisted of two Trump appointees and one by Clinton.
Russian paratrooper Pavel Filatyev spent more than a month fighting in Ukraine after his poorly equipped unit was ordered to march from its base in Crimea for what commanders called a routine exercise.
In early April, the 34-year-old Filatyev was evacuated after being wounded. Over the next five weeks, deeply troubled by the devastation caused by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion, he wrote down his recollections in hopes that telling his country the truth about the war could help stop it.
His damning 141-page journal, posted this month on Vkontakte, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, is the most detailed day-by-day account to date of the attacks on Kherson and Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine as seen through the eyes of a Russian soldier.
The document describes an army in disarray: commanders clueless and terrified, equipment old and rusty, troops pillaging occupied areas in search of food because of a lack of provisions, morale plummeting as the campaign stalled. He tells of soldiers shooting themselves in the legs to collect the $50,000 promised by the government to injured servicemen. He describes units being wiped out by friendly fire. He blasts Russian state media for trying to justify a war that the Kremlin had no “moral right” to wage.
“They simply decided to shower Ukraine with our corpses in this war,” he wrote.
In an exchange of messages on Telegram this week with The Washington Post, Filatyev said he knew that posting his views carried risks. Though technically still in the army, he left Russia this week with the help of the human rights organization Gulagu.net. He declined to give his location because of security concerns.
With his permission, The Post is publishing excerpts of his writings; they have been edited only for conciseness and clarity. The Post has not been able to independently verify his account. But Filatyev provided his military ID as proof that he served in the 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment based in Crimea, as well as documents showing that he was treated for an eye injury after his return from the front.
“It may not change anything,” he wrote, “but I will not participate in this madness.”
Feb. 15: Gearing up before the invasion
I arrived to the training ground [in Stary Krym, Crimea]. Our entire squadron, about 40 people, all lived in one tent with plank boards and one makeshift stove. Even in Chechnya, where we only lived in tents or mud huts, our living conditions were organized better. Here we had nowhere to wash up and the food was horrible. For those who arrived later than the rest, me and about five other people, there was neither a sleeping bag, nor camo, armor, or helmets left.
I finally received my rifle. It turned out that it had a broken belt, was rusty and kept getting stuck, so I cleaned it in oil for a long time trying to put it in order.
Around February 20, an order came for everyone to urgently gather and move out, packing lightly. We were supposed to perform a forced march to some unknown location. Some people joked that now we would attack Ukraine and capture Kyiv in three days. But already then I thought it is no time for laughter. I said that if something like this were to happen, we would not capture anything in three days.
Feb. 23: Bracing for something serious
The division commander arrived and, congratulating us on the [Defender of the Fatherland] holiday, announced that starting from tomorrow, our salary per day would be $69. It was a clear sign that something serious is about to happen. Rumors began spreading that we are about to go storm Kherson, which seemed to be nonsense to me. […]
Feb. 24: Rolling into war with no plan
At about 4 a.m. I opened my eyes again and heard a roar, a rumble, a vibration of the earth. I sensed an acrid smell of gunpowder in the air. I look out of the truck and see that the sky is lit bright from volleys.
It was not clear what is happening, who was shooting from where and at whom, but the weariness from lack of food, water and sleep disappeared. A minute later, I lit up a cigarette to wake up, and realized that the fire is coming 10-20 kilometers ahead of our convoy. Everyone around me also began to wake up and smoke and there was a quiet murmur: ‘It’s started.’ We must have a plan.
The convoy became animated and started to slowly move forward. I saw the lights switch on in the houses and people looking out the windows and balconies of five-story buildings.
It was already dawn, perhaps 6 a.m., the sun went up and I saw a dozen helicopters, a dozen planes, armored assault vehicles drove across the field. Then tanks appeared, hundreds of pieces of equipment under Russian flags.
By 1 p.m. we drove to a huge field where our trucks got bogged down in the mud. I got nervous. A huge column standing in the middle of an open field for half an hour is just an ideal target. If the enemy notices us and is nearby, we are f—ed.
Many began to climb out of the trucks and smoke, turning to one from another. The order is to go to Kherson and capture the bridge across the Dnieper. […]
Feb. 25: Collecting corpses from the road
Somewhere around 5 in the morning they wake everyone up, telling us to get ready to move out.
I lit a cigarette and walked around. Our principal medical officer was looking for a place to put a wounded soldier. He constantly said that he was cold, and we covered him with our sleeping bags. I was told later that this guy had died.
We drove on terrible roads, through some dachas, greenhouses, villages. In settlements we met occasional civilians who saw us off with a sullen look. Ukrainian flags were fluttering over some houses, evoking mixed feelings of respect for the brave patriotism of these people and a sense that these colors now somehow belong to an enemy.
We reached a highway at around 8 a.m. and … I noticed the trucks of the guys from my squadron. They look kind of crazy. I walk from car to car, asking about how things are. Everyone answers me incomprehensibly: “Damn, this is f—ed up,” “We got wrecked all night,” “I collected corpses from the road, one had his brains all out on the pavement.”
We are approaching a fork and signs point to Kherson and Odessa. I am thinking about how we will storm Kherson. I don’t think the mayor of the city will come out with bread and salt, raise the Russian flag over the administration building, and we’ll enter the city in a parade column.
At around 4 p.m. our convoy takes a turn and settles in the forest. Commanders tell us the news that Ukrainian GRAD rocket launchers were seen ahead, so everyone must prepare for shelling, urgently dig in as deep as possible, and also that our cars almost ran out of fuel and we have communication problems. […]
Feb. 26-28: Advancing on Kherson
Filatyev’s convoy made its way to Kherson and surrounded the local airport, looting stores in villages along the way. On the third day, the convoy received the order to enter Kherson. Filatyev was told to stay behind and cover the front-line units with mortar fire if necessary. He recounted hearing distant fighting all day. The southern port city would become the first major Ukrainian city that Russia captured in its invasion.
March 1: Acting like savages
We marched to the city on foot … [around 5:30 p.m.] we arrived at the Kherson seaport. It was already dark, the units marching ahead of us had already occupied it.
Everyone looked exhausted and ran wild. We searched the buildings for food, water, showers and a place to sleep, someone began to take out computers and anything else of value.
Walking through the building, I found an office with a TV. Several people sat there and watching the news, they found a bottle of champagne in the office. Seeing the cold champagne, I took a few sips from the bottle, sat down with them and began to watch the news intently. The channel was in Ukrainian, I didn’t understand half of it. All I understood there was that Russian troops were advancing from all directions, Odessa, Kharkov, Kyiv were occupied, they began to show footage of broken buildings and injured women and children.
We ate everything like savages, all that was there was, cereal, oatmeal, jam, honey, coffee. … Nobody cared about anything, we were already pushed to the limit.
March 2-6: Wandering in the woods
Filatyev’s exhausted convoy was ordered to push ahead to storm Mykolaiv and Odessa, though the Russian campaign had already begun to stall. Filatyev described how his unit wandered in the woods trying to reach Mykolaiv, about 40 miles away. He recalled asking a senior officer about their next movements. The commander said he had no clue what to do.
The first reinforcements arrived: separatist forces from Donetsk, mostly men over 45 in shabby fatigues. According to Filatyev, they were forced to go to the front lines when many regular Russian army soldiers refused.
Into mid-April: Holding from front-line trenches
From now on and for more than a month it was Groundhog Day. We were digging in, artillery was shelling us, our aviation was almost nowhere to be seen. We just held positions in the trenches on the front line, we could not shower, eat, or sleep properly. Everyone had overgrown beards and were covered in dirt, uniforms and shoes began to fray.
[Ukrainian forces] could clearly see us from the drones and kept shelling us so almost all of the equipment soon went out of order. We got a couple of boxes with the so-called humanitarian aid, containing cheap socks, T-shirts, shorts and soap.
Some soldiers began to shoot themselves … to get [the government money] and get out of this hell. Our prisoner had his fingers and genitals cut off. Dead Ukrainians at one of the posts were plopped on seats, given names and cigarettes.
Due to artillery shelling, some villages nearby practically ceased to exist. Everyone was getting angrier and angrier. Some grandmother poisoned our pies. Almost everyone got a fungus, someone’s teeth fell out, the skin was peeling off. Many discussed how, when they return, they will hold the command accountable for lack of provision and incompetent leadership.
Some began to sleep on duty because of fatigue. Sometimes we managed to catch a wave of the Ukrainian radio, where they poured dirt on us and called us orcs, which only embittered us even more. My legs and back hurt terribly, but an order came not to evacuate anyone due to illness. […]
By mid-April, earth got into my eyes due to artillery shelling. After five days of torment, with the threat of losing an eye looming over me, they evacuated me.
Aftermath: Remaining silent no longer
I survived, unlike many others. My conscience tells me that I must try to stop this madness. … We did not have the moral right to attack another country, especially the people closest to us.
This is an army that bullies its own soldiers, those who have already been in the war, those who do not want to return there and die for something they don’t even understand.
I will tell you a secret. The majority in the army, they are dissatisfied with what is happening there, they are dissatisfied with the government and their command, they are dissatisfied with Putin and his policies, they are dissatisfied with the Minister of Defense who did not serve in the army.
The main enemy of all Russians and Ukrainians is propaganda, which just further fuels hatred in people.
I can no longer watch all this happen and remain silent.
One of the hallmarks of the Steve Bannon era, and the Tucker Carlson era, the Rudy Giuliani era, and God help us all we could keep going with that for another hour if nobody reined us in, was the seemingly omnipresent political question: Are American voters really dim enough to fall for that? “That” has been a take-your-pick selection of some of the weirdest conspiracy theories and paranoias to ever have campaign money put behind them, but the answer has always seemed to be: Yes.
Yes, there is literally no invented paranoia too ridiculous for some segment of the jus’ folks Republican base to refuse to latch on to. You say Central American drug cartels are working with Al Qaeda to ship dangerous sex toys to Walmart store basements? This requires immediate action! Why are Democrats letting this happen? Why are our national newspapers not up in arms about this? Why yes, I will donate $20 to your campaign or interest group so that you can bring us more news about the Al Qaeda Sex Toy Caravan!
You might remember, as one example, that Texas Republicans—the sort of people who willingly elect Louie Gohmert to office, and more than once—became convinced during the Obama years that a multistate military exercise used to test and train our large-scale military operations capabilities, dubbed by the Pentagon as Jade Helm, was secretly a plot by the federal government to take over Texas and turn it into, uh, part of America. Republicans showed up at town halls seething about these things. The state’s Republican officials put out stern warnings insisting that they were on the lookout for this sort of thing, so if any Texas law enforcement folks saw any suspicious pro-Obama annexation happening, by gum there would be trouble.
No, really. State officials had to “address” this and everything.
[…] Conservative dark money groups have taken to weaponizing that paranoia, and that brings us to the current moment. A Politico story reports that a dark money group calling itself Citizens for Sanity—this is a very Washington, D.C., thing, this naming convention of picking a name that openly throat-punches the premise of the underlying thing being sold—will supposedly be spending “millions of dollars” on what amounts to a trolling campaign.
A trolling campaign aimed just as much at their own base as on anyone else, mind you: The group is targeting allegedly out-of-control “wokeness” and the terrible “woke” radicals who are threatening America with it. The first John Brabender-produced ad, reports Politico, envisions a terror-filled future in which a transgender athlete wins a sporting event.
Because yes, that’s the sort of thing that will get Republican base voters worked up. […]
Tell them that transgender athletes are coming to win all the sporting events, thus somehow leading to America annexing Texas, you’ll have […] twits out waving guns in front of government buildings in three minutes flat. […]
So this is how unknown rich assholes will be spending their money in the months before the midterms, and we don’t know which rich assholes because nobody wants their name attached to what amounts to a(nother) bottomlessly cynical professional hoax-producing outfit. Maybe it’s the MyPillow guy. Maybe it’s the Uline guy. Maybe it’s some stadium owner, maybe it’s that same group of half-dozen wealthy fascists that has been trying to overturn democracy ever since people started muttering that they should pay their damn taxes already. It’s purely a trolling effort […]
It’s a multimillion dollar troll campaign, and the people being trolled aren’t just conservatism’s many supposed cultural enemies, but Republican voters themselves. If you want a conspiracy theory to panic over, here’s one: Republicans have spent the last five decades trying to sabotage both education and journalism, and now that a significant percentage of the U.S. population has yogurt for brains […] the party intends to capitalize on the effort by rousing the yogurt-brained as the driving force of electoral politics.
Forget about the coup attempt and the deaths in the U.S. Capitol. Forget about the Republican domestic terrorism, the new laws giving party lackeys the power to overturn election results, the million pandemic deaths, the two impeachments, the national security documents found stuffed into rooms at Mar-a-Lago. Forget about your abortion rights. If you abandon Republicanism just because of that stuff Republicans are doing, our dearly gullible Republican voters, criminals will run amuck, men will demand pregnancy rights, and children will be allowed to participate in sporting events without local party officials looking down their pants.
The premise of Citizens for Sanity: “Forget everything we’ve done, all you yogurt-brains. Instead, here are 50 new conspiracy theories. Just pick whichever one you want and go with it, we really don’t care.”
Once again: Republicanism is reliant on hoaxes. It is now how they campaign, and how they govern, and how they try to evade responsibility for even criminal acts. Not just the dark money groups, but individual campaigns are now centered around “The 2020 elections were secretly rigged against Trump,” or, “The entire American education system is actually a trick perpetrated on the country by woke anti-racist groomers.” Hoax-based gibberish is now the basis of all of Republicanism.
And we’re left once again wondering: Will it work? How much will it work? What percentage of conservative voters, after turning their own brains to absolute mush by watching pro-fascist conspiracy programs propped up by the Murdoch family for just a bit more wealth, will vote to ignore the abortion debate, Florida’s future coastlines, the future inhabitability of large parts of the Republican-held South, the return of polio, and an economy that’s no longer collapsing because they are absolutely convinced a secret plot by “woke” people will destroy the country if they don’t keep voting for the party that turns everything it governs to crap?
Folks, let’s forget for the moment that the GOP blocks everything Democrats want to do to help working people, is threatening our democracy with a fusillade of election lies, routinely whitewashes the reputation of a traitor who steals nuclear secrets, and thinks people who somehow can’t keep track of how many homes they own or children they’ve fathered should be U.S. senators.
Repeat after me: They want to force women—and girls—to carry nearly every fertilized egg to term … including eggs that were fertilized by pedophile rapists. They’ve been calling us “groomers” for respecting the individuality and self-determination of LGBTQ kids while they’re literally upholding the parental “rights” of rapists.
And it’s not like they’ve been shy about telegraphing their sincere hope that the diligent work of pedophile rapists be preserved for posterity. They literally can’t stop talking about it.
[…] The latest GOPster to argue that literal children need to be forced to give birth to their rapist uncles’ babies is the actual Republican nominee for Michigan governor, Tudor Dixon. She recently sat down for an interview with Fox 2 Detroit anchor Roop Raj, and while Raj may have been trying to get her zygote, Dixon was steadfast in her sincerely held belief that 10-year-old girls should humbly embrace their divine mission to serve as gross old men’s God-anointed fetus decanters.
Watch: [video at the link]
RAJ: ”You were asked what about someone who is raped by somebody who is, you know, 14 years old as a victim. Why not allow that person to have an abortion?”
DIXON: “I’ve talked to some other legislators about this, and they’ve met the same people that I’ve met who’ve told their story of ‘once this child knew they were in their second or third trimester, and I’m that child.’ I’ve talked to those people who were the child of a rape victim, and the bond that those two people made, and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby—it’s something that we don’t think about …”
Okay, that’s frightening. […]
Weirdly, this isn’t even the most bonkers thing Dixon has said about abortion. As reported by The Daily Beast, she claimed earlier this month that giving child rape victims too many rights simply plays into the hands of their abusers.
During a conversation about a proposed ballot referendum this year that would guarantee accessible abortion in the state, Dixon said that doing so would create “a safe haven for any type of predator out there.”
“If you’re a predator there’s nothing you like more than abortion. And if you can get a girl an abortion without her parents knowing you can keep hurting her,” Dixon said at a meet-and-greet at Na-Lar Farms last week.
“So we have to make sure we protect people from predators in this state. We cannot let this constitutional amendment be passed and give predators a chance to keep preying on young women,” she added.
Got that? The only way to stop child predators is to make sure their victims are forced to carry their offspring to term. That’ll show ‘em!
Republicans have painted themselves into a corner on this issue, and they don’t want to be asked about it. Because their answers don’t make sense, and everyone knows it.
Yes, Democrats have a lot to run on this election cycle—including the fact that we want to preserve democracy for future generations while the GOP wants to euthanize it with a MyPillow. But the abortion issue is no longer an abstraction for voters—it’s real, and deadly serious. Anyone who’s a woman, knows a woman, or has an 11-year-old daughter they’d prefer not to turn into an incubator is affected.
And people should be reminded as often as possible about the dominionist dystopia Republicans like Dixon want to create.
ravensays
Published: 15 August 2022 Nature.com Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection
Lili Xia, Alan Robock, Kim Scherrer, Cheryl S. Harrison, Benjamin Leon Bodirsky, Isabelle Weindl, Jonas Jägermeyr, Charles G. Bardeen, Owen B. Toon & Ryan Heneghan
Nature Food volume 3, pages586–596 (2022)Cite this article
Abstract
Atmospheric soot loadings from nuclear weapon detonation would cause disruptions to the Earth’s climate, limiting terrestrial and aquatic food production. Here, we use climate, crop and fishery models to estimate the impacts arising from six scenarios of stratospheric soot injection, predicting the total food calories available in each nation post-war after stored food is consumed. In quantifying impacts away from target areas, we demonstrate that soot injections larger than 5 Tg would lead to mass food shortages, and livestock and aquatic food production would be unable to compensate for reduced crop output, in almost all countries. Adaptation measures such as food waste reduction would have limited impact on increasing available calories.
We estimate more than 2 billion people could die from nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia—underlining the importance of global cooperation in preventing nuclear war.
There have been numerous estimates of how many people would die in a US-Russia full scale nuclear exchange.
I have several on my book shelves titled, for example, On The Beach. Their estimates are very few survivors.
This is a new one, incorporating our latest data and models.
They use the recent mega-forest fires that totally aren’t due to climate change that doesn’t exist as analogues for a nuclear exchanges.
A US Russia exchange would loft 150 Tg of soot into the atmosphere, and cool the earth by blocking sunlight.
The estimate is that 5 billion of the 8 billion people on earth would die of starvation.
For people in North America or Russia, our chances of surviving are close to zero.
(FWIW, we are as close to a major nuclear exchange as at any time in my life since the Cuban crisis.)
The estimate is that 5 billion of the 8 billion people on earth would die of starvation.
Isn’t that pretty much what we’re on the road to anyway? I mean, it’ll take longer, sure, but there’s no way we’re all living under the current system, nukes or not.
Is there some plausible path that doesn’t include the death of over half of humanity?
The web of state highway troopers that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has woven at the border has ensnared local drivers pulled over by officers searching for smugglers and people who’ve slipped across the border.
Abbott’s election-year attempt to thwart illegal immigration, called Operation Lone Star, has vexed some residents in small towns and counties where the number of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers has increased along with citations of drivers.
In Kinney County, where Brackettville is the county seat, citations more than quadrupled, from 1,400 in 2019-2020 to more than 6,800 in 2021-2022, more than in any other Texas county. The number of officers working in this county of 3,674 nearly tripled, from 14 to 41, an NBC News analysis of Texas DPS data shows. [graph at the link]
As citations climb, residents decry a loss of freedom and civil liberties as they are pulled over for what they and civil rights groups say are questionable reasons and grilled or searched without probable cause. Some say they fear for their safety as high-speed pursuits by troopers have turned deadly.
“I never had this problem before this border situation came into their minds. We were just a regular little sleepy town and all of a sudden now, it’s pursuits everywhere and that’s because there are so many, a flood of law enforcement officers here,” said Richard Gonzalez, 73, a 31-year veteran police officer who worked patrol in California and now lives in Brackettville, a town of 1,642.
Not everyone opposes the troopers’ presence. Some credit them with increasing safety and curbing property damage, while others welcome the increase in state dollars for their law enforcement agencies, hotel rooms, food and the added troopers’ other needs.
[…] The civil liberties groups complained to Attorney General Merrick Garland that Department of Public Safety, or DPS, officers were conducting dubious traffic stops and racially profiling drivers. They said they had linked DPS vehicle pursuits in South Texas to 30 deaths since the start of Abbott’s operation. The Texas Tribune and Pro Publica obtained state records discussing an ongoing Justice Department civil rights investigation of the operation.
The Texas Civil Rights Project did its own data analysis to track warnings and citations and found similar increases.
[…] Abbott, who faces Democrat Beto O’Rourke in his re-election bid this year, launched Operation Lone Star in March 2021 by executive order.
He has declared 53 counties as disaster areas because of illegal immigration, and deployed state troopers, sheriff’s officers and National Guard to arrest, detain and prosecute people on criminal trespassing charges, to intercept drug traffickers and smugglers and turn them over to federal immigration officials.
[…]Twenty-four of the counties under Abbott’s June “disaster declaration” are on or near the Mexico border. Of the border counties, 21 have Latino-majority populations.
Among the 53 counties, DPS data show troopers have disproportionately increased their presence in Latino-majority border counties since the pandemic began: More than half of the Latino-majority counties on or near the border saw above-average increases in troopers, while none of the three white-majority counties did. [maps at the link]
[…] one rancher said with a DPS trooper outside his ranch gate, migrants are no longer unloaded there.
“Please continue to support Operation Lone Star,” Garibay said.
Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said while such problems can’t be dismissed, policymakers need to weigh the consequences and consider alternative policies, such as asylum and refugee reform.
“I would weigh violations of civil rights, including of Latino U.S. citizens as more of a danger long-term than whatever damage to property is really documented,” Saenz said. “It’s a question of whether you value the constitutional rights and freedom of a racially defined portion of your population enough to avoid it.” […]
On the second anniversary of the poisoning attack on Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, Germany and the United States hailed the determination of the Kremlin critic who is still imprisoned in Russia on charges those nations consider politically motivated.
“He barely survived the assassination attempt. He was able to recover in Germany,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a video message released Saturday, praising the Russian dissident’s bravery for going back to his homeland.
“I spoke with him during this time and got to know a courageous man who returned to Russia because he wanted to fight for democracy, freedom and the rule of law,” the chancellor added. “We should think about that now.”
The U.S. State Department called for the immediate release of Navalny and condemned the Russian government’s crackdown on opposition figures and independent media. Navalny is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most well-known critic and has detailed huge incidents of corruption by his regime.
“It is no coincidence that the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine has been accompanied by intensified repression at home,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
“The Kremlin seeks to prevent the people of Russia from knowing about the atrocities its forces are inflicting on Ukrainian civilians, and also from learning about the needless Russian military casualties for the sake of this unjust war,” he added, referring to Russia’s six-month brutal war in Ukraine.
Navalny himself tweeted Saturday that “this is the second time I celebrate my second birthday. The day they tried to kill me, but for some reason I didn’t die.”
He also wrote that his case “has exposed both Putin himself and his system to such an extent that it has shown not only the criminality, but also the dysfunctionality and failure of his regime.” […]
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Authorities in Kyiv have banned large public events and gatherings ahead of Ukraine‘s 31st anniversary on Wednesday of independence from Russian-dominated Soviet rule, reports Reuters. People in the capital will not be able to meet up in big groups from Monday until Thursday due to the possibility of rocket attacks, according to a document published by the Kyiv military administration signed by its head Mykola Zhyrnov. It comes after Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, warned of the risk of more severe attacks ahead of the celebration.
Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine is not going the way that Vladimir Putin hoped, the former head of the British army has said. Gen Lord Richard Dannatt told Kay Burley on Sky News that Russian forces have had to “recalibrate” what they are doing as they have been unable to obtain a swift victory over the Ukrainian military. He said: I think the war has panned out completely differently to what Vladimir Putin imagined. This is probably his worst scenario, his nightmare scenario.”
…
Russia is finding it difficult to motivate and add “auxiliary forces” to its regular troops in the Donbas, the latest British intelligence update said. On 15 August, Ukrainian social media channels circulated a video, which allegedly showed elements from a military unit of the self-proclaimed republic in Luhansk refusing to be part of an offensive operation, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said. The fighters claimed they had already fulfilled their duty by gaining control over the Luhansk Oblast and did not want to fight in the neighbouring Donetsk region – despite threats from commanders, the update said….
My colleague Andrew Roth has the full write-up on the news that Russia has accused Ukraine’s intelligence services of carrying out the murder of Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue:
Dugina, the daughter of Alexander Dugin, was killed on Saturday evening when a bomb blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving, Russian investigators said.
Ukraine has denied involvement and the Guardian has not been able to independently verify the accusations made by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
But the direct accusation against Ukraine will raise concerns about possible Kremlin retaliation for the first political assassination in Moscow in the nearly six-month-old war.
In a statement on Monday, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said that its suspect was a female Ukrainian citizen whom it said had arrived in Russia in late July with her 12-year-old daughter.
“It has been established that the crime was prepared and committed by the Ukrainian special services,” the FSB statement read, according to state-run RIA Novosti.
The woman allegedly moved into a flat near Dugina in order to surveil her and then attended the festival Dugina attended the night that she was killed.
Five minutes after departing the festival, a bomb ripped through Dugina’s car, killing her.
The FSB said that after the bombing, the woman and her daughter fled across the Russian border into Estonia. It said they had been traveling in a Mini Cooper that used various license plates, including registrations from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and from the Russian-controlled areas of east Ukraine.
My colleague Dan Sabbagh has the latest from Ukrainian officials after Russia accused Kyiv’s intelligence services of carrying out the murder of Darya Dugina:
A senior Ukrainian official repeated a denial of Kyiv’s involvement in the car bombing on Monday, arguing that the victim and her father were not strategically significant figures. “What reason is there for us to do this?” said one, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official said they believed that Dugin was the target, not the daughter, but said that he was not an important Russian political figure or a decision maker in the Ukraine war. “Not many people here have heard of him, and nobody had heard of his daughter,” they added.
A claim made in Ukraine that the killing was the work of a new group called the National Republican Army should not be taken too seriously either, the official added. “They are a virtual group, seeking to increase their profile as a result of this incident,” they said.
The car bombing appeared to be a sophisticated plot – “the work of professional guys” – and while it may be been the product of a dispute amongst ultranationalists the official speculated it could also have been the work of Russia’s FSB agency, although they stressed the latter hypothesis was only speculative.
Ukraine does expect Russia to try and make political capital from the incident, particularly because it has come at a time when Ukraine wants the US and other countries to list Moscow as a state sponsor of terrorism. Russia would likely refer to the bombing to try “to silence voices” calling for such a designation.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak has responded on Twitter to the accusation from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) that Ukrainian intelligence services are responsible for the killing of Daria Dugina.
[His tweet reads: “Ru-propaganda lives in a fictional world: [Ukrainian] woman and her 12-year-old child were ‘assigned’ responsible for blowing up the car of propagandist Dugina. Surprisingly, they did not find the ‘Estonian visa’ on the spot. Vipers in [Russian] special services started an intraspecies fight.”]
At Guédelon Castle the year is 1253 and the minor nobleman, Gilbert Courtenay, has ridden off to fight in the Crusades, leaving his wife in charge of workers building the family’s new home: a modest chateau that befits his social position as a humble knight in the service of King Louis IX.
Here, in a forest clearing in northern Burgundy, history is being remade to the sound of chisel against stone and axe against wood, as 21st-century artisans re-learn and perfect long-forgotten medieval skills.
The Guédelon project was dreamed up as an exercise in “experimental archaeology” 25 years ago. Instead of digging down it has been built upward, using only the tools and methods available in the Middle Ages and, wherever possible, locally sourced materials. Now, in an unforeseen twist of fate, Guédelon is playing a vital role in restoring the structure and soul of Notre Dame cathedral….
Mike Kofman joins Ryan once again to update us all on the war in Ukraine. The big thing that everyone is watching for is evidence of an impending Ukrainian counter-offensive. Mike explains that we don’t see that yet. He also discusses fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, some events that surprised him, Ukrainian strikes on Russian-occupied Crimea, the expenditure of munitions, and the possibility that Russia might hold referenda in the territories it currently occupies in the east and south of Ukraine. Ryan and Mike also discuss slowing aid from Europe and whether European backers of Ukraine will hold through the winter. The big takeaway, however, is that Russia seems to have lost the momentum at this stage of the war and appears to be waiting to see what Ukraine does next.
How will Russia react after the car bomb killing of a key Putin ally’s daughter? Is Ukraine set for intensified attacks, despite denying involvement? Plus, sewage spewed across beaches dirties the Government’s record further as the Tory leadership contest dribbles on. Is it too late for them to clean up their act and the country – even slightly? Gavin Esler lays out the week ahead with Andrew Harrison.
Van der Pijl has claimed that Israelis brought down the Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks ‘with help from Zionists in the US government’. The University of Sussex started a procedure to investigate accusations of antisemitism and demanded that Van der Pijl would make “a public apology on social media, acknowledging the hurt that your actions have caused and distancing yourself formally from anti-Semitism in any form.” and remove the tweet which started the row. Van der Pijl refused to do so and decided to resign from his emeritus status on 14 March 2019.
Dude had to resign his emeritus status.
From the description of his latest book:
Ever since large parts of the world were placed in lockdown in March 2020 in the name of public health, there has been a growing public suspicion that some sort of global seizure of power and social transformation is being implemented under guise of the extraordinary suspension of democracy and unprecedented restrictions of basic freedoms occurring in so many countries at the same time.
This book contends that since the financial collapse of 2008, populations in many countries have become restive in the face of extreme inequality and diminishing life chances. In a digital economy, one to two billion people will soon be superfluous, but they are not likely to remain sitting on their hands; in many parts of the world their resistance has begun. The Western capitalist elites have lost the capacity to engage their respective peoples in an equitable social contract and have resorted to stoking fear — from the terrorism scare and the Russian threat to the COVID infliction, with more variants coming on line — as a formula for curtailing protest and maintaining power.
It analyses the social forces driving this process: the US national security state and its intelligence apparatus, the IT giants spun off from it, and the large media conglomerates that have joined forces to create a comprehensive surveillance system of Orwellian dimensions The production of disease threats is amplified by the Gates Foundation and other public international organizations including the WHO, along with the pharmaceutical industries, foresee unprecedented profit in plans to inoculate the world population with experimental gene therapies sold as vaccines. Ideas on using a pandemic to initiate a worldwide state of siege have matured until the need for collective intervention — the threat of a new financial meltdown and the need to remove Trump — prompted global elites to seize the day.
The virus threat may not be an idle one, given the Pentagon’s biowarfare infrastructure which for decades has been producing gain-of-function viruses in laboratories the world over, as have a wide range of countries….
It’s not an entirely surprising development (I might try to find the old book to see if it hinted even more strongly at his future trajectory than I realized at the time…), but it was weird to see the name pop up in this context in 2022.
NEWS w/ @kenvogel: A new conservative nonprofit helmed by Leonard Leo scored a $1.6 billion donation — an extraordinary sum that could boost the right for years to come.
This is the first reporting revealing the existence of the Marble Freedom Trust.
The money originated from Barre Seid, a little known manufacturing mogul. And it was routed in an unusual way. He gave his entire company to Marble Freedom Trust *before* it sold for $1.65 billion.
The deal appeared structured to avoid taxes.
Justice Clarence Thomas once joked that Leonard Leo was “the No. 3 most powerful person in the world.”
And that was before Leo controlled a $1.6 billion — with a b — new conservative fund.
Severe downpours are threatening to wash out the previously drought-stricken Southwest after a weekend of flash flooding. Meanwhile rescue teams at Zion National Park are searching for a hiker believed to be swept away by flood waters. NBC’s Miguel Almaguer reports and TODAY’s Dylan Dreyer tracks the forecast as the storm threat moves east.
[RT EiC Margarita] Simonyan, on Dugina’s alleged killer ahiding in Estonia: “I think we’ll find some professionals who’ll want to have a look at the spires around Tallinn.”
Is this another case of Russia stridently denying responsibility for something, only to casually admit it years later?
Simonyan, two years from now: “End the sanctions or we’ll shoot down another Boeing”
Republicans saw Doug Mastriano as so extreme that they tried to derail his campaign. Now they’re rallying behind the radical election denier anyway.
There is no air of mystery surrounding Doug Mastriano. The Pennsylvania Republican has an ugly record that he makes no effort to avoid and abhorrent views that he makes no effort to deny. The GOP’s gubernatorial nominee in the Keystone State is exactly who appears to be.
Mastriano is a climate denier. Mastriano is also an election denier who appears to have breached Capitol barriers on Jan. 6 and took the lead in Pennsylvania trying to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat in the state — including playing a role in the fake electors scheme. The Republican is also an anti-gay, anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist with ties to QAnon and anti-Semites that cannot be easily explained away.
Mastriano is so extreme that “panicked“ GOP officials in the state desperately tried to prevent him from winning the party’s gubernatorial nomination, convinced that the right-wing state senator’s radicalism was so over the top that he simply couldn’t run a credible race for the commonwealth’s top job.
Republican voters backed him anyway — and now party officials are falling in line, indifferent to everything they know about him. The New York Times reported over the weekend:
In one of the most closely watched governor’s races of the year, Pennsylvania Republican officials who had warned that Mr. Mastriano was unelectable have largely closed ranks behind him, after he proved to be the overwhelming choice of base Republicans.
[…] not everyone in the Pennsylvania GOP has put the party’s interests over public’s interests. Last month, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee, touted endorsements from some prominent Pennsylvania Republicans, including two former GOP congressmen.
But in general, even members of the party that scrambled to deny Mastriano the nomination have embraced the political calculation: Electing one of the most radical gubernatorial nominees in the nation is fine, because partisanship trumps every other consideration.
Indeed, Gov. Ron DeSantis was so indifferent to Mastriano’s extremism that the Floridian traveled to Pittsburgh late last week for a joint appearance with the right-wing legislator.
At the federal level, eight of Pennsylvania’s nine-member Republican congressional delegation — everyone except Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick — also recently signed a letter of support for Mastriano.
As Politico recently noted, the broader pattern is familiar: “GOP leaders rushed to stop him in the primary. When he won anyway, some polls unexpectedly showed him within reach of his Democratic rival, and the Republican establishment began to warm to him. But then he was engulfed by controversy — exactly the kind that GOP insiders had previously worried could sink his chances.”
[…]as Election Day draws closer, Republicans are pretending those concerns no longer matter.
With less than a week remaining before Election Day 2016, many took note of the apparent antipathy the FBI had for Hillary Clinton and her candidacy. One of Donald Trump’s top spokespersons responded at the time with a memorable quip.
“When you’re attacking FBI agents because you’re under criminal investigation, you’re losing,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote on Twitter.
Nearly six years later, it’s amazing how relevant that simple observation remains.
In the wake of the FBI executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Huckabee Sanders’ former boss decided the smart move would be to villainize federal law enforcement. Using his Twitter-like social media platform, Trump published a series of missives that accused the FBI of “abuses,” “breaking in“ to his home, being politically manipulated, possibly “planting“ incriminating evidence, and being “corrupt.”
As threats against law enforcement increased, the former president — who hasn’t made any on-air appearances since the FBI showed up at his Palm Beach property — briefly seemed to change direction, telling Fox News a week ago this morning that the national “temperature has to be brought down.” [Trump] went on to say that the country “is in a very dangerous position,” adding, “If there is anything we can do to help, I, and my people, would certainly be willing to do that.”
Trump’s interest in trying to “help” lower the “temperature” didn’t last. Within hours of talking to Fox, the former president promoted an article that said Americans shouldn’t trust the FBI. Two days later, he promoted another piece that referred to the FBI as “the Fascist Bureau of Investigation.”
Late Friday, by way of several published missives, Trump went even further than he has before:
“When will people realize that the atrocities being perpetrated by the FBI and DOJ having to do with the Raid and Break In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, or after years of other atrocities and unthinkable violations of freedom and the law, this has been going on for years, from the moment I came down the golden escalators in Trump Tower, right up until the present…. The law enforcement of our Country has become that of a Third World Nation, and I do not believe the people will stand for it — between Fraudulent Elections, Open Borders, Inflation, giving our Military to the Enemy, and so much more — how much are we all expected to take?”
This was soon followed by another item in which Trump condemned law enforcement of being “viciously and violently involved” in our political lives, adding, “They have no shame. They are destroying our Country!”
For good measure, the former president went on to promote an article that accused the FBI of “irredeemable corruption.”
“When you’re attacking FBI agents because you’re under criminal investigation, you’re losing.”
The FBI has certainly had its share of critics, but at no point in recent memory has a national figure on par with a former American president accused federal law enforcement of committing “atrocities,” being “viciously and violently involved” in our political lives, and “destroying” the United States.
Perhaps most importantly, it’s difficult not to wonder how some of Trump’s most provocative phrases — “I do not believe the people will stand for it” and “How much are we all expected to take?” — will be perceived by his most radical followers.
The former president reportedly complained last week that the Justice Department didn’t respond to his offer to “help.” It’s likely that officials didn’t respond because there wasn’t much to say: Either Trump will stop pushing inflammatory rhetoric or he won’t. That doesn’t require a meeting; that requires restraint and a mature sense of responsibility.
The Republican’s latest rhetorical attack on federal law enforcement suggests he’s less interested in lowering the “temperature” and more interested in starting political fires.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Monday said he plans to step down from government service in December to “pursue the next chapter” of his career.
Fauci, who has led the NIAID for 38 years, told the New York Times in an interview Sunday evening that he was “not retiring in the classic sense.” Fauci said that his plans for the future include traveling, writing and encouraging young people to serve in the government.
“So long as I’m healthy, which I am, and I’m energetic, which I am, and I’m passionate, which I am, I want to do some things outside of the realm of the federal government,” Fauci told the Times, reportedly adding that he wanted to use his experience in public health and public service to “hopefully inspire the younger generation.”
In a statement on Monday, President Biden thanked Fauci for his long career, serving under seven Republican and Democratic presidents. The President noted that he began working closely with Fauci on the U.S. response to Zika and Ebola when he served as vice president.
Biden mentioned that one of his first calls as President-elect following the 2020 election was to Fauci, who he “immediately” asked to extend his service as chief medical adviser amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Because of Dr. Fauci’s many contributions to public health, lives here in the United States and around the world have been saved,” the President said. “As he leaves his position in the U.S. Government, I know the American people and the entire world will continue to benefit from Dr. Fauci’s expertise in whatever he does next.”
Fauci’s longtime career in public health service began in 1968 when he joined the National Institutes of Health during then-President Lyndon Johnson’s presidency. Fauci was later appointed to the director of its infectious disease branch in 1984 amid the AIDS epidemic.
Fauci has been an adviser to every president since Ronald Reagan, but became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci became a target of former President Trump and conservatives, who directed their ire over public health measures aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 at the nation’s top infectious disease specialist. […]
Saturday night, 29-year-old Daria Dugina got into her Toyota Land Cruiser somewhere in the outskirts of Moscow. Seconds later, all that remained was burning rubber and steel, the result of a bomb planted underneath her seat. Some reports claimed that security cameras pointing at the site of the bombing had all been disabled for two weeks. Even if some of those details were wrong or exaggerated, it was clearly a professional hit job.
Dugina was the daughter of Alexander Dugin—a ultra-nationalist nut who has written a series of books demanding Russia reassert historical territorial control from Finland and the “Slavic” European nations (as far west as Greece), all the way to Mongolia and northern China, and down to the Indian Ocean. His daughter was following in her father’s footsteps. In fact, she had just had an appearance on state TV on Thursday: [videos at the link, “People in the West are living in a dream.” And, “Azovstal defenders are following the ideology of death, Russia started the operation delicately.” Bullshit]
Western media news reports dubbed Alexander Dugin “Putin’s brain,” painting him part Rasputin, part Karl Rove. CNN called him Putin’s “spiritual guide.” The New York Times referred to Daria as “daughter of a Putin ally.”
Meanwhile, modern-day Kremlinologists—scholars and journalists studying and covering contemporary Russian politics—scoffed at the characterization. [Tweets debunking the “Putin’s brain” meme, claiming that Dugin launched a PR campaign to persuade the world outside of Russia that he is Putin’s brain.]
By some indications, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin considered Dugin a major irritant. He was fired from his teaching post at Moscow State University in 2014 for being too genocidal in Russia’s first Ukrainian invasion. And after being a frequent guest on Russian state TV supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he fell out of favor after criticizing Putin for not taking more of Ukraine at the time. (The rules are clear—the military can be criticized from right, but never Putin himself.)
In the late 90s he wrote a book proposing taking Tibet, Inner Manchuria, Xinjiang and other parts of Northern China, compensating them with much of southeastern Asia (except for Vietnam, for some reason), the Philippines, and Australia. The Chinese were not amused, as you might imagine, and the Kremlin was forced to distance itself from Dugin. (This Twitter thread digs into the book’s maps. His main tool for European and Asian domination? Not military force, but energy blackmail. Maybe Putin read that chapter.)
So no, Dugin wasn’t Putin’s “brain” or “close ally” or “Rasputin” or whatever else has been written. He was an ultranationalist crank who dreamed of an expanded Russian empire with zero hopes that any of it would ever be a reality. It was sheer madness.
Some sources, still trying to make Dugin sound particularly important, claim his book was “influential” within Russian circles. Aside from the lack of real sourcing, as far as I can tell, how influential could a book about global conquest be with Russia’s military establishment, if they didn’t bother maintaining equipment at standards capable of actually conquering anything?
Still, none of this is helpful in determining why and by whom Dugina was assassinated. Russia has launched an “investigation,” but no one is taking that seriously. [Tweet at the link]
Some unanswered questions:
Who was the actual target, Dugin or Dugina? Some claim it must’ve been the former, because why would someone assassinate a 29-year-old, when her father was the true lightning rod? Yet other reports claim the car was registered to Dugina. Honestly, not sure we can trust anything coming out of Russia right now.
No, Ukraine wasn’t involved. Russia’s propagandists immediately pointed their fingers at Ukraine, happy to gin up outrage and support for further escalation in Russia’s brutal, murderous invasion. Yet none of that makes sense. If Ukraine had that kind of murderous capacity, there are better targets than a young wannabe fascist. For example, Russian command and control—generals and other top military leaders. There’s no tactical or strategic gain in assassinating Dugina, and for good measure, Ukraine firmly denied any involvement—a stark departure from the wink-wink “denials” of attacks on infrastructure on Russian soil.
Was Putin involved? There is a long history of Putin offing enemies … and friends, if it serves a broader purpose in his Machiavellian machinations. Heck, it could even be a false flag operation to spark outrage among Russian citizens, creating space for mass mobilization or other escalatory measures.
Did Dugina make her own enemies? One Russian journalist wrote, “Dugina was involved in the theft of money that the Kremlin allocated to finance the election campaign in France – Le Pen. The money never reached Marine. The same thing happened with European anti-globalists. The girl is a rat. But they wanted to remove the daughter and father.”
Again, not a lot of confirmation. But if true, that would piss off the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency tasked with International ratfuckery, and it would piss off mafioso-style European far-right Nazis. Neither is a great enemy to have.
So lots of theories, and zero evidence for any of them, with little chance of a real investigation that would give us some answers. And since that wasn’t confusing enough, this season is now test marketing the introduction of an entirely new character: [Tweet and video at the link]
There is supposedly a resistance movement inside Russia? That would be welcome news! But don’t get attached to that story line. It won’t go far. Sure, it would be a convenient explanation for all the “smoking accidents” at Russian industrial and military sites. But one guy, claiming to be the sole conduit of information from this secretive new armed Russian insurgency is … it’s just not credible. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and we’re nowhere near being able to see any evidence at all.
But hey, if it’s between a bullshit “Ukraine did it” and an equally bullshit “armed Russian insurgents did it” narrative, the latter is less internationally flammable.
Occam’s razor says that all things being equal, the simpler explanation is generally better than more complex ones. In this case, we know Russia is a mafia oligarchy state. Simplest explanation is that an ambitious and greedy Dugina stepped on some toes, and the oligarchy mafia or FSB responded in kind.
One last note—Dugina’s assassination has hit the Russian non-ruling elites hard, irrespective of whether they are pro- or anti-Putin. This thread explains that in the end, the oligarchy thrives on personal connections, not ideology. [Tweet at the link]
North Carolina’s May primary was “one of the worst elections I’ve ever worked,” said Karen Hebb, the elections director in Henderson County. “It was worse than COVID.”
In addition to long conversations with skeptical voters bringing her misinformation they read on the Internet, Hebb said she and her staff were blindsided by the sheer number of election observers who wanted to watch voting during the primary. There were at least 20 from the Republican Party alone, she said, compared with five or six observers total in the past. “We’ve never had that before,” she said
….some of the people watching the primary were disruptive, endlessly questioning workers and demanding to approach tabulators to verify totals, she reported to state officials in a post-election survey.
And in one alarming case, Hebb said in an interview with Votebeat, an observer followed an election worker from a voting site to the elections office “to make sure that they actually brought the ballots.”
[…]
Henderson County…was one of more than a dozen counties to tell state election officials about problems with election observer conduct during the primary election. The issues documented in the state survey included reports that observers demanded to watch people vote, intimidated election workers, or improperly interacted with voters. The feedback from the county election officials prompted the state elections board to adopt new temporary rules for election observers on August 16.
Observers at the polls, typically appointed by political parties, are a longstanding tradition throughout the country. But the unfounded claims of fraud by former President Donald Trump and his allies are attracting a surge of new observers with unfounded concerns and misconceptions about election integrity…..
Different states have different rules governing election observers, sometimes also known as poll watchers. The Republican Party and allied conservative groups have been training potential observers around the country, sometimes emphasizing unfounded suspicions about the integrity of the vote.
North Carolina is far from the only state wrestling with how to handle a rush of new election observers. In Michigan this month, officials ejected a GOP observer from a Detroit facility where they were counting primary ballots after he spent hours arguing about predetermined rules. Some Arizona election officials are now requiring poll observers to fill out forms detailing problems before they leave polling sites, a way to avoid unsupported allegations that surface after the fact.
[…]
For its part, the North Carolina State Board of Elections last week unanimously approved the temporary changes to the rules governing election observers.
The new rules more clearly spell out where observers are permitted to be. For example, the new rules specify that observers cannot be “so close to a tabulator, laptop, pollbook, or other official [voting] document” that they are able to view confidential voter information….
Multiple people spoke at public hearings in July and August about the proposed changes to the relatively obscure rules. Among them: Cleta Mitchell, a conservative election attorney who featured in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and has been spearheading conservative efforts to train election observers. Mitchell, who said she now resides in Pinehurst, NC, a nationally renowned golf destination, said the state board was improperly using the temporary rulemaking process “for the purpose of curbing the enthusiastic interest that many citizens of North Carolina have expressed in making sure that the elections conducted in our state are transparent and that they are following the law.”
Sounds to me like an all-too-convenient excuse for Russia to attack Estonia. It also sounds suspiciously like this excuse was concocted before the car bombing.
Commentary:
Well, the world’s fastest investigators work in Russia, apparently.
Wow. Russian police found 3-week-old footage so quickly, and spliced it all together in 24 hours! Not to mention, she doesn’t enter the building. She has her 12-year-old in tow. Various videos have her car with three different license plates. Oh, and this:
Kremlin-linked media is posting what they say is Natalya Vovk’s ID card, which identifies her as a member of the nationalist Above regiment.
Not the most obvious thing to take with you when you plot a car bombing in Russia. […]
Vipers in Russian special services started an intraspecies fight.
Russia is comically bad at this.
[…] This response makes more sense:
The ppl close to power or higher up have realized it for some time. the opposition to Putin is brewing. I bet Dugin made the mistake and sided with the far right opposition. That would be a real problem for Putin. As Dugins support for any coup would legitimize it.
The loudest oppositional voices are coming from the nationalist right. Maybe Putin is getting concerned. Takes her out, blames Ukraine (however clumsily), and it’s a two-fer.
[…]
On his far-right web page “Arctogaea” Alexandr Dugin posted a huge article about the ancient mystical tradition to sacrifice children, including a case of a father sacrificing his daughter’s life. In 2011 Dugin wrote an article titled “It’s Good to Die Young.”
Crazy people living in a mafia-like nightmarish Russia. I still think Putin is likely responsible.
Each new claim over the attack that killed Darya Dugina seems to raise more questions than it answers.
On Monday, Russia’s FSB security service claimed to have cracked the case, publishing information and a video it said showed a Ukrainian woman from the country’s Azov regiment was responsible for the murder of Dugina, whose father is the far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin.
According to the FSB, the assassin managed to enter Russia with her 12-year-old daughter in tow, move around undetected while frequently changing the plates on her Mini Cooper, plant and detonate a professional explosive device, and leave the country.
Supposedly, she managed to do all this without being spotted by Russia’s security services until after she had fled, presumably by posing as one of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have either sought refuge in Russia or been forcibly deported from occupied areas of Ukraine.
The FSB’s claims will be met with extreme scepticism, and Ukraine has strongly denied any involvement in the attack, pointing out that Dugin was a marginal figure and insisting it does not carry out this kind of mission.
But it is not impossible to imagine a motive for Kyiv: Dugina’s death came as Ukrainians are increasingly taking the fight to Russia in occupied Crimea for the first time since the invasion in February. Operations such as an audacious plan to lure a group of Russian mercenaries to Ukraine two years ago show that there are those in the Ukrainian services who like to think big.
Additionally, while it is true that Dugin is hardly the Putin-whisperer that some make him out to be, there is no doubt that he does have high name recognition both in Russia and the west, and he has made frequent, odious calls for violence against Ukraine and Ukrainians. If the calculation was for a high-profile target who was nonetheless reasonably vulnerable and had minimal security, Dugin would not be an illogical choice, assuming that he and not his daughter was the original intended target. [It’s strange that they seem to want to suggest that she was actually the intended target.]
However, the speed with which the FSB has come up with video “evidence”, as well as several rather puzzling aspects of its story, certainly raise red flags….
…
Officials in Ukraine have suggested the killing was more likely to be a “false flag” operation, organised by the Russian state in order to frame Ukraine and provide a justification for further violence. Certainly, it has done that: propagandists such as Margarita Simonyan of the television network RT have called for increased targeting of Ukraine and Ukrainians in the aftermath.
However, it is not clear that Russia needed any pretext to continue its aggression, and if the whole case was a set-up, it is one that makes the FSB and Russian state look curiously vulnerable and incompetent….
Friday, the misogynistic social media influencer and MLM proprietor who’s been investigated for keeping women locked in his basement in Romania was kicked off of Instagram and Facebook, and on Sunday night, finally, he was kicked off of TikTok, where he has had the most influence. This is in part because TikTok has been shoving his videos in the face of any teenage boy using the app even if they don’t search for him, subscribe to him or “like” his content.
In a statement to The Washington Post, a TikTok representative said Tate’s account was removed for violating the company’s policies that bar “content that attacks, threatens, incites violence against, or otherwise dehumanizes an individual or a group” based on attributes including sex. Meta said it had removed Tate’s official accounts on Facebook and Instagram, pointing to policies against dangerous organizations and individuals.
Tate, a 35-year-old American-born, British-raised resident of Romania who ran an online “education and coaching” program called Hustler’s University, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
If you are blessed enough to be unfamiliar with Tate, an introduction:
He’s a former champion kickboxer who …
Was kicked off “Big Brother” in 2016 after video emerged of him beating a woman with his belt and making her count her bruises for him. (He says this was consensual.)
Said that 40 percent of the reason he moved to Romania is because it’s easier to get off on rape charges there, stating “I like the idea of just being able to do what I want. I like being free.”
Said that “If you put yourself in a position to be raped, you must bear some responsibility.” (Which got him kicked off Twitter.)
Recruited women he dated during his kickboxing career to become webcam models for him, and to bilk men for piles of money by telling them “sob stories.”
Ran some ridiculous MLM called “Hustler’s University,” which promised to make young men rich by sharing his videos and other content. (This also just shut down this weekend.)
Bragged about how if a woman accused him of cheating he would beat the shit out of her.
Has hobnobbed with rape apologist Mike Cernovich, pizzagate idiot Jack Posobiec, Paul Joseph Watson, Ali Alexander and other far-right misogynistic influencers.
In April, Romanian police raided his home after reports surfaced that he was keeping an American girl captive there. Police found the girl as well as a Romanian girl he was also keeping there. He is being investigated for human trafficking, although no arrests have been made.
Over the last few months, parents, babysitters, teachers and pretty much anyone else who interacts with middle school age and teenage boys have been sounding the alarm about the toxic influence Andrew Tate has had, turning nice kids into misogynistic assholes.
“I had a boy today, 11, turn to a girl and tell her that she’s fat, women need to be thin, she sits at home and she eats all day and that she’s like every other girl in the world and that she uses men to get money and at least he’s a hard-working man and he works for his money,” one teacher said on Twitter.
A babysitter on Twitter shared a story about picking kids up from summer camp to find that a 10-year-old boy had been bullying his seven-year-old sister by repeating Tate’s talking points and declaring that both of them had to listen to boys because “we’re working.” [Tweets at the link]
Another teacher reported on Reddit that boys in her class refused to even read articles by a female author because “women should only be housewives”:
Just this week I had to have 6 convos with families about their sons saying shit like “women are inferior to men” “women belong in the kitchen […]”.
Not only are they making these misogynistic claims in class but are literally refusing to do assignments if it’s sourced from a woman….I had three boys refuse to read an article by a female author because “women should only be housewives”. But when I say “I’m a teacher and here teaching you” the cognitive dissonance kicks in and they start saying “yah but teaching is a woman’s job”…??!?
5/6 parents (all mothers) were mortified when I discussed their comments. The other 1 dad said “we’ll he isn’t wrong”. 2 are immigrant mothers and they cried on the phone when I shared a video of Andrew Tate that their sons kept referencing & translated the content to them. And this particular videos was talking about his webcaming “business” (ie human trafficking women).
Y’all. It’s been only 2 weeks of school & these young boys are losing it. I’ve never heard such vitriol from young boys since this Andrew Tate guy came on the scene.
[…] While Tate has been banned by TikTok, there are still hundreds of fan accounts pushing his content to teenagers and it’s going to take a hell of a lot of scrubbing to remove them all. Still, part of the reason Tate has had such an outsized influence on young men is precisely because he’s been so accessible, because they get his videos thrown in their faces whether they’re specifically looking for him or not. So by limiting that, hopefully his influence over these kids will wane and they will go back to being nice normal boys who don’t tell their classmates to get back in the kitchen.
Note: I know I promised I would stop covering the manosphere/online misogyny stuff here, but this is actually relatively big news, so I think we can make an exception this one time. Don’t be mad at me!
The federal magistrate judge who authorized the warrant to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate emphasized Monday that he “carefully reviewed” the FBI’s sworn evidence before signing off and considers the facts contained in an accompanying affidavit to be “reliable.”
Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart offered his assessment in a 13-page order memorializing his decision to consider whether to unseal portions of the affidavit, which describe the evidence the bureau relied on to justify the search of the former president’s home.
“I was — and am — satisfied that the facts sworn by the affiant are reliable,” Reinhart said in the order.
Reinhart ruled last week that he would consider unsealing portions of the affidavit after conferring with the Justice Department and determining whether proposed redactions would be sufficient to protect the ongoing criminal investigation connected to the search. But in his order, Reinhart emphasized that he may ultimately agree with prosecutors that any redactions would be so extensive that they would render the document useless.
“I cannot say at this point that partial redactions will be so extensive that they will result in a meaningless disclosure, but I may ultimately reach that conclusion after hearing further from the Government,” Reinhart wrote.
The new order underlines the historic significance of a typically secret part of the criminal investigative process, arriving just as Trump has indicated he’s preparing to mount his own attack on the FBI investigation in court. The Justice Department is due to propose potential redactions by Thursday, portending a potentially lengthy process of negotiation with Reinhart and possible appeals.
In his order, Reinhart noted that “neither Former President Trump nor anyone else purporting to be the owner of the Premises has filed a pleading taking a position” on efforts to unseal the affidavit.
Reinhart also rejected the contention that unsealing aspects of the affidavit would set a dangerous precedent, given the singular, historic significance of this case.
“Given the intense public and historical interest in an unprecedented search of a former President’s residence, the Government has not yet shown that these administrative concerns are sufficient to justify sealing,” Reinhart ruled.
Reinhart’s order echoed his decision to shoot down an effort by media organizations and conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch to unseal the entire FBI affidavit. Reinhart acknowledged that some reporting had already indicated the significance of what may have been recovered from Mar-a-Lago — some news reports described nuclear-related information and other documents related to highly classified government programs. But he said those anonymously sourced reports, whether true or not, reveal nothing about the sources and methods the government used to obtain its evidence.
“Disclosure of these facts would detrimentally affect this investigation and future investigations,” Reinhart wrote, adding, “The Government has a compelling reason not to publicize that information at this time.”
Reinhart also echoed the government’s concern about threats to those involved in the investigation if identifying information were released via court documents. He cited news reports about threats to the FBI and the recent attack by an armed man against an FBI building in Cincinnati, though he didn’t mention that he himself has reportedly faced threats.
“Given the public notoriety and controversy about this search, it is likely that even witnesses who are not expressly named in the Affidavit would be quickly and broadly identified over social media and other communication channels, which could lead to them being harassed and intimidated,“ Reinhart noted.
Another reason to keep the affidavit sealed? Trump and his family’s personal protection by the Secret Service. Reinhart noted that the document describes the physical characteristics of Mar-a-Lago.
“Disclosure of those details could affect the Secret Service’s ability to carry out its protective function,” he wrote. “This factor weighs in favor of sealing.”
U.S. companies are bringing workforces and supply chains home at a historic pace. American companies are on pace to reshore, or return to the U.S., nearly 350,000 jobs this year, according to a report expected Friday from the Reshoring Initiative. That would be the highest number on record since the group began tracking the data in 2010. The Reshoring Initiative lobbies for bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.
Former CIA director Michael Hayden, a Bush administration appointee, said Wednesday that today’s Republican Party is the most dangerous political force he’s ever seen.
Two astrophotographers have teamed up to produce an out-of-this-world photo of the moon, capturing over 200,000 shots to create a single image.
Andrew McCarthy and Connor Matherne collaborated last November to push their photography skills to the limit. Their finished product was posted online Saturday, and is currently gaining lots of attention on Reddit…
Reginald Selkirksays
@185: Sounds to me like an all-too-convenient excuse for Russia to attack Estonia…
I seriously doubt that will happen. Estonia is a member of NATO.
The initial batch of documents retrieved by the National Archives from former President Donald J. Trump in January included more than 150 marked as classified, a number that ignited intense concern at the Justice Department and helped trigger the criminal investigation that led F.B.I. agents to swoop into Mar-a-Lago this month seeking to recover more, multiple people briefed on the matter said.
In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Mr. Trump since he left office, the people said: that first batch of documents returned in January, another set provided by Mr. Trump’s aides to the Justice Department in June and the material seized by the F.B.I. in the search this month.
The previously unreported volume of the sensitive material found in the former president’s possession in January helps explain why the Justice Department moved so urgently to hunt down any further classified materials he might have.
And the extent to which such a large number of highly sensitive documents remained at Mar-a-Lago for months, even as the department sought the return of all material that should have been left in government custody when Mr. Trump left office, suggested to officials that the former president or his aides had been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators, or both.
The specific nature of the sensitive material that Mr. Trump took from the White House remains unclear. But the 15 boxes Mr. Trump turned over to the archives in January, nearly a year after he left office, included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest, a person briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.
The highly sensitive nature of some of the material in the boxes prompted archives officials to refer the matter to the Justice Department, which within months had convened a grand jury investigation.
Aides to Mr. Trump turned over a few dozen additional sensitive documents during a visit to Mar-a-Lago by Justice Department officials in early June. At the conclusion of the search this month, officials left with 26 boxes, including 11 sets of material marked as classified, comprising scores of additional documents. One set had the highest level of classification, top secret/sensitive compartmented information. […]
[…] Trump revved up his feud with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) over the weekend, just as Republican concerns are starting to grow about whether the party can flip the Senate red in November.
In a Truth Social statement on Saturday, Trump criticized McConnell, whom he labeled a “broken down hack politician,” for recent remarks about certain GOP Senate candidates, before taking a swipe at his “crazy wife,” former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who served in the Trump administration before resigning one day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. [Probably because Mitch McConnell saw Herschel Walker, J.D. Vance and Dr. Oz proving that they are low quality candidates. Just guessing.]
“This is such an affront to honor and to leadership. He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!” he added. […]
[…] McConnell is still helping some of those candidates get elected regardless of his stated worries in an attempt to win control of the chamber and once again crown himself majority leader.
Last week, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund was spending $28 million on television and radio ads for “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, who is running against Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) in the Buckeye State.
And McConnell has endorsed Walker in his bid against Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.). […]
That must have hurt.
StevoRsays
DOCO ALERT : On tonight, 8.30 pm ABC TV c2, ‘Australia’s Favourite Tree’ Part 2. Details :
Australia’s Favourite Tree
Tuesday, 23 Aug
Series 1 | Episode 2
8:32 PM – 9:36 PM [64 mins]
gCCRepeated on Thursday 25 Aug at 10:35 PM, ABC TV
Dr Ann Jones and Paul West travel across Australia to investigate the extraordinary lives of Australia’s oldest, largest and most iconic trees and a panel of judges will crown Australia’s Favourite Tree! (Final)
For those in Oz. Loved the first ep of this last week.
It is no surprise that the Covid-19 virus is evolving.
That is why we see new variants every few months.
One of the trends is evolving for shorter incubation periods.
This might be a reflection of another evolving trend, for higher transmission due to higher viral levels in the upper airways.
Bloomberg.com Covid Incubation Gets Shorter With Each New Variant, Study Shows
ByJason Gale August 22, 2022 at 8:00 AM PDT
The longer a virus can replicate inside a person before causing symptoms, the harder it can be to stop because of the greater potential for the infected to unknowingly spread it far and wide.
Among Covid-19’s pernicious features, its incubation period is longer than many other respiratory viral infections, including influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and rhinovirus. The good news is the interval between exposure and the development of symptoms appears to be narrowing.
Scientists from Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing analyzed data from more than 140 studies to estimate the incubation period of Covid caused by different strains of SARS-CoV-2. It fell from an average of five days with an alpha infection to 3.42 days with omicron, according to a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Incubating Covid
Incubation periods for Covid-19 vary by SARS-CoV-2 variant
Source: Wu, Liang et al, JAMA Network Open, Aug. 22, 2022
‘Early’ and ‘late’ values reflect breadth of estimate range
The researchers also noted variable incubation periods across different age groups and severity of disease.
“The findings of this study suggest that SARS-CoV-2 has evolved and mutated continuously throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, producing variants with different enhanced transmission and virulence,” Wannian Liang and colleagues said. “Identifying the incubation period of different variants is a key factor in determining the isolation period.”
Disease Onset
Covid-19 incubation period also varies by age and disease severity
Source: Wu, Liang et al, JAMA Network Open, Aug. 22, 2022
‘Early’ and ‘late’ values reflect breadth of estimate range
The findings are significant for places like China and Hong Kong, which maintain a Covid Zero policy intended to eliminate any signs of the virus as quickly as possible. Everyone who is infected and all foreign travelers are expected to isolate throughout the potential incubation period to prevent transmission to others. Both China and Hong Kong have recently reduced quarantine periods for new arrivals as part of their efforts to revive their economies.
ravensays
The Covid-19 virus pandemic is still going on and likely will go endemic and never really end.
I’m still seeing the victims although the pace as slowed and more people are getting very sick but fewer are dying.
The latest was an old friend, old in both senses. He is 80.
He caught Covid-19 virus at the start of summer and was sick but not that sick. This was because he was vaccinated. Without that, it would have likely been fatal.
Got over that.
Then came down with a severe case of shingles which went for his eyes.
Two months of intensive antivirals therapy and he can now see again and move around.
It turns out that Covid-19 viral infections can reactivate the chickenpox virus. Formally, we can’t say definitely that his infection caused his shingles but the timing is such that this is probably what happened.
The shingles vaccine is looking like a good idea to him now.
[…] Trump agreed to turn over the 150 documents, but kept many more for reasons that have not yet been explained. According to the Times, when each of the steps are considered together — the January batch, a follow-up return in June, and the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search — federal officials have recovered “more than 300 documents with classified markings” from the former president.
That’s an enormous number, laying waste to the idea that we’re only talking about a handful of love letters between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
For that matter, some Republicans have pushed the idea that a modest number of pages got caught up in the former president’s rushed packing during a chaotic transition period (made chaotic by Trump’s attempted coup). If the controversy involved three pieces of paper, each of which were quickly returned, that might be credible. But when this involves “more than 300 documents” that Trump tried to keep indefinitely, the talking point is rendered foolish.
What’s more, the Times reported that the documents were fairly broad in nature, including materials from the CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency, “spanning a variety of topics of national security interest.” This was not, in other words, a single shiny object that captured the former president’s attention.
But just as important was this detail from the article: “Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.”
When it comes to assigning responsibility — legal or otherwise — this detail is critical. If accurate, it tells us that Trump not only took classified materials, he also personally reviewed the spoils of his pilfering, deciding which classified materials he felt most entitled to, federal laws and national security interests be damned.
Making matters just a bit worse, the Times also shed light on the June meeting, when a Trump lawyer signed a letter, falsely claiming that the former president and his team had turned over all of its classified documents:
On June 3, Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterespionage section of the national security division of the Justice Department, went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with two of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, and retrieve any remaining classified material to satisfy the subpoena…. Mr. Bratt and the agents who joined him were given a sheaf of classified material, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Corcoran then drafted a statement, which Ms. Bobb, who is said to be the custodian of the documents, signed. It asserted that, to the best of her knowledge, all classified material that was there had been returned, according to two people familiar with the statement.
But all of the classified documents had not been returned. Did Bobb knowingly sign a document making false assertions to the Justice Department about classified materials, or did her client mislead her as part of an effort to conceal evidence and keep secret documents to which he was not entitled?
A Colorado state senator switched parties yesterday, citing the GOP’s conspiracy theories on elections and climate. It’s a move with national relevance.
[…] The Associated Press reported:
Citing alarm toward the Republican Party’s widespread embrace of 2020 election conspiracies, a moderate GOP Colorado state senator has switched his affiliation to Democrat, enhancing that party’s prospects to retain its majority in the chamber in the November midterms. Kevin Priola, who represents Adams County in Denver’s suburbs, said in a letter Monday he was horrified by the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol and had waited in vain for his party to repudiate it as well as former President Donald Trump, who continues to insist that it was stolen.
“It never came,” Priola said. “To my dismay, brave and honorable Republicans like Mike Pence, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney and Adam Kinzinger have fought to defend the Constitution and the rule of law only to be met with ridicule and threats.”
He added, “I cannot continue to be part of a political party that is okay with a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election and continues to peddle claims that the 2020 election was stolen.”
Priola went on to lament the GOP’s indifference to the climate crisis. “Today, my Republican colleagues would rather deny the existence of human-caused climate change than take action,” he wrote. He added that electing Democratic majorities is important “because our planet and democracy depend on it.”
The practical effects in the Rocky Mountain State are clearly meaningful: Colorado Republicans have predicted in recent months that it might be able to flip control of the state Senate from “blue” to “red” in this year’s elections. Priola abandoning the GOP and aligning with Democrats will make that task even more difficult.
But just as notable is the national relevance. There’s a school of thought in Republican politics that suggests those who accept election results and scientific evidence should stick with the GOP, despite its radicalism, in order to push back against the party’s shift to the far-right.
This Colorado state senator effectively made the opposite case yesterday, suggesting that to stick with the contemporary Republican Party is to reward and enable it. To force a change in direction, the argument goes, the GOP will need to see its members walk away in disgust.
Late last week, Donald Trump used his Twitter-like platform to let us know some kind of legal filing was on the way. “A major motion pertaining to the Fourth Amendment will soon be filed,” the former president wrote, “concerning the illegal Break-In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, right before the ever important Mid-Term Elections.”
Putting aside the Republican’s idiosyncratic approach to grammatical rules, and his unsettling breaks with reality, the missive made it sound as if Trump and his hapless band of lawyers were prepared to make some kind of case against the Justice Department on search-and-seizure grounds. As NBC News reported, that’s what happened yesterday — sort of.
Former President Donald Trump asked a judge Monday to order the appointment of a special master to oversee the handling of the documents seized in the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate two weeks ago. The court filing also asks the judge to require the Justice Department to return materials not covered by the scope of the search warrant, which Trump’s team refers to as “overbroad.” The filing also calls the Justice Department’s decision to search the estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Aug. 8 a “shockingly aggressive move.”
It might be tempting to scrutinize the filing as if it were a serious legal document, submitted in a credible way. That would be a mistake. Orin Kerr, a conservative law professor at UC Berkeley, noted overnight that many actual lawyers “are giggling at Trump’s motion, and how poorly it was done.”
The chortles are understandable. Team Trump’s court filing is a mess.
Among the many problems is the fact that it’s oddly late. The FBI executed its search warrant on Monday, Aug. 8. At that point, federal law enforcement officials reclaimed classified materials the former president brought to his glorified country club, taking stock of what he improperly took. Two weeks later, Trump’s lawyers went to court, apparently in the hopes that the FBI would stop reviewing the documents.
The idea that the FBI’s search was “shockingly aggressive” is even more difficult to take seriously. The Justice Department tried a series of lesser means, including subpoenas and in-person meetings in the hope of avoiding this step. When Team Trump refused to cooperate, the FBI went to court, obtained a search warrant, and executed it in the least aggressive way possible: The bureau sent plain-clothed agents who coordinated in advance with the Secret Service.
[…] Perhaps most entertaining was an accompanying written statement from Trump, which read in part, “This Mar-a-Lago Break-In, Search, and Seizure was illegal and unconstitutional, and we are taking all actions necessary to get the documents back, which we would have given to them without the necessity of the despicable raid of my home, so that I can give them to the National Archives until they are required for the future Donald J. Trump Presidential Library and Museum.”
Cutting through the thick layers of nonsense, the underlying point seemed to be that Trump, who took classified materials to his property and refused to give then back, wants the FBI to return the documents so that he can then turn them over to the National Archives — the agency that sought the materials in the first place, only to be rebuffed.
It’s hard not to wonder whether the court filing is a genuine legal effort or a political stunt designed for the next fundraising appeal and fodder for conservative media outlets.
That said, misguided court filings sometimes work, and in this instance, the case was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump-appointed Federalist Society member, who was confirmed after Trump’s 2020 defeat, and who has a reputation as a far-right jurist.
Credible legal observers may be “giggling” at the filing, but Cannon may very well take the matter quite seriously.
ravensays
Russia has cut off its natural gas deliveries to western Europe.
The Europeans were threatening to stop buying Russian natural gas anyway. At least someday in the indefinite future.
The price of natural gas in Europe is going up rapidly.
Needless to say, it is going to be a cold winter in parts of western Europe, mostly Germany.
The lesson here is obvious. Russia is an unreliable trading partner and it is suicidal to depend on Russian energy. Why buy natural gas from a country that keeps threatening to vaporize you with nuclear weapons anyway?
There are alternatives but nothing that is going online in a month. Germany has significant gas reserves that they refuse to drill for because fracking is a scary word.
Natural gas is the most important story to watch as Russia goes for ‘mutually assured destruction’ with Europe, a top RBC strategist says
Zahra Tayeb Tue, August 23, 2022 at 6:09 AM·2 min read
Russia recently paused the Nord Stream 1 gas supply to Germany for three days.Photo by Daniel Reinhardt/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Natural gas is the most important area to watch in energy markets, a top RBC strategist told CNBC.
Moscow’s cuts in gas flows to Europe have sent prices soaring as the region’s energy crisis worsens.
Helima Croft suggested Russia is seeking “a mutually-assured-destruction strategy with Europe.”
Investors should keep a close eye on natural gas as prices break records and Moscow sticks to its strategy of “mutually assured destruction” with Europe, a top Royal Bank of Canada strategist said on Monday.
“I think nat gas is the most important story to be watching right now in this market,” Helima Croft, RBC’s head of global commodity strategy, told CNBC. “I mean, look what is happening, where we just keep breaking previous highs.”
On Tuesday, Dutch TTF natural-gas futures were up by almost 13%, at 276 euros, or about $274, per megawatt-hour, after reaching a record of 291 euros the previous day on worries about Gazprom’s pause of Nord Stream 1 gas flows to Germany.
European natural-gas prices have soared as the region’s energy crisis has intensified, with Moscow’s cuts in flows driving the gains. Countries are scrambling to get cut usage and build inventory for the winter ahead.
Even before the Nord Stream 1 news, Gazprom had slashed its gas supply to Europe via the pipeline to 20% of capacity.
“We have to fully expect that Russia is going for a mutually-assured-destruction strategy with Europe,” Croft said. “‘You impose these sanctions on us on December 5, you continue to support Ukraine, we are going to make this absolutely awful for you.'”
European officials have accused Moscow of weaponizing its energy exports as payback for Western sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine. The European Union’s ban on seaborne imports of Russian crude oil — the vast majority of the supply — is set to come into force on December 5.
Countries in the region face what one analyst has called a “scary” energy crisis. Germany’s leading utility has been forced to restart a mothballed coal-fueled power plant to secure electricity supply — a sign of how stretched the European gas supply is.
“Europe is facing an economic nightmare right now,” Croft said on Monday. “And the question is — look at where natural-gas prices are. Look at what’s going to happen in terms of industrial shut-ins and rationing. Is Europe going to go forward with these sanctions? That, to me, is the wild card.”
There’s a school of thought in Republican politics that suggests those who accept election results and scientific evidence should stick with the GOP, despite its radicalism, in order to push back against the party’s shift to the far-right.
This Colorado state senator effectively made the opposite case yesterday, suggesting that to stick with the contemporary Republican Party is to reward and enable it. To force a change in direction, the argument goes, the GOP will need to see its members walk away in disgust. – Lynna, OM quoting MSNBC@203
I doubt if either approach can produce a change in direction. The shift of “respectable centre-right” parties to the conspiracist far right is AFAIK a new phenomenon; previously, right back to the 1930s, we’ve seen new far-right parties arise and take vote-share from the centre-right (and often from the left too), while centre-right parties have at most shifted rightwards to shore up their vote without abandoning liberal-democratic norms altogether. But with both the Republicans in the USA, and Fidesz in Hungary, we’ve seen a more-or-less complete transformation to far-right conspiracism. Arguably, the Conservatives in the UK and Canada, the Liberal-National Coalition in Australia, the LDP in Japan and maybe others I’m not aware of are at various points along the same trajectory. I suspect there’s a point beyond which the shift is irreversible, and the party must be destroyed if it is not to destroy democracy.
KGsays
raven@204,
Restarting fracking in Germany now would do very little to prevent shortages this winter. And there’s an excellent reason for not doing so – there’s something called “climate change” going on, and the more fossil fuels are extracted, the worse it’s going to get. Russia invading Ukraine hasn’t repealed any of the laws of physics.
The leak of a May letter from the National Archives to Team Trump about classified documents is a classic example of a political “own goal.”
In sports, there’s a phenomenon known as an “own goal.” The basic idea is, there are competing teams, each trying to score a goal against their rival, but sometimes things go horribly awry and a team accidentally helps its rival by scoring a goal against itself. […]
Of course, the phenomenon isn’t limited to sports. In politics, we occasionally see parties, candidates, and politicians with “own goal” problems of their own. Rachel highlighted some memorable examples last year, noting Republican recount efforts, intended to cast doubts on the 2020 presidential election, which ended up showing Donald Trump losing by an even larger margin.
Last night, Team Trump seemed to kick the ball into its own net once again. Politico reported:
The National Archives found more than 700 pages of classified material — including “special access program materials,” some of the most highly classified secrets in government — in 15 boxes recovered from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in January, according to correspondence between the National Archivist and his legal team.
It was John Solomon, a conservative writer and one of Trump’s authorized Archives liaisons, who published online a May 10 letter from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). As Politico’s report added, the document showed that NARA and federal investigators “had grown increasingly alarmed about potential damage to national security caused by the warehousing of these documents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as by Trump’s resistance to sharing them with the FBI.”
I have no idea why someone from Team Trump would voluntarily show this to the public. It not only bolsters damaging reporting about the Mar-a-Lago scandal, it also makes the former president look worse, not better.
Indeed, the NARA letter confirms that Trump took highly classified national security materials to his glorified country club. It confirms that the Republican’s haul was extensive and wasn’t limited to a handful of documents. It confirms that the National Archives was amazingly accommodating, accepting multiple delays in the hopes that the former president would eventually cooperate and return the secrets he wasn’t supposed to have.
Also notable is what wasn’t mentioned: If Trump had declassified any of the materials, he and his lawyers hadn’t mentioned this to NARA.
It’s possible that this May letter was leaked in the hopes of proving some kind of political interference on the part of the Biden White House, but the document itself points in the opposite direction: The incumbent Democratic president deferred decisions related to executive privilege to NARA and Justice Department lawyers.
Politico’s Kyle Cheney, who called the NARA letter “extraordinarily damning“ for the former president and his team, put together a worthwhile Twitter thread on the developments and highlighted another angle I haven’t seen elsewhere: “Trump has been on notice since at least May of the FBI’s efforts to access this material. So his motion to seek a special master following the execution of the search warrant is months — not just weeks — late.”
If the former president’s critics are fortunate, Team Trump will continue to “help” the Republican with disclosures like these.
In Arizona’s U.S. Senate race, while many Republicans are rallying behind Blake Masters’ far-right candidacy, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly announced new support yesterday from in-state Republican backers, including former top staffers to late Sen. John McCain and former leaders of the state’s GOP.
* In Nevada’s U.S. Senate race, with recent polls showing Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto ahead, Club for Growth Action, a super PAC aligned with Republican politics, is investing $2 million in new attack ads. The commercials will slam the incumbent senator for supporting increased enforcement of federal tax laws.
* On a related note, the Club for Growth is also going on the air in Utah, investing $2.5 million in ads in support of Republican Sen. Mike Lee, who’s facing a tougher-than-expected race against independent candidate Evan McMullin.
* The latest Fox News poll in Wisconsin found Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes with a relatively small lead over Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, 50 percent to 46 percent.
The most notable aspect of Donald Trump’s reaction to the FBI executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago has been the difference between what Trump has said in public, and what Trump attorneys have said in court. At rallies, in fundraising emails, and in the empty wastes of the Truth Social platform, Trump has flung spittle in all directions and accused the FBI, DOJ, National Archives, and President Biden of every form of harassment. But in court … crickets.
Finally, on Monday evening, Trump actually followed up two weeks of threats with some action. His crack legal team bypassed judges whose jurisdiction included Mar-a-Lago and marched straight to the court of a judge that Trump appointed in order to find the most friendly setting possible. There, they dropped a motion for a “special master” to oversee the handling of documents seized in the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago two weeks ago and for the return of some of the documents taken.
While this move finally allows Trump to address the “Why doesn’t he go to court?” question that popped up in any discussion of the FBI search, it generates a lot more questions. Like … why is it that Donald Trump never seems capable of securing anyone competent for his legal team? Because the biggest thing that Trump’s filing has generated from the legal community is laughter.
On Tuesday, the court had to tell Trump’s team they needed a do-over. Because they failed to even properly file the ridiculous motion.
That Tuesday morning response from the court “denying without prejudice” Trump’s motion came for the simplest of all reasons: His legal team failed to follow the rules when submitting the motion.
A pro hac vice motion—a request from a lawyer who is accredited in another area, but not in the state in which it was filed—is both very common and well-defined. Still, Trump’s team got it done—where “it” meant screwing this up badly enough that they have to start over. What they got back in response was essentially the court saying, “You failed to fill in the form correctly. Go read the instructions and try again.”
While they’re in there crossing the T’s and dotting those I’s, Trump’s legal team might also want to reconsider some of the actual contents of the motion, all of which was apparently crafted for how it will read in Trump’s next “We need your $100 by midnight!” fundraising effort rather than meeting any legal standard. Lines like “Law enforcement is a shield that protects Americans. It can not be utilized as a weapon for political purposes” might be good for a Truth Social post, but don’t have any meaning in this context.
The motion calls the search of Mar-a-Lago, which was conducted after months of efforts from the National Archives and others to retrieve national security information stolen by Trump, a “shockingly aggressive move.” Trump also uses the filing for a hefty dose of simple whining, saying that the FBI and Department of Justice have long “treated him unfairly.”
But if the motion makes room for lots of chest-beating and Job-level of claims of rolling in ashes and potshards, there’s one thing it tellingly leaves out. […] the statute which Trump’s team is invoking in this request for a special master and the return of some documents and citations of existing case law—is missing in action from the motion.
[…] exactly what law, regulation, or precedent Trump’s attorneys are citing remains a mystery. So does where Trump gets the idea that he can ignore every past regulation and ruling concerning the limits of executive privilege. Doing any research before filing this motion was apparently too much of a bother.
As MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported on Monday, this is far from the only reason attorneys are “giggling” at Trump’s motion. First off, this kind of request is usually made immediately after, or even during, a search of documents in question. That Trump’s team waited two weeks demonstrates that they have no actual concern about the documents being read by the FBI, and that this is all for show.
Second, the claims about how “aggressive” the FBI search was are sharply undercut by the evidence that shows how the National Archives, White House, and DOJ absolutely bent over backward in an effort to allow Trump to return the documents without generating exactly this kind of incident.
[…] Trump was given the reasons, he was given the time to respond, and he did respond—by stalling over and over and refusing to hand over classified documents that contained “important national security interests.”
As Marcy Wheeler writes at emptywheel, Trump’s document is a lot of things. Including:
A confession to a violation of the Espionage Act
A confession to making a threat against the Attorney General
A legal shit show
Serial proof that a Trump search was conducted like other searches
Filed in the wrong place at the wrong time
Probably written in significant part by Kash Patel
Not backed by sworn declarations to substantiate its “factual claims”
An invocation not of special master reviews by Trump’s own personal attorneys but instead an invocation of a terrorist lawyer convicted of conspiring with that terrorist.
[,..] it is not a serious legal document, much less the “significant fourth amendment challenge” Trump insisted he would file.
[Popehat} I mean this is shitty on every level. It’s shitty strategy, shitty lawyering, shitty writing, shitty organization. It’s even shitty as propaganda. It’s just incompetent.
LEGAL BRAINTEASER: If Donald Trump Jr. decided to breathe heavy and act really needy for his father’s love while he insisted that it would be SO AWESOME if his dad stole the nuclear codes and put them inside his armpits and took them to Mar-a-Lago, would that be a good defense of Daddy or a bad defense of Daddy?
TIME’S UP, he did it anyway: [video at the link]
The gist of what the sad, damaged boy was saying while campaigning for Matt Gaetz — yep — was that he thinks it would be GOOD if Daddy had the nuclear codes, because “Our enemies might actually be like, ‘okay, maybe let’s not mess with them,’ unlike when they look at Joe Biden and they say, ‘you know what, we should attack now.’” Uh huh, sure.
Of course, that’s a strawman. The nuclear codes change all the time […] even the current president doesn’t have the codes that actually make the weapons fire, but rather the codes that allow that order to be given. The ones that make the weapons fire are “kept on military bases and at the Pentagon.” Trump definitely shoved his dumbest boy band of idiots in at the Pentagon after he lost the election, but we are skeptical those morons have the mental capacity to pull off that heist. […]
Regardless, we think most people are a lot more curious/worried Trump might have stolen state nuclear secrets, with the intention of selling them to God knows whom. But we will make a note that if Junior is out there blabbing about “MY DADDY SHOULD HAVE THE NUCLEAR CODES!” it’s always possible this is a fumbling attempt to move the goalposts yet again.
As JoeMyGod notes, the top of Drudge, at least as of this writing, is certainly interpreting it that way: [image at the link]
So that’s neat.
Other Trump spawn and things that mate with Trump spawn have also been hitting the airwaves the last 24 hours. Here is Eric Trump saying the “whole country is revolting” over the raid on Mar-a-Lago. [video at the link]
[…] And because he’s trying to sell his hilariously shitty book nobody wants to read, Jared Kushner is prairie-dogging out of whatever holes he’s been hiding in. This morning on “Fox & Friends,” he said he “wasn’t familiar” with whatever state secrets his father-in-law stole (allegedly!), but this just reminds him of that time they met with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 transition for an “innocent meeting” and everybody went very crazy and “hyperventilated” for months and years, but then it turned out that whole Trump and Russia thing was a big nothing and they were totally innocent.
Right?
RIGHT? ISN’T THAT EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED? THE RUSSIA THING, WITH TRUMP AND RUSSIA, WAS A HOAX? (The Senate Intelligence Committee, then led by Republicans, did not seem to agree it was a big nothing or a hoax.) [video at the link]
Jared also told Mark Levin this weekend regarding the Mar-a-Lago raid that people are “manufacturing fabulous claims that get debunked shortly thereafter.” Plus the usual argle-bargle about how this is only happening because Trump “drives his enemies so crazy” blah blah blah. Is it still possible Jared or Ivanka are the mole? Of course it is!
It’s probably to be expected that the spawn are everywhere right now, as last night was full of news dumps about what the government found at Mar-a-Lago. And every time more news drops about that, Donald Trump looks more and more terrible and criminal.
[…] the highlights are:
1) The New York Times reported that the government has so far retrieved more than 300 classified documents from Trump, between this month’s search and its actions back in January. According to the Times’s sources, the stuff Trump turned over in January “included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest.” And it was some of those contents that freaked the feds out so much that a grand jury was convened and a criminal investigation commenced. Of the stuff the feds took away from Mar-a-Lago this month, 11 more sets were classified, and “[o]ne set had the highest level of classification, top secret/sensitive compartmented information.”
So that’s bad.
2) Late last night, […] Trump’s favorite fake journalist John Solomon released a May 10 letter from National Archivist Debra Wall to Trump’s lawyers. Solomon’s intentions in releasing the letter were, um, unclear, but one thing catching people’s attention is that it showed that in January, the National Archives recovered “more than 700 pages of classified documents, including ‘special access program materials’ — among the most highly classified secrets in government — in the 15 boxes recovered from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago complex.”
In other words, we are guessing Wonkette was right when we wrote just after the Mar-a-Lago search that it sure sounded like whatever Trump stole was very bad, based on his lawyers’ hysteria trying to suggest that the FBI had planted it themselves.
So yes, Junior, please tell us more about how AWESOME it would be if Daddy stole X, Y and Z, and if you have any cool ideas about neat places your bestest daddy ever could hide-and-go-seek them for you and Eric to find at Mar-a-Lago, we are sure the feds would also like to hear those too!
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog (which is now closed). Their last summary:
The US is expected to announce an additional military aid package for Ukraine of about $3bn (£2.5bn), according to reports. The new package will be announced on Wednesday, the day the war in Ukraine hits the six-month mark, US officials were cited as saying. It would be the largest such assistance package that the US has provided for Ukraine since the start of the war.
Many civilians are attempting to leave Kyiv amid fears of a Russian attack on the country’s independence day, according to an adviser to Ukraine’s president. Alex Rodnyansky said people were worried and that there was “certainly some concern” that an attack may strike the centres of decision-making in the Ukrainian capital on Wednesday.
The US has issued a security alert warning that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days. The warning is the first specific security alert the US embassy in Kyiv has issued in recent months and comes after a ban by the Ukrainian government on celebrations in the capital to mark Wednesday’s anniversary of independence from Soviet rule because of fears of attack.
The head of Ukraine’s security and defence council, Oleksiy Danilov, said he expects Russia’s security services to stage a series of terrorist attacks in Russian cities, resulting in large numbers of civilian casualties. Danilov said that the murder on Saturday of Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian ultra-nationalist Alexander Dugin, was the first in what he expects to be a number of attacks.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has vowed a “powerful response” in the event of a Russian attack on Kyiv on or around independence day on Wednesday. There was a daily threat of Russian attacks and Ukrainian intelligence was working with foreign intelligence, Zelenskiy said in a joint news conference with the visiting Polish president, Andrzej Duda.
Ukraine’s president said the country will not agree to any proposal to freeze the current frontlines in its conflict with Russia in order to “calm” Moscow, which now controls about 22% of Ukraine including Crimea. Speaking at a news conference in Kyiv today, Zelenskiy urged the world not to show fatigue with the war, saying this would pose a big threat to the whole world.
Zelenskiy also promised to bring “freedom to Ukraine and citizens in Crimea” and vowed that the Ukrainian flag will fly “where it’s supposed to be” in all occupied parts of Ukraine. The Ukrainian president said Kyiv would restore Ukrainian rule over the Russia-annexed region. “It started in Crimea and it will end in Crimea,” he told an international conference on Crimea.
Boris Johnson has urged world leaders not to allow Vladimir Putin to repeat the annexation of Crimea in other parts of Ukraine. Britain will continue to support Ukraine with military, humanitarian, economic and diplomatic support until Russia “ends this hideous war and withdraws its forces from the entirety of Ukraine”, Johnson said in a remote address to the international Crimea Platform summit.
Hundreds of people gathered in Moscow for the funeral of Darya Dugina, the daughter of one of Russia’s most prominent nationalist ideologues. Dugina, daughter of ultra-nationalist Alexander Dugin, was murdered on Saturday in a car bomb attack outside Moscow. Russia’s FSB security service has accused Ukrainian intelligence agencies of ordering her killing, which Kyiv denies.
Russian tourists may be banned from entering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland if the EU does not enact a bloc-wide ban, according to Lithuania’s foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. Russians should not be allowed to enter the EU while their country “is undertaking genocide”, Landsbergis told reporters in Vilnius. It comes after the US rebuffed Ukraine’s demand for a blanket visa ban on Russians.
The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, has demanded a halt to “nuclear sabre-rattling”, saying the world is at a “maximum moment of danger” and all countries with nuclear weapons must make a commitment to “no first-use”. The UN chief described the situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, as critical. Shelling and fighting in the area continues.
The war in Ukraine has pushed people to “a critical breaking point” with “devastating” knock-on effects that will only grow as the conflict drags on, the Red Cross has warned. Soaring inflation and shortages of essential products like fuel and food in Ukraine and neighbouring countries have left people struggling to afford basic supplies, with the situation becoming more desperate as the weather chills in the weeks ahead.
Kyiv has accused Moscow of having organised illegal mass adoptions of Ukrainian children after transferring them from occupied territories to Russia. “More than 1,000 children from Mariupol,” were “illegally transferred to outsiders in Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo and Altai Krai” in Siberia, a statement by Ukraine’s foreign ministry read.
The UN has said it is “very concerned” about plans by Russian-backed authorities to hold trials for captured Ukrainian soldiers in Mariupol. Pro-Russian officials appear to be installing metal cages in a hall in Mariupol as part of plans to establish what they were calling an “international tribunal”, a UN rights office spokesperson said, adding that such a process could itself amount to a war crime.
Twice as many deaths involving Covid occurred this summer compared with last summer, according to analysis of new data – though rates have fallen in recent weeks as the latest wave decreases in severity in the UK.
Although the overall number of deaths of people with Covid in 2022 remains far below last year, the summer months have bucked that trend. More than 5,700 Covid deaths have been registered since 8 June when two Omicron subvariants became dominant. This is 95% higher than in the same period last year when there were 2,936 deaths involving Covid across the UK.
However, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also indicate that deaths caused by the latest Covid wave – fuelled by the two more transmissible Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, which became dominant in early June – are on the wane.
…
Prof Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the “surge in infections associated with the BA.5 wave” is behind the increase in the number of deaths this summer compared with last.
“But we will see fewer deaths in August this year than last,” he added. “I suspect that over the next three months we shall see [that Covid] deaths [are] a lot lower than last year and probably that will remain the case for the entire winter.”
The fact that more people are dying this summer than last is most pronounced in the older age groups, a trend that has been consistent throughout the Covid pandemic….
…
Wales and the east and south-west of England recorded the biggest increase in deaths involving Covid with more than three times as many deaths in each of these regions in the summer to date this year compared with the same period in 2021.
In just one region – the north-west – the number of Covid deaths decreased when compared with the same period last year.
Covid was sixth among leading causes of death in July in England and Wales, the latest ONS monthly analysis of age-standardised mortality rates shows. In July last year, Covid was the ninth-leading cause of death in England and it ranked 22nd in Wales.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there (further to Lynna’s #112):
Last week, Florida governor Ron DeSantis traveled to Ohio to campaign for J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate for the state’s open Senate seat. Journalists obviously wanted to attend, but there was a catch. In fact, there was more than one.
The organizers of the event, Trump-aligned Turning Point Action, put in place a host of restrictions affecting who reporters could talk to and where they could do it. They also required them to share any video shot during the event for promotional use.
Normally, the Cleveland Plain Dealer would send its reporters to this sort of event, but in a strongly worded editorial, the newspaper’s editor Chris Quinn pointed to the rules and said none of his reporters would attend. He also warned voters about what DeSantis and Vance’s apparent acceptance of these restrictions said about their approach to press freedom:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate in 2024, scheduled a trip to Ohio Friday to stump for Senate candidate J.D. Vance, and our reporters were not there because of ridiculous restrictions that DeSantis and Vance placed on anyone covering the event.
The worst of the rules was one prohibiting reporters from interviewing attendees not first approved by the organizers of the event for DeSantis and Vance. When we cover events, we talk to anyone we wish. It’s America, after all, the land of free speech. At least that’s America as it exists today. Maybe not the America that would exist under DeSantis and Vance.
Think about what they were doing here. They were staging an event to rally people to vote for Vance while instituting the kinds of policies you’d see in a fascist regime. A wannabe U.S. Senator, and maybe a wannabe president.
Another over-the-top rule was one reserving the right to receive copies of any video shot of the event for promotional use. That’s never okay. News agencies are independent of the political process. We do not provide our work product to anyone for promotional use. To do so would put us in league with people we cover, destroying our credibility.
Yet another of the rules reserved the right to know in what manner any footage of the event would be used. We are news people. We use footage on news platforms. But this rule set up a situation in which reporters could be grilled on their intentions.
I’m scratching my head over one other rule, one that prohibited reporters from entering the hotel rooms of any attendees of the event. If someone invites a reporter into a hotel room for an interview, what’s the harm?
Anyway, we didn’t accept the limitations, because they end up skewing the facts. If we can speak only with attendees chosen by the candidate, we don’t get a true accounting of what people thought of the event. You get spin from the most ardent supporters.
On January 19, when a California appeals court stunned the Scientology-watching world with its ruling that restored Bixler v. Scientology, the lawsuit filed by Danny Masterson’s accusers, we spent considerable time reporting on how much the court’s ruling made a major distinction about how this case was unique.
That day, we pointed out how several times in their ruling, the three-justice panel at California’s 2nd Appellate District had gone to pains to say that they were not questioning the right of a church to hold its members to contracts which obliged them to take their grievances to “religious arbitration,” or even to question the right of Scientology to enforce those contracts against ex-members.
What made this case different, they said, was that Scientology was trying to enforce an arbitration contract against ex-members who said they had been harmed by Scientology after they left the church.
…
And we will remind you again, the court came to this conclusion despite the fact that the attorney for the Bixler plaintiffs, Marci Hamilton, had argued at a November 6 hearing that the contracts should be null and void simply because these ex-members had left the church.
The court disagreed, but restored the lawsuit specifically because it alleges that Scientology was stalking, harassing, and even killing the pets of these former Scientologists after they had left the organization.
Naturally, however, when Scientology petitioned this ruling to the US Supreme Court last month, it made no mention at all about this distinction. Instead, Scientology is trying to gaslight the US Supreme Court by bleating like stuck pigs that its First Amendment rights are under attack because the California court ruled that its contracts are unenforceable simply because a member walks away.
…
As much as we have pointed out this vital detail over and over in multiple stories, other news organizations reporting on this case almost never make the distinction, instead quoting Scientology’s language that its freedoms are under attack.
And now, Scientology has academics rallying to its cause. Two amicus briefs have been filed with the Supreme Court, urging the court to take up the case and examine its issues.
One of the amicus briefs was filed by Federalist Society member Ronald Colombo and by Emory University professor Michael Broyde, who also wrote something mischaracterizing the case for the Wall Street Journal. A second amicus brief came in from a Tennessee lawyer, Larry Crain, who runs something called the Church Law Institute. [I don’t know that three people, only one of whom appears to be connected to a university, really constitutes academics lining up. That said, Broyde is the director of the Law and Religion program at the Emory law school, so that’s disturbing.]
We’re providing links to both briefs below. We will let you see for yourself that they, like Scientology in its petition, make no mention of the distinction that the appeals court was so careful to make, which said that it was not questioning a church’s rights to hold its members to contracts, or even to hold ex-members to those contracts when it comes to things that happened while they were still in the church.
Instead, all three documents — Scientology’s petition and the two amicus briefs — ignore that distinction and claim, incorrectly, that the appeals court is saying the contracts are useless as long as people can walk away from their religion.
“If former church members are permitted to ignore contractual limitations on civil litigation merely by withdrawing from the church, then the practical effect of this ruling is to render such covenantal agreements meaningless,” Crain writes in his amicus.
How’s that for some legal gaslighting.
Will these amicus briefs make any difference? It’s always hard to know. The Supreme Court receives hundreds of petitions every year and only selects a small number to take up. In any normal year, Scientology’s chances of getting the court’s interest, particularly for an appeals ruling that was “unpublished” (meaning not to be used as legal precedent in other cases) would be very small.
But this Supreme Court has shown an interest in “religious freedom” cases, and you can see in all three documents that Scientology and its friends are trying mighty hard to convince the court that a church’s freedoms have been viciously attacked by the California court. Will it work? We’ll find out in a couple of months.
Florida senator Rick Scott is the man charged with leading the Republican party’s campaign to win a majority in the chamber, but Axios is reporting today that he’s on vacation in Italy amid mounting signs that GOP candidates are struggling in key races nationwide.
That news of the senator’s whereabouts leaked shows just how upset GOP lawmakers are with Scott, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee….
“Breaking news in Gov. Whitmer kidnapping case: Jury finds Adam Fox and Barry Croft guilty of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. Croft also guilty of possessing an unregistered destructive device”
On August 22, 2022, an attempt was made on the life of Igor Telegin, an employee of the Russian-controlled occupation administration of Kherson region.
On Monday evening, Telegram channel “Ukraine Now” reported, citing intelligence sources, that at 18:20 Telegin’s car was blown up. At the time, it was unclear whether or not he was injured.
On August 23, 2022, representatives of the occupation administration confirmed the assassination attempt, stating that Telegin was “alive and well.”
“Ukraine Now” reports that Telegin is an associate of former Kherson mayor Volodymyr Saldo, who was declared head of the occupation administration. Russian state media described Telegin as deputy head of the administration’s domestic policy department.
– Assassination attempts on people cooperating with Russia are not uncommon in the Kherson region. On June 24, Dmitry Savluchenko, an employee of the region’s “new authorities,” was killed in a car bombing, and on August 6, Vitaly Gura, deputy head of the occupation administration of Novaya Kakhovka, was killed.
– Volodymyr Saldo, head of the Russian-controlled Kherson Oblast occupation administration, was taken to a medical facility in Moscow in early August. According to unofficial reports, he was admitted with suspected poisoning.
“your reminder that Reality Winner swiped one document and was quickly arrested and did four years in prison. no polite requests. no gently-worded letters. no pretty-pleases. no second chances. no months-long negotiations. one document. four years”
Moderna said Tuesday it had asked the Food and Drug Administration to authorize an updated version of its Covid booster shot that targets the highly contagious BA.5 omicron subvariant.
@202: A Colorado state senator switched parties yesterday, citing the GOP’s conspiracy theories on elections and climate. It’s a move with national relevance.
“Moderate” Republicans has been leaving the Republican Party for decades. See for example It’s My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America (2006).
The GOP has been on an accelerating positive feedback loop of crazy since the days of Ronald “The Great Communicator” Reagan. If the person mentioned in your story felt at home in the party up until Jan 6 2021, just think of all the evil that they were OK with. Voodoo economics, tax breaks for billionaires, illegal wars for oil, increasing power for religious wackos, repeated shutdown of the U.S. government, and on and on.
In 2009, Barack Obama was awarded a Nobel peace prize just for not being George W. Bush.
A former Louisville detective pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to conspiring to falsify an affidavit for a warrant to search Breonna Taylor’s home — which ultimately led to the woman’s death — and to cover up the false document by lying to investigators, the US Justice Department says.
Kelly Hannah Goodlett, 35, pleaded guilty before US District Judge Rebecca Grady in Kentucky. The botched March 2020 raid ended with the fatal shooting of the 26-year-old woman.
“First, Goodlett admitted that she knew that the affidavit in support of the warrant to search Taylor’s home was false, misleading and stale,” the DOJ said in a statement.
“Second, Goodlett admitted that she and the other detective conspired to obstruct justice by providing false information to investigators after Taylor was shot and killed.”
Goodlett was charged, along with three other officers, earlier this month with submitting a false affidavit to search Taylor’s home without probable cause before the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department’s raid, and then creating a “false cover story in an attempt to escape responsibility for their roles in preparing the warrant affidavit that contained false information,” according to court documents.
Goodlett is scheduled to be sentenced on November 22, according to court records. She could face up to five years in prison.
The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Goodlett is expected to testify against two former colleagues, Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany. A third ex-detective, Brett Hankison, is charged in a separate federal indictment, The Courier-Journal reports.
A trial for Jaynes and Meany is scheduled for October 11, 2022, court records show. Hankison’s trial is set for October 13.
The charges filed earlier this month were the first federal counts against any of the officers involved in the raid. In addition to civil rights offenses, federal authorities charged the defendant with unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force and obstruction, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland….
Two of the biggest states in the union, Florida and New York, are settling their congressional primaries on Tuesday. In dozens of safely red or safely blue districts where the general election is a formality, this will all but decide the next members of Congress. New York also hosts two special congressional elections that will be watched for tea leaves about November, including a strong pick-up opportunity for Republicans.
And there is plenty to watch besides the battle for Congress, including Governor Ron DeSantis’s bid for an ideological takeover Florida of school boards, a runoff for Oklahoma prosecutor (Oklahoma held the first round of its primaries on June 28), and ideologically divided Democratic primaries for the Florida House.
Here are 25 races that Bolts is watching on Aug. 23 in Florida, New York, and Oklahoma, as prepared by Daniel Nichanian. More may be added to our cheat sheet through Election Day.
Check back on Election Night as we fill in each result in the second column. And support us to sustain this work….
Some have already been filled in as polls are now closed in Florida.
More on the Russian kidnapping of Ukrainian children.
This is BTW, quite disturbing and it gets worse the more you look at it.
The source for this claim is Russian which means it is likely real.
.1. The number of children involved is in the thousands.
.2. It is not clear what happened to their parents. Or other relatives.
They are from Mariupol which is destroyed. There are thousands of dead civilians buried in new graveyards there. I’ve seen photos and video of them. They are very large.
.3. The places they are being sent to are remote. I looked up ” Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo and Altai Krai.” These are all in Siberia.
This can’t be an accident. They don’t want these children around and don’t want them available to be retrieved in the future.
.4. They seem to be having a hard time finding people to adopt these children.
Not surprising since Russia is poor.
One of the signs of a dysfunctional society is the number of children in orphanages. Russia has a high number of institutionalized children (see below).
Ukrayinska Pravda Russia announces the “adoption” of thousands of children deported from Mariupol
Ukrainska Pravda
Tue, August 23, 2022 at 3:49 AM·1 min read
Diana Krechetova, Ukrainska Pravda.Zhyttia – TUESDAY, 23 AUGUST 2022
In Russia’s Krasnodar Krai alone, more than 1,000 Ukrainian children who were illegally taken from captured Mariupol have been given up for “adoption”.
This is evidenced by information on the website of the Department of Family and Childhood of Krasnodar Krai, which cynically calls Mariupol “liberated”.
It is reported that the children who were taken by the Russian occupiers from the bombed-out Ukrainian port city will now live in Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo and Altai Krai.
In addition, more than 300 Ukrainian children are currently in specialised institutions of Krasnodar Krai waiting to be “adopted”.
To encourage Russians illegally deported from Ukraine to adopt children, they are offered a “one-time payment of maternity benefits and state aid”. They promise to pay an annual 20,000 roubles [approximately 300 US dollars] for each adopted child and more than 150,000 roubles [approximately 2500 US dollars] for a child with a disability, a child older than 7 years or the “adoption” of siblings.
According to the data of Daria Herasymchuk, the representative of the President of Ukraine for children’s rights and child rehabilitation as of 1 August, the illegal deportation of 5,754 children to Russia is a known issue. Prior to that, it had also become known that the Russian Federation is preparing changes to the legislation that will allow Russians to adopt Ukrainian children according to a simplified procedure.
Not a sign of a healthy society.
Does Russia have a lot of orphans?
Russia has 600,000 “orphans,” although 70 to 90 percent of them have birth parents who are alive. This is Russia’s third great wave of orphans, the first two coming on the heels of the two world wars.May 4, 2013
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their most recent summary:
Russian opposition politician Yevgeny Roizman was shown being detained at his home in a video published on social media on Wednesday, reports Reuters. Video of the arrest showed Roizman, former mayor of the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, being taken away by law enforcement officials. Roizman was seen in the video telling reporters that he was being investigated under a law against discrediting the armed forces. He said he was being arrested “basically for one phrase, ‘the invasion of Ukraine’”.
…
A Russian-installed head of the town of Mykhailivka in the Russian-controlled part of the Zaporizhzhia region in south-eastern Ukraine was killed in a car bomb on Tuesday, an official said. Ivan Sushko was critically injured when a bomb placed under his car exploded, Zaporizhzhia region administration member Vladimir Rogov said on Telegram.
Norway and Britain will jointly supply micro drones to Ukraine to aid in its war with Russia, reports Reuters. The cost of the Teledyne Flir Black Hornet drones, used for reconnaissance and target identification, will be up to 90m Norwegian crowns (£7.4m), the Norwegian defence ministry said in a statement.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told Ukrainians on Wednesday in an emotional speech to mark 31 years of independence that Ukraine was reborn when Russia invaded and would recapture annexed Crimea and occupied areas in the east. In the recorded speech aired on the six-month anniversary of Russia’s 24 February invasion, Zelenskiy said Ukraine no longer saw the war ending when there was peace, but when Kyiv was actually victorious….
Democrat Pat Ryan scored a huge special election upset for his party by defeating Republican Marc Molinaro 51-49 in New York’s 19th District, a swing seat in the Hudson Valley that Molinaro appeared poised to flip until polls closed on Tuesday. The win for Ryan, an Army veteran who serves as Ulster County executive and made abortion rights the centerpiece of his campaign, is the latest―and most dramatic― sign that the political landscape has shifted since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade at the end of June.
Joe Biden carried this constituency 50-48 (the special was fought under the old congressional map), but until results started rolling in, both parties had behaved as though Molinaro was the strong favorite….
…
Ryan…quickly closed much of the financial gap he faced by the end of June, but he still looked like the decided underdog. Even a late June internal poll for Ryan taken days after Roe was repealed showed him down 43-40. However, the same survey found that the Democrat could turn things around by hammering home Molinaro’s opposition to abortion rights. Ryan did just that in ad after ad, while Molinaro and the GOP continued to emphasize inflation and crime while ignoring reproductive rights.
Still, Democrats remained pessimistic about Ryan’s chances. While the NRCC and the Congressional Leadership Fund spent a combined $1.8 million here, the DCCC limited its involvement to running some joint buys with their nominee. (We won’t know how much the committee spent until new fundraising reports are out in late September.) The progressive veterans group VoteVets, however, dropped $500,000 to help Ryan with an ad campaign declaring that the candidate, who served in Iraq, “sure didn’t fight for our freedom abroad to see it taken away from women here at home.”
But it still didn’t seem to be enough: An early August DCCC poll found Molinaro leading 46-43—that same stubborn 3-point margin—while the Democratic firm Data for Progress released its own poll on Election Day giving him an even larger 53-45 edge. Tuesday’s upset, though, validated Ryan’s tight focus on abortion rights―a strategy fellow Democrats have deployed in other races across the country.
Both Ryan and Molinaro will be on the ballot again in November under the new court-drawn congressional map, but they won’t be facing each other this time. The new congressman is Team Blue’s nominee for the redrawn 18th District in the Lower Hudson Valley, turf that, at 53-45 Biden, is several points to the left of the constituency he just won. Ryan, who will represent just under 30% of the new district, will go up against Republican Assemblyman Colin Schmitt this time.
Molinaro himself will be competing in the new 19th District, a seat in the southeastern part of upstate New York that also would have gone for Biden by a larger spread, in this case 51-47. About 42% of the new 19th’s residents live in the district Molinaro just lost, but importantly, none of his home county of Dutchess is contained in the district. Molinaro’s opponent will be attorney Josh Riley, who claimed Team Blue’s nomination on Tuesday and will have the chance to deal the county executive his second straight defeat of the year in just a few months.
Jared Smith, the idiot Florida judge who decided a teenager was too “immature” to get an abortion (see raven’s #104 above; she testified that she got Bs in school but he said her GPA was 2.0 so her testimony “evinces either a lack of intelligence or credibility, either of which weigh against a finding of maturity pursuant to the statute”), lost his race to challenger Nancy Jacobs.
I was hoping it would celebrate both these things, but instead the fish are contemptuously tossed aside.
I was being mercilessly bullied at school, and it was obvious to even the ants that crawled the pavements that I was gay as hell, which also happened to be my Iraqi parents’ worst nightmare. Home was a corseted environment where any kind of genuine self-expression was policed.
But the rainbow fish were almost defiant in their flamboyance. I was hypnotised by their ethereal, kaleidoscopic forms that seemed to reject the conformity of the world I was desperately trying to fit into. Strange, undefinable [?] creatures that moved through the sand and the water as if constantly in the process of becoming – I was transfixed.
That was the start of a love affair between me and the ocean that helped me survive the darkest times. Soon afterwards, I got myself a job at the aquarium shop, where I worked every weekend for three years. It became my sanctuary and allowed me to keep an aquarium in my own bedroom. Instead of praying to Allah five times a day, now I would go to the marine oasis glowing magically in the corner.
OK so far, but already beginning to take a solipsistic turn.
At 15, after a particularly disturbing nightmare, they once again turned to their aquarium for comfort:
But something had shifted. Instead of feeling solace, irrationally, I felt anger that my marine companions couldn’t understand what I was going through. I scanned the tank and tried to grab the attention of a pair of clownfish. But they were swimming along happily together – just another couple who had found love – and suddenly the tank made me feel lonelier than ever. I started to realise I had constructed a fantasy that could never replace what I really needed – a community of my own. I remember feeling that even in the queer oceanic universe of my dreams, there was no place for me.
Shortly afterwards, I quit my job at the marine shop and developed a complete aversion to my fish tank, barely able to look at it without the temptation to smash the glass. I couldn’t even bring myself to turn on its lights.
One night, I saw that all my fish and coral were floating rigid on the surface. It was the final confirmation I needed – the tank no longer served me, and couldn’t be the heal-all balm I needed it to be.
WTAF? They were the caretaker of these fish, who they professed to love! The fish no longer served their emotional purpose, so they could be destroyed or abandoned to die? I’m glad they did quit their job, if this was the nature of their alleged “love” for the animals. (I have sympathy for the 15-year-old, but the person writing this is an adult: “Amrou Al-Kadhi is a British-Iraqi writer, drag performer and film-maker.”)
My foray into aquatic life might not have lasted, but the experience stayed with me. Once I left home, I found a community of other queer people at university, and found what I was searching for. I discovered the freeing power of drag that finally allowed me to embody the kaleidoscopic wonder of the marine world that had felt so seductive as a closeted teen. But this time, I was able to share in the boundlessness and vibrancy with like-minded people.
I’m happy that they found this. But also, animals don’t exist for our use; nor should we impose our self-centered fantasies on them, much less punish or destroy them for being real, independent beings and not metaphors.
U.S. President Joe Biden marked Ukraine’s Independence Day on Wednesday with a new security assistance package nearing $3bn (£2.5bn) to equip the country for a war of attrition fought primarily in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Announcing the largest support package for Ukraine since Russia’s invasion six months ago, Biden said:
The United States of America is committed to supporting the people of Ukraine as they continue the fight to defend their sovereignty.
Since the beginning of the Biden administration, the US has committed approximately $10.6 billion in security assistance to Ukraine.
Lithuania’s president has expressed of Russia’s ambitions to continue their aggression and expansion beyond the borders of Ukraine, and called the war in Ukraine a “true miscalculation”.
Speaking on Sky News, Gitanas Nausėda said:
Ukraine is fighting for their freedom, but I think Ukraine is fighting also for us, for the freedom of democracy.
Nausėda added:
Everybody understands that there’s no limit of appetite of Vladimir Putin and Kremlin’s regime. If they will succeed in Ukraine there will be [a] continuation of this aggression and expansion.
When asked if he was worried of Putin’s ambitions to go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Nausėda responded: “Unfortunately, yes”.
Tomorrow [now today] marks six months since Russia launched its unprovoked attack on Ukraine, so this seems like a good moment to take a look at how things have turned out for Russia so far. Apologies, even more than usual, for the length of this thread.
Apologies too, for making this wholly concerned with Russia not Ukraine’s heroic defence – I wanted to look in some detail at how badly Russia has screwed things up (tl;dr: very badly).
In trying to determine how successful Russia has been to date, it’s worth comparing Putin’s stated reasons for invading Ukraine with what’s actually happened. His speech on 24 Feb listed several grounds for launching the ‘special military operation’.
The first was to stop NATO expansion and to reverse the increased military presence in NATO’s easternmost states:…
The NATO expansion claim made little sense at the time since there was no meaningful prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, as everyone knew. Beyond Ukraine itself, we all know how well the attempt to stop further NATO expansion has turned out:…
The war has pushed two historically neutral states, one of them sharing a more than 1,000km border with Russia, to seek to join NATO. Short of Ukraine itself joining NATO, it’s hard to imagine how this outcome could be worse for Russia.
The other NATO related aim – reversing the increased military presence in eastern members and, as Putin made clear several times, resetting the strategic map of Europe to pre-1997 – hasn’t turned out too well for Russia either: [link: “NATO’s military presence in the east of the Alliance”]
Then there were two implicit goals relating to Ukraine’s geopolitical and security position:…
It’s hard to see how no. 1, stopping Ukraine turning into ‘a hostile anti-Russia’, could have been a bigger failure than it has been. On 2, stopping NATO supplying Ukraine with weapons, obviously, there are weapons Ukraine would like but hasn’t been given for fear of escalation.
But I’m not sure that’s going to be a huge consolation for the Russian government given the staggering scale of western military aid to Kyiv, above all form the US:…
Then there are these alleged aims, that have played such a huge role in Russian propaganda: [screenshot with Russian claims about protecting people from Nazis and genocide]
This was a disgusting lie at the time; the last six months of Russian crimes against humanity, genocidal actions and rhetoric, and the rapid domestic shift to something that looks very like fascism also make it look like projection.
Beyond the Russian govt’s stated goals, how well have Russian national interests (as understood from a reading of policy documents, speeches, articles, interviews) been served by the war? Very badly indeed.
Others who know far more about these topics than me have talked about issues including the effects on the Russian economy and the acceleration of Russia’s dependence on China. I want to highlight 3 issues:
First, Russia has seen maintaining its influence over the other states of the former Soviet Union (minus the Baltic States) as a foreign policy and security priority since the collapse of the USSR. The war has been very bad for this.
Ukraine is further away from Russia than ever; Moldova is on a path to EU accession, together with Ukraine.
Although Russia sent troops to Kazakhstan in Jan to prop him up during serious unrest, Kazakhstan’s president has refused to support Russia’s war and relations between Russia and this key Central Asian state are possibly the worst they’ve ever been.
Other states of the former Soviet Union have conspicuously failed to stand behind Russia over Ukraine. In early March, for example, only Belarus voted against a UNGA vote condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, for example; the other states abstained.
But even Belarus has not always proved to be a helpful client state. Despite reported pressure and despite Russia’s urgent need for help, Lukashenka has not involved Belarus directly in the war by sending Belarusian troops into Ukraine.
Lukashenka’s widely-talked about resistance to Russian pressure on this issue is an embarrassment for the Kremlin – if they can’t even coerce Lukashenka, where does this leave Russian regional hegemony?
And if Russia isn’t a regional hegemon, then what happens to Russian national identity, grounded as it is in self-identified great power status that rests heavily on its hegemonic role in the post-Soviet space?
Closely related to this, the Russian govt, and particularly the armed forces, have always viewed the retention of a secure military presence in key post-Soviet states as a strategic priority.
Since 1991, the Black Sea/S. Caucasus region has been seen as an area of particular importance for Russia. The 2008 Georgia war and the 2014 annexation of Crimea consolidated Russia’s military presence in the region – which seems to have been part of the point of both operations
Although Russia’s hold over the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia hasn’t changed, the spectacle of Russia having to pull out its troops to fight in Ukraine raises questions about the strength of Russian military capabilities.
And if Russia continues to lose in Ukraine, its hold on Georgian territory is going to look weaker even if the current Georgian govt shows no sign of wanting to do anything about it.
As for Crimea: [link to tweet with image of Russian tourists fleeing the beach with explosions in the background]
It’s hard to over-state the importance of what’s happening in Crimea for the Russian military. One of the – perhaps the most – significant Ukraine-related objectives for the Russian military when the USSR collapsed was to secure control of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.
Even before 2014, the Russian BSF Sevastopol base was a key symbol of Russia’s ability to project military power. Now: [link to tweet about hit on Russian naval headquarters in Sevastopol]
This connects to a 3rd key national interest: the credibility of its armed forces. Russian capacity for influence has always been more coercive than attractive, despite its attempts to develop soft power. Its great power-ness relies in multiple ways on its military capabilities.
All this has been crushed by Russia’s military humiliation in Ukraine. Listing all the ways in which the invasion has been a disaster would take several more threads, but a couple of things are worth highlighting.
1. Having utterly failed in the original aim of rapidly seizing control of the key cities, Russia announced much more modest revised aims of taking all of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.
Months later, they still haven’t managed to do this. The front line has stayed almost unchanged for the last month and there is no sense that the situation favours Russia.
2.The war exposed the hollowness of Russian military reform. In the 90s, Western perceptions of the Russian army were of a catastrophically ineffective force relying on poorly trained conscripts, riddled with corruption, plagued by equipment failures, and unable to adapt or learn
30 years and billions of dollars later, its reputation is back where it started in the early post-Soviet period.
If the Russian government hadn’t sent the armed forces to fight a war they were staggeringly unprepared to fight, their 21st century reputation as an effective, modernised, powerful force might well be intact. Putin has blown that reputation for a pointless vanity war.
As a general rule, it’s probably fair to say that if you expect to seize the key cities in 3 days but 6 months later they’re displaying your burned out tanks in the centre of the capital, you aren’t quite the military force you thought you were.
Finally: shortly after the start of the invasion, RIA Novosti published, then quickly removed, an article clearly intended to celebrate the end of what was supposed to be a small victorious war in Ukraine….
It made two key claims. First: [“there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia”; “Russia is restoring its historical fullness”…]
And second: [Russia “has shown that the era of Western global domination can be considered completely and finally over”]
6 months ago, lots of people were wrong about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including most of us Western analysts who assumed it wouldn’t happen because we could see how badly it was likely to go and we wrongly assumed Putin could, too.
But it’s harder to imagine getting anything more comprehensively wrong than this. As became clear almost immediately, Russia’s war against Ukraine has been an abject failure that has done unprecedented damage to Russian national interests.
It has accelerated the end of what was left of its post-Soviet regional hegemony; diminished Russia’s international status; shredded the reputation of the Russian military; and reinforced the US’s engagement with Europe and the status of Western institutions more effectively than anything since the end of the Cold War.
Putin and those around him have so far managed to achieve the exact opposite of everything they wanted from their criminal war; whatever happens from now on, it’s hard to imagine they’ll ever be able to undo the damage they’ve done to Russia and to themselves.
Boris Johnson visits Kyiv, announcing £54mn in support. The prime minister has made an unexpected visit to Ukraine to announce further support including unmanned surveillance and missile systems for the Ukrainian military.
Britain is importing no energy from Russia for the first time on record. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released six months after the start of the war found that in June the UK’s imports from Russia were down by 97% and stood at only £33m as sanctions took effect.
…
Pope Francis has renewed calls for peace for the “beloved” Ukraine on the country’s independence day. He also said he thinks of “that poor girl” Daria Dugina, the daughter of a Russian ultranationalist intellectual allied with President Vladimir Putin, who was killed by a car bomb Saturday.
The Pope later came under fire for his remarks on Dugina’s death, as Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, Andrii Yurash, called Wednesday’s speech “disappointing”….
Sometimes the biggest surprises come from the strangest of places. On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, host Will Sommer and guest host Andrew Kirell, senior editor at The Daily Beast, return to the icy north to discuss the QAnon “Queen of Canada,” Romana Didulo, and her disco RV. Also on the podcast, Rolling Stone political news reporter Nikki McCann Ramirez talks former kickboxer “turned-awful-man” Andrew Tate.
Across industries and income brackets, a growing number of American workers are discovering that their productivity is being electronically monitored by their bosses.
This technology is giving employers a means to gauge what their employees are doing and it’s already impacting how much and when people get paid.
Times investigative reporters have discovered that this tracking software is more common than one might think.
Guest: Jodi Kantor, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
Cherry-picking a few more bits of good news, (in addition to Democrat Pat Ryan winning in a special election upset by defeating Republican Marc Molinaro 51-49 in New York’s 19th District, which SC already discussed):
[…] Impeachment prosecutor Daniel Goldman won the Democratic primary in NY-10 and is expected to win the general election in November. […]
Carl Paladino, the glowering racist with a soft spot for Adolph Hitler, lost in the GOP primary in the NY-23. […]
The extreme right wing candidate Laura Loomer lost in the FL-11 GOP primary. As Mother Jones noted, Loomer would have been a top contender for most racist member of Congress.
[…] Maxwell Alejandro Frost, a 25-year-old gun control activist, won the Democratic primary in the FL-10, a heavily Democratic district that he is expected to win in November. Incumbent Rep. Val Demmings (D) won the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Marco Rubio (R) […]
Let’s start with the fact that former President Donald Trump is simply not the sharpest tool in the shed. His latest court filing on Monday is not only a hot mess, but according to attorneys, it could also be an admission of guilt. While arguing for executive privilege, he’s equally admitting that he held on to top secret official government documents. […]
Asha Rangappa, a former FBI agent and former associate dean at Yale Law School, tells The Guardian, “If [Trump is] acknowledging that he’s in possession of documents that would have any colorable claim of executive privilege, those are by definition presidential records and belong at the National Archives.” She adds, “And so it’s not clear that executive privilege would even be relevant to the particular crime he’s being investigated for, and yet in this filing, he basically admits that he is in possession of them, which is what the government is trying to establish.”
Trump’s filing and maneuvering for a special master isn’t the savior he’s hoping for. […] the motion itself could bring up a lot of things that lawyers for the former president would like the court to forget.
The motion outlines months of stalling and defiance on Trump’s part, as The Washington Post reports. A section of the motion titled “President Donald J Trump’s Voluntary Assistance” lays bare the pushing and prodding the DOJ was forced to do to get the boxes of government records to the National Archives (where of course, they belong)—all leading to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
[…] the brief itself was not only filed late in the process but also improperly filed […]
Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and a former federal prosecutor, told Rolling Stone that the motion filed by Trump’s lawyers is “absolutely terrible,” adding that with regard to his lawyers filing another motion to retrieve documents taken from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, it would be “hard to contemplate him filing something even more aggressive and even more unlikely to succeed. ”
The bottom line is Trump rifled through government documents, and it appears he chose what to take to his Florida home and what to send to the National Archives.
[…] Despite the fact that Trump has demanded that his lawyers get “my documents” back from the FBI, an unnamed Trump advisor tells Rolling Stone, “I hate to break it to the [former] president, but I do not think he is going to get all [the] top-secret documents back … That ship has probably sailed.”
Akira @244, yeah. Loomer is determined to reveal that she can be stupid and anti-democracy on all levels. So glad to see her defeated. I don’t think she’ll get anywhere with her “voter fraud” claims.
In other news, here are some excerpts from the latest Ukraine Update, (a followup of sorts to SC’s 239):
[…] In almost two months of fighting, “incremental gains” barely seems adequate to describe how little new territory Russia has taken.
And even as Russia has taken all or part of villages east of the Ukrainian line, it’s been losing territory to the west, south of Izyum. Bohorodychne, which was the target of Russian attempts for weeks, is now once again under Ukrainian control. So is the whole line from Dibrovne to Dolyna.
Russia has made small gains here and there, including capturing small villages around Bakhmut over the last three weeks. However, it’s safe to say the last month has seen almost no success for Russia. There have been hundreds of failed attacks, often more than a dozen in a day.
The slowdown of Russian advances is so obvious that even Russia has had to address it. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed on Tuesday that Russia’s failure to progress was a “conscious decision” made because Russia is concerned about “minimizing civilian casualties.” Everything, says Shoigu, is going according to plan. [map at the link]
A reminder: The plan is to take Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, and the surrounding area, allowing Russia to make a claim on the whole of the Donbas. But Russia’s progress toward that goal since the days just after Lysychansk fell is miniscule.
Here’s the U.K. Ministry of Defense’s evaluation of the current situation in Ukraine: “The Donbas offensive is making minimal progress and Russia anticipates a major Ukrainian counterattack. Operationally, Russia is suffering from shortages of munitions, vehicles, and personnel. Morale is poor …” […]
The reasons that Russia has run out of steam are many, but the biggest suspect for this change of pace is the same as the suspect in every explosion in Ukraine at this point: HIMARS.
In part, that’s because HIMARS clearly has been utilized for one particular purpose: taking out high-value targets well beyond the range of standard artillery. That’s included those shots to the bridges at Kharkiv and Nova Kakhovka that changed the whole tone of events in Kherson. And it’s included one big and scenic boom after another at sites in locations that Russia felt were safely under their control.
This is from an explosion on Wednesday at Shakhtarsk in Donetsk oblast. It’s due east of Pisky, which has been the scene of hard fighting over the last two weeks, except Shakhtarsk is about 50 kilometers behind the lines. Reports are that this may have been both an ammunition depot and a command center. Naturally, the explosion is being credited to HIMARS. [video at the link]
Here’s a whole series of strikes at Nova Kakhovka, also attributed to HIMARS. [video at the link]
Maybe something else will come along to displace HIMARS in the pantheon. Like … whatever it is that’s making those strikes way down in Crimea. And at the moment the relatively small number of HIMARS systems don’t give Ukraine what it needs to move from defense to offense.
But HIMARS seems to have put the brakes on the Russian military. And that’s not bad.
Republicans lost the special election in New York’s 19th District with a county-level elected official who had run for statewide office in 2018 and even, in that election, won the 19th District while being stomped statewide. Republican Marc Molinaro tried to focus on inflation and crime and downplay abortion—following a Republican playbook to deflect from voter anger over abortion—saying that while he was opposed to abortion, he would not support a national ban. Meanwhile, Pat Ryan, the Democratic winner of the election, campaigned on abortion rights.
So Republicans lost a race they spent a lot of money on with a guy who has experience and a constituency in the district and gauged his pitch to a swing district. This loss comes as the party desperately tries to change the subject, to make voters angry and scared about something other than the rights Republicans are taking away. It doesn’t appear to be working. Republicans worked for a generation to end abortion rights, and they were thrilled when the Supreme Court made it a reality. They don’t want to own that now? Well, tough. Voters know who did this.
Republicans didn’t just celebrate the Dobbs decision, they talked about doubling down with a federal abortion ban. […]
Republicans narrowly avoided nominating two of the worst of the worst of their party. In Buffalo, Carl Paladino came close to winning the Republican nomination for the House despite positive comments about Hitler and claiming that Democrats are holding Black people “hungry and dumb so as to provide a base for the Democratic Party.”
In Florida, vile alt-right activist Laura Loomer came close to defeating incumbent Rep. Daniel Webster in a deep red district. With a few more points for Loomer in the primary, someone so extreme she has been banned from CPAC would have been headed to Congress. Loomer has also been banned from Twitter, which she hilariously protested by chaining herself to a door at Twitter headquarters. She even got banned from Uber Eats. But around 44% of Republican primary voters in her district looked at that and said, “I want to send her to Congress.”
It’s true, Republicans dodged the Loomer and Paladino bullets. But in a party that hadn’t spent recent years moving from dog whistle racism to regular whistle racism and trying to overturn elections, those would not have been bullets that needed dodging because Loomer and Paladino would have been seen as the fringe of the fringe. Now they are really close to being mainstream Republicans […]
“When rights and freedoms are being taken away from people,” Ryan told Greg Sargent, they “stand up and fight.” And beyond that, they might start to believe that Republicans aren’t going to stop at taking away the rights and freedoms they’ve already taken, that extremism on one thing might translate to extremism on other things. […]
More than two years after Joe Biden first floated the idea on the campaign trail, the president finally announced a sweeping student loan forgiveness plan that will relieve the debt burdens of millions of Americans.
Biden said on Wednesday that he would forgive up to $10,000 in student loans for borrowers who make less than $125,000 a year, or households that make less than $250,000. Students who have received Pell Grants can expect up to $20,000 in loan forgiveness. He also announced that the current pause on student loan payments, which was set to lapse on Aug. 31, will continue until January. […]
In Roe v. Utah High School Activities Association
a Utah state trial court issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of a provision in Utah law that bans transgender girls from competing on pre-college girls sports teams. Under Utah law, if the ban is enjoined a School Activity Eligibility Commission is to be created that will consider confidentially on a case-by-case basis whether it would be fair for a particular transgender student to compete on girls’ teams. The court said in part:
[From the ruling]
The Court finds that Plaintiffs have shown a substantial likelihood that the Ban violates the uniform operation of laws (“UOL”) clause of the Utah Constitution….
Both a plain reading of the Ban and relevant case law demonstrate that the legislation classifies individuals based on transgender status and, therefore, on sex….
During the 2021-22 school year, only four of the 75,000 students that played high school sports in Utah were transgender. Of those four, only one student played on a girls’ team…. There is no support for a claim “that allowing transgender women to compete on women’s teams would substantially displace female athletes.”….
Similarly, Plaintiffs’ evidence suggests that there is no basis to assume that transgender girls have an automatic physiological advantage over other girls. Before puberty, boys have no significant athletic advantage over girls…. Many transgender girls – including two of the plaintiffs in this case – medically transition at the onset of puberty, thereby never gaining any potential advantages that the increased production of testosterone during male puberty may create…. Other transgender girls may mitigate any potential advantages by receiving hormone therapy…. And still others may simply have no discernable advantage in any case, depending on the student’s age, level of ability, and the sport in which they wish to participate. The evidence suggests that being transgender is not “a legitimate accurate proxy” for athletic performance.
I don’t think she’ll get anywhere with her “voter fraud” claims.
She doesn’t have to get anywhere and I’m certain she knows that. All she has to do is to keep the idea circulating in conservative circles until they believe any election where a right-winger loses is “rigged,” justifying voter suppression laws (at best) or another insurrection (at worst).
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 247
Sadly, this isn’t going to help everyone who got stuck taking loans during Bush’s regime when public student lending was handed over to private institutions.
From the closing summary at the Guardian liveblog:
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia has put the world “on the brink of a radiation catastrophe”. Russia has controlled the Zaporizhzhia plant in south-east Ukraine since March, although it is still run by Ukrainian scientists. Built in the Soviet era, is the largest nuclear reactor in Europe
Boris Johnson visits Kyiv, announcing £54m in support. The prime minister has made an unexpected visit to Ukraine to announce further support including unmanned surveillance and missile systems for the Ukrainian military.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called the six-month anniversary of the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine a “sad and tragic milestone.” He said he remained “gravely concerned” about military activity around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine, Europe’s largest atomic power plant.
The number of people facing acute food insecurity worldwide has more than doubled to 345 million since 2019 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, conflict and climate change, according to the World Food Programme. The impact of the Ukraine crisis had “massive repercussions” in the Middle East and Africa….
“Estonian Prime Minister @kajakallas just now on on @cnni said high inflation in Estonia is ‘a war tax that we can easily pay in euros, while Ukrainians pay in blood’.”
At least 22 people have been killed and 50 wounded in a Russian rocket strike on a Ukrainian railway station, as the country marked six months since Moscow’s invasion on a sombre independence day overshadowed by warnings of further “brutal” attacks.
Addressing the UN late on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the rockets struck a train in a station in the town of Chaplyne, about 145km (90 miles) west of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
“Rescuers are working, but, unfortunately, the death toll could increase,” Zelenskiy said.
An 11-year-old child died in the attack, said Kirill Timoshenko, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, in a message on his Telegram channel….
Of course they did. The Washington Post is reporting that a report from a House panel investigating the botched response to the pandemic has already turned up some extremely alarming facts. Facts like how Donald Trump pressured the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to skip safety tests so that vaccines could roll out before Election Day. And how both Trump and now-Senate candidate Mehmet Oz pushed the agency to promote drugs that did not work.
Staffers at the FDA tried to point out that not only would cutting back on phase III testing violate the agency’s rules and possibly result in distributing an unsafe product, it could also lead to exactly the kind of public distrust in vaccines that was already spreading among Republicans. And, for once, the public would have had a good reason.
Former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn also tried to point out something else: None of this would be secret….
The pressure campaign from Trump came as he and his allies were already spreading rumors and accusations about figures like National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Anthony Fauci. Officials inside the FDA complained that Trump’s attacks on the agency and scientists left “lingering scars” and punched holes in not only trust for the vaccines, but in public health officials at every level.
Trump also mocked the FDA’s vaccine guidance when it was first published in briefing documents for the agency’s outside advisers. That public ridicule went a long way toward cutting confidence in the agency just before vaccines made their appearance.
“These assaults on our nation’s public health institutions undermined the nation’s coronavirus response, “ said Rep. James Clyburn, “and are precisely why we must never again settle for leaders who prioritize politics over keeping Americans safe.”
When Trump was not pushing the FDA to ignore safety rules or making attacks on agencies and individuals, he played another important role: trying to make the FDA approve drugs that were not proven to work, in particular the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
With Trump acting as the central promoter, FDA officials were “inundated” with demands to make the drug available. That included messages and public statements from Oz, who “called for patients to immediately begin receiving the treatment.”
Oz also wrote to Jared Kushner. “We have a potential pandemic solution at our finger tips,” while pushing an unverified report that the drug had left “100% of trial patients free of virus” in a French clinic. Oz called for distribution of hydroxychloroquine to be a “national priority,”
White House adviser Peter Navarro went even further: He worked with a Michigan-based hospital group to create more pressure for the drug in hopes of pushing the FDA into authorizing more extensive use.
In the face of this pressure, the FDA actually issued an emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine at the end of March, but withdrew it just three months later when evidence poured in that the treatment was both ineffective and high levels, the administration of the drug generated a potential risk of heart damage.
Trump supporters, including Navarro and his deputy Steven Hatfill, worked to generate anger over the agency’s reversal and bragged about how they were generating problems for the FDA.
…
This is just the first step in investigating how a nation with so many resources and options failed so utterly in response to a deadly pandemic. But we already have two clear answers: One is Trump. The other is his associates.
Re the text of the ruling @ tomh’s #248 – so nice to see the reasoned, evidence-based argument laid out so simply and clearly in a court decision, especially one from Utah!
Former Newsnight host Emily Maitlis has said a rebuke she received from BBC bosses over on-air remarks about Dominic Cummings “makes no sense”, and warned that growing political pressure has led the media to censor itself.
In 2020, the BBC said Maitlis broke its impartiality guidelines by saying “the country can see” the prime minister’s then adviser had broken lockdown rules.
Maitlis, who has since left the BBC, said its ruling, “without any kind of due process”, may have been “a message of reassurance” to the government.
In response, a BBC spokesman said: “The BBC places the highest value on due impartiality and accuracy and we apply these principles to our reporting on all issues.
“As we have made clear previously in relation to Newsnight we did not take action as a result of any pressure from Number 10 or government and to suggest otherwise is wrong. The BBC found the programme breached its editorial standards and that decision still stands.”
In a speech at the Edinburgh Television Festival, Maitlis said: “Why had the BBC immediately and publicly sought to confirm the government spokesman’s opinion, without any kind of due process?
“It makes no sense for an organisation that is, admirably, famously rigorous about procedure – unless it was perhaps sending a message of reassurance directly to the government itself?”
She added: “Put this in the context of the BBC board, where another active agent of the Conservative party – former Downing Street spin doctor and former adviser to BBC rival GB News – now sits, acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality.”
It is thought she was referring to Sir Robbie Gibb, who previously worked as Theresa May’s director of communications.
She also revealed that, amid all the furore at the time, Mr Cummings had personally contacted her to offer his support.
…
Speaking on Wednesday during the keynote lecture at the festival, Maitlis said the media had failed to deal with assaults from populist politicians and risked losing the trust of audiences as a result.
In May 2020, Maitlis introduced an edition of Newsnight about the No 10 adviser’s infamous trip to Barnard Castle by saying: “Dominic Cummings broke the rules – the country can see that and it’s shocked the government cannot.”
In her speech, she claimed “a phone call of complaint was made from Downing Street to the BBC News management” the following morning, and the BBC swiftly ruled that the monologue had broken rules on “due impartiality”.
Referring to that decision, Maitlis said: “It makes no sense for an organisation that is admirably, famously rigorous about procedure – unless it was perhaps sending a message of reassurance directly to the government itself?”
The corporation also received more than 20,000 public complaints about Maitlis’s on-air remarks.
The presenter said there had been a wider assault on journalism on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years – in which media organisations “are primed to back down, even apologise, to prove how journalistically fair we are being”.
In her speech, Maitlis said many journalists now self-censor in order to appear balanced and avoid backlash, adding that “the way populist rhetoric is used to discredit journalists turns into a sophisticated form of ‘soft censorship'”.
She suggested any fear by the BBC and other media outlets to fully tackle the impact of Brexit “feels like a conspiracy against the British people”.
Recalling Newsnight’s coverage, Maitlis said: “It might take our producers five minutes to find 60 economists who feared Brexit and five hours to find a sole voice who espoused it.
“But by the time we went on air we simply had one of each; we presented this unequal effort to our audience as balance. It wasn’t.”
She described this “myopic style of journalism” as “both side-ism” – something “we tie ourselves in knots over” and which arrives at “a superficial balance whilst obscuring a deeper truth”.
…
She added that modern journalists like herself had helped to “normalise the absurd”, and that in the future “whilst we do not have to be campaigners, nor should we be complaisant, complicit, onlookers”.
In February, Maitlis and her colleague Jon Sopel announced they were leaving the BBC to launch a new podcast and host a radio show together on LBC.
In the aftermath of the decisive Democratic win in New York’s special congressional election on Tuesday, Republican leaders are suddenly concerned that midterm voters might believe that women deserve rights.
The Democrat Pat Ryan’s thumping win in Tuesday’s election has made Republicans wonder, in the words of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, “Is this thing of women having rights going to be a problem for us in the fall?”
“You look at the results in the Ryan election, and it sure seems like a lot of people thought women should be considered human,” McCarthy said. “The question is: is this a part of something bigger or just kind of a onetime fluke?”
McCarthy said that he hopes midterm voters will “think big picture” and consider other issues besides whether women should have rights.
“With our emphasis on environmental deregulation, book banning, and easier access to guns, the Republicans have created a big tent,” he said. “It would be a shame to see that wrecked by an obscure special-interest group like women.”
California is expected to put into effect on Thursday its sweeping plan to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a groundbreaking move that could have major effects on the effort to fight climate change and accelerate a global transition toward electric vehicles.
Aides to the Jan. 6 select committee traveled to Copenhagen last week to review documentary footage related to Donald Trump ally and pardon recipient Roger Stone, according to two people familiar with the trip.
Congress may be on a recess, but the Jan. 6 committee is working.
The Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday it was waiving late-filing penalties and issuing refunds to 1.6 million taxpayers who missed extended filing deadlines for tax year 2019 and 2020 federal income-tax returns. The automatic refunds of penalties and interest to individual and business taxpayers will total $1.2 billion. That works out to an average refund of about $750.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
The head of the Kyiv regional military administration said Russia launched a rocket attack on the region’s Vyshgorod district north of the city centre early this morning. Oleksiy Kuleba said there were so far no casualties or damage to residential buildings or infrastructure facilities. Ukraine’s armed forces said that “several” explosions were heard around 3am.
The US president, Joe Biden, will speak with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, after the announcement of a further $3bn (£2.5bn) in US military aid for Ukraine. John Kirby, the communications coordinator at the national security council, said the phone call would also provide the Ukrainian president with an update on US arms shipments.
Russia plans to disconnect Europe’s largest nuclear plant from Ukraine’s power grid, risking a catastrophic failure of its cooling systems, the Guardian has been told. Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s atomic energy company, said Russian engineers had drawn up a blueprint for a switch on the grounds of emergency planning should fighting sever remaining power connections. “The precondition for this plan was heavy damage of all lines which connect Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the Ukrainian system,” Kotin said.
Russia is probably prepared to exploit any Ukrainian military activity near the Zaporizhzhia plant (ZNPP) for propaganda purposes, according to British intelligence. While Russia maintains the military occupation of ZNPP, the principal risks to reactor operations are likely to remain disruption to the reactors’ cooling systems, damage to its back-up power supply, or errors by workers operating under pressure, the latest UK Ministry of Defence report reads.
Death toll from Russian strike on rail station rises to 25
25 people have now been confirmed dead after Russian forces attacked a train in the village of Chaplyne, Dnipropetrovsk oblast on Wednesday, the Kyiv Independent reports. Four trains caught fire and the deputy head of the president’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, reported on Telegram that two children were killed in the attack.
Russia will be held to account for ‘rocket terror’ attack, says EU’s top diplomat
The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, has condemned a Russian rocket strike on a Ukrainian railway station that killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens.
Writing on Twitter, Borrell described the attack on Wednesday in the town of Chaplyne as “heinous” and vowed that those responsible “will be held accountable”.
Authorities in Myanmar have detained Britain’s former ambassador to the country in Yangon, a source has said.
Vicky Bowman and her husband, Htein Lin, a Burmese artist and former political prisoner, were arrested on Wednesday and charged with immigration offences, Reuters reported. They were remanded in custody and were being sent to Insein prison, it added.
At the time of her arrest, Bowman was working as a director at the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (MCRB). She previously served as the UK ambassador to Burma from 2002-06. She also held roles in Brussels under the former European commissioner Chris Patten and as director of global and economic issues at the UK Foreign Office.
When appointed at the MCRB Bowman was described as one of the “pre-eminent experts on Myanmar”. She said the role brought together her “two professional and personal passions”: Myanmar and responsible business.
Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup on 1 February last year, leading to mass protests in Yangon and across the country.
The arrest of Bowman comes after the UK released a statement on the fifth anniversary of the Rohingya crisis and announced further sanctions targeting military-linked companies.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an organisation tracking human rights violations in Burma, more than 15,000 people have been arrested by 24 August and 12,000 remain in detention….
More than 85 workers at Starbucks who were heavily involved in union organizing efforts at giant coffee chain have been fired over the past several months, according to the workers group Starbucks Workers United.
Workers have filed numerous unfair labor practice charges over the firings and a federal judge recently ordered the reinstatement of seven workers in Memphis, Tennessee, who were fired in February, a ruling Starbucks has said it disagrees with and intends to appeal.
The National Labor Relations Board has issued 21 official complaints against Starbucks, encompassing 81 charges and 548 allegations of labor law violations that are currently under review.
Starbucks has accused the NLRB of favoring the union campaign and called for union elections to be temporarily suspended. The company has vehemently opposed unionization efforts as more than 220 stores have won union elections since December.
Starbucks Workers United have called for Starbucks executives to testify before Congress on the company’s response to the union campaign.
Meanwhile, fired workers have described their treatment. Jaysin Saxton, who worked at Starbucks in Augusta, Georgia, for over three years, was fired on 16 August. His store began organizing in January, publicly announced in March, and won their union election overwhelmingly at the end of April.
Saxton said that a couple of months ago after a new manager was brought into the store, workers started receiving intense scrutiny and disciplinary measures.
“That’s when everything went downhill. They started writing people up a lot, ranging from documented coachings and final written warnings so workers couldn’t transfer or be promoted,” said Saxton. “They surveil us. It’s insane. They just created this intense culture of fear in the store and are trying to push us all out.”…
Dystopian corpspeak meets 19th-century union busting:
Starbucks has denied all allegations of retaliation. A spokesperson said in an email: “These individuals are no longer with Starbucks for store policy violations. A partner’s interest in a union does not exempt them from the standards we have always held. We will continue enforcing our policies consistently for all partners.”
Preet speaks with Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer and partner at the law office of Mark S. Zaid, about former President Trump’s claims that he issued a “standing order” to declassify the sensitive documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.
Ukraine’s Air Forces: On Independence Day, Russian jets made 200 sorties, often simulating strikes.
According to Yuriy Ignat, spokesperson for the command of Ukraine’s Air Forces, air raid alarms went off about 190 times in Ukraine’s regions on Aug. 24.
Sec. Blinken tweeted: “Russia’s missile strike on a train station full of civilians in Ukraine fits a pattern of atrocities. We will continue, together with partners from around the world, to stand with Ukraine and seek accountability for Russian officials.”
Here’s a clip (Twitter link) from Maitlis’ speech @ #259.
Akira MacKenziesays
Russia will be held to account for ‘rocket terror’ attack, says EU’s top diplomat…
Pfffft…Only the defeated ever face punishment for “war crimes” and this whole thing looks like it’s going to grind down into years and years of attrition until everyone gives up and let’s Putin (or his successor) have their way. Besides, if the USA is never punished for the atrocities we’ve committed during our bouts of military adventurism, why would Russia?
Russian building near occupied Melitopol ‘blown up’, says mayor
The mayor of the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, said a building allegedly used by Russian-backed officials in the region has been “blown up”.
Fedorov, who is not in the city, posted a video on Telegram reportedly showing damage to the building, which he said was being used to plan a “pseudo-referendum” by Russia-backed authorities on whether the region should join Russia….
Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to increase the size of Russia’s armed forces from 1.9 million to 2.04 million, as the war in Ukraine enters its seventh month with no signs of abating.
The Russian president’s decree appears to point to the country’s aim to replenish its military, which has been heavily damaged in Ukraine and has failed to achieve its objective to capture the capital, Kyiv.
The order, which will come into effect on 1 January, includes a 137,000 rise in the number of combat personnel to 1.15 million.
It marks a noticeable increase in army personnel since the last time Russia expanded the size of its military in 2017, when it added 13,698 military personnel and 5,357 non-combatants.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was disconnected from Ukraine’s national grid on Thursday, for the first time in nearly 40 years of operation, the country’s nuclear power operator Energoatom said.
The final power line connecting the plant to the grid was cut twice by fires at the ash pits of a nearby coal-fired power plant. Three other lines had already been taken out in months of fighting.
“The actions of the invaders caused a complete disconnection of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant from the power grid – for the first time in the history of the plant,” the company said in a statement.
The nuclear power plant needs electricity to run cooling systems for the reactors and spent fuel rods. If all external connections go down, it must rely on diesel-fuelled generators for power. If they break down, engineers only have 90 minutes to stave off dangerous overheating.
During the outage, the plant still got supplies of electricity from one remaining backup line connecting the plant to the nearby conventional power plant, Energoatom said. There were three of these lines before the war, but two have been cut.
Energoatom’s chief on Wednesday told the Guardian that Russian engineers have drawn up a risky blueprint to permanently disconnect the plant from its national grid, and connect it to the Russian power network instead.
The plan is ostensibly aimed at maintaining power supply to the plant if all connections to Ukraine are cut off by fighting, as they were on Thursday, Petro Kotin said.
Ukraine and world leaders have warned Russia against attempting to change connections at the plant. They have also called it to demilitarise the area, after military vehicles were parked in turbine halls and other sensitive areas of the plant, potentially blocking access for firefighters.
Hanna Liubakova: “Today #Belarus marks Independence Restoration Day. On this day 31 years ago, the Declaration on State Sovereignty came into force. Lukashenka was among the 3% of MPs who did not vote for independence. We see it today since he and Putin are the main threats to our sovereignty”
A concrete obelisk with Soviet stars at the top that was the centerpiece of a monument commemorating the Red Army’s victory over Nazi Germany was taken down Thursday in Latvia’s capital.
Heavy machinery was spotted behind a green privacy screen fence at the foot of the nearly 80-meter (260-foot) obelisk shortly before its removal. The column, which had stood like a high-rise in the landscape of downtown Riga, crashed into a nearby pond at Victory Park.
A leading Latvian media outlet broadcast the event live, showing onlookers cheering and applauding as the obelisk fell. It wasn’t immediately clear what would happen to it.
The obelisk, which comprised five spires with three Soviet stars at the top, stood between two groups of statues — a band of three Red Army soldiers and on the other side a woman representing the “Motherland” with her arms held high.
The monument was built in 1985 while Latvia was still part of the Soviet Union. It had stirred controversy since Latvia regained independence in 1991 and eventually became a NATO and European Union member.
The country shares a 214-kilometer (133-mile) border with Russia and has a large ethnic Russian population. On Russia’s annual Victory Day, which commemorates the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II, people gathered in front of the Riga monument to lay flowers.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February has prompted authorities in several eastern European countries to hasten the removal of symbols from their communist eras.
Latvia’s parliament voted to approve the demolition of the Victory Park monument in May, and the Riga City Council followed suit….
Here’s video of it coming down. I’m enjoying these videos immensely (although in this case I worry about any animals in the pond). I hope someone makes a montage of them from the US, UK, Eastern Europe, etc.
‘Freedom!’ Russians turn out in court to demand the release of [Yevgeny Roizman – see #233 above], the latest prominent opposition figure charged with ‘discrediting the Russian military’ for criticising the war in Ukraine
He faces prison for calling the war a war & the invasion an invasion
‘Freedom is the most valuable thing there is; freedom to say what you think’ Roizman in court
Ahead of trial, he’s banned from the internet where he’s been condemning the Ukraine war & trolling its cheerleaders – but no house arrest…
Russian tourists should stop coming to the EU until Russian aggression ends in Ukraine.
It’s to protect national security & integrity of EU sanctions.
It’s a question of EU’s moral clarity while Russian genocidal war is taking place in Europe.
We are not advocating for an outright ban, there should be humanitarian exceptions, for example visiting family members, close relatives. Border will also be open for asylum seekers, dissidents.
A couple of weeks ago, Americans received some good news on inflation: The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which helps measure cost-of-living changes, and which has spent much of the year climbing, was flat in July. President Joe Biden was quick to celebrate the heartening data.
More than a few Republicans flipped out and accused the White House of lying, but reality wouldn’t budge. As Slate’s Jordan Weissmann joked, the GOP was “outraged at Joe Biden for accurately describing the economy.”
On the surface, the partisan apoplexy was wrong but understandable. As the prevailing political winds start to blow in Democrats’ favor, Republicans need inflation. It is at the heart of the GOP’s strategy for the midterm elections.
But there’s a dimension to this that the party isn’t yet prepared for. Republicans have a simple calculus in mind: Americans aren’t happy with high prices, so they’ll blame the party in power, whether that makes sense of not.
The complication comes when GOP officials are asked what, specifically, the party intends to do about the issue.
Over the weekend, NBC News’ Chuck Todd asked Republican Rep. Andy Barr — a five-term incumbent and the ranking member on the Financial Services Committee’s panel on monetary policy — the question on the minds of many. “Let me ask you this: What is your plan to deal with inflation?” the “Meet the Press” host asked. “What is the Republican plan to deal with inflation — other than not supporting Joe Biden policies? … What is the proactive agenda here?”
The GOP congressman responded:
“Well, we have a positive agenda. We have a commitment to America, and we’re going to get back to basics.”
[LOL]
Barr then peddled a variety of hollow talking points, referencing illicit drugs, border security, a border wall, the terrorist watch list, the IRS, and oil drilling. Those waiting for the Kentucky congressman to get around to answering the question — “What is the Republican plan to deal with inflation?” — were left wanting.
[…] his party doesn’t have a plan.
[…] In April, NBC News asked Sen. Joni Ernst about her plan to address the issue. The Iowa Republican responded, “Stop spending federal money and then start investing in American innovation and energy.” [LOL]
In other words, to reduce inflation, Ernst wants to spend less and spend more.
Two weeks earlier, Donald Trump was asked on Fox News what he’d do to address inflation if he were in the White House. He gave a long, meandering, and wildly dishonest answer, which didn’t even try to address the question.
[…] Sen. Rick Scott accidentally told The Wall Street Journal what he was actually thinking. Looking ahead to the next round of elections, the Florida Republican, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, seemed a little eager to celebrate inflation. “This is a gold mine for us,” the senator said.
[…] elected officials aren’t supposed to be happy about economic conditions that hurt the public. Scott’s “gold mine” rhetoric made him sound less like someone looking out for Americans’ interests and more like The Simpsons’ C. Montgomery Burns.
[…] It’s now late August, and very little has changed. When Biden insists that Republicans “have no plan” to address inflation, he’s not wrong.
Quite a few Republican voters were caught casting illegal ballots in the 2020 race. In each case, judges didn’t exactly throw the book at them.
To the extent that the United States has a retirement community known to national audiences, it’s probably The Villages in central Florida. As regular readers probably recall, it’s also earned a reputation as a far-right Republican stronghold.
A couple of years ago, for example, when Donald Trump promoted a video showing a parade of supporters in golf carts — one of whom shouted, “White power” — it was recorded at The Villages.
[…] we learned late last year that three residents of The Villages were charged with voter fraud. (A fourth soon followed.) As we discussed at the time, according to local police reports, the accused tried to game the system by voting in Florida, while also trying to cast absentee ballots in other states. Not surprisingly, they got caught.
Whatever happened to these charges? […] two of the accused — Charles Barnes and Jay Ketcik — pleaded guilty to a third-degree felony. Though the charges could’ve resulted in prison sentences, both received probation.
Last week, they were joined by another resident of The Villages who did the same thing. WPLG in Miami reported:
A third resident of The Villages has admitted to voting twice during the 2020 election, court records show. Joan Halstead, 73, entered a pretrial intervention program Wednesday that will allow her to avoid potential prison time if she successfully completes court-ordered requirements such as performing community service and attending a civics class, Local 10 News partner WKMG News 6 in Orlando reports. Halstead acknowledged her guilt as part of her agreement with prosecutors.
It’s worth noting for context that Halstead, a registered Republican, reportedly pleaded not guilty earlier this year. Evidently, she changed her mind ahead of a plea agreement in which she received probation.
This is, to be sure, a familiar dynamic.
It was in May 2021 when we learned about Pennsylvania’s Bruce Bartman, who cast an absentee ballot in support of Trump for his mother — who died in 2008. Bartman pleaded guilty to unlawful voting, conceded he “listened to too much propaganda,” and was sentenced to five years’ probation.
About a month later, Edward Snodgrass, a local Republican official in Ohio, admitted to forging his dead father’s signature on an absentee ballot and then voting again as himself. NBC News noted at the time that Snodgrass struck a deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to three days in jail and a $500 fine.
In August 2021, we learned of a Pennsylvania man named Robert Richard Lynn, who used a typewriter to complete an absentee ballot application on behalf of his deceased mother. After getting caught, he faced up to two years behind bars. Lynn instead received a sentence of six months’ probation.
Nevada’s Donald Kirk Hartle, meanwhile, became a cause celebre in Republican circles when he said someone cast a ballot for his late wife. In November 2021, we later learned that it was Hartle who illegally voted for his late wife, lied about it, got caught, and ultimately pleaded guilty. As part of a plea deal, he received a yearlong probation.
Three months ago, a Phoenix woman named Tracey Kay McKee also pleaded guilty after she was caught casting a ballot for her deceased mother. She also received probation.
Last month, Colorado’s Barry Morphew also pleaded guilty to voting for Trump on behalf of his missing-and-presumed-dead wife, and he also received probation.
[…] What these examples show is that when would-be criminals try to cheat, the existing system is strong enough to catch and prosecute them. This doesn’t prove the need for new voter-suppression laws; it helps prove the opposite.
[…] spare a thought for Texas’ Crystal Mason, who cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 elections while on supervised release for a federal conviction. She didn’t know she was ineligible to vote, and her ballot was never counted, but Mason — a Black woman — was convicted of illegal voting and sentenced to five years in prison.
And yet, the aforementioned white voters received vastly more lenient sentences, despite the fact that they knowingly hatched schemes to cast illegal ballots.
They were caught and charged, but judges didn’t exactly throw the book at them.
tomhsays
Opposite opinions from federal courts, one by a Clinton appointee, one by a Trump appointee. This often means it will end up in the Supreme Court.
In United States v. State of Idaho an Idaho federal district court enjoined the state of Idaho from enforcing its nearly total abortion ban to the extent it conflicts with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. The court said in part:
[T]he State of Idaho, including all of its officers, employees, and agents, are prohibited from initiating any criminal prosecution against, attempting to suspend or revoke the professional license of, or seeking to impose any other form of liability on, any medical provider or hospital based on their performance of conduct that (1) is defined as an “abortion” under Idaho Code § 18-604(1), but that is necessary to avoid (i) “placing the health of” a pregnant patient “in serious jeopardy”; (ii) a “serious impairment to bodily functions” of the pregnant patient; or (iii) a “serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part” of the pregnant patient.
Idaho law permits an abortion only to save the life of the mother.
In State of Texas v. Becerra a Texas federal district court issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement in Texas of the Department of Health and Human Services’ guidance to hospitals (and accompanying letter) which, relying on the federal Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act, requires hospital emergency rooms to perform certain abortions even when they violate Texas law. According to the Guidance, when an abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve an emergency medical condition, EMTALA requires emergency rooms to perform it. The court’s 67-page opinion said in part:
Texas law already overlaps with EMTALA to a significant degree, allowing abortions in life-threatening conditions and for the removal of an ectopic or miscarried pregnancy. But in Dobbs’s wake and in an attempt to resolve any potential conflict with state law, the Department of Health and Human Services issued Guidance purporting to remind providers of their existing EMTALA obligations to provide abortions regardless of state law. That Guidance goes well beyond EMTALA’s text, which protects both mothers and unborn children, is silent as to abortion, and preempts state law only when the two directly conflict. Since the statute is silent on the question, the Guidance cannot answer how doctors should weigh risks to both a mother and her unborn child. Nor can it, in doing so, create a conflict with state law where one does not exist. The Guidance was thus unauthorized. In any event, HHS issued it without the required opportunity for public comment.
Yesterday was Independence Day in Ukraine, which Russia appears to have celebrated mostly in the same way it has celebrated every day for months: with a reported 98 towns shelled, missiles falling in Ukrainian cities (including at least 65 civilian casualties at a train station in Chaplyne, 100 miles from the front), and with many, many failed attempts to capture Ukrainian towns and villages. Russian forces were forced to withdraw from attacks near Bairak, attacks near Donetsk, had to fall back from positions at Soledar and Bakhmuts’ke, gained absolutely no ground in an intense attack at Kodema, and continued to not take Pisky and Nevel’s’ke while suffering heavy losses. And all that is just the eastern part of the Donbas on a single day.
What Russia has accomplished in six months in Ukraine can be measured in terms of centimeters per day on the ground, but there are more important measures of its accomplishments. For one thing, Russia has utterly demolished the reputation of its own military, the regard for its military systems, and the degree to which anyone takes their threats seriously. Sure, people still listen because Vladimir Putin is known to have a basement full of moldering Soviet warheads, which we assume are still functional. But otherwise, any saber rattling from Moscow has begun to sound more like kids playing with the silverware. You’re going to do what? Really? When 85% of your utterly pathetic military is already tied up in Ukraine going nowhere? Sure you are.
Trying to peddle Russian military systems to other governments around the world could be right up there in the Crappiest Jobs of 2022 list. HIMARS and Javelins may have been sainted, but what Russian system comes out of this conflict still looking even remotely as fearsome as it did going in? […]
Russia has also achieved building an unparalleled alliance in the West. Despite predictions that Russian actions would splinter NATO and damage the U part of the EU, the opposite happened. Western nations have ratcheted the sanctions against Russia ever upward, to the point where “how can we tighten the screws today?” seems to be a favorite game from Brussels to Washington. Media sources may have instruments sensitive to pick up the moaning of the—mostly out of office—politicians still fretting over confronting Putin. The rest have moved on to freeing Europe of any dependence on Russia’s fossil fuel pipelines and corrupt banking system.
Put simply, Russia went into this fight claiming that it was motivated by fear of a NATO member on its border. Now NATO has two more members. And Russia’s hold over Europe is infinitely weaker than it was six months ago.
[…] last month, a study from Yale University took a look at the difference between the media perception and how things are really going for Russia on the economic front and how effective sanctions have been.
Defeatist headlines arguing that Russia’s economy has bounced back are simply not factual – the facts are that, by any metric and on any level, the Russian economy is reeling, and now is not the time to step on the brakes.
The full report is so satisfyingly bleak for the people who started this bloody war that reading it is a dark pleasure. But for those not so inclined, here are the high points:
– The Kremlin is “cherry picking” economic statistics and pushing them to the worldwide press in an effort to paper over an economy in collapse. Putin is engaged in “patently unsustainable, dramatic fiscal and monetary intervention,” pumping out the last of Russia’s cash reserves in an effort to make things seem less dire to casual observers.
– Russia is “pivoting to Asia” on natural gas sales because it has no choice. The countries they are dealing with know they have Russia over a barrel and can demand well below market pricing.
– Foreign companies leaving Russia represent a staggering 40% of its GDP. In six months, Putin has erased three decades of foreign investment and improvements in Russia.
– Russia is bleeding population; specifically those educated and talented individuals who have skills valuable elsewhere, along with those experienced in working with international companies.
– The idea that Russia can create a self-sufficient economy is proving laughable, and crucial components are in increasingly short supply.
– The lack of imports, loss of skilled population, and backwards domestic industry is “hollowing out” Russia’s economy and making it impossible for them to innovate their way out of the crisis.
-Russian domestic financial markets are now the “worst performing markets in the entire world “ and a powerful indicator that the Russian economy is contracting at a rate little short of freefall.
– The net result: soaring prices for necessary goods and growing consumer unrest.
While Putin opening the taps on Russia’s last reserves of foreign capital allowed him to claim an only 4% economic drop in the last report, the details of recently published figures for Russia’s domestic production are more telling. In June, Russia’s production of fiber optics cable was down 80%. Automobile production was down 89%. Domestic goods like refrigerators and other appliances were down by over half. Supply chains that fell apart under sanctions are not getting repaired.
Russians are facing a winter ahead like they haven’t seen since the privations of World War II. And it’s coming not because they are fending off an assault from the largest army in the world, but because Fearless Leader decided to take an utterly unnecessary swing at a much smaller neighbor.
[…] as Reuters reports, Putin appears to have taken the first steps on what might be considered the ultimate Russian domestic jobs program. On Wednesday, Putin signed a decree increasing the official size of the Russian army by over 100,000 members to 2.04 million. Which is about a 1.1 million more than the actual headcount in the Russian army.
Like the efforts to make the economy look better, this order may be nothing more than Putin trying to make the Russian army look bigger by changing a number on paper. If he actually intends to fill 1 million empty slots, exactly who is going to lace on those bring-your-own boots isn’t clear. Recent Russian recruitment drives have netted only a small fraction of the new cannon fodder recruits desired, even using some pretty drastic incentives. That has led to speculation that Putin’s signature on the Make Army Bigger decree is step one in the long-anticipated general mobilization—a nationwide draft to fill those army ranks. […]
ravensays
Who thought it was a good idea to fight a war around a nuclear power plant anyway?
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was cut off from the power grid.
If the nuclear reactors shut down, it takes a month to cool them down to where they don’t need flowing cooling water. Which takes electricity.
That is one reason why they should stay connected to the power grid.
If the reactors shut down, they still need electricity from somewhere to run the cooling water pumps.
Ukrainian nuclear plant temporarily cut off from power grid
By FRANK JORDANS and HANNA ARHIROVA AP
10 minutes ago
NIKOPOL, Ukraine (AP) — The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the middle of the fighting in Ukraine was temporarily cut off from the electrical grid Thursday because of fire damage, causing a blackout in the region and heightening fears of a catastrophe in a country haunted by the Chernobyl disaster.
The plant, Europe’s largest, has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of the war. The government in Kyiv alleges Russia is essentially holding the plant hostage, storing weapons there and launching attacks from around it, while Moscow accuses Ukraine of recklessly firing on the facility.
On Thursday, the plant was cut off from the grid for the first time after fires damaged a transmission line, according to Ukraine’s nuclear power operator. The damaged line apparently carried outgoing electricity — and thus the region lost power, according to Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russia-installed governor. As a result of the damage, the two reactors still in use went offline, he said, but one was quickly restored, as was electricity to the area.
The line that was apparently affected is different from the one that carries power to run cooling systems essential for the safe operation of the reactors. A loss of power in those supply lines is a major concern of experts warily watching the fighting.
Still, Thursday’s cutoff underscored concerns about the battles around around the plant.
“Anybody who understands nuclear safety issues has been trembling for the last six months,” Mycle Schneider, an independent policy consultant and coordinator of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, said before the latest incident at the plant.
Ukraine cannot simply shut down its nuclear plants during the war because it is heavily reliant on them, and its 15 reactors at four stations provide about half of its electricity. Still, an ongoing conflict near a working atomic plant is troubling for many experts who fear that a damaged facility could lead to a disaster.
That fear is palpable just across the Dnieper River in Nikopol, where residents have been under nearly constant Russian shelling since July 12, with eight people killed, 850 buildings damaged and over the half the population of 100,000 fleeing the city.
Liudmyla Shyshkina, a 74-year-old widow who lived within sight of the Zaporizhzhia plant before her apartment was bombarded and her husband killed, said she believes the Russians are capable of intentionally causing a nuclear disaster.
Fighting in early March caused a brief fire at the plant’s training complex that officials said did not result in the release of any radiation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia’s military actions there amount to “nuclear blackmail.”
No civilian nuclear plant is designed for a wartime situation, although the buildings housing Zaporizhzhia’s six reactors are protected by reinforced concrete that could withstand an errant shell, experts say.
The more immediate concern is that a disruption of electricity supply to the plant could knock out cooling systems that are essential for the safe operation of the reactors, and emergency diesel generators are sometimes unreliable. The pools where spent fuel rods are kept to be cooled also are vulnerable to shelling, which could cause the release of radioactive material.
Kyiv told the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, that shelling earlier this week damaged transformers at a nearby conventional power plant, disrupting electricity supplies to the Zaporizhzhia plant for several hours.
The atomic agency’s head, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said Thursday he hopes to send a mission to the plant within “days.”
Negotiations over how the mission would access the plant are complicated but advancing, he said on France-24 television after meeting in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron, who pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin in a phone call last week to allow the U.N. agency to visit the site.
“Kyiv accepts it. Moscow accepts it. So we need to go there,” Grossi said.
At a U.N. Security Council meeting Tuesday, U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo urged the withdrawal of all military personnel and equipment from the plant and an agreement on a demilitarized zone around it.
Currently only one of the four lines supplying the plant with power from outside is operational, the U.N. atomic agency said. External power is essential not just to cool the two reactors still in operation but also the spent radioactive fuel stored in special facilities onsite.
“If we lose the last one, we are at the total mercy of emergency power generators,” said Najmedin Meshkati, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California.
He and Schneider expressed concern that the occupation of the plant by Russian forces is also hampering safety inspections and the replacement of critical parts, and is putting severe strain on hundreds of Ukrainian staff who operate the facility.
“Human error probability will be increased manifold by fatigue,” said Meshkati, who was part of a committee appointed by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences to identify lessons from the 2011 nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant. “Fatigue and stress are unfortunately two big safety factors.”
If an incident at the Zaporizhzhia plant were to release significant amounts of radiation, the scale and location of the contamination would be determined largely by the weather, said Paul Dorfman, a nuclear safety expert at the University of Sussex who has advised the British and Irish governments.
The massive earthquake and tsunami that hit the Fukushima plant destroyed cooling systems that triggered meltdowns in three of its reactors. Much of the contaminated material was blown out to sea, limiting the damage.
The April 26, 1986, explosion and fire at one of four reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant north of Kyiv sent a cloud of radioactive material across a wide swath of Europe and beyond. In addition to fueling anti-nuclear sentiment in many countries, the disaster left deep psychological scars on Ukrainians.
Zaporizhzhia’s reactors are of a different model from those at Chernobyl, but unfavorable winds could still spread radioactive contamination in any direction, Dorfman said.
“If something really went wrong, then we have a full-scale radiological catastrophe that could reach Europe, go as far as the Middle East, and certainly could reach Russia, but the most significant contamination would be in the immediate area,” he said.
That’s why Nikopol’s emergency services department takes radiation measurements every hour since the Russian invasion began. Before that, it was every four hours.
<a href=”>Florida voters decide abortion-denying judge not ‘mature’ enough to continue on the bench
n their zeal to turn women and others who become pregnant into second-class citizens with fewer rights than their male counterparts, some right-wing judges in particular have tried to cover their tracks by relying on ambiguous statutory language. This enables them to effectively cloak their (usually religious-based) motivations for punishing behavior they disapprove of by pretending to defer to their state legislatures, especially in cases where such matters are in reality left to their own discretion.
Such was the case this January in Florida, when Judge Jared E. Smith of the Circuit Court of Hillsborough county, Florida, ruled that a seventeen-year-old young woman was insufficiently ‘mature’ to terminate her unwanted pregnancy. The woman, identified only as “Jane Doe” due to her age, had sought judicial approval pursuant to the Florida law that allows pregnant minors an opportunity to escape the often-impossible task of obtaining their parents’ approval in order to obtain an abortion by seeking judicial “permission.”
This type of cumbersome “judicial bypass” procedure, codified in 38 states, has been a means used by the religious right and its enablers in Republican state legislatures to further traumatize those who become pregnant while still paying lip service to their rights as protected by the law (now that Roe is overruled and abortion can be fully outlawed these statutes in abortion-denying states will mostly become moot).
As acknowledged by the Florida Second District Court of Appeal which quickly reversed his decision, Florida law required Judge Smith to make a determination as to Jane Roe’s “maturity” before he could issue his edict:
Section 390.01114(6)(c) requires the circuit court to ascertain whether there is clear and convincing evidence “that the minor is sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.”
As reported by Carter Sherman, writing for Vice earlier this year, in his original ruling, Smith, an appointee of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, brought his vast judicial wisdom to bear in evaluating Jane Doe’s “maturity”:
In his original ruling, Hillsborough County Circuit Court Judge Jared E. Smith focused on the fact that Doe had originally said she made “B” grades, but her current GPA is 2.0.
“Clearly, a ‘B’ average would not equate to a 2.0 GPA,” Smith wrote. Doe’s “testimony evinces either a lack of intelligence or credibility, either of which weigh against a finding of maturity pursuant to the statute.”
Smith, then went out of his way to further justify his ruling, essentially inventing reasons to deny the young woman her rights. As Sherman reports, on appeal the District Court fairly “demolished” Smith’s findings:
[A] ruling written by Judge Darryl Casanueva and joined by Judge Susan Rothstein-Youakim pointed out that if Doe is making “Bs,” then her current GPA may not reflect her newer grades. And, in any case, “we observe a ‘C’ average demonstrates average intelligence for a high school student,” Casanueva wrote. “The evidence certainly did not show that her overall intelligence was ‘less than average.’”
The appeals court ruling also demolishes some of Smith’s other arguments that Doe shouldn’t get an abortion. While Smith used the fact that Doe doesn’t care for any younger family members to evaluate her emotional stability, Casanueva pointed out that Doe doesn’t have younger siblings. And while Smith said that Doe “has never had any financial responsibilities, even so much as paying her own cellphone bills,” Casanueva stressed that Doe works upwards of 20 hours a week, has $1,600 in savings and two credit cards, and pays for practically everything but the cellphone bills.
On Tuesday voters in Florida’s Group 37 went to the polls to decide whether Judge Smith should be permitted to continue his tenure on the bench. As reported by Caitlin Cruz, writing for Jezebel, the answer was “no.”
In a low-turnout election, Nancy L. Jacobs beat Smith by nearly 8,000 votes. Florida judicial elections are non-partisan, meaning the judges aren’t registered under a party. Still, there was indication of a partisan divide in the outcome. Jacobs solidly won the mail-in vote, 63,226 to 48,702, a trend seen among Democratic-leaning voters. Smith only marginally won the day-of voting, typically a Republican-heavy voting day.
Voters in Florida seldom reject incumbent judicial candidates, and Smith’s ejection by the voters is even more remarkable in light of his endorsement by the Tampa Bay Times Editorial Board.
[…] Smith’s own wife may have sealed his fate this July by inadvertently revealing the true source of his judicial philosophy. Speaking alongside her smiling husband at a Christian church, Suzette Smith explained that her husband’s (Jewish) opponent, Ms. Jacobs, was in dire need of conversion.
[In] a video sent to CL, his wife Suzette said that Jacobs needs to be saved by God while speaking to members of a Christian church.
“We pray for her, she needs Jesus,” she said to a church crowd. “To deny God and to deny the Bible is a person that the heart is very hard toward God.”
Without commenting directly on her opponent or his wife’s prior statements, newly-elected Judge Nancy Jacobs provided a statement to BuzzFeed News:
[…] Jacobs said she looked forward to taking the bench in January and “ensuring that the people of Hillsborough County who enter my courtroom are treated with respect, dignity, and integrity every day.”
Sounds like Florida voters made the ‘mature’ decision.
[…] Ukraine is fully capable of the logistics to supply its forces for an offensive, even with multiple new systems including the Abrams [M1 Abrams tank]. The Ukrainian’s aren’t new to war. They inherited the same Soviet system the Russians did. While the Russians have shown themselves to be miserable at truck logistics they are excellent with the railroads. Ukraine will have that same railroad capability plus American support with trucks and further training. Plus, I’m pretty sure we’d have introduced Ukraine to the concept of a pallet and forklift if they hadn’t already discovered it on their own. I still can’t figure out how it continues to elude the Russians.
Ukraine doesn’t need to emulate the American logistic system capable of supplying troops anywhere on the globe, including deployment of some forces (IRF) within 18 hours of notification. Ukraine just has to get supplies from the Polish border to the front lines. They don’t need ships. They don’t need airlift. They don’t need to supply a force beyond their original borders. Let’s stop treating them like they’re teenagers when it comes to what they can handle.
We’ve been surprised multiple times now by Ukraine and what NATO is giving it. I think it’s likely more surprises are on the way. The US and Ukraine have shown they are rolling out new stuff pretty much as fast as they can be reasonably expected to. I see absolutely no reason why they wouldn’t continue to do so. In fact, they tell us they are doing so. At the very bottom of the Fact Sheet on US aid to Ukraine (this is the total numbers, not just the latest) they have a single sentence:
The United States also continues to work with its Allies and partners to provide Ukraine with additional capabilities to defend itself.
The Sacramento County Coroner’s Office determined earlier this year that the 2021 death of Loretta McClintock, the wife of Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, was caused by “adverse effects” from ingestion of white mulberry leaf.
The coroner’s report, dated March 10, was released after Kaiser Health News obtained a copy and disclosed it on Wednesday. The coroner found that Ms. McClintock’s death had been accidental, caused by dehydration from stomach inflammation after she consumed the herb.
[…]
White mulberry leaf, often sold as an extract or powder in capsules, is regularly promoted by supplement companies as a dietary aid that can curb cravings and lower blood sugar.
[…]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration monitors dietary supplements, which are categorized as food, not medicine. This means that supplements are not held to the same standards of rigorous testing as other products, such as prescription and over-the-counter medications.
Companies selling supplements are responsible for ensuring that their products are safe and that their claims are “truthful and substantiated,” according to the F.D.A.
The agency does not maintain a list of the dietary supplements on the market. In the United States, the industry is worth an estimated $35 billion, and there are about 50,000 to 80,000 of these products, according to The A.M.A. Journal of Ethics.
And frauds like Dr. Oz become multi-millionaires from these scams.
A redacted version of the affidavit used to secure the search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is set to be unsealed Friday under a judge’s order.
The U.S. economy contracted at a more moderate pace than initially thought in the second quarter as consumer spending blunted some of the drag from a sharp slowdown in inventory accumulation, dispelling fears that a recession was underway.
Fair to middling economic news. Rick Scott, (and other Republicans), won’t like that.
A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked part of Idaho’s strict abortion law that’s scheduled to take effect Thursday, handing the Biden administration a narrow courtroom win in its first lawsuit to protect reproductive rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Good news.
NBC News:
A federal judge in Texas blocked the Biden administration late Tuesday from enforcing new guidance in the Republican-led state requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions to women regardless of state bans on the procedure.” (The jurist, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, is a Trump appointee.)
The Trump administration’s political interference with the Covid response happened in 2020, but for a few reasons, it’s still highly relevant in 2022.
The revelations from House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis haven’t generated front-page attention in recent months, which is a shame because this was a once-in-a-century pandemic — and the Trump administration’s handling of the crisis was a genuine scandal.
Late last year, for example, congressional investigators issued a report that found the former president and his team engaged in “deliberate efforts“ to undermine the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic for political purposes. NBC News reported at the time the committee concluded that the Trump White House “repeatedly overruled public health and testing guidance by the nation’s top infectious disease experts and silenced officials in order to promote then-President Donald Trump’s political agenda.”
But that’s not all the Republican administration did. The Associated Press reported yesterday on the House panel’s latest findings.
Officials in the Trump White House tried to pressure U.S. health experts into reauthorizing a discredited COVID-19 treatment, according to a congressional investigation that provides new evidence of that administration’s efforts to override Food and Drug Administration decisions early in the pandemic…. The report by the House subcommittee investigating the government’s COVID-19 response focused on pressure at the FDA, which serves as gatekeeper for the drugs, vaccines and other countermeasures against the virus.
The discredited treatment, of course, was hydroxychloroquine, which Team Trump pressured the FDA to support, even after FDA officials had concluded the drug was ineffective against Covid.
It might be tempting for some to question the relevance of such information now. After all, the former president is no longer in office and the FDA is recovering and trying to rebuild its reputation.
But it’s not that simple. For one thing, accountability matters, and Team Trump’s efforts to dictate political shots at the FDA during a deadly public-health crisis represent a controversy that would ordinarily help define an administration.
For another, rumor has it the former president sees himself as a future president, making a record of his catastrophic failures that much more important.
But even putting these truths aside, the select committee’s findings don’t just deal with those who’ve exited the stage.
[…] The Washington Post highlighted what happened when the FDA determined that hydroxychloroquine simply didn’t work against Covid, after initially extending emergency approval in March 2020.
The reversal frustrated [Peter] Navarro, a top trade adviser to Trump, and Steven Hatfill, a deputy and virologist, who strategized on how to get the FDA to reverse its decision, such as using allies including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), according to emails obtained by the panel.
In fact, the controversial Wisconsin senator appeared quite a bit in the select committee’s report, with Johnson playing an active, behind-the-scenes role in trying to advance the ineffective treatment. (The GOP senator’s office told the Post he’d been wrongly attacked by the “Covid cartel,” whatever that means.)
Johnson’s not alone. Politico reported yesterday:
Mehmet Oz, the former TV medical personality and current Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, was in touch with the senior-most levels of the Trump White House in March 2020 promoting hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for Covid, emails released by the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis on Wednesday show. According to the emails, Oz emailed Deborah Birx, the then-White House coronavirus response coordinator, on March 22, 2020, seeking access to medication for trials in patients. “If you don’t wish to put in writing, please call but I need guidance for my show and dozens of media interviews that I am doing tomorrow,” he wrote.
Oz also reportedly contacted Jared Kushner on the matter, and a week later, he followed up with Birx again, claiming the drug was “safe and results are better than expected.” [Liar, bullshit artist, con man]
We now know, of course, that the celebrity doctor was completely wrong at a key time. Oz is now running for the Senate — and much of his campaign is based on his alleged credibility as a medical professional, his highly dubious record notwithstanding.
The arrests this week of five Florida militiamen who called themselves the “B Squad” for their violent actions on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol serve as a helpful reminder that the Justice Department is still in the process of bringing the insurrectionists who attacked American democracy that day—now over 860 and counting—to justice.
The details of their case, moreover, are chilling reminders of just how close the nation came to catastrophe that day, saved largely by the valor of police officers who defended the Capitol—and the deep implications of these unfolding arrests for the Republican Party, after NBC News identified the ringleader of the B Squad as a recently defeated GOP legislative candidate, a man who has not yet been charged.
The affidavit filed by prosecutors features a number of screenshots from videos of the B Squad undertaking paramilitary exercises to prepare for Jan. 6, including several of the man it identifies only as “B Leader,” who is not among the five men arrested Wednesday. NBC News’ Ryan J. Reilly identified B Leader as Jeremy Liggett, who ran for Congress this year in Florida’s 7th Congressional District, but dropped out in March and did not qualify for the August GOP primary.
Liggett is a former Atlanta Metro police officer who sounded various pro-Trump notes when he announced his candidacy. “The Second Amendment community has been dealing with censorship for a lot longer than everyone else,” he declared.
FBI agents arrested five members of his crew, all from Florida: Benjamin Cole, 38, of Leesburg; John Edward Crowley, 50, of Windermere; Brian Preller, 33, of Mount Dora; Jonathan Rockholt, 38, of Palm Coast; and Tyler Bensch, 20, of Casselberry […]
New York Times: “The U.S. State Department and Yale identify 21 detention sites in Russian-controlled territory.”
The U.S. State Department and Yale University researchers said Thursday that they had identified at least 21 sites in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine that the Russian military or Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists are using to detain, interrogate or deport civilians and prisoners of war in ways that violate international humanitarian law. There were signs pointing to possible mass graves in some areas, they said.
[…] the sites were part of a “filtration system” used for processing detainees and prisoners. They reached their conclusions after examining commercial satellite imagery and open-source information. The detainees and prisoners could be forced to live outside the centers in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, imprisoned for long periods, deported to Russia or even killed.
[…] The researchers released their findings through a report from Conflict Observatory.
“We again call on Russia to immediately halt its filtration operations and forced deportations and to provide outside independent observers access to identified facilities and forced deportation relocation areas within Russia-controlled areas of Ukraine and inside Russia itself,” the State Department said in a statement referring to the new findings.
The report identified four types of centers in the filtration system: registration, holding, secondary interrogation and detention.
The researchers also found evidence of disturbed earth on two recent occasions at the Volnovakha “correctional colony” near the village of Olenivka that they said was consistent with mass graves. The appearance of disturbed earth predated an explosion on July 29 at the prison compound that killed 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
One area of disturbed earth appeared in imagery from April 11 — “contemporaneous with an open source account of alleged gravedigging,” the report said, referring to an online account in which a former inmate discussed a cellmate working a shift digging graves. A second area of disturbed earth appeared on July 27, two days before the explosion.
A New York Times analysis from early August of images from Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs, two satellite imaging companies, concluded that some time after July 18 and before July 21, about 15 to 20 spots of notable changes to the ground appeared on the southern side of the complex. They were about 6 to 7 feet wide and 10 to 16 feet long at first, and some later appeared to have been lengthened to merge. It was unclear whether they were grave sites.
The Conflict Observatory report said the Volnovakha center was being used as a long-term detention center […] for holding prisoners of war, particularly Ukrainians who surrendered after the siege of Azovstal, in the coastal city of Mariupol. […]
The researchers noted that there had been reports of torture, beatings, lack of water and proper nutrition, unhygienic conditions and overcrowded cells at the compound.
[…] “President Putin and his government will not be able to engage in these persistent abuses with impunity,” the department added. “Accountability is imperative, and the United States and our partners will not be silent.” […]
StevoRsays
For those who are following this, the results of ‘Australia’s Fave Tree poll” are bing live blogged and announced here now going in reverse order :
but Mason — a Black woman — was convicted of illegal voting and sentenced to five years in prison.
And yet, the aforementioned white voters received vastly more lenient sentences, despite the fact that they knowingly hatched schemes to cast illegal ballots.
They were caught and charged, but judges didn’t exactly throw the book at them.
Not only that, but those white conservative men broke the law INTENTIONALLY!
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
A group of lawmakers from Germany’s Social Democratic party (SPD) are calling for peace negotiations with Russia and for a ceasefire to be reached in Ukraine as soon as possible.
In a letter entitled “The guns must be silent!” seen by Der Spiegel, the group representing the pacifist left-wing of the SPD urged for a diplomatic offensive to end the war in Ukraine quickly.
They called for a new attempt at a “modus vivendi”, in which conflicting parties agree to coexist in peace, arguing that such a relationship “must be found with the Russian government based on the acknowledgment of realities that one does not like, which rules out a further escalation of the war”.
The group propose China act as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine, oppose rearmament plans and warned against the delivery of heavy military equipment to Ukraine, citing the danger of nuclear war.
The letter reads:
With every delivery of weapons, it is important to carefully weigh up and consider where the ‘red line’ lies, which could be perceived as entering the war and provoke corresponding reactions.
Fuck. Off.
Workers at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine have been hailed as “heroes” after Europe’s largest nuclear power plant was disconnected from the country’s power grid for the first time in its history.
Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear agency, has now said one of the two working reactors had been reconnected to the grid.
An administrative worker at the plant told CNN earlier today that “everything is already ok”.
The plant employee, who has not been named, said:
Yesterday there was no electricity, no water, nothing. But everything is already ok, the men [operational staff] at the NPP [Nuclear Power Plant] are just smarties and heroes.
They added that with “shelling around the station and the city, smoke from fires, dust from the ash dump of a thermal power plant”, that the “situation sometimes looks like the end of the world” at the plant.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
Get ready to learn more about the investigation that sparked the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month – but don’t get your hopes up too high.
In response to a lawsuit from media organizations and other groups, a federal magistrate judge yesterday ordered the release of the affidavit from the search, which should contain details like the probable cause that justified the warrant. But Bruce Reinhart also allowed the justice department to redact “the identities of witnesses, law enforcement agents, and uncharged parties… the investigation’s strategy, direction, scope, sources, and methods, and… grand jury information.”
The document could therefore potentially contain lots of blacked out lines rather than new information. But as The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reported yesterday, “depending on how the affidavit was produced, several former US attorneys said, it could also contain elements that are not directly related to the investigation, such as descriptions of potential crimes that the justice department suspected were being committed at Mar-a-Lago.”
As he courted voters in Democrat-friendly Maryland last night, Joe Biden sought to cast the Republican party as extreme and play up his own recent legislative accomplishments. Joan E Greve was there, and filed this report on the renewed optimism in the Democratic party:
Joe Biden has transformed his rough July into a jubilant August. Last month, the US president was drowning in negative headlines about his handling of numerous crises, from the war in Ukraine to record-high gas prices and the apparent demise of his signature legislative proposal.
Now, as the summer draws to a close, Biden is riding high, powered by the passage of Democrats’ climate and healthcare package and glimmers of hope for his party’s prospects in the midterm elections. That optimism was on vivid display on Thursday, as Biden took the stage for a rally held by the Democratic National Committee in Rockville, Maryland.
“We’ve come a long way in 18 months. Covid no longer controls our lives. A record number of Americans are working,” Biden told the cheering crowd. “We never gave up. We never gave in. We’re delivering for the American people now.”
The Biden Administration’s renewed feistiness was in full effect last night when the normally staid White House twitter account began calling out Republicans.
Whoever was behind the official account took issue with GOP lawmakers who objected to Biden’s student loan relief plan announced earlier this week, and highlighted the politicians’ own history of benefiting from debt forgiveness….
[tweets at the link]
The White House has condemned a slew of new abortion restrictions that recently went into effect in four states.
“Today marks the latest attack against the fundamental rights of Americans as new abortion bans go into effect in Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said….
ravensays
Here is our daily threat to use nuclear weapons against someone for something.
The dictator of Belarus, Lukashenko, is claiming that his airplanes have been converted to carry nuclear weapons. “God forbid, if there are some serious provocations against Belarus, we have defined the targets already. We know about their decision-making centres. ”
Pretty vague. Those decision-making centres are probably cities like Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga, Talin, Berlin, Kyiv, and London.
We of course, have no idea that the capital city of Belarus is Minsk and don’t have any maps of Belarus.
FWIW, I don’t believe for one second that Russia will ever transfer nuclear weapons to Belarus. Lukashenko is very unpopular with 85% of the population against him. He is only propped up by the Belarusian army and mostly the Russian army.
It wouldn’t take much for those nuclear weapons to end up in Western leaning hands.
Lukashenko threatens West that Belarusian aircraft to carry Russian nuclear weapons
FRIDAY, 26 AUGUST 2022, 13:3134206 IRYNA BALACHUK UK Pravda
Aleksandr Lukashenko, the self-proclaimed president of Belarus, announced the conversion of Belarusian Su-24 aircraft to carry nuclear weapons. Lukashenko added that targets had already been set in case of provocation by the West against Belarus.
Quote from Lukashenko: “Once in St. Petersburg together with Putin we stated that we are going to reequip Belarusian Su-aircraft in order to carry nuclear weapons. Do you think we are just babbling? Everything is ready!”.
Details: According to Lukashenko, the West continues to unload US military equipment as part of the Atlantic Resolve operation, after which the helicopters and equipment will be transferred, including to the countries of Eastern Europe.
Quote from Lukashenko:
“They must understand that if they escalate, neither helicopters or planes will save them. They must think of it. I warned them: God forbid, if there are some serious provocations against Belarus, we have defined the targets already. We know about their decision-making centres. I’m not threatening anyone, they’re watching us and we’re watching them.”
Details: The self-proclaimed president of Belarus added that if not the authorities in Europe, then the military “understands perfectly that it is impossible to escalate relations with Belarus, because this is an escalation of relations with the ‘nuclear-weapons state’.”
Background:
On 25 June, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he will soon give Belarus Iskander M systems, which can carry ballistic and cruise missiles. Putin emphasised that these missiles could have nuclear warheads.
On 30 June, at a meeting with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, Lukashenko assured that there were no nuclear weapons depot on the territory of Belarus.
To keep the climate habitable, most scientists agree that switching to renewable energy alone isn’t enough – Americans also need to change the way they eat. Environmental and public health advocates are pushing a new strategy to help get there: including climate change in the official US dietary guidelines, which shape what goes into billions of meals eaten across the country every year.
Every five years, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services jointly publish a new version of the guidelines. They form the basis for the public-facing eating guide MyPlate, formerly MyPyramid, as well as many government-backed meal programs, such as National School Lunch. Historically, these guidelines have narrowly focused on human nutrition, but some are now saying they should be expanded to incorporate climate considerations as well.
The current, 150-page edition for 2020-2025 doesn’t mention food’s role in climate change at all. Climate groups say this is an abdication of responsibility, with Americans feeling the effects of a warming planet more than ever. The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant climate legislation in US history, does very little to address the food system.
“Climate change poses a multitude of threats to human health and nutrition security. We cannot extricate these things from each other,” said Jessi Silverman, a senior policy associate for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Her group and 39 others, including the Union of Concerned Scientists and the American Academy of Pediatrics, in May wrote a letter urging the government to include sustainability in the 2025-2030 dietary guidelines, which are now in development.
A sustainability component would encourage Americans to eat less meat and dairy, which have a significantly higher climate impact than nutritionally comparable plant-based foods. “It would be virtually impossible to even meet the two-degree [Celsius] limit in global temperature change without incorporating substantial reductions in beef intake,” said Mark Rifkin, senior food and agriculture policy specialist for the Center for Biological Diversity, another signatory to the letter.
The current guidelines advise Americans to eat far more animal products than is sustainable, said Walter Willett, a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Health….
Because most Americans are deficient in fiber and fruits and vegetables, not animal products, Rifkin, a dietitian, said climate-focused guidance would line up with what the public needs nutritionally. It would also help address other problems that stem from the meat-heavy US food system, he said, including risk of future pandemics, food security and pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations, which disproportionately affects communities of color.
…
Countries including Germany, Brazil, Sweden and Qatar have addressed sustainability in their dietary guidelines, according to a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report. Canada’s Food Guide advises choosing plant-based foods more often for the environment. Germany has cut its per-capita meat consumption by 12% since 2011, Vox reported last month, and its minister of food and agriculture has recently prioritized a shift toward more plant-based eating.
Advocates say a change in the US dietary guidelines could have a similar influence….
…
This isn’t the first time the environment has been at issue in the nation’s dietary guidelines. In 2015, the government-appointed panel of nutrition experts that advised the 2015-2020 guidelines addressed sustainability in their scientific report….
But after outcry from the meat industry and Republican lawmakers, the recommendation to eat more plants was dropped from the final guidelines. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal at the time, the USDA secretary, Tom Vilsack, said sustainability was outside the purview of the dietary guidelines and compared the scientific committee to his granddaughter who “colors outside of the lines”.
“It’s really condescending stuff,” said Bob Martin, of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, about Vilsack’s comments. “The people involved in this were highly qualified.”
Agribusiness has a long history of influence over the dietary guidelines, and it will undoubtedly be a factor this time around, too. The meat and dairy industries spent $49.5m on political contributions in 2020, and another $15.9m lobbying the federal government.
Food industry groups also routinely report lobbying on federal nutrition policy….
Even though environmental advocates face an uphill battle, a lot has changed since the failed 2015 effort to incorporate sustainability, said Jessi Silverman of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “I think the public pressure to have concrete policies to address climate change has grown a lot in the years since then.”
Hungary’s state audit office has issued a report about the risks of the country’s education system being “too feminine”, saying it could hurt the development of boys and create demographic problems.
The report was issued last month but had not caught the public’s attention until a newspaper article was published on Thursday.
“The phenomenon called ‘pink education’ has numerous economic and social consequences,” states the report by the state body, which is seen as close to the nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
As in many countries, the teaching profession in Hungary is dominated by women, accounting for 82% of the country’s teachers.
“If education favours feminine traits” such as “emotional and social maturity” and “provokes the overrepresentation of women in universities, equality (of the sexes) will be considerably weakened”, the report concludes.
It warns that if boys, who, it said, are more inclined to be entrepreneurial and take risks are not allowed to develop unfettered they will be at risk of “mental and behavioural problems”.
The report adds that boyish traits of creativity and innovation are “necessary for the optimal development of the economy”.
The audit office says “pink education” could cause “demographical problems” as educated women would be unable to find similarly educated spouses, “which could lead to a decline in fertility”.
In response, the Hungarian opposition lawmaker Endre Toth said on Facebook that talk of masculine and feminine qualities was “total scientific absurdity”,.
“It is time to remove your glasses from the last century,” he added….
Why might the FBI have been so worried about the potential that government secrets were stored at Mar-a-Lago?
As we await the release of the redacted affidavit from federal agents’ search of the property, an investigation by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project appears to indicate that an imposter repeatedly entered the resort last year, and mingled with Donald Trump.
The outlets found that a woman named Inna Yashchyshyn posed as a member of a famous European banking family and managed to get into the ex-president’s Florida club, playing a round of golf at a nearby course with Trump and his ally senator Lindsey Graham in May 2021.
Here’s more from the story:
The ability of Ms. Yashchyshyn — the daughter of an Illinois truck driver — to bypass the security at Mr. Trump’s club demonstrates the ease with which someone with a fake identity and shadowy background can get into a facility that’s one of America’s power centers and the epicenter of Republican Party politics.
Those issues have become even more critical after FBI agents seized boxes of classified and top-secret materials two weeks ago from Mar-a-Lago after executing a search warrant on Mr. Trump’s home.
Her entry — multiple trips in and out of the club grounds — lays bare the vulnerabilities of a facility that serves as both the former president’s residence and a private club, and highlights the gaps in security that can take place.
“That’s his residence,” said Ed Martin, a former U.S. Treasury special agent who spent more than two decades in criminal intelligence. “She shouldn’t have been in there.”
The People of Praise, a secretive Christian faith group that counts the conservative supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett as a member, considered women’s obedience and subservience to men as one of its key early teachings, according to leaked remarks and writings of the wife of the group’s founder.
A leaked video of a recent private People of Praise event, marking its 50th anniversary, shows Dorothy Ranaghan explaining how some female followers of the faith group cried intensely in reaction to the group’s early teachings on “headship” and the “roles of men and women”, in which men are considered divinely ordained as the “head” of the family and dominant to women.
Asked in an interview during the anniversary event about the years after the group’s members first made a “covenant” to join People of Praise in the early 1970s, Dorothy Ranaghan said: “Some of the women – who are still in my women’s group, as a matter of fact – were wearing sunglasses all the time, because they were always crying and would have to hold on to their chairs every time somebody started teaching, because ‘What are we going to hear this time?’”
She then added, as the audience and her interviewer laughed: “But it all worked out just fine in the end.”
The comment marks the first time a statement about some women’s negative early responses to “headship” teachings has been published. The leaked footage was shared with the Guardian by a source who asked to remain anonymous.
Former members of People of Praise, many of whom are critical of the group’s dominance over members’ lives, have described the group as calling for complete obedience of women to their husbands.
…
…While Barrett’s personal faith-based opposition to abortion rights and Roe v Wade were known before her 2020 confirmation and before she joined a majority of justices in overturning the landmark ruling that protected abortion rights nationally, less is known about the culture in which Barrett was raised and its views on women and childbirth, suffering, and their role in society.
…
In her early writings, Dorothy Ranaghan emphasized the need for women to be “self-giving, responsible and reserved”. In a 1978 article that appeared in New Covenant magazine, called “Fully a Woman”, childbearing is described as a “central reality of womanhood” that “determines our presence in the world”, even for those who “by chance or choice” did not have children.
“The child in the womb expands the mother’s body, changing its dimensions. As her body yields, so do the borders of privacy and selfishness. Her very existence gives to another.” Women who are most admired, she wrote, “are not private persons, but are surrendered and available to care for others”.
“Pregnancy teaches a woman that others have a claim on her very person for the service of life. Rather than annihilating her, pregnancy makes her a new person, radiant and strong: a mother,” she wrote….
President Biden equated radical Trumpism with “semi-fascism,” and while Republicans weren’t pleased, the underlying conversation seems worth having.
President Joe Biden yesterday held his first campaign events in a while, and as NBC News noted, the Democrat’s message included a rhetorical escalation of sorts.
President Joe Biden lashed out Thursday night at Republicans who have embraced the “Make America Great Again” philosophy central to Donald Trump’s presidency, saying it’s “like semi-fascism.” Biden made the comment at a fundraiser for Democrats at a home in Bethesda, Md., ahead of a kickoff rally he headlined at a high school in Rockville, Md., to mark the final countdown to November’s midterm elections.
As part of his remarks at a donor event, the president said, “What we’re seeing now is the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism.”
He soon after spoke to a few thousand people packed into a nearby high school gym in Maryland and seemed to flesh out what he meant by the ideological label.
“The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security,” Biden said. “They’re a threat to our very democracy. They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace political violence. They don’t believe in democracy.”
[…] Trump and other prominent GOP voices have, in recent years, started calling Democrats “communists,” and they seemed to expect the public to take the label seriously, reality notwithstanding.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, meanwhile, calls Democrats “Marxists“ with such frequency that if I had a nickel for every time the far-right Floridian used the word I could retire.
At one point in early 2009, some Republicans even tried accusing the Obama White House of engaging in “economic fascism” — not because it made sense, but because some GOP partisans were looking for a new way to “raise the consciousness of the average voter.”
In other words, after years of Republicans trying to apply all kinds of provocative labels to Democrats and progressive ideas, it’s a little rich for the party to clutch its pearls and look for the fainting couch because Biden equated radical Trumpism with “semi-fascism.”
All of which leads to the other overarching question: Was the Democratic president correct?
To be sure, there’s long been debate among political scientists about the precise definition of “fascism,” though early last year, The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson — George W. Bush’s former chief speechwriter and an observer no one would seriously describe as a bomb-throwing liberal — wrote a memorable column about the growing number of radicalized Republicans and their contempt for our democratic system of government.
[S]ome have adopted a very different political philosophy than the Founders held. This approach to government promises the recovery of a mythical past. It feeds a sense of White victimhood. It emphasizes emotion over reason. It denigrates experts and expertise. It slanders outsiders and blames them for social and economic ills. It warns of global plots by Jews and shadowy elites. It accepts the lies of a leader as a deeper form of political truth. It revels in anger and dehumanization. It praises law and order while reserving the right to disobey the law and overturn the political order through violence. This is a reality that I have resisted naming. The 45th president and a significant portion of his supporters have embraced American fascism.
Months earlier, in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack, The New York Times’ Paul Krugman came to a similar conclusion, writing, “One shouldn’t use the term ‘fascist’ lightly. It isn’t a catchall for ‘people you disagree with.’ … Donald Trump, however, is indeed a fascist — an authoritarian willing to use violence to achieve his racial nationalist goals.”
People can draw their own conclusions, of course, about whether Biden’s rhetoric was accurate or appropriate, but it’s far more difficult to suggest the underlying conversation is somehow out of bounds.
The far-right, conspiracy-trafficking, anti-Muslim internet personality Laura Loomer lost to incumbent Rep. Dan Webster in the FL-11 this week, and it wasn’t even particularly close. Webster won 51-44. But Loomer, in fitting Trumpian fashion, is refusing to concede in increasingly unhinged ways.
Loomer declared Thursday in a rambling and vaguely threatening statement: “I actually am the Congresswoman in Florida’s 11th District, and everyone knows it.” […]
Loomer is alleging without basis all kinds of corruption and voter fraud that led to her defeat, she’s going “scorched earth” against Webster and the Republican Party, and she is excusing her loss with Big Lie style misdirection and misinformation. […]
Two days after the January 6th insurrection that Donald Trump incited, Twitter permanently suspended his account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Undaunted, Trump soldiered on determined to provide his glassy-eyed cult disciples with a steady stream of lies, hostility, and self-exaltation.
Trump eventually launched his own social media app, Truth Social, that was a blatant ripoff of Twitter. From its inception the venture was pure Trump, in that it was a fetid failure built on a foundation of fraud. After missing several launch dates, and racking up potential users on a waiting list of thousands, the site went live to a pitifully small audience, which didn’t stop Trump from claiming that it was “one of the hottest sites in the world.”
That, however was just the beginning of Trump’s problems. The company he started to run the site, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), and the shell company that he intended to use to get it listed on the stock exchange, Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC), both became mired in legal muck.
Now, to no one’s surprise, Trump is sinking ever more into legal and financial trouble. A story published by the Fox News Business site (that’s right, Fox News) is reporting that Truth Social has failed to make payments to the web hosting service that it runs on. According to Fox Business…
“In October, RightForge announced it entered into an agreement to host Truth Social, which Trump helped create after he was banned by Twitter following the Jan. 6 riots. RightForge now contends that Truth Social has reneged on its contractually obligated monthly payments for setting up the platform’s web-servicing infrastructure, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.
“These people say RightForge contends that Truth Social has made just three payments and ceased making any payments since around March. RightForge claims that Truth Social owes it around $1.6 million and is threatening legal action to recoup the money, these people add.”
So in its short lifespan, Truth Social has sputtered to the starting gate, left its users hanging, lost 70% of its value (at DWAC), and is currently being investigated by a federal Grand Jury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. All of which is the predictable path of any Trump enterprise. […]
Meet Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, widow, jeweller, and socialite. The love child of a German father and a Peruvian mother, born in Callao, Peru, and abandoned in Moscow by her mother during the 1980 Olympic Games….
An expectant Louisiana woman who is carrying a skull-less fetus that would die almost immediately after birth has cemented plans to travel to North Carolina to terminate her pregnancy after her local medical provider dithered on performing the procedure, citing fear that the state’s abortion ban outlawed it.
Standing on the steps of Louisiana’s Capitol building in her hometown of Baton Rouge, Nancy Davis, 36, announced this morning that her grim trip would be next week, financed by more than $30,000 in donations raised by an online GoFundMe campaign launched after she went public with her plight earlier this month.
Her lawyer, the prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, called on Louisiana’s lawmakers to at least clarify the wording of their abortion ban – if not repeal it altogether – to prevent anyone else from enduring what Davis and her family had during the last several weeks.
The state’s governor, John Bel Edwards, should call a special legislative session in advance of the regular one scheduled to begin in April of next year to do that if necessary, Crump said.
“Louisiana lawmakers inflicted unspeakable pain, emotional damage and physical risk upon this beautiful mother,” Crump said, gesturing at Davis, who was accompanied by her partner Shedric Cole, their young daughter and her two stepchildren.
“They replaced care with confusion, privacy with politics and options with ideology.
“Ms Davis was among the first women to be caught in this crosshairs of confusion due to Louisiana’s rush to restrict abortion. But she will hardly be the last.”
The White House used its Twitter account to point the finger at a handful of GOP lawmakers.
The White House hit back at Republicans in an uncharacteristic manner Thursday by using its Twitter account to go after GOP lawmakers who are bashing President Joe Biden’s move to cancel some student debt after they personally benefited from having Paycheck Protection Program loans forgiven during the Covid pandemic.
In a series of tweets, the White House highlighted several congressional Republicans — Reps. Vern Buchanan of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, and Markwayne Mullin and Kevin Hern of Oklahoma — who it said had six- and seven-figure PPP loans forgiven as part of a federal program intended to help those harmed by the coronavirus.
Like many of their GOP colleagues, the lawmakers have blasted Biden over his student loan decision.
Greene, who said on Newsmax that “it’s completely unfair” for student loans to be forgiven, had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven […]
Kelly, who tweeted that Biden’s move was poised to benefit “Wall Street advisors” at the cost of “plumbers and carpenters,” had $987,237 forgiven, the White House said. […]
Buchanan, who according to the White House had more than $2.3 million in PPP loans forgiven, tweeted that Biden’s move was “reckless” and a “unilateral student loan giveaway.” […]
The Paycheck Protection Program was promoted in 2020 as offering loans that could be forgiven if the companies spent the money on business expenses. The requirements for federal student loan forgiveness have been much more stringent over the years.
The White House also highlighted criticism and PPP loan forgiveness amounts from Mullin (more than $1.4 million) and Hern (more than $1 million). […]
The paperwork just released, containing portions of the affidavit, is as predicted heavily redacted.
The document says: “Information in the affidavit could be used to identify many, if not all, of these witnesses. For example” – which is followed by a long redacted passage.
The document then adds: “If witnesses’ identities are exposed, they could be subjected to harms including retaliation, intimidation, or harassment, and even threats to their physical safety. As the court has already noted, ‘these concerns are not hypothetical in this case’.”
Another redacted passage follows, then the following text appears:
“Meanwhile, FBI agents who have been publicly identified in connection with this investigation have received repeated threats of violence from members of the public. Exposure of witnesses’ identities would likely erode their trust in the government’s investigation, and it would almost certainly chill other potential witnesses from coming forward in this investigation and others.”
A redacted FBI affidavit used to convince a judge for a search warrant for former President Trump’s Florida home noted that authorities found 184 classified documents in their initial review of boxes recovered from the home in an effort that began just a few months after he left office.
The 28-page affidavit contains numerous redactions but indicates authorities believed “evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” would be found at Mar-a-Lago.
In a separate filing explaining the rationale behind its redactions, DOJ said it had to protect “a broad range of civilian witnesses,” warning they would likely face intimidation.
The same federal magistrate judge who approved the search ordered DOJ to release the affidavit that convinced him to approve the warrant. Judge Bruce Reinhart concluded Thursday that proposed redactions from DOJ were narrow enough to allow for public disclosure while protecting their ongoing investigation.
The release of the redact affidavit follows the disclosure of the warrant that allowed for the search of Trump’s home, indicating that storing documents there may have violated the Espionage Act, as well as two other statutes.
One bars concealing, removing and mutilating government documents, and the other prohibits similar actions when done “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence [an] investigation.”
An inventory released alongside the warrant indicated the FBI recovered 11 different sets of classified documents during the search, along with information about “the president of France” and Trump’s pardon of his ally Roger Stone.
Trump had called for the release of both the warrant and the affidavit. He filed a separate case however seeking an injunction to stall the FBI’s investigation and asking a court to appoint a special master for the case. Doing so would let an outside party approved by the court first review the evidence taken during the search before the FBI can review it. [more later]
There is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the PREMISES. There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the PREMISES.
Based upon the following facts, there is probable cause to believe that the locations to be searched at the PREMISES contain evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(e), 1519, or 2071.
Inspector General sent the NARA Referral via email to DOJ. The NARA Referral stated that according to NARA’s White House Liaison Division Director, a preliminary review of the FIFTEEN BOXES indicated that they contained “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post- presidential records, and ‘a lot of classified records.’ Of most significant concern was that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.”
From May 16-18, 2022, FBI agents conducted a preliminary review of the FIFTEEN BOXES provided to NARA and identified documents with classification markings in fourteen of the FIFTEEN BOXES. A preliminary triage of the documents with classification markings revealed the following approximate numbers: 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET. Further, the FBI agents observed markings reflecting the following compartments/dissemination controls: HCS [HUMINT Control System!!!], FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, and SI.
[…] The document confirms that federal law enforcement is investigating former President Trump’s possession of highly classified documents, and of presidential records, and of possible obstruction. Under the Presidential Records Act, all documents need to remain in federal custody regardless of classification level.
“There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the PREMISES,” the filing reads.
The filing — written by an unidentified FBI agent trained in “counterintelligence and espionage” — says that agents suspected Trump of hiding intelligence information relating to signals collection, human sources, and other top secret information.
[…] That included markings referencing human sources, FISA, records to be kept away from foreign nationals, and signal intelligence.
“Several of the documents also contained what appears to be FPOTUS ‘s handwritten notes,” the filing reads. FPOTUS refers to the “Former President of the United States.”
Trump’s decision to take reams of records from the White House at the end of his administration — bringing on yet another criminal investigation of himself and those around him — is unprecedented in American history.
Public records and statements show that the National Archives spent more than one year from Trump’s departure in January 2021 trying fruitlessly to regain control of the records, all of which, under federal law, should have remained in government custody, regardless of classification. Trump refused, only handing over the 15 boxes — not a complete set of the records he had stashed away — in January 2022.
After NARA officials discovered classified information in those boxes, they referred the matter to the FBI. The affidavit cited a June 8 letter from federal prosecutors to Trump’s attorneys, demanding that they preserve records that were still held at Mar-a-Lago.
“As I previously indicated to you, Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information. As such, it appears that since the time classified documents were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location,” reads an excerpt of the letter included in the affidavit. “Accordingly, we ask that the room at Mar-a-Lago where the documents had been stored be secured and that all of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago (along with any other items in that room) be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.”
From the affidavit: “HUMINT Control System, or ‘HCS’, is an SCI control system designed to protect
intelligence information derived from clandestine human sources, commonly referred to as ‘human intelligence’. The HCS control system protects human intelligence-derived information and information relating to human intelligence activities, capabilities, techniques, processes, and procedures.”
Looks like Trump removed classified pages from their identifying cover sheet […] “Of most significant concern was that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.”
———————-
“suspected Trump of hiding intelligence information relating to signals collection, human sources, and other top secret information.”
Release of this information gets people killed. Forget the book, throw the entire library and Large Orange Buffoon.
———————–
Trump removed classified pages from their identifying cover sheet?! Holy crap
It never fails to surprise me that Trump is even worse than I could possibly imagine.
He’s not going to escape this time.
———————————-
Matthew Miller: All of it is bad, but Trump having documents derived from human intelligence (i.e. spies) floating around Mar-a-Lago is about the worst imaginable offense in this space.
Oggie: Mathomsays
Further, the FBI agents observed markings reflecting the following compartments/dissemination controls: HCS
Holy Shit! This is the kind of information that gets people killed.
[…] The execution order unsealing the affidavit can be found here. The letter from the DOJ explaining the reasoning behind redactions is here. The heavily redacted list of requested redactions is here. And finally, the affidavit itself is here. And that affidavit wastes no time in making clear that this is a serious matter [embedded links are all available at the main link]
[…] when it comes to the conclusion, the document is even more harsh:
Based on the foregoing facts and circumstances, I submit that probable cause exists to believe that evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation18 U.S.C. §§ 793(e), 2071, or 1519 will be found at the PREMISES.
[…] This is a criminal investigation. The FBI has cause to believe that there have been multiple violations of federal law. That law calls for fines and/or imprisonment. And they believe the “fruits of crime” will be found at “PREMISES”—otherwise known as Mar-a-Lago.
Does that sound like enough to get measured for an orange jumpsuit? Hold on for another paragraph.
Further, there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI or that are Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the PREMISES. There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the PREMISES.
So, in addition to stolen classified documents, the FBI expected to find evidence of obstruction at PREMISES-a-Lago.
[…] In the section describing the reasons why the government wanted all this sealed, there’s another tip that the jumpsuit order may be made in bulk.
I believe that sealing this document is necessary because the items and information to be seized are relevant to an ongoing investigation and the FBI has not yet identified all potential criminal confederates nor located all evidence related to its investigation. Premature disclosure of the contents of this affidavit and related documents may have a significant and negative impact on the continuing investigation and may severely jeopardize its effectiveness by allowing criminal parties an opportunity to flee, destroy evidence (stored electronically and otherwise), change patterns of behavior, and notify criminal confederates.
So, the FBI was also concerned about “potential criminal confederates” and didn’t want to tip off these “criminal parties” in ways that would let them bury the evidence of their crimes.
[…]
A team of inspectors from the UN nuclear watchdog are poised to make an emergency visit to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, according to reports.
Sources have told the Wall Street Journal that it is “almost certain” that a mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will visit the plant early next week, although details are still being completed.
“Frantic preparations” were underway after a breakthrough in negotiation over access, a person familiar with the matter told the paper.
The IAEA team could bring spare parts, radiation-monitoring devices and other vital materials to the plant after it was disconnected for the first time in history.
…
The mission will seek to assess the safety of the plant and address any security problems that have emerged during the fighting.
Residents near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine have reportedly been given iodine tablets, amid mounting fears that the fighting around the complex could trigger a catastrophe….
[…] The first document that came online was the memorandum of law explaining the redactions in the affidavit. In short, they have to protect the witnesses and FBI agents, who are facing an avalanche of threats from Trump’s rabid supporters. And if they put out the details of their investigation, it will point a big red arrow for anyone seeking to obstruct the investigation or intimidate witnesses. […]
On Januaary 18, 2022, Trump “voluntarily” handed over 15 boxes after he stonewalled for a year and the National Archives threatened to get Congress involved. In those boxes were 184 classified records, many of which were “unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.” […] [Snipped bit about the letter from Kash Patel claiming Trump had magical telepathic declassification powers.]
The government also notes that Devin Nunes’s former lackey Kash Patel was flapping his yap over at Breitbart about Trump having declassified everything before he left office. Not cool, bro.
For the past two weeks, Trump has been screaming bloody murder about how cooperative he was with the search, even going so far as to put a better lock on the door of that storage locker next to the pool where he was stashing all those stolen classified documents. Turns out, what the government really said was something along the lines of, “seal off that room and don’t let anyone in or out because it’s now a crime scene.” […]
probable cause to believe that FPOTUS was hanging onto Classified National Defense Information, as well as regular old presidential records which didn’t belong to him. […]
Oggie: Mathomsays
nor located all evidence related to its investigation.
Hmmm. I wonder what else is missing? Remember, these documents are numbered. The creating office of the document keeps track of where each numbered product goes, who reads it, when it is returned, and disposal (filing or destruction) of each copy.
For those frustrated by the affidavit’s necessary redactions: Donald Trump knows the information that is redacted about what docs he took to MAL and his misrepresentations to the archives and DOJ about them.
Why so silent now, Donald?
Retweet by Neal Katyal:
“This document … reveals the FBI, the Justice Department think that Donald Trump is a liar.”
Scroll down here: https://twitter.com/neal_katyal
to view a video of Neal Katyal explaining the significance of the unsealed affidavit. It’s a good video. It is only about a minute long, but Katyal covers a lot of ground in that minute.
[…] In February, the former president issued a written statement about the 15 boxes, saying, “The National Archives did not ‘find’ anything…. If this was anyone but ‘Trump,’ there would be no story here.” We now know, of course, that he was brazenly lying.
Facts:
[…] in the redacted affidavit, it explained the FBI agents also reviewed the contents of the 15 boxes and found approximately 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, 92 documents marked as secret, and 25 documents marked as top secret. “Further,” it read, “the FBI agents observed markings reflecting the following compa11ments/dissemination controls: HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, and SI […]
Oggie: Mathomsays
The letter by Corchran (sp?) entered as evidence as part of the affidavit is breathtaking. It should be used in law schools for ages to come. Specifically, it should be used in law schools as an example of professional ignorance of the law. The President of the United States is above the law?
Maybe they are laying the groundwork in the hopes that it goes all the way to SCOTUS and that the Trump judges will declare that the POTUS is above the law. Which they won’t. Not even for Trump. Because they know that Biden (or any other President with a D) would also be covered.
“On live Russian TV, propagandist Solovyev calls Olaf Scholz a ‘nazi’ and a follower of Hitler, suggests striking Ukrainian training camps in Germany.”
On Wednesday, as Ukraine marked its independence day, Vladimir Putin put his signature to a order officially increasing the number of slots in the Russian army to over two million. While that sounds impressive, it was clearly a declaration with only symbolic value, as the total number of people in the Russian army is currently well below one million. There are plenty of empty helmets to fill—assuming Russia can find the helmets.
On Thursday, Putin declared that he intends to follow his symbolic bump by adding 137,000 actual soldiers to the army’s total number. Only … from where?
Since the outset of the invasion, there have been reports of Russia having to engage in everything from bribes to outright extortion to get people to sign on as contract soldiers. And even then, many of those who have been dragged into Ukraine have refused to fight. As Radio Free Europe put it last month:
Nearly five months into the largest war in Europe since World War II, a growing number of Russian soldiers… are refusing to fight, demanding to return home, or outright not going to Ukraine in the first place. Russian rights activists say hundreds, possibly thousands of troops are balking at orders to deploy, to keep fighting, or to remain on the battlefield without rotating out or home.
At one point, Russia reportedly had at least 26 Battalion Tactical Groups at Izyum, and still that Izyum salient was barely able to advance over a period of months. In the last two weeks, Russia has actually lost ground in that area and is reportedly withdrawing troops from the city that represents one of it’s biggest victories in the invasion. Rumors on both Twitter and Telegram have laid much of the blame for the failure in this area on Russian troops that simply refused to fight.
Considering that Russia continues to engage in a daily ritual of “reconnaissance by force” in which it engages in dozens of failed attacks in order to determine Ukrainian troop dispositions, with each of those mini-attacks accompanied by what are often described as heavy casualties, it’s not hard to see why those shoved up to the front lines would be reluctant. Russia’s strategy may be to use artillery to blast targets into rubble, then advance across the rubble, but even in an age where there are so many other options for gathering intelligence, Russian forces seem to make those advances in a way that’s incredibly casual with the lives of Russian soldiers. Even in recent weeks, it’s not difficult to find reports in which some of these groups sallying forth to attack a town or village ran headlong into a Ukrainian hard point and were totally destroyed.
That’s how Russia has racked up an incredible loss of 45,000+ troops in the middle of what has basically been an artillery war.
To backfill those deaths, Russia has become increasingly forceful in using men from Luhansk and Donetsk to plug the gaps. There might not be mobilization in Russia, but there certainly is in the long-time Russian controlled areas of Ukraine. Reports of men being pressganged off the streets, and of men hiding to avoid being forcibly conscripted, are all over posts from that area. This is apparently the glorious independence that people the Donbas has earned: Being herded onto trucks and being sent to die in other areas of Ukraine.
Every intelligence report for weeks, whether from Ukraine, the U.S., or the U.K. has made note of the same thing when talking about Russia: “Morale is poor in many parts of its military and its army is significantly degraded.” How bad is Russian morale? Bad enough that this week Russian forces reportedly engaged in … [fighting each other]. […]
This note followed earlier reports that Russian forces were firing on each other going back into June.
If Putin genuinely intends to add over 100,000 more men to the Russian army (and it is men, because … Russian reasons), it seems unlikely that any form of wheedling, promises, or threats is going to do it. It’s going to take some level of mobilization—a draft—to make it work. If that happens, it’s still unclear what happens next. After all, Russia supposedly opened this war with 190,000 of its own troops around Ukraine, and 30,000 LNR / DNR conscripts on the side.
Getting Russian forces to fight in Ukraine is reminiscent of how Abraham Lincoln spoke about getting reluctant general George McClellan to move. “Sending armies to McClellan is like shoveling fleas across a barnyard,” said Lincoln. “Not half of them get there.”
An hour after the release of the affidavit, Trump posted another message on his social media network attacking the FBI, the Justice Department and the judge in the case.
“Affidavit heavily redacted!!! Nothing mentioned on ‘Nuclear,’ a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ, or our close working relationship regarding document turnover – WE GAVE THEM MUCH. Judge Bruce Reinhart should NEVER have allowed the Break-In of my home,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Gee. What a surprise. Despite lots of evidence showing that Trump and his ‘lawyers’ were lying about cooperation, Trump continues to lie. And he attacks the judge. Who he appointed.
“WE GAVE THEM MUCH” of what they had illegally stolen from the US Government. And kept even more of it in an unsecure location. Some of the documents he illegally had, stored improperly, in an unsecured location, were given back to their rightful owner — the National Archives. He still has no idea that what he did is wrong, illegal, and dangerous.
The former president has publicly demanded the release of the unredacted affidavit but did not make that request in court.
Of course he wanted an unredacted affidavit for his personal use, not necessarily for public release, so that he would know who the disloyal traitors are.
What a rapidly oxidizing rectum.
Oggie: Mathomsays
Sorry I borked the hatemail* tags. My daily homage to Tpyos.
He knows it is wrong, and illegal. The endless deflection and ever shifting excuses are admissions of guilt. It’s just that that he has never once been held to account for lying, thieving, income tax evasion, colluding with Russia, attempting a coup, etc
Now it’s time for all those dominoes to start falling, and the people in charge of all these investigations are pissed off and far smarter than him.
It’s obvious that several branches of lawyers are cooperating in getting him convicted. Pissing off the DOD, DOJ, CIA, and FBI is supernova grade stupidity.
Oggie: Mathomsays
Today’s Calvin and Hobbes at gocomics.com has the perfect description of Donald Trump:
I pray for
<
blockquote>The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t and the incapacity to tell the difference.
A federal judge in Texas on Thursday struck down a state law barring adults under 21 from carrying handguns, ruling that the age limit violated the Second Amendment.
[Trump-appointed] U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman said the Constitution didn’t put an age restriction on the right to bear arms, meaning adults 18 to 20 shouldn’t be prevented from carrying handguns outside the home.
The 23-page opinion leaned heavily on originalism, the conservative legal theory that judges should interpret the Constitution based on the way it was understood when it was written.
“The issue is whether prohibiting law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying a handgun in public for self-defense is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Pittman wrote. “Based on the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by Founding-Era history and tradition, the Court concludes that the Second Amendment protects against this prohibition.”
Three years before retiring from the U.S. Army in 2017, Donald Trump-backed Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano posed in Confederate uniform for a faculty photo at the Army War College, according to a copy of the photo obtained by Reuters.
The previously unreported photo, released by the War College to Reuters after a request under the Freedom of Information Act, showed Mastriano in a 2013-14 portrait for the Department of Military Strategy, Plans, and Operations, where he worked.
Faculty at the time had been given the option of dressing as a historical figure, people familiar with the photo said. At least 15 of the 21 faculty in the photo opted to appear in regular attire. Although one man wears a trench coat and sunglasses and another carries an aviator’s helmet, Mastriano is the only one wearing a Confederate uniform.
…
After Reuters made its formal request for the photo, it was removed from the War College wall where it had hung alongside other annual portraits of faculty groups.
The Army War College (AWC), a premier military higher education institution in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, told Reuters a team had reviewed all art, text, and other images displayed at Carlisle Barracks in 2020, but missed the faculty photo.
“The faculty photo did not get the team’s attention; the photo has since been removed because it does not meet AWC values,” the college said in a statement.
…
It is unclear how the photo might be viewed in Pennsylvania, which played a critical role in the Civil War. More than 33,000 soldiers from Pennsylvania died fighting for the Union, and the state was the site of the Battle of Gettysburg, the conflict’s bloodiest battle, which ended with a Union victory and inspired President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Mastriano’s district, Pennsylvania’s 33rd, includes Gettysburg….
Ukrainian military hits Russian air defense facility in Kherson.
On Aug. 26, Operational Command “South” reported that they killed 24 Russian troops and destroyed three Giatsint self-propelled guns.
Among other Russian losses are two Smerch multiple rocket launchers, Pion self-propelled artillery, NONA self-propelled mortar system, one ammunition depot, and five units of armored and military vehicles.
The Ukrainian military also struck concentrations of Russian equipment and personnel in Novopetrivka and Olhyne in Kherson Oblast.
More terrorism from the right wingnuts.
These terrorists claimed (flat out lied) that a hospital was doing hysterectomies on Trans children.
Which they don’t do.
Trans surgery isn’t done on children. The usual practice is to wait until age 18 or later.
Washingtonpost 8/26/2022 Children’s hospital threatened after Libs of TikTok recording on trans hysterectomies
Children’s National Hospital faced a torrent of threats after the Libs of TikTok recording was published on Twitter Thursday. (AFP/Getty Images)
Children’s National Hospital has been inundated with threatening emails and phone calls after an influential right-wing Twitter account published a recording that falsely suggested the hospital is performing hysterectomies on transgender children, a hospital spokeswoman said. The torrent of harassment was accompanied by social media posts suggesting that Children’s be bombed and its doctors placed in a woodchipper.
In what may be the most shocking story to emerge from the entire Mar-a-Lago document scandal, The New York Times is reporting that officials at intelligence agencies fear that among the classified information Donald Trump stole was details on U.S. assets embedded in foreign countries. The names, locations, and even the existence of such assets is among the most guarded secrets of the nation. But something mysterious has been happening over the last few years, with an unusual number of foreign sources being killed or arrested.
In the past, officials have worried that documents leaked by outlets like WikiLeaks might, either purposely or intentionally, reveal the identity of U.S. sources, putting their lives at risk. But now, intelligence agencies have a greater concern: A man who has a horde of stolen documents, connections to numerous hostile governments, and a frequently expressed disdain for both sources and the intelligence community. Put it all together, and you get one of the most amazing front pages in recent years. [image at the link of New York Times newspaper with headline “U.S. FEARED TRUMP FILES PUT SPIES AT RISK]
In the days leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, one fact stood out: The United States had uncannily accurate information about Russia’s plans. It was crystal clear that, not only did the U.S. have a fleet of high resolution satellites and other resources observing Russian movements on the ground, they also had sources inside the Kremlin that were giving the White House a direct pipeline into Vladimir Putin’s every thought.
It’s hard to put a value on that kind of intelligence. In this one case, it’s even possible that Ukraine would not have survived, had it not received early, accurate warnings of both Russian troop build-ups and Putin’s intentions. Thanks to U.S. intelligence sources.
It can take years to establish a reliable source. It can take moments for that point of light to go dark.
Even before he took up residence in the White House, Trump frequently expressed disdain for the intelligence services. Just as he bragged that he was “smarter than all the generals” and declared that his natural instincts allowed him to declare the climate crisis a fraud, Trump has celebrated his “gut” over the combined efforts of agents and analysts. Stories of Trump’s refusal to engage with intelligence briefings have been all too common over the last five years. Trump sneered that his own intelligence chiefs were “naïve” in their assessments of international events, mocked their findings, and insisted they should “go back to school.”
Even more than intelligence agencies, Trump hates whistleblowers. At every instance, he had ridiculed the idea of an anonymous source, insisted that whistleblowers be revealed, then attacked and endangered them once they were known. In his first impeachment, Trump constantly attacked the whistleblower who revealed his attempt to extort Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He didn’t just ridicule the whistleblower continuously, but insisted that the whistleblower testify in public—Republicans in Congress took up that call.
Most tellingly, when Trump learned an alleged name for the whistleblower, he tweeted it over and over.
Pair Trump’s attitude toward the intelligence services, whistleblowers, and witnesses of all kinds, with his incredible disdain for protecting classified information, and it’s a recipe for utter catastrophe. The revelation of a “NOC list,” giving away dozens of undercover operatives in vital roles, may be the subject of adventure fiction, but it seems like an all-too-real possibility for Trump.
And if the nation needed another reminder of just how lax Trump’s actual security at Mar-a-Lago really is, there was the Pittsburg Post-Gazette story this week in which a 33-year-old Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant convinced Trump that she was actually an heiress of the Rothschild banking family.
In addition to the FBI, law enforcement agents in Canada have confirmed that she has been the subject of a major crimes unit investigation in Quebec since February.
But there she was at Mar-a-Lago, playing golf with Trump and Lindsay Graham. She was there. So were all those documents suspected to hold key information about U.S. sources in some of the most sensitive areas of the world.
Even the hint that one of these sources might have been revealed can result in an immediate, emergency exfiltration to bring them to safety in the U.S. That means that it doesn’t even take the death or arrest of a U.S. source to cripple intelligence gathering. All it takes is concern that a source might have been compromised.
Donald Trump has provided plenty of cause for concern.
Appearing early Saturday morning on MSNBC, former federal prosecutor Cynthia Alksne claimed that the latest legal filing by Donald Trump’s lawyers over the Mar-a-Lago search three weeks ago is a sign of desperation and that it is evidence that they have no idea how to deal with their client’s worsening legal woes.
Speaking with host Katie Phang, Alksne responded to a report from Politico that stated, “The filing, which was billed as a ‘supplement’ to Trump’s meandering initial bid on Monday, was notable, however, for what it didn’t include. It makes no mention of the hundreds of pages of classified documents recovered during the Aug. 8 search and in previous visits by investigators. It also makes no mention of Trump’s claims to have declassified the material. It also eschews the heated criticism Trump has leveled at Bruce Reinhart, the magistrate judge who authorized the search.”
“What do you make of last night’s filing that supplements, that was court ordered, that Trump’s legal team had to do in their pursuit of the appointment of the special master?” Host Phang asked.
“Well, it’s mostly a gobbledegook filing,” Alksne began. ” And honestly, it gets the law wrong. It misses a lot of facts. It does not have clear reasoning about why they need the special master.”
“It says the Reinhart case is substantially over which it’s not; it’s an ongoing investigation,” she continued. “I just think that they are scrambling and they have nothing.”
“The problem is, what they know is, this is an ongoing investigation. There is, there has been, serious probable cause in this case, over and over in abundance of probable cause to do the search of Mar-a-Lago,” she elaborated. “When they were there, they found documents all over the place, you know, in his premises, in hallways. Lord knows what maids had been in and out of the area in addition to in the basement.”
“And the president is in serious trouble and they’re scrambling,” she concluded. “And you can tell when you look at the filing that they filed yesterday that they know that they are in trouble.”
And, I would add, the Trump Dream Team (the team seems to be a really bad dream at this point) is populated by lawyers who are not even good enough to be second tier. They know they won’t get paid but are, most likely, looking to use their representation of Trump as a footstool to elected office as MAGA Fascists.
And, as Wife just told me, ‘Doing a post-mortem on a dumpster fire is messy.”
Last year, intelligence officials learned something alarming, and alerted their stations globally: Assets, or in this case, foreign nationals recruited globablly to collect intel for the United States, were being pulled off the chess board by being captured or killed at unusual rates.
As it turns out, and as one might expect, the C.I.A runs a tight ship when it comes to protecting its assets.
A breach of the classified communications system, or “covcom,” used by the C.I.A. helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency.
Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.
The message, in an unusual top secret cable, said that the C.I.A.’s counterintelligence mission center had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.
That article is from October 7th, 2021 and outlines a disturbing trend that began only after one Donald Trump became President. In fact, it had been known for some time that there was a problem. It also was not unknown across the pond. There, a reporter is a bit more direct in their angle, questioning is a “super-mole” was betraying our spies. […]
Fast forward to Friday, and a redacted affidavit […]
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida home was spurred by the discovery that he had retained a trove of highly classified material that included documents related to the use of “clandestine human sources” in intelligence gathering, according to a redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant. In those boxes, they found a total of 184 documents with classification markings, including 25 labeled “top secret.” Others were marked in a way suggesting they were related to foreign intercepts collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
What stands out there obviously is “clandestine human sources.” There is a reason you keep reading about that angle. I am not going to dance around this, and here is where the NYT detonates on Trump:
C.I.A. espionage operations inside numerous hostile countries have been compromised in recent years when the governments of those countries have arrested, jailed and even killed the agency’s sources.
Last year, a top-secret memo sent to every C.I.A. station around the world warned about troubling numbers of informants being captured or killed, a stark reminder of how important human source networks are to the basic functions of the spy agency.
There is growing speculation that Trump will soon be charged for crimes involving taking the documents, and espionage. I can not independently verfiy that, and can myself make no formal accusation based on information I would not be privy to. However many inside the beltway feel these actions would not have been taken unless something nefarious had been done with the documents, and that the D.O.J. has proof of that. Perhaps on the video.
[…] In 2019, CNN reported about a secret mission carried out by the U.S. to extract a covert source that was operating inside of the Russian government.
In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.
A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.
The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.
[…] How much is known about this problem globally? According to The Guardian, it is not a secret.
Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.
Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.
Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
[…] a megalomaniac was on the rise in American politics, and decided there was only one place for his “prodigious” talents: Russia.
“He already had Russia mania in 1986, 31 years ago,” asserts Bernard Lown, a Boston-area cardiologist known for inventing the defibrillator and sharing the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize with a top Soviet physician in recognition of their efforts to promote denuclearization. Lown, now 95 and retired in Newton, Massachusetts, tells The Hollywood Reporter that Trump sought and secured a meeting with him in 1986 to solicit information about Mikhail Gorbachev. (Gorbachev had become the USSR’s head of state — and met with Lown — the year before.) During this meeting, Lown says, the fast-rising businessman disclosed that he would be reaching out to then-President Ronald Reagan to try to secure an official post to the USSR in order to negotiate a nuclear disarmament deal on behalf of the United States, a job for which Trump felt he was the only one fit.
“He said to me, ‘I hear you met with Gorbachev, and you had a long interview with him, and you’re a doctor, so you have a good assessment of who he is,’” Lown recalls. “So I asked, ‘Why would you want to know?’ And he responded, ‘I intend to call my good friend Ronnie,’ meaning Reagan, ‘to make me a plenipotentiary ambassador for the United States with Gorbachev.’ Those are the words he used. And he said he would go to Moscow and he’d sit down with Gorbachev, and then he took his thumb and he hit the desk and he said, ‘And within one hour the Cold War would be over!’ I sat there dumbfounded. ‘Who is this self-inflated individual? Is he sane or what?’”
[…] Just what is on that video of Mar-A-Lago? Who entered the storage areas? What are the hand-written notes on that document, that led to immediate instances of redactions on the affidavit?
This is not “just” about documents. […]
Oggie: Mathomsays
Okay, I was wrong. Those documents regarding HUMINT DID get people killed.
Trump is a traitor.
Oggie: Mathomsays
I remember way back in the fall of 2016, Trump went off the deep end when Saturday Night Live did a live open in which someone playing the Russian ambassador called Trump “Not the candidate, the Manchurian Candidate.”
Wonkette: “Ron DeSantis Suspends Four Broward School Board Members, Appoints Loyal Republicans”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday afternoon — nothing like a late-Friday news dump! — suspended four members of the Broward County school board and replaced them with four new members. Ostensibly, the suspensions were related to the results of a statewide grand jury investigation that DeSantis had requested following the 2018 school shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, which killed 17 students and school staff and wounded another 17. But in a complete coincidence, we’re sure, DeSantis’s action immediately gave the Broward board a majority of Republican members (Florida school board elections are officially nonpartisan, but the four women DeSantis suspended were Democrats; the new appointees are Republican men). Funny how that worked out!
DeSantis explained in a press release that he was just doing good government stuff in replacing the four elected members of the board, don’t you see:
It is my duty to suspend people from office when there is clear evidence of incompetence, neglect of duty, misfeasance or malfeasance. […]
DeSantis also said that he hoped the action “brings the Parkland community another step towards justice” and that it was “in the best interest of the residents and students of Broward County and all citizens of Florida.” Surely the Parkland community will feel far better now that the people they elected — and reelected since the shooting — have been removed and replaced by DeSantis’s hand-picked members.
[…] In a statement to CNN and other outlets, former board chair Levinson said that the grand jury report simply gave DeSantis a pretext to replace elected board members with his political allies.
“What country is this? What Governor DeSantis did is un-American and undemocratic. He doesn’t care about democracy and he overturned the will of the voters.”
This is all about political retribution for not firing Superintendent Runcie. It’s about blaming the Superintendent, and any school board members who supported him, for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting. All four board members were elected by the people multiple times, including post tragedy. My heart will always go out to all the families and community.
Because you may disagree on local policy decisions is not a reason to remove someone from elected office…. This action is authoritarian-like and has no place in the United States of America where the voters decide who represents them.
As the New York Times explains, a year after the massacre, DeSantis requested that the state Supreme Court empanel a grand jury to investigate school security matters statewide:
including if refusal or failure to follow school safety laws put students at risk; if districts have committed fraud by accepting state funds conditioned on safety measures without putting them into place; and if districts have diverted for other purposes funds from bonds designated for school safety.
The grand jury completed its report in April 2021, but it was kept under seal while the school board members named in it fought its release.
The grand jury said the five Broward board members had “engaged in acts of incompetence and neglect of duty” in their implementation of an $800 million bond issue, passed in 2014, that was supposed to renovate school buildings to make them safer. We haven’t read the entire 122-page PDF, but pages 12 to 17 make pretty clear the grand jury blamed the board members for cost overruns and delays in those renovations — not for any failures that led to the mass shooting.
Gosh, it sure would be cynical to suggest that the school board suspensions have a lot more to do with DeSantis’s ongoing war on public education — especially in a generally liberal school district like Broward, where the board also defied DeSantis’s ban on mask mandates during the pandemic — than it does with alleged problems with school repair contracts.
But for DeSantis, every last part of governance is about pushing a political agenda. Remember his absolutely necessary $1.1 million Election Police Force, which he vowed would eliminate all the voter fraud that already is extremely rare? The Elections Cops made their first arrests earlier this month, scooping up 20 felons who mistakenly thought their right to vote had been restored by 2018’s Amendment 4, which was supposed to restore voting rights to those who’d served their time? DeSantis held a big press conference and crowed about how he was protecting the integrity of the vote from criminal frauders who were bent on stealing elections from good honest voters.
Defendants in the sweep said that they honestly thought it had been legal for them to vote in the 2020 elections, because after all, they finished their prison time and had been allowed to register with no problems. Yesterday, Politico published a report detailing that several of the defendants were actually notified by their counties that they were all set to vote:
In the days since the announcement, however, several of those arrested have told media outlets or authorities that they had no idea they were not eligible to vote. In court documents filed in five counties, most say at least one official government body — in most cases a local election supervisor — incorrectly indicated to them they could vote, including allowing them to register and sending them voter cards in the mail.
Court records show that many who were swept up by authorities have little education or financial resources and are now back in the state’s criminal justice system. Florida Department of Law Enforcement special agents interviewed the defendants over a few days in early August before arresting them last Thursday.
Gosh, it’s almost as if Ron DeSantis is really good at twisting Florida’s legal institutions to get outcomes that will advance his favored political agenda — with a thin film of official legality, even!
Say, what was that thing Joe Biden said this week about MAGA Republicans going all semi-fascist? […]
Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant came under renewed shelling on Saturday as fraught negotiations to allow for a team of scientists from the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the facility took on added urgency.
The United Nation’s nuclear watchdog has assembled a team of experts to visit the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine — Europe’s largest nuclear power station — as early as next week.
A list of the team’s members seen by The New York Times includes the nuclear agency’s chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi of Argentina, and 13 other experts from mostly neutral countries. Neither the United States nor Britain, countries that Russia scorns as unfairly biased because of their strong support for Ukraine, is represented.
[…] even as the details of a possible visit to the plant took shape, Russia and Ukraine on Saturday again blamed each other for shelling the facility.
Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency, Energoatom, said Russia shelled the plant late Friday and into Saturday morning. It accused Russian forces of increasing pressure on the plant’s staff ahead of a possible I.A.E.A. visit “to prevent them from disclosing evidence about the crimes of the occupiers at the plant and its use as a military base.”
Within minutes of Energoatom’s statement, Russia’s Ministry of Defense put out its own statement saying that Ukraine had fired shells at the plant in the past 24 hours.
Both the Russians and the Ukrainians said radiation levels remained within normal range.
The plant has come under sporadic shelling since early August, although the extent of the damage remains unclear. Critical infrastructure around the plant has also been shelled and on Thursday the plant temporarily lost its off-site electrical power after a critical high-voltage wire was damaged, forcing it to rely on on-site backup power.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in an address to the nation late Friday that the episode had brought it perilously close to disaster, making the need for a visit by international inspectors even more urgent. […]
The warring nations have haggled over the composition of an inspection team and whether it would travel to the plant through territory occupied by Russian forces or controlled by the government in Kyiv.
Ukraine has insisted that the inspectors start out from government-controlled territory, to avoid giving legitimacy to the Russian occupation. That means the inspectors would have to pass through frontline positions where shelling is frequent and would probably use a crossing point already crowded with civilians fleeing the fighting and nuclear dangers. Any deal is likely to require a cease-fire along the route.
A senior diplomat familiar with the negotiations said that Russia had given its approval to the inspection team and indicated that it had acceded to Ukraine’s demand that the mission originate in territory it controls rather than in Russian-occupied land.
Moscow has said it supports the work of the I.A.E.A., but has ignored pleas to withdraw military forces from the plant and its vicinity to create a demilitarized zone. Russia seized the facility, which comprises six nuclear reactors, in March at the start of its invasion but Ukrainian engineers still operate it.
The I.A.E.A. mission includes experts from Poland and Lithuania, nations seen as friendly by Ukraine, but also others from Serbia and China, which Ukraine views with deep suspicion because of their cozy relations with Moscow.
The remaining members are from countries that have mostly stood on the sidelines of the war in Ukraine or that have kept channels open with the Kremlin. They include Albania, France, Italy, Jordan, Mexico and North Macedonia.
Edwin Lyman, a nuclear power expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that a visit by the I.A.E.A. would allow experts to inspect the state of all the emergency systems as well as the diesel supply, and then make arrangements for replenishing it.
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @348:
And he said he would go to Moscow and he’d sit down with Gorbachev, and then he took his thumb and he hit the desk and he said, ‘And within one hour the Cold War would be over!’
Yeah, it would have been over because he would have granted everything to the USSR. That is how “great” his negotiation skills are.
Democrats have come up with a whole new way to rig elections, and it’s not by recruiting Italy’s best hackers to employ satellites and also possibly the Vatican to change all of the votes in the voting machines — rather, it is by doing things that actually help people and improve their lives.
This worries Ted Cruz, who said as much on a recent episode of his podcast, Verdict, in which he posited that student debt relief could lead to “slacker baristas” going out and voting — or possibly even voting from home. Oh, the horror. [video at the link]
“There is a real risk! If you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans, and can’t get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand. Like, holy cow! 20 grand!” Cruz posited, somehow unaware that being a barista is, in fact, a job.
“Like maybe you weren’t gonna vote in November,” he continued, “and suddenly you just got 20 grand, and if you can get off the bong for a minute and head down to the voting station, or just send in your mail-in ballot that the Democrats have helpfully sent you, it could drive up turnout, particularly among young people.”
See, the big problem with this is that Ted Cruz’s imaginary unemployed slacker barista who majored in underwater basket weaving is not the only sort of person drowning in student debt. It’s 15 percent of the country. It’s 49,425,000 living, breathing American voters. It’s the parents of those voters, the spouses of those voters, the friends and relatives and coworkers of those voters.
Even if that were the case, does Ted Cruz think baristas should be barred from voting? Who does Ted Cruz think is good enough to vote? Does he want to institute an income threshold? Limit the vote to property-owning white males?
This has been the big Republican fear for decades. They worked very hard to cultivate an image of Americans as a people who prefer misery over relief as a matter of pride and “rugged individualism,” and while a lot of people have fallen for it […] no one actually prefers that. Not deep down. […] people may talk a good game, but they don’t actually want their lives to be harder. Everyone already thinks they’ve got it hard enough as it is.
That’s why Kansas voted to keep abortion legal. Sure, part of it was empathy, but a bigger part of it was that actually being forced to be pregnant against one’s will would be a terrible time […]
Ted Cruz should be worried. Republicans should be worried. Because people do like nice things, they do like their lives being less hard, and the more Democrats figure out that this will get people to the voting booths, the more emboldened they will be to do things like student debt forgiveness and the more elections Republicans will lose.
I think it is a safe bet that Ted Cruz could not do a barista’s job.
Oggie: Mathomsays
I think it is a safe bet that Ted Cruz could not do a barista’s job.
I KNOW I couldn’t do that job. I have listened to baristas taking orders. And it amazes me that ANY of the product even comes close to matching what the customer wants. Just the vocabulary needed is amazing.
Then again, almost any job requires a special vocabulary. When my son, his wife, and my daughter (all of whom work in a warehouse (making far more money and with far less stress then their degree fields)) start talking about work, I am lost halfway through the first sentence. I developed two professional vocabularies. One for work at the park, a second for federal incidents (like forest fires). Wife and son have both worked in restaurants. A whole ‘nuther vocabulary.
I guess, even for Cruz, Congress requires a specialized vocabulary — definitions of socialism, communism, fascism, radicalism and capitalism that all have little or no relationship to the historical meanings, historical and academic usages, or, even, reality. My whole time studying history, I never knew that ‘socialism’ meant “Things I, and my Constituents, do not Like!”
Oggie: Mathomsays
Actually, socialism means “Things that would help my constituents but I do not like!”
KGsays
Yeah, it would have been over because he [Trump] would have granted everything to the USSR. – johnson catman@254
Arguably, that would have been a good thing! It would have given Gorbachev more leeway to enact his liberalising reforms, which were bound to cause short-term problems. While people in much of eastern Europe benefited from the collapse of the USSR, it intensified the shift to the right across the rich capitalist countries by removing a potential alternative which acted as a restraint on the greed of the 1%. And while Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is Putin’s responsibility, a revanchist Russia was an obvious possible outcome of the USSR’s disintegration.
Starting in July, we started hearing about Russia working hard to sign up new volunteers, offering hefty signing bonuses appealing […]. Big monthly paychecks were designed to draw in desperate recruits from Russia’s most impoverished, neglected regions.
In a normal army, in a normal war, those recruits would spend several months training, then be integrated as replacements in existing units. Remember that Russia went to war with undermanned units, and death and injuries have further depleted those ranks. And since Russian dictator Vladimir Putin won’t declare an actual war, Russia can’t deploy conscripts to Ukraine or hold on to contract soldiers past their contract dates. Those contracts run 4-6 months. What month are we in this war? Six months.
Russia’s manpower shortage is real, so common sense would dictate that any new recruits would reinforce those existing, depleted units. Not only do they need the warm bodies, but they would presumably have experienced combat vets in their ranks to guide those new recruits.
Of course, Russia is not a normal or logical or efficient army. So things have taken a weird turn, one that will inevitably lead to more calamity for Russia’s ruinous war effort.
Meet Russia’s 3rd Army Corps, an entirely new unit. […]
In Western parlance, a “corps” is 2-4 divisions, or about 20-40,000 troops. This isn’t that, probably a handful of BTGs, so less than 10,000. We’ve seen pictures of some of these recruits—in their 50s or older (the age limit is now 65), overweight […] [photo at the link]
Again, none of this would be remarkable if these poor sods were simply being thrown as replacement fodder into existing units. However, this 3rd Army Corps is completely new, with completely new leadership. There are no NCOs to bring expertise, and Russia’s officer ranks have been decimated, as they were thrown in with cannon fodder early in the war to fill manpower gaps. Their leadership are local officials and retired officers.
And they trained these volunteers for about a month.
So, we have a bunch of old, scraggly, out-of-shape men signing their 4-6 month contracts for debt relief, training for a handful of weeks, and led by their local constabulary or something. Pretty bad, for sure.
But it gets worse.
You see, turns out Russia had some top-level gear still stashed in their reserves. But instead of sending it to the front to replace lost gear, manned by more experienced crews, they handed their best gear to this rabble. [tweet and video at the link]
To be clear, line units on the current front lines don’t have latest generation gear, nor even the previous generation gear. That stuff is long gone. They’re now using stuff from the 1960s. And all this time, Russia had leftover good stuff and held back, then gave it to this crew.
People assume these guys will be used for offensive operations. With Russia shifting to a more defensive posture as it attempts to freeze the conflict, perhaps Russia wants its most experienced troops staving off any Ukrainian counteroffensive. So hey, here’s some fresh cannon fodder for the daily failed “reconnaissance by force” probes, but with the best gear for some reason.
If you think that’s ass-backwards and there must be some rational military explanation for that decision, there just isn’t. It’s truly bizarre.
Given its current whereabouts, the 3rd Army Corps will likely deploy either in the Donetsk front, where Russia is trying to push away from Donetsk City, or Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, where Russian hasn’t budged in months. If the 3rd Corps Army truly intends to push forward, my money is on the former. [map at the link]
One month training is unfathomably short. For context, my son is currently finishing his infantry training at Fort Benning (I’ll be there for his graduation in three weeks). The length of that program? 22 weeks, almost six months!
For armor crewmen, training is also 22 weeks.
And remember, in the U.S. Army, that is just initial training. Initial training graduates then head to their units, where they continue their training and education under the watchful eyes of experienced sergeants (NCOs) with years of experience.
The only thing you learn in a month is how to press a trigger and move forward. I don’t even want to know what the armor people learn. Probably, “drive forward until you hit a mine. Next guy, drive around him, hope there isn’t another mine.” I mean that literally. [tweet and video at the link]
f that’s what you’re teaching, then sure, a month is enough time…
Ultimately, equipping a bunch of old indebted drunks with minimal training with Russia’s best remaining gear is so unbelievably backwards that there has to be a grift in here somewhere. I don’t see it, but how else to explain it?
I’m tired of all the death and killing in this war, on both sides. But if Russia insists on sending people with death machines into Ukraine, we should be glad it looks like this.
Federal judge just issued her preliminary order intending to appoint a special master that Trump sought to review the documents seized in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.
Armando (NDK):
Wow. she has not even heard opposition. I’ve never ever seen an order like this. She doesn’t even describe what the Special Master would do. This is an insane order. As a journalist, you should describe it as such. She could have just set a briefing scheduled.
emptywheeel:
Among the many reasons this is insane, the filter protocol is public. Zillions of people have read it. She claims to be unaware of it.
Another reason Cannon’s order is nuts is bc she’s basing it off Trump’s egregious misrepresentation of what happened in SDNY with Rudy, in which the District Judge had been involved in the case for years.
Rudy and Vic weren’t charged. They still aren’t. But Parnas was.
The estimated death toll is over 1200 in hard-hit flood-ravaged Pakistan. The flooding is a result of monsoon rains supercharged by global warming. This event is so catastrophic because more water vapor can be held in the atmosphere amplifying the impacts of our heating globe. A state of emergency has been declared, and Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif has appealed to the world for help for the people of the impoverished Islamic nation. Pakistan is one of many nations that will not be habitable due to a myriad of climate destruction.
As climate change is a threat multiplier, not only was record-breaking rainfall an issue, but “ construction in flood-prone areas, endemic corruption, lack of investment in infrastructure, scant regard for the environment and poor preparedness for natural disasters also exacerbate the problems when flooding happens.”
The flash flooding has had unrelenting devastation since June. In addition, thirty million have been displaced and thousands injured. Communications have been lost; roadways washed away have isolated millions from immediate rescue and humanitarian aid.
From the Guardian:
Many parts of Pakistan have become inaccessible, and rescuers are struggling to evacuate thousands of marooned people from flood-affected areas. Balochistan and Sindh provinces are the worst-affected areas.
Local media reported late on Saturday that the Kach dam near Ziarat city, 80 miles from Quetta, Balochistan’s capital, had broken due to heavy flooding – putting lives of local residents at risk. Other dams in the area have also reportedly been damaged.
There were also reports that protesters had blocked the Indus Highway, the only safe passage between Hyderabad and Karachi and northern Sindh and the rest of Pakistan at Naseerabad. The protesters claim the local lawmakers have endangered the population by diverting floodwater.
Three people were killed as a result of landslides and floods in Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and the authorities in Nowshera asked for immediate evacuations amid a “very high flood” in the Kabul River.
Videos shared on social media showed bridges, roads and hotels sinking into water and people running to evacuate their homes. The army has been called in for rescue help in the province.
Over twenty million people are now believed to be homeless: and winter is coming.
I don’t often mention a trigger warning in my diaries, as climate change is punishing and brutal; most people should know that by now. There is no sugarcoating the impacts; unrelenting climate terrorism shows no mercy to any caught in the brutality of climate upheaval. Referring to these events as biblical does an injustice to the catastrophe. That climate has long since passed. We have entered a new period of disasters that has only just begun.
The embedded tweets below show the ferocity of the damage. While you watch, remember that Pakistan has had minimal greenhouse gas emissions.
You have been warned. [Tweets and videos at the link]
tomhsays
@ Lynna #360
There were predictions that this judge would do something like this. She was appointed after Trump lost the election, and is known as among the most right-wing of all his judicial appointees.
(CN) — Amy Litzinger votes in every election, even if sometimes she needs a little extra help.
Born with quadriplegic cerebral palsy, the 34-year-old Austin resident runs into challenges that able-bodied voters might not even consider.
To get to a polling place, Litzinger, who doesn’t drive, needs a van capable of transporting her wheelchair. When she arrives, she might need help with tasks like opening doors or getting out her ID.
Once in the voting booth, she needs help inserting her Scantron voting sheet, getting it out and putting it into a ballot box.
“I don’t know why they make those boxes so high,” Litzinger said in an interview, “but I can’t reach them in my chair.”
Now, like other Texas voters with disabilities, Litzinger worries challenges like these could get even worse in the 2022 midterms. That’s after the Texas Legislature last year passed a sweeping new election-security law.
The law, Senate Bill 1, came in the wake of unfounded conspiracies about dead voters and rigged voting machines in the 2020 election. Supporters, including Texas Governor Greg Abbott, argue it’s necessary to ensure “trust and confidence in our elections.”
That’s not how critics see it. In a massive lawsuit that started before SB 1 became law, civil and voting rights groups say the law imposes new barriers at the polls, empowers partisan poll watchers and criminalizes protected free-speech activities related to voter organizing and turnout. They’ve brought claims under the Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the U.S. Constitution…..The U.S. Department of Justice has also joined the case, arguing the law will create “intentional discrimination in voting.”
[…]
This year, Litzinger is worried that if she votes by mail, her ballot could get rejected due to signature mismatch. While she typically has enough dexterity in her hands, “the signature doesn’t ever match,” she said. “Depending on how my body is feeling that day, it can look completely different.”
She thinks she’ll probably vote in person in November, even though she’s worried about being exposed to Covid-19 at the polls. “It seems to be safer than sending in your signature,” her mother, Linda, said. Litzinger agreed: “Having to go in and prove your signature kind of defeats the purpose of a mail-in ballot.”
“I’ve been lucky that I have people that are able to step in,” she said, but “I know a lot of my friends have been really struggling.” She wants to make sure their right to vote is protected, too. “People [with disabilities] who still have family alive are lucky,” her mother Linda added. “People who don’t have family alive are very unlucky these days.”
Laura Halvorson, a Texan with muscular dystrophy and other disabilities, also provided a deposition in the lawsuit. After SB1 passed, she said she worried about not getting the voting assistance she needs.
“The way SB1 is written,” she said in an email, “I can only have assistance if I am unable to see or write, [but] I can do both.” However, “it is extremely fatiguing and often painful for me to write by hand” to do a mail-in ballot. When voting in person, “I am unable to move my arms enough to mark the ballot on touchscreen voting machines.”
To help her with voting, Halvorson’s personal assistants would have to swear an oath that she was unable to write by herself. Technically, that “would not be true,” she said. Like Litzinger, Halvorson stated in her deposition that her assistants were unwilling to help this year out of fear of being prosecuted.
Halvorson was dismissive of arguments from Governor Abbott and others that SB 1 is necessary to prevent voter fraud.
“Statistics show there is little to no voting fraud in Texas. We already have one of the lowest voter turnouts in the country,” she said. “It’s like they are doing everything in their power to make sure our voices are not heard.”
[….]
tomh @364, I hear that. Disabled people are being treated like second class citizens. They have every right to vote … and the government has an obligation to make voting convenient and easy.
Corporal punishment, also called “paddling” in recent years, is child abuse. You will never be able to locate a worthwhile study that says otherwise. Any time an adult or authority figure uses the threat of physical violence against someone, child or adult, the effects are all-around counterproductive to positive outcomes. That is true for education, and it’s true for most everything.
You would think that corporal punishment went out with drowning witches, but you would be wrong. In fact, 19 states still allow schools to decide whether or not to employ corporal punishment techniques. You don’t need to guess the political leanings of those 19 states. The newest example of this backward thinking is the Cassville R-IV School District in Missouri, which has decided they want to reinstate the practice of hitting children with a paddle in order to educate them better.
The Springfield News-Leader interviewed Merlyn Johnson, the relatively new superintendent of the 1,900-student district, who seems pretty cool with everything. “My plan, when I came to Cassville, wasn’t to be known as the guy who brought corporal punishment back to Cassville. I didn’t want that to be my legacy and I still don’t. But it is something that has happened on my watch and I’m OK with it.”
Don’t worry, it’ll be your legacy. And the kids who matriculate through the schools during your tenure will remember you as a true monster.
According to Johnson, the school board decision to reinstate paddling happened in June. Parents were technically notified then. Letters of permission were sent to parents in the community this week. They can reportedly opt out of this “last resort” punishment for their children. How many parents have opted in for corporal punishment is not yet known.
The good news, says Johnson, is that he believes the parents of children attending his schools are as backwards as him. “We’ve had people actually thank us for it,” he claimed. Maybe they have and maybe they have not. But never fear what you read on the internets because sometimes, beating children is something better done out of the watchful eye of the public. “Surprisingly, those on social media would probably be appalled to hear us say these things but the majority of people that I’ve run into have been supportive.”
Johnson said it will only be administered by a principal, in the presence of a witness and will never be inflicted in the presence of other students.
So, no worries. Your kid will be alone in a room with the principal and some other person who will make sure that child takes their punishment. And after that, they will stop acting out! Problems solved. Also, it will only happen in a once-in-a-while situation. What’s that you say, New York Times?
The Government Accountability Office says the number of American students subjected to corporal punishment is “significantly understated.” The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which compiles data on the practice, last reported figures from the 2017-2018 school year. That data shows that more than 69,000 were struck at school nationwide. Mississippi had the highest rate, with more than 20,000 students, according to the office, followed by Texas with almost 14,000 and Alabama with over 9,000. In Missouri, nearly 2,500 got the punishment.
Huh. A lot of “last resorts.” I wonder how many last resorts before kids get it through their heads that this is for their benefit? KOLR spoke with Miranda Waltrip, a parent of three in the district, who is appalled that this is happening at all. “I feel like if they had a different outlet like counseling services in school instead of corporal punishment, that would be the more appropriate answer. At the end of the day, they are having to hold the child down and spank them or use whatever means that they can to make the child submissive when that is not the issue, it is the fact that they need to be heard because children act out for varied reasons.”
But counseling services and other programs would cost money, and hitting kids is basically free, and since it has never worked, no harm no foul! Unreal. Waltrip also pointed out that she understands that the small community in which she lives remember being hit and smacked when they were younger and for many, the idea is appealing as a return to “the good old days but it’s not because it’s going to do more harm than good at the end of the day.”
Missouri is the place where Republican officials argue that abortions are the reason for violent crime but hitting children will lead to less … violence.
Akira MacKenziesays
Whelp… tomorrow will be the second attempt at the surgery I was supposed to have earlier this month. Due to a worldwide recall, I couldn’t get ahold of the bottle of magnesium citrate need to clean out my system. Instead I had to drink down 238 grams of Myralax dissolved in 64 ounces of Gatorade. While it didn’t make me nauseous like the magnesium citrate did, its going to be a while until I can look at a bottle of sports drink. I took my the first of my two pre-op showers using surgical soap. I had a sumptuous dinner of beef broth and lime gelatin. Now I’m lying in bed wondering how much sleep I’m going to get tonight. This going to be fun.
StevoRsays
On today’s launch of the first Artemis (SLS) flight there’s a good news article linked here :
Best wishes for your surgery and commiserations on the unpleasant but necessary preliminaries, Akira@367!
StevoRsays
Well, the first scheduled Artemis launch has been scrubbed for today. Been waiting a lifetime to see us return to the Moon, I’ll have to wait a few more days. Could be much worse. Still, sigh.
Launch Attempt Scrubbed
The launch director halted today’s Artemis I launch attempt at approximately 8:34 a.m. EDT. The Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft remain in a safe and stable configuration. Launch controllers were continuing to evaluate why a bleed test to get the RS-25 engines on the bottom of the core stage to the proper temperature …
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Ukrainian troops begin counter-offensive in Kherson region, says military command
Ukraine has started a long-awaited counter-offensive in the country’s south, its southern military command has announced, amid reports that Ukrainian troops were able to break through Russian lines in the Kherson region.
Ukraine’s southern command spokesperson, Natalia Humeniuk, was cited by Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne as saying:
Today we started offensive actions in various directions, including in the Kherson region.
She declined to provide more details about the new offensive but said Ukraine’s recent strikes on Russia’s southern logistical routes had “unquestionably weakened the enemy”.
More than 10 Russian ammunition dumps had been hit over the last week, Humeniuk added.
Humeniuk’s comments came after reports from Ukrainian newspapers that units of Ukraine’s defence forces had last night launched a counteroffensive on the right bank of the Dnipro river in Kherson Oblast.
Soldiers deployed on the front lines have reportedly said they managed to break through the first line of Russian defence in the region.
The Guardian has not been able to verify these reports.
More on the Ukrainian offensive in Kherson. They are claiming early successes as the Russians flee.
This surprises me a little.
The Ukrainians are going to take heavy casualties in this sort of fighting. So are the Russians but the Russian leadership doesn’t care about them and they are all replaceable.
Reportedly, the Russians have fled the battlefield so far.
If true, that would be the smart thing to do.
It is like the Vietnam war.
Who wants to be the last soldier killed in a war so pointless that we were going to lose it anyway? That means your death is absolutely meaningless and accomplishes nothing. At the end of the Vietnam war, the US soldiers were just sitting in their bases and trying to not get killed before they could go home.
Armed Forces of Ukraine break through first line of Russian defence in Kherson Oblast – Kakhovka Operational Group
MONDAY, 29 AUGUST 2022, 13:11 227696 67Додати у вибране
ROMAN PETRENKO – MONDAY, 29 AUGUST 2022, 13:11 UK Pravda
The Kakhovka Operational Group have published a video in which it is said that the Ukrainian army broke through the first line of Russian defence in Kherson Oblast.
Source: Kakhovka Operational Group; Ukrainska Pravda sources in the Ukrainian Armed Forces; Dom TV channel
Quote: “The 109th regiment of the so-called ‘DPR’ (Donetsk People’s Republic) has withdrawn from its positions in Kherson Oblast, and the Russian elite Airborne, who supported them, fled the battlefield.”
Details:
The operational group also published a video in which a Russian soldier complains that the Ukrainian Forces have broken through the first line of defence in Kherson Oblast.
Ukrainska Pravda’s sources have confirmed a breakthrough by the Ukrainian forces.
Another source in the southern group of the Armed Forces noted that there had been a breakthrough in some areas of the first line of Russian defence, but “it’s too early to say anything in particular yet because it’s a large front.”
“The Armed Forces of Ukraine have launched offensive actions on many fronts in Ukraine’s South,” reports Nataliya Humenyuk, the head of the Joint Press Centre of the Security and Defence Forces Pivden (South).
Russia’s Education Ministry has published instructional materials, including scripts for teachers to follow, for an extracurricular lesson series titled “Conversations About What’s Important” that’s slated to begin in Russian schools in September.
The ministry’s site includes materials for lessons scheduled until the end of November. The curriculum reportedly cost the government 22 million rubles (about $361,000) to develop.
The classes designed for first and second graders are aimed at instilling in them a love for Russia’s nature, which the lesson plan refers to as “one manifestation of love for one’s Fatherland.” Students will look at Russian landscapes, hear recordings of sounds from nature, and listen to patriotic songs. The lesson plan suggests having students listen to the Soviet song “Where does the Motherland begin?”
Third and fourth graders’ lessons will be dedicated to “fostering the idea of effective love for the Motherland.” One of their assignments will be to explain the meaning of the saying “To love the Motherland is to serve the Motherland.” The curriculum suggests teachers write two definitions for the word “serve” on the board: “performing one’s military duties; participating in military service” and “working […] for the good of something or someone.”
In fifth graders’ classes, teachers will begin speaking directly about the “special military operation,” which is the Russian government’s euphemism for its war against Ukraine. Proposed class activities include an assignment intended to help students solve “problematic situations” based on the model of the “special military operation.” In addition to learning about the “reasons” for the “operation,” preteens will study the “heroes” and “patriots” of the Russian military.
“The goals of the special military operation include protecting the people of the Donbas, who have suffered abuse and oppression at the hands of the Kyiv regime; disarming Ukraine; and preventing NATO from putting military bases on [Ukrainian] territory. […] The immense amount of military and other aid the collective West has given to the Ukrainian authorities is prolonging the hostilities and raising the death toll of the operation,” reads one of the lesson scripts.
The stated goals of the eighth and ninth graders’ lesson on the “special military operation” include teaching students that “residents of the DNR [Donetsk People’s Republic] and LNR [Luhansk People’s Republic] are Russians, so it’s important that they return to Russia,” and that “Russian soldiers are heroes.”
Students in the tenth and eleventh grades will be tasked with comparing various signs and photographs from Russian history. For the period 2000 – 2020, the curriculum’s creators selected a picture of a Russian tank convoy and a picture of a woman crying next to a stand showing pictures of children who were killed during the terrorist attack in Beslan.
At the end of the lesson for upperclassmen, teachers are told to explain what it means to be a patriot and to love one’s motherland: “You can’t be a patriot if all you do is repeat slogans. People who are truly patriotic are willing to defend their Motherland with arms in hand, but that’s not the only way to express one’s patriotism. Patriotism is exhibited in small acts, […] therefore each and every one of us who’s prepared to act for the benefit of his country, of his fatherland, is a patriot.”
MAJOR UPDATE: I can’t remember the last time current events made something I wrote obsolete this quickly. Just as I finished writing “I no longer see any urgency from Ukraine to start that counterattack,” it did exactly that, with reports on the ground and from General Staff confirming ongoing operations. […]
Interesting that Ukraine telegraphed exactly this for the last two months. There was speculation (including mine) that Ukraine was engaging in some misdirection, goading Russia into reinforcing the region while thinning out elsewhere. But nope, they attacked exactly where they said they would, and have hopefully trapped thousands of Russians with limited resupply and escape options. […]
Russian sources claiming Ukraine has already advanced 10 kilometers, which is like a month worth of Russian progress on the Donbas front. Interestingly, they claim Ukraine advanced with the help of artillery, armor, and aviation. That is combined arms, the doctrine of using various branches of your military together to better achieve success. It’s something Russia has never managed to do, and we hadn’t seen Ukraine do it until now, so there were doubts it could pull it off. Combined arms is something you drill and train extensively.
Today will be a two-update day. Expect a fuller update on Kherson offensive this evening. […]
there are scattered reports that in Kherson Oblast, the DPR’s 109th MRR was abandoned by their attached Russian VDV unit, forcing a retreat.
VDV is Russia’s “elite” airborne unit. They were shredded at the Battle of Kyiv, and parked in quieter Kherson to recuperate. Would be interesting if indeed they still haven’t found the will to reengage in the war. DPR is Donetsk People’s Republic, of of the two Russian proxies in the Donbas.
OLD STORY: OMG, Dovhenke is back in play. [Tweet and map at the link]
Some of you may remember my ode to Dovhenke back in early June. It took Russia two months to conquer the tiny settlement, which had a pre-war population of just 800. As in other places, the effort was apparently so exhausting, Russian forces never moved far beyond it. […]
In the aftermath of the FBI executing a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump and his cohorts have experimented with a great many talking points — some of which have already been discarded, and all of which have been unpersuasive. But as the controversy becomes more serious, the Republican Message Machine is still revving, hoping to find a line that might work.
Over the past few days, a line has emerged: The Justice Department is “interfering” in the midterm elections by investigating these alleged crimes. Trump, for example, argued over the weekend, by way of his Twitter-like platform:
“The DOJ and FBI are practicing Election Interference at the highest and most dishonest level our Country has ever seen before, both in the Midterms, and the 2024 Presidential Election.”
Three weeks after the Mar-a-Lago search, this talking point has suddenly become quite popular. Tom Fitton, who leads a far-right legal activist group Judicial Watch, and who reportedly encouraged Trump not to give back the documents the former president took, tweeted yesterday afternoon, “The Biden raid on Trump’s home is election interference.”
Even Republicans who should know better have begun pushing related rhetoric. Sen. Roy Blunt said on ABC yesterday, “What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and, less than 100 days before the election, suddenly, we’re talking about this.”
Around the same time, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu added on CNN, “Former President Trump has been out of office for going on two years now. You think this is a coincidence just happening a few months before the midterm elections?”
Right off the bat, let’s set the record straight on a couple of relevant details. No matter what one thinks of Trump, reasonable people should be able to agree that he’s a private citizen. He is not a candidate for elected office and he has no formal role in any political party. To suggest that federal law enforcement should leave him alone, to avoid “interfering” in the midterm elections, because a lot of Republicans still like him, is bonkers.
What’s more, let’s not forget that then-FBI Director James Comey reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails with less than two weeks remaining before Election Day 2016, as millions of Americans cast ballots by way of early voting. If Republicans like Blunt and Sununu found this inappropriate, they kept their concerns to themselves.
It’s probably worth adding that there’s a qualitative difference between early August and late October. If the Justice Department were trying to influence electoral matters, it likely would’ve waited until after Labor Day, instead of moving forward in the middle of summer.
But putting all of this aside, Trump’s defenders appear to be going out of their way to miss the point of the controversy: If the former president had cooperated with federal officials and followed the law sooner, this entire mess would’ve been resolved months ago.
Yes, it’s happening now, with 10 weeks remaining before the 2022 midterms, but whose fault is that? As a New York Times report explained over the weekend, “When the F.B.I. descended on Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s home and club in Florida, on Aug. 8 and carted off several boxes of sensitive documents, it was only after government officials had spent more than a year using various — and far less invasive — means of trying to secure the materials or get them back.”
Sununu and Blunt marveled on the air yesterday at how these developments could unfold so long after Trump’s White House exit. But it’s taken all of this time because officials pleaded with the former president, only to be rebuffed.
I suppose the rejoinder to this from the right is that the FBI could’ve waited until after the midterm elections, but this wasn’t a credible option, either: Trump allegedly had sensitive secrets at his glorified country club. To wait until after Nov. 8 would’ve been to needlessly put our national security interests at risk for months.
In Lindsey Graham’s vision, if Donald Trump is indicted and there’s violence, Americans should blame law enforcement, not the suspected criminal.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has an odd affinity for inflammatory predictions. In 2014, for example, after a State of the Union address from then-President Barack Obama, the South Carolinian said, “The world is literally about to blow up.” […]
The Daily Beast highlighted the senator’s latest provocative prediction.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) forecast “riots in the street” if former President Donald Trump were to be criminally charged over the cache of classified documents hauled out of his Mar-a-Lago estate by federal agents earlier this month. “If there is a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle … there’ll be riots in the streets,” Graham, who has remained one of Trump’s staunchest allies, said in a Sunday Night in America interview.
[JFC]
It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Toward the end of the interview, the senator returned to the subject, adding, “If they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hillary Clinton set up a server in her basement, there literally will be riots in the street. I worry about our country.”
This was, to be sure, a brief quip from a Trump sycophant with a history of making over-the-top predictions that nearly always fail to come to fruition. There’s certainly a temptation to simply roll one’s eyes at Graham’s latest drivel and move on.
But in this instance, it’s not that simple.
As federal law enforcement faces an escalating number of threats from right-wing extremists, casual rhetoric — on a national outlet aligned with Republican politics — about street violence is not easily ignored. What’s more, let’s not overlook the fact that when Graham’s comments started circulating via social media, Trump himself promoted the senator’s prediction.
At this point, I could spend a few paragraphs explaining why Graham comparing the Mar-a-Lago scandal to Hillary Clinton’s email mess is foolish. I could similarly spend some time marveling at the senator’s ugly assumptions about his own party’s base, which he apparently assumes includes thugs who will resort to street violence as part of a rejection of the rule of law.
I could also note the degree to which the South Carolinian is no longer even bothering to suggest that Trump is innocent, instead preferring to express indifference to the former president’s apparent guilt.
I’m similarly tempted to explore in detail what Graham envisions as an alternative to holding Trump accountable for his alleged felonies. Would the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee explicitly endorse the idea of simply looking the other way?
But as relevant as those dimensions are, there’s a related question that’s arguably more important: What exactly motivated Graham to make these comments?
The rhetoric seemed to straddle the line between warning and threat. “Let Trump get away with crimes,” the senator seemed to suggest, “or his followers will turn violent.”
Worse, Graham’s comments were apparently based on the idea that these hypothetical rioters’ violence would somehow have merit. In a Washington Post analysis, Philip Bump explained, “Graham’s angry, pointed declaration of what would come was predicated on the idea that riots would in some way be justified, that a universe of Trump supporters who have come to understand investigations as unwarranted would understandably engage in violence.”
A responsible public official would take this opportunity to defend the integrity of the system, denounce Trump’s misconduct, and urge his party’s base to deal with developments responsibly. Graham has done the opposite, effectively making the argument that the former president’s radicalized followers would “riot in the streets” in response to a perceived injustice — irrespective of the fact that Trump may very well be guilty of important crimes.
Evidently, in Graham’s vision, if there’s post-indictment violence, Americans should blame law enforcement, not the suspected criminal.
After President Joe Biden raised concerns about “semi-fascism“ in Trumpism, some Republicans howled, condemning such rhetoric as inappropriate. There is a degree of irony to the circumstances: It’s against this backdrop that Graham appeared on Fox News and warned of street violence in response to the rule of law.
It is a tried and true legal strategy that Trump has used for decades: stalling proceedings in order to run out the clock. This has been deployed successful many times and Trump tried to do it again by asking for a “special master” to review the docs which would delay the criminal investigation for who knows how long.
At the end of last week, a Trump appointed judge said she would consider doing this against all logic (this is after Trump’s lawyers embarrassed themselves with their first filling that was incoherent). However it’s been over 20 days since the FBI seized the docs and they had a filter team reviewing and separating docs for privileged info, and now they have completed their review. Making the motion to halt the doc review moot.
I originally read on WaPo: This link has the basic info and avoids the paywall: CBS 47 Jacksonville
This is not to say the judge won’t still ask for the special master later this week (though what’s the point), but the FBI now has accounted for everything that was retrieved and can likely use what they know to further the investigation.
I will emphasize that the FBI had a “filter team” that looked through the material to see if any “privilege” applied to any of the documents, and to see if any of the documents should be returned to Trump. The filter team was independent, not associated with the investigation.
Russia has made good on threats to reduce supply—leaving the EU in a bind.
In 1970, West German politicians and gas executives signed a landmark deal with the Soviet Union that would shape the next half-century of European energy policy. West Germany promised to supply the USSR with steel pipes, while in exchange the USSR would extend a gas pipeline to the border of West Germany and start pumping Soviet gas beneath the Iron Curtain and into Western Europe. The trade deal was one form of Ostpolitik—a wider policy of thawing relations between the USSR and West Germany that would earn then West German chancellor Willy Brandt the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971.
[…] The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 exposed deep fissures in the EU’s energy policy. After EU sanctions on Russia, the Russian state-controlled energy firm Gazprom announced it was slashing gas exports through one of its main pipelines to about 20 percent of capacity. The share of Russian gas entering Europe has dropped to 15 percent, squeezing already-inflated prices to new highs. In the UK, which is sensitive to gas prices on international markets, average energy bills are projected to reach nearly four times their January 2019 levels.
“It is important to acknowledge for the EU that increasing this dependency on Russia has been a policy failure,” says Ganna Gladkykh, a researcher at the European Energy Research Alliance. The continent is now facing two challenges. First, a cold winter—or several—with gas supplies stretched to their limit, could mean forced blackouts and industry shutdowns. Second, Europe must reduce its dependence on Russian gas, striking new deals with different suppliers and stepping up its renewable rollout. At the end of that road, Europe may find itself in a new era of energy security—no longer reliant on an unpredictable neighbor to the east, but with new dynamics that may bring their own problems.
But first: the crunch. In late July, European Union member states agreed to reduce their gas demand by 15 percent between August 2022 and March 2023. The measures are voluntary, but the EU Council has warned that they may be made mandatory if gas security reaches crisis levels. Some countries have already taken small steps to limit energy demand. Cities in Germany are switching off public lighting, lowering thermostats, and closing swimming pools in order to reduce dependence on Russian gas. France has banned shops from running air-conditioning while doors are open, while Spain—which does not import much Russian gas—now prohibits air-conditioning from being set to less than 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) in public places.
[…] The EU also has rules that protect households, hospitals, schools, and other essential services from gas-rationing measures.
About a quarter of natural gas in the EU goes to industry—which means that sector may well have to shoulder a large part of the burden of gas reduction, says Chi Kong Chyong, a research associate at the University of Cambridge. The EU is encouraging companies to switch to other forms of fuel, and it has asked member states to draw up lists of which businesses should be asked to stop production in the event of sudden gas shortages. German steelmarker ThyssenKrupp has said it could cope with restricted production, but warns that it may face shutdowns or damage in the event of a gas shortage. The chemical firm BASF has said it will slow down fertilizer production in response to high gas prices.
“The really urgent and tricky thing is heating,” says Gladkykh. About half of German homes are heated by gas, accounting for about one-third of all the country’s gas consumption. Because consumers are protected from gas rationing by law, the German government is limited in what it can do to limit gas consumption in homes. But advisers to German climate and economic minister Robert Habeck say that high gas prices will likely cause households to reduce their usage anyway. In other words, people will turn their heating down simply because they can’t afford to keep it on.
[…] By 2030 the EU should have overturned its reliance on Russian gas for good, but getting there will mean several tough years of energy squeezes.
Friday night, some assholes at Brigham Young University shouted racial slurs at Black volleyball players during a volleyball match on its Provo, Utah, campus. Yes, this is 2022, but even kids born after 9/11 are capable of racism.
Duke sophomore Rachel Richardson is the only Black starter on the Blue Devils team. She’s also just 19. She claims she and her Black teammates were “targeted and racially heckled throughout the entirety of the match.” The racist slurs and remarks soon “grew into threats which caused us to feel unsafe.” […]
Richardson released a gutting statement that called out the BYU officials’ failure to respond or stop the game.
Both the officials and BYU coaching staff were made aware of the incident during the game, but failed to take the necessary steps to stop the unacceptable behavior and create a safe environment. As a result, my teammates and I had to struggle just to get through the rest of the game, instead of just being able to focus on our playing so that we could compete at the highest level possible. They also failed to adequately address the situation immediately following the game when it was brought to their attention again. No athlete, regardless of their race should ever be subject to such hostile conditions. God has called each of us to be members of one body, while we may have our differences they should never divide us (Romans 12:4-5).
According to Richardson’s godmother Lesa Pamplin, she was “called [the n-word] every time she served. She was threatened by a white male that told her to watch her back going to the team bus. A police officer had to be put by their bench.”
Richardson called her father, Marvin Richardson, as soon as she was on the bus after the game ended. Marvin Richardson said they spoke for hours, until past 2 a.m., and her emotional distress was obvious as soon as he heard her voice.
“We were up well into the night here,” Marvin Richardson said. “Just trying to make sure that we were able to support her and listen to her and be there for her.”
Duke players reportedly heard multiple racial slurs from the BYU student section, but they could only clearly identify one perpetrator, who was later banned from all athletic events on campus. He was apparently not a student, just a racist fan. […]
Before Saturday’s game, BYU Athletic Director Tom Holmoe repudiated the “egregious and hurtful” remarks without actually calling them “racist.” He said he met Saturday morning with Richardson and her coach. There was big “credit to her people” energy in his comments.
“If you would have met her, you would have loved her, but you don’t know her, and so you don’t feel that way,” Holmoe said. “As children of God, we are responsible, it’s our mission to love one another and treat everybody with respect, and that didn’t happen (Friday). We fell very short. We didn’t live up to our best.”
I don’t think Richardson should have to proactively meet every white fan before a game to avoid racial slurs. Besides, even the best charm offensives have historically failed against racists. White folks were awful to the wonderful Josephine Baker.
BYU is an overtly religious school, but racism has long found a home within religion. That’s not surprising to those of us who grew up in the Bible Belt.
While unable to attend future games, the racist fan might feel sick pride in perhaps contributing to BYU’s three-to-one win over Duke. However, the true victory that night was Richardson’s.
“Although the heckling eventually took a mental toll on me, I refused to allow it to stop me from doing what I love to do and what I came to BYU to do: which was to play volleyball,” Richardson said. “I refused to allow those racist bigots to feel any degree of satisfaction from thinking that their comments had ‘gotten to me.’ So, I pushed through and finished the game.”
Richardson is a 19-year-old woman who plays sports, yet all the Republicans who insist they want to “defend women’s sports” have remained silent about what she endured. Apparently, if there’s no trans woman to bully, they aren’t interested.
When Herschel Walker talks, people listen. This has proven a problem for Walker’s campaign to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia. There’s never any telling what Walker will say or do next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing.
Here’s Walker at Saturday’s Truth and Courage PAC conference in Atlanta. [video at the link]
WALKER: We gotta defend our military. They’re bringing wokeness in our military. Wokeness (unintelligible) getting people killed. I can promise you this. China, Iran, and Russia not talking about how you identify. They’re talking about being a superpower.
The military being overly woke and burdened with pronouns is boilerplate conservative drivel these days, but he obviously went off script during this next part, as no normal person would write these words and present them to a US Senate candidate.
WALKER: The way we can become a superpower again is by coming together. Because as Pharaoh said, when I wanted to keep my slaves in order, I kept them fighting among each other. But when they came together, something gotta move.
Huh? It’s unclear which part of the Egyptian king’s enslavement policy Walker thinks America should emulate. Nonetheless, Walker looked really proud of himself […]
Walker also complained that Warnock is spending a lot of money just to make him look “bad.” Walker says he could have done that — made himself look like a person who’s suffered extensive head trauma, we are guessing? — for the same amount of money. [video at the link]
WALKER: My opponent has spent $34 million against me. Can you believe it? $34 million. I told him if he had gave me the money, I could’ve made myself look bad.
Walker perhaps unintentionally references the 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Cassidy (Paul Newman) is appalled to learn how much railroad executive E.H. Harriman has paid a posse to kill him. He exclaims, “If he’d just pay me what he’s paying them to stop me robbing him, I’d stop robbing him.”
Warnock hasn’t hired a posse or anything. He’s just run ads that reveal Walker talking about “dry mist” COVID-19 cures and detail his repeated lies about his business and academic credentials. Georgia Republicans apparently consider it unfair character assassination to remind voters about Walker’s actual character.
Ginger Howard, a Georgia committeewoman on the Republican National Committee, said, “I get really passionate about this because I know Herschel, and the left is trying to paint him into something he is not.”
[…] We’re producing straightforward renderings of Walker. […]
Republicans are so desperate for this Senate seat they’re insisting Walker is a perfectly normal candidate. Chip Lake, Walker’s adviser and wannabe political Henry Higgins, claims this campaign is “no different” from any other he’s worked on. Walker speaks vaguely and often bizarrely about policy, but Lake claims, “I don’t remember Raphael Warnock’s campaign being that detailed” in the 2020 special election against Kelly Loeffler.
Has Lake somehow taken too many blows to the head? Warnock often discussed specific policy issues, such as capping insulin costs and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices. It was Loeffler who had no platform other than promoting Donald Trump’s Big Lie and, in essence, “hey, look, scary Black man!” (Not an exact quote. Just the way the entire campaign felt.)
RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel wrote an absurd op-ed this weekend hyping Walker. It’s the upside to having no more dignity to lose.
Georgians deserve U.S. senators who represent their values. That’s why Herschel Walker’s vision for Georgia is so refreshing. As a senator, Walker will support economic policies that work because he is a successful entrepreneur.
Walker doesn’t appear to be the successful businessman he’d like us to think he is, and we’re not sure what she means by “vision for Georgia.” But that BS is just a set-up for what McDaniel describes as Walker’s true purpose in the Senate.
He will vote to secure our southern border and stop the flow of human trafficking, criminals and drugs. […] He’ll reject woke social experiments and require prosecutors to do their jobs: prosecute crimes and keep violent criminals in jail. And as a legendary athlete, he’ll have no problem protecting women’s sports from the far left.
If Walker wins, he’ll help return the majority to Republicans and vote exactly as he’s told. That’s all Republicans want, no matter how clearly unfit, morally and mentally, Walker obviously is.
New research suggests the massive ice sheet is already set to lose more than 3 percent of its mass, even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today.
[…] The findings in Nature Climate Change project that it is now inevitable that 3.3 percent of the Greenland ice sheet will melt — equal to 110 trillion tons of ice, the researchers said. That will trigger nearly a foot of global sea-level rise.
The predictions are more dire than other forecasts, though they use different assumptions. While the study did not specify a time frame for the melting and sea-level rise, the authors suggested much of it can play out between now and the year 2100.
“The point is, we need to plan for that ice as if it weren’t on the ice sheet in the near future, within a century or so,” William Colgan, a study co-author who studies the ice sheet from its surface with his colleagues at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said in a video interview.
“Every study has bigger numbers than the last. It’s always faster than forecast,” Colgan said.
One reason that new research appears worse than other findings may just be that it is simpler. It tries to calculate how much ice Greenland must lose as it recalibrates to a warmer climate. In contrast, sophisticated computer simulations of how the ice sheet will behave under future scenarios for global emissions have produced less alarming predictions.
A one-foot rise in global sea levels would have severe consequences. If the sea level along the U.S. coasts rose by an average of 10 to 12 inches by 2050, a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found, the most destructive floods would take place five times as often, and moderate floods would become 10 times as frequent.
[…] The paper’s lead author, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland scientist Jason Box, collaborated with scientists based at institutions in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States to assess the extent of ice loss already locked in by human activity.
Just last year, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which generally forecasts lower figures for total ice loss from Greenland by the end of the century — projected around half a foot of sea-level rise from Greenland by the year 2100 at the high end. That scenario assumed humans would emit a large amount of greenhouse gases for another 80 years. [photos at the link]
The current study, in contrast, does not factor in any additional greenhouse gas emissions or specify when the melting would take place, making the comparison with the U.N. report imperfect.
The finding that 3.3 percent of Greenland is, in effect, already lost represents “a minimum, a lower bound,” Box said. It could be much worse than that, the study suggests, especially if the world continues to burn fossil fuels and if 2012, which set a record for Greenland ice loss, becomes more like the norm.
But that aspect of the study offers hope: even if more sea-level rise is locked in than previously believed, cutting emissions fast to limit warming close to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) would prevent things from getting much worse. [video at the link]
[…] Melt rates have been increasing in the past two decades, and Greenland is the largest single ice-based contributor to the rate of global sea-level rise, surpassing contributions from both the larger Antarctic ice sheet and from mountain glaciers around the world. Greenland lies in the Arctic, which is warming much faster than the rest of the world.
Higher Arctic temperatures cause large amounts of ice on Greenland’s surface to thaw. While the island’s oceanfront glaciers are also shedding enormous icebergs at an accelerating pace, it is this surface melt — which translates into gushing ice rivers, disappearing lakes and giant waterfalls vanishing into crevasses — that causes the biggest ice losses. […]
The International Atomic Energy Agency mission is set to arrive at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia power plant in southern Ukraine later this week.
International inspectors were heading Monday to the Ukrainian nuclear plant at the center of growing alarm about a potential radiation disaster.
The United Nations nuclear watchdog mission is set to arrive at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia power plant later this week, offering hope for progress even as the two warring sides exchanged new accusations of shelling around the complex in southern Ukraine.
“The day has come,” Rafael Grossi, the head of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, said in a tweet early Monday, announcing that a team was “on its way” after weeks of negotiations about getting nuclear inspectors access to the site near the conflict’s front lines.
“We must protect the safety and security of Ukraine’s and Europe’s biggest nuclear facility,” he said.
The mission, which will be led by Grossi, will assess physical damage to the plant, determine how well its safety systems are functioning, evaluate working conditions for its staff and perform any urgent safeguard activities, the IAEA said in a separate tweet.
The U.N.’s atomic energy agency has warned for months about the risk of a nuclear catastrophe, and has sought to send in a team to inspect and help secure the safety of the plant.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday that Moscow considers the mission necessary, the Russian state news agency Tass reported.
He was quoted as saying that Russia will ensure the safety of the IAEA inspectors on the territory that it controls, but reiterated Moscow’s opposition to creating a demilitarized zone around the plant. It’s up to the international community to pressure Kyiv to reduce tensions around the site, he added.
Earlier, Mikhail Ulyanov, the Russian envoy to international organizations in Vienna, told the state news agency Ria that the mission consists of about 15 people and some of its members will stay behind at the plant on a permanent basis.
“We hope that the visit of the station by the IAEA mission will dispel numerous speculations about the unfavorable state of affairs” at the plant, he was quoted as saying.
NBC News has reached out to the IAEA for comment on the claim.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Monday that the mission “will be the hardest in the history of IAEA” given the active fighting on the ground.
Last week, fighting in the area temporarily disconnected the plant from Ukraine’s power grid for the first time in its 40-year history, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying the incident left the world narrowly avoiding a radiation catastrophe. […]
Mainstream-media journalists are completely unprepared to cover a presidential candidate who would use the power of the state against his political enemies, who stokes division with racist conspiracy theories, and who will do anything to entrench one-party control of the government.
Yes, we’ve been through this before. But in 2016, the media at least had the excuse that it was new to them.
Now, after Trump’s disastrous presidential term and his violent attempt to steal another one, newsroom leaders can argue that everyone knows who Trump is, so they don’t need to explain it every time.
But here comes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Not everybody knows who he is yet. And in some ways, he’s much more dangerous to our democracy than Trump.
He’s an ideologue, not just a narcissist — with a real track record of authoritarian governance. He isn’t just tweeting idle threats, or enriching himself personally. He is already using his position of power to punish his enemies and reward his allies in furtherance of his political goals. His hyperbole and mendacity match and surpass Trump’s. He doesn’t just insult people who disagree with him, he accuses them of wanting to sexualize kindergartners.
He has weaponized cis white grievance. He has turned the schools into the battlefield of his culture wars, signing laws to censor teachers from talking openly about gender identity or America’s real history. He has created his own sham police force to intimidate voters. He has suspended an elected official for political reasons. He threatened to fine the Special Olympics over its COVID-19 vaccination mandate before the 2022 USA games in Orlando. He has impaneled his own redneck grand jury to criminally charge sanctuary cities. He drew a new congressional-district map so that Republicans could win 70 percent of House seats in a state where the voters are almost evenly divided.
A federal judge recently enjoined one of his new laws, calling it an attempt to turn the “First Amendment upside down.” He is following the trail blazed by Victor Orbán, who has turned Hungary into a dictatorship.
DeSantis has taken over all three branches of government in Florida. There is nobody in the state willing and able to hold him accountable. The Miami Herald editorial board calls it “unchecked one-man rule.”
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And he is gaming political journalists just like Trump did in 2016.
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Every time any fact-based, democracy-loving journalist refers to Ron DeSantis, it is their moral obligation to warn readers and viewers that he is an authoritarian, a would-be despot.
Casually noting that he is a front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – and simply identifying him as conservative, or maybe controversial, is not enough. It’s journalistic malpractice.
Can any reporter honestly say that an introductory clause stating that DeSantis “raised his national profile over his handling of the pandemic and is widely considered a potential 2024 presidential candidate” (Wall Street Journal) or “has relished stoking cultural battles, even going to war with Disney, a storied company with deep ties to his state” (New York Times) is an adequate summary of who he is and how he would govern?
DeSantis is a great topic for news stories. But those stories shouldn’t be about his poll numbers, his “electability,” or how he would fare against Trump, or Biden.
They should be about how some Republican voters are so full of toxic ethno-nationalism that they want a strong leader to avenge them, no matter the consequences….
I’m still waiting to go in. There’s a bit of a delay. I spoke with the doctor and I’m waiting on the anesthesiologist. I’m told everything should be ready for me in about an hour.
The word “should” is doing A LOT of heavy lifting.
It’s easy to forget, with all the coup-ing and low-rent gangster antics, that Donald Trump is also an emotionally damaged piece of shit.
Reports have circulated for a while about Trump’s growing resentment toward his personal All About Eve, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Florida tyrant has been called the “smart Trump,” which isn’t sufficient for Mensa membership but is apparently enough for Republicans who want to move on from original recipe, extra-crooked Trump.
DeSantis, however, is what your objective observer might call a “big dork” whose only personality setting is “asshole.” Trump reportedly has noticed that the same guy who ran a shameless, suck-up ad describing himself as a “pit bull Trump supporter” is now stealing his act.
Oh, it’s as if there’s no more decency in Republican politics.
Rolling Stone reports:
When Trump has seen video clips of of DeSantis speaking at public events over the past year and a half, the former president has scornfully mocked the ascendent Florida Republican for appearing to imitate Trump’s body language, movements, and even, at times, speaking rhythm. One of the other sources recalls Trump joking at a dinner event earlier this year that he’d ought to sue DeSantis for copyright infringement.
Trump, a soulless monster, famously has no actual sense of humor. We can imagine him seriously considering filing a lawsuit against DeSantis for “theft of mojo.”
Rolling Stone notes that Trump has a “distinctive (and much-satirized) way of gesticulating while casually talking, delivering political speeches, or even ‘firing’ contestants on his former game show.” Yes, and it’s fucking goofy. That’s why it’s so embarrassing to watch DeSantis’s transparent Trump tribute act. He’s like an Elvis impersonator who specializes in his unpleasant death on the toilet.
The Recount first observed DeSantis’s Trump cosplay back in October, but Trump probably takes a while to process new information. [video at the link]
God, that’s pathetic.
Imagine thinking that Trump is someone worth emulating or believing that his weird assortment of verbal and physical tics is somehow the key to his inexplicable political success. The most positive thing you could honestly say about Trump is that he’s authentically awful. Mitt Romney wore dad jeans in a desperate attempt to connect with the common folk. Trump rarely removed his ill-fitting power suit. Trump disparaged prisoners of war and still won the 2016 Republican primary. DeSantis has adopted the belligerence and contempt for others — so have most Republicans — but he can’t even tweak the formula. No one wants a shoddy imitation of Trump.
Last week, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie mocked the “obviously silly idea” some Republicans have that DeSantis represents a “post-Trump” future. Bouie tweeted, “The man has literally adopted [T]rump’s posture and physical gestures.”
DeSantis recently released another humiliating ad where he pretended he was Tom Cruise from Top Gun. That’s also something actual Donald Trump would never do. He’d probably insist at a rally that they based Maverick on him, after begging his permission while calling him “sir” a lot.
What’s interesting is that at least three people who’ve spoken to the one-term loser about DeSantis shared his frustration with Rolling Stone. Donald Trump Jr. laughably suggested that whatever deranged gibberish he tweets “ends up incorporated into the Florida governor’s talking points.”
This has happened enough times that Trump’s eldest son has come to believe, according to a person familiar with the matter, that DeSantis and his staff likely look to his Twitter account for inspiration and to raid it for their latest policy ideas or red-meat-hurling rhetoric.
Sure, Junior, your Twitter feed is the Holy Grail of right-wing culture war crap.
Fortunately for DeSantis, Donald Trump Jr. exists and makes everyone seem more impressive in contrast. Still, this isn’t the best press for DeSantis, who’s running for re-election to his current job. It makes him look (even more) ridiculous, when he’s been building a rep as a Republican leader who actively torments the powerless. That was once Trump’s beat. However, Republican gubernatorial candidates Tudor Dixon in Michigan and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania have both suggested they’ll make their states more like Florida if they win their elections.
Is Trump losing his grip on the party to a lumpen Memorex copy? It’s too soon to tell, but we support any and all tensions between those creeps.
Eating classified documents was “an essential part of President Donald Trump’s super-healthy diet,” Dr. Mehmet Oz has claimed.
Oz, the longtime television host and, more recently, Pennsylvania’s G.O.P. nominee for the U.S. Senate, said that “classified documents, including the nuclear codes, provided the roughage necessary to keep President Trump’s digestive system humming along at the highest possible level.”
Speaking at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, Oz said that Trump’s diet consisted of “the four food groups: the hamburger group, the ketchup group, the Coca-Cola group, and the classified-documents group.”
“Looking at President Trump, you might wonder what miracle diet made him such a fine physical specimen,” Oz said. “It turns out that national-security documents are not only loaded with secrets—they’re chock-full of fibre.”
The government will end its giveaway of Covid-19 at-home tests Friday because of insufficient congressional funding, a senior Biden administration official said Sunday. A stockpile of the tests is being depleted, and officials want to have enough on hand in the event of a fall surge, the source said.
Also from NBC News:
The Secret Service said Friday that it has recovered $286 million in Covid relief funds that were meant for small businesses but were siphoned off by fraudsters using thousands of stolen or fake identities.
Russian cargo planes left Tehran 10 days ago with UAVs, some of which have already malfunctioned, U.S. and allied officials say.
Russian cargo planes have quietly picked up the first of scores of Iranian-made combat drones for use against Ukraine, U.S. officials said, in a move that underscores deepening ties between Moscow and Tehran while also highlighting Russia’s struggles to supply its overstretched military.
Transport planes departed Iran on Aug. 19 hauling at least two types of unmanned aerial vehicles, both capable of carrying munitions for attacks on radars, artillery and other military targets, according to intelligence gathered by U.S. and other spy agencies.
But while the weapons could provide a significant boost for Russia’s war effort against Ukraine, the transfer has been marred by technical problems, security officials from the United States and an allied government said in interviews. In early tests by the Russians, the Iranian drones experienced numerous failures, the officials said.
“There are a few bugs in the system,” said an allied security official whose government closely monitored the transfer. The official agreed to discuss sensitive intelligence on the condition that his identity and nationality not be revealed. “The Russians are not satisfied,” the official said.
The initial delivery of the Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series drones to Moscow is believed to be the first installment of a planned transfer of hundreds of Iranian UAVs of various types, Biden administration officials said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
[…] In interviews, the U.S. and allied security officials said Russian planes flew to an Iranian military facility to pick up the drones over several days in mid-August. The allied security official said the initial shipment included two models of Shahed drones, the Shahed-129 and Shahed-191, as well as the Mohajer-6. All are considered to be among Iran’s top-of-the-line military drones, designed for attacks as well as surveillance.
[…] Russian military officers underwent training in Iran, the official said.
[…] While Iran has supplied military drones to armed proxy groups such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels, it has rarely, if ever, tested such models against the kinds of sophisticated electronic jamming and antiaircraft systems used in Ukraine, said Michael Knights, a military and security expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
[…] While Russia is apparently seeking to ramp up domestic production of such drones, it is hampered by Western sanctions and export controls, which have stanched the flow of semiconductor chips essential to producing such weapons, analysts said.
[…] “The bigger message — which may be lost on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin for now — is that one of the world’s allegedly leading militaries is having to turn to Iran for help with key technologies, which shows just how drained their inventory is.”
#UPDATE Iraq’s powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr announced on Monday that he is quitting politics, after a nearly-year long stalemate that has left the country without a new government
#BREAKING Iraq army announces curfew in Baghdad from 1230 GMT
#BREAKING Live fire in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone: AFP
#UPDATE Live fire rocked Baghdad’s Green Zone on Monday after hundreds of supporters of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr stormed the government building in the fortified area, an AFP journalist said
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#BREAKING 15 protesters shot dead in Baghdad’s Green Zone: medical sources
Zelensky: I won’t give any specifics, but we will drive the invaders to the border.
Zelensky urged Russians to go home or surrender, otherwise “they will deal with our defenders, who will not stop until they liberate everything that belongs to Ukraine.”
US Secret Service Assistant Director Tony Ornato left the Secret Service on Monday, according to two sources familiar, a significant departure two months after explosive testimony by a former White House aide, who alleged Ornato had told her then-President Donald Trump was irate upon learning his security detail wouldn’t take him to the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
CNN has reached out to Ornato for comment.
The House select committee investigating the insurrection made clear it believes Ornato was a central figure who could provide valuable information about Trump’s movements and intentions leading up to and on January 6. Not only did Ornato once run Trump’s detail, but he also made the unprecedented move of joining White House staff as the deputy chief of staff in December 2019 on a temporary assignment and eventually returned to the Secret Service to run its training program.
According to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who serves on the panel, committee members have stressed their desire to speak with Ornato and he has retained private counsel….
Biden gave a speech to the American Constitution Society during the 2016 campaign that I remember thinking was very good. I don’t have time to listen to it again to confirm my recollection, but here’s the video.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Russia is struggling to find more soldiers to fight in Ukraine and has expanded recruitment efforts by eliminating the upper age limit and by tapping into prisons. “Many of these new recruits have been observed as older, unfit and ill-trained,” a Pentagon official told journalists on Monday. Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, decreed last week that his army would increase by about 10%, to 1.15 million service personnel, starting January next year.
Ukrainian forces have heightened artillery fire in the south, according to British intelligence. Several brigades of the Ukrainian armed forces increased the weight of artillery fires in front line sectors across southern Ukraine early on Monday, the UK Ministry of Defence said in its latest report. Ukrainian long-range precision strikes also continue to disrupt Russian resupply.
Kyiv’s forces have broken through Russian defences in several sectors of the frontline near the city of Kherson, a senior adviser to Zelenskiy claimed. Oleksiy Arestovych said Ukrainian forces were also shelling the ferries in the Kherson region that Moscow is using to supply Russian-occupied territory on the west bank of the Dnieper River. A separate Ukrainian military source told CNN that its forces have taken back four villages near the city of Kherson after breaking through the frontline in three places, with the main “target” being Kherson. The operation began with heavy shelling of Russian positions and the rear, forcing them to flee, the source was quoted as saying.
Senior adviser to Ukraine’s president Oleksiy Arestovych described the counteroffensive as a “planned slow operation to grind the enemy”. In an update posted to his official Telegram account, Arestovych said: “We do not fight for show-offs and high-profile phrases as an enemy. We fight for a cause. And this thing takes time and effort. Therefore, be patient. This process will not be very fast, but will end with the installation of the Ukrainian flag over all the settlements of Ukraine.”
Germany and France have issued a joint warning against a ban on tourist visas for Russians, saying such a step would be counter-productive, reports Reuters. The split on tourist visas will be at the heart of a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Prague on Tuesday and Wednesday, as they discuss what further steps they can take to sanction Russia for its six-month old invasion of Ukraine. Defence ministers meeting in Prague are likely to agree in principle on the less controversial step of organising joint military training missions for Ukrainian troops.
Ukraine has deployed a fleet of dummy rockets to trick Russian forces into wasting expensive long-range missiles on pointless targets, according to reports.
The decoys are made of wood but look like US-supplied advanced rocket launcher systems when spotted by Russian drones, the Washington Post reports.
At least 10 Russian cruise missiles have reportedly been fired by Moscow’s naval fleet in the Black Sea at the dummy targets, a senior Ukrainian official told the paper.
A source said:
When the UAVs see the battery, it’s like a VIP target.
The initial success of the replicas has left Ukraine to make more of these wooden decoys in a bid to neutralise Russia’s artillery advantage on the battlefield.
In addition, the destruction of Ukraine’s fleet of fake Himars may have been behind Russia’s claims that it has taken out a large number of the systems.
ravensays
This website from Ukraine is claiming that the Russians killed 90,000 in Mariupol.
I tried to determine the reliability of this source with Google. It’s a safe site but the reliability is unknown.
The story isn’t made up but the source is the Mariupol morgue, whoever they are.
The numbers aren’t unbelievable though. Mariupol is all but completely destroyed and almost everyone is gone one way or another. I’ve seen photos and videos of the new graveyards.
They are very large.
MARIUPOL MORGUE: RUSSIAN MILITARY KILLED ABOUT 90 THOUSAND PEOPLE
10:15, 30.08.2022 Oleg Kotov ЧИТАТИ УКРАЇНСЬКОЮ Socportal
In Mariupol, about 87 thousand people were killed by the Russians, but these figures do not take into account unidentified bodies.
Unidentified bodies of civilians are still found in mass graves. This was told by the president of the Mariupol television Nikolay Osichenko with reference to the data of the Ilyichevsk morgue.
Why a hundred thousand? Because according to the Ilyichevsk morgue, a few days ago, 87,000 dead in Mariupol were documented. There is also a database of unidentified. Unknown bodies of civilians are dug up in mass graves. As of today, there were 26,750 such people,” Nikolay Osichenko said.
He also stressed that the death toll could be even higher.
We get terrible numbers, but that’s not all. The exhumation of bodies in graves in courtyards and under the rubble of buildings has not yet ended. There are many people who have nothing left. The numbers of Mariupol are horrendous,” Osipenko emphasized.
Nikolai Osichenko believes that the number of victims could be minimized.
If the world community had closed the sky over our country in early March, none of this would have happened. We see that to this day the sky is not closed. To blame the central government for not doing something, while being ashamed to turn a blind eye to the fact that the world community does not want to openly confront Russia, it is much more convenient for them to have a war here. This is very bad, hypocritical and cynical. If the sky were closed, more than a hundred thousand dead in Mariupol would be alive,” he said.
I looked it up.
The irony was that Mariupol was the most pro-Russia city in Ukraine. It was 90% native Russian speakers.
I’m sure the ones alive still speak Russian. I’m also sure they aren’t pro-Russia any more.
Putin has destroyed Mariupol, once one of the most pro-Russian cities in Ukraine
Dailykos Charles Jay for Community Contributors Team
Friday March 25, 2022 · 12:45 PM PD edited for length
The brutal Russian assault on the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol is exposing one of Vladimir Putin’s biggest lies—that the invasion was necessary to protect Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population from “genocide.” Instead, Putin’s forces have reduced to rubble what was once one of the most pro-Russian cities in Ukraine, according to an annual survey of Ukrainian public opinion.
But Russian forces are indiscriminately targeting civilians in cities throughout eastern and southern Ukraine—including Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city—which just happen to be the cities in Ukraine with the largest proportion of Russian-speakers.
No city has suffered more in the current war than Mariupol, which joins the Chechen capital Grozny and Aleppo, Syria, among the cities leveled to the ground by Russian forces.
BEFORE THE WAR, MARIUPOL WAS ONE OF THE MOST PRO-RUSSIAN CITIES IN UKRAINE
Since 2015, the Ukrainian Sociological Group “Rating” has been conducting annual surveys of Ukrainian public opinion on behalf of the International Republican Institute’s (IRI) Center for Insights in Survey Research, with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The IRI and its counterpart, the National Democratic Institute, have both been involved in pro-democracy activities in Ukraine.
The latest survey, conducted from May 12-June 3, 2021, interviewed 19,196 respondents in the 24 regional capitals of Ukraine not under the control of Russian or Russian-backed forces. As a result, Mariupol, the second-largest city in the Donetsk region, was chosen to replace Donetsk, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists.
Regional hospital, Mariupol
Of the 24 cities surveyed, Mariupol ranked as the most pro-Russian. As you go further west in Ukraine to the city of Lviv, the results are diametrically opposite. Being pro-Russian doesn’t mean that Mariupol residents necessarily favored independence from Ukraine or annexation by Russia, but unlike residents of western Ukraine, they did oppose membership in NATO and the European Union, while supporting closer economic ties with Russia.
According to the results of the survey, if Ukraine could only enter one international economic union, which of the following should it be? Mariupol voted 48% for the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan as opposed to 22% for the European Union. And Mariupol’s citizens were 60% against joining NATO. Additionally, their attitude toward Russia was 52% at very warm, where it was only 15% very warm for the U.S.
These results are similar to the findings by VoxUkraine, an independent analytical group, which in November 2020 reviewed the results of a survey of Mariupol residents conducted by the Kyiv-based Center for Social Indicators. The survey found that “Mariupol remains a Russian-speaking city: only 0.9% report regularly speaking Ukrainian at home. … Russian is the preferred language of 81.9%, followed by Russian and Ukrainian in equal measure (9.6%) and Surzhyk (7.3%). A whopping 88% opined that Russian should be elevated to the status of second official (state) language.” Surzhyk is a mixed Russian-Ukrainian language.
Mariupol’s population is divided between a large openly pro-Russian minority of at least 40 percent and a small explicitly pro-Ukrainian and pro-European minority, represented by between 10 and 20% of the population, probably closer to 10%. The remainder of the population’s allegiances and identities seems to be up for grabs.
It’s not likely that there will be surveys of Mariupol residents anytime soon. But if a survey could be done now, I wonder how dramatically different the results would be. That’s what Putin’s disastrous “special military operation” has done. He has destroyed one of the most pro-Russian cities in Ukraine in order to “save” it.
REMEMBER MARIUPOL: ITS DESTRUCTION MAY BE ONE OF PUTIN’S BIGGEST BLUNDERS
Russian-speaking Ukrainians are not welcoming the invaders as liberators but instead rallying to the side of the Ukrainian government. How many of them would still support closer economic ties to Russia and its collapsing economy?
Akira MacKenziesays
OK kids, here’s the sitrep: They had to take the whole kidney, but that was the most likely result. They also checked the surrounding orders and again found that spread. Thanks to the wonders of modern opioids, I was able to sleep with limited interruptions. Doctor’s sayy labs and vitals look good. And I just had a superstitious breakfast of organ jello and grape juice.
They may keep for a few day. Fortunately I have my phone, a charger, my air pods, and a few books to entertain me.
Thanks for all the well wish and see you all soon!
Akira MacKenziesays
EDIT: “…surrounding organs…”
Akira MacKenziesays
Edit: …found that nothing has spread…
Forgive the typos.
ravensays
Edit: …found that nothing has spread…
Well, that was good news at least.
Glad to hear that you are still with us and the worst is over with.
FWIW, an old friend of mine had the same thing, kidney cancer and one kidney removed.
That was 30 years ago.
He is 85 and has his share of medical problems. Kidney cancer isn’t one of them.
KGsays
Best wishes for a full recovery Akira!
KGsays
This is very bad, hypocritical and cynical. If the sky were closed, more than a hundred thousand dead in Mariupol would be alive. – Nikolai Osichenko quoted by raven@415
It’s absolutely understandable for Ukranians to feel that way, but “closing the sky” over Ukraine would require bombing targets within Russia, as well as shooting down Russian planes. The risk that that would lead to nuclear armageddon is and was just too great. Not only those hundred thousand, but hundreds of millions or even thousands of millions more, might already be dead.
Kyrylo Stremousov, deputy governor for Russia’s collaborationist regime in Kherson, has fled the city – all the way to Voronezh in Russia. Stremousov was the most visible face of the Russian authorities in Kherson, so it’s striking that he’s decided it was time to leave.
…In a series of telephone interviews, people in Kherson reported minimal enthusiasm for a referendum, and described a nervous, unpredictable atmosphere in the city.
Residents remain unsure about what the next few months might bring: a swift Ukrainian counteroffensive to regain control, a protracted battle that turns the city to rubble, or Russia carrying out its sham referendum and annexing the territory.
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Even those who described themselves as largely apolitical said they were firmly opposed to voting in a referendum or joining Russia.
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Russian authorities have used intimidation to crush public opposition to their rule. A series of pro-Ukraine rallies that took place in March and April petered out after Russian soldiers shot stun grenades into the crowd and began detaining organisers at their homes.
In late May, the city’s internet was rerouted through Russian servers, and all local media has either been shut down or stuffed with pro-Russia content.
Now complaints about the Russians are reserved for whispered conversations in kitchens. Residents describe the formerly bustling city of 300,000 as a “ghost town”. The official curfew begins at 10pm, but few people go out after five.
The noisy protest rallies have been replaced by an underground partisan movement. Posters and flyers surreptitiously placed around the city under cover of darkness threaten death to those who collaborate with the occupiers. In June, an official from the puppet authorities was killed in a bomb blast while on his way to work.
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One of the most visible figures of Russian rule in Kherson is Kyrylo Stremousov, a former anti-vaccine blogger [!] who stood for mayoral elections in 2020 and received about 1.5% of the vote.
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In one recent meeting in a park in the village of Mykilske, Stremousov told a crowd, most of whom were pensioners, that Russia was here to solve their problems, promising an improved economic situation and also using Kremlin rhetoric about so-called “traditional values” in opposition to the decadent west.
“We want to return to the world where there is a real understanding of the word ‘family’ and not a perverted form of it, where everyone can feel like part of one whole,” he said.
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While nostalgia for the Soviet period and appeals to conservative social values may work on a segment of the older population, many people who remain in Kherson are hoping fervently for Ukraine to regain control over the city.
“When we hear explosions, everyone rejoices – it means Ukraine is coming closer,” said Olena, a 45-year-old mother, but she conceded that this prospect also comes with its own set of fears.
“We are waiting for the Ukrainian army, but of course we hope civilians don’t die during the liberation. We love our city and don’t want it to be turned into Mariupol,” she said.
There is a fear, though, that if the Kremlin succeeds with its referendum plan and formally annexes the territory, a Ukrainian counteroffensive would become harder and more dangerous, and a Russian crackdown would be on the cards….
If it’s true that Stremousov has left the city (there are Kremlin trolls in the responses to Hauer’s tweet claiming he just decided to visit Russia right now, LOL) and it’s not a fake-out to convince the many people gunning for him in Kherson that he’s no longer around, it would be a good sign.
“This intercepted call published by GUR reveals discussion between two Russian soldiers in Kharkiv Oblast who have been surrounded, and discussing a defeat of a 7th company, but no more details were provided.”
Audio with translation at the (Twitter) link.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 424
Yeah, I’m still a little groggy. Sorry for the scare.
Yesterday and today, the so-called deputy head of the #Kherson Military-Civilian Administration Kirill Stremousov recorded his videos about the “futile counteroffensive launched by the Ukro-Nazis” in #Kherson from Marriott Hotel [or building beside it? I’m a bit confused] in Voronezh, Russia.
Here you can see the Annunciation Cathedral (Voronezh) from his video uploaded yesterday.
This building is located on Revolution Avenue, 38, Voronezh, right next to the Marriott Hotel.
Trump is spending his morning on Truth Social directly posting 4chan and Q messages, a day after calling to be reinstated as president [which he did again early this morning]. He’s doing explicitly what he used to try to shade or use coded language for.
For good measure, he’s also promoting a nonsense idea that the FBI and antifa, not his supporters, stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, and a completely false claim about Ray Epps’ wife.
And promoting anti-vaccine messaging that includes an obviously fake quote attributed to his daughter
Glad to hear from Akira that the disease was surgically removed from his body, and that it had NOT spread. Still a tough situation, but we are glad to hear some good news.
The deputy head of the Russian-installed administration in Ukraine’s occupied Kherson region, Kirill Stremousov, said in a telephone interview that “everything in Kherson was under control,” claiming that Ukrainian spies and saboteurs were killed near Kherson’s Tavriiskyi neighbourhood on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, reports emerged that Stremousov had left Kherson after a video he posted appeared to indicate that he was located in Voronezh, a Russian city some 600 miles from Kherson.
When asked by the Guardian about his location, Stremousov said that he was currently “travelling around Russian cities, meeting different people for work”.
He said:
I don’t have to sit [in Kherson]. I am the deputy head of the region and have the opportunity to move around…These are working trips.
“Kherson will remain my base,” he added, denying that he left Kherson out of safety concerns. [LOL]
Stremousov became the most senior Russian-appointed official in Kherson after the local governor, Volodymyr Saldo, was taken to hospital amid a suspected poisoning earlier in the summer.
Stremousov’s apparent departure from Kherson comes after another Russian-appointed official in the region, Alexei Kovalev, was shot dead in his home over the weekend.
In the past months, a number of Ukrainian nationals appointed by Russian forces in occupied territory have been killed or wounded in apparent partisan attacks.
For almost three decades, Anthony Ornato served in law enforcement, starting as a police officer in Waterbury, Connecticut, before joining the Secret Service in 1997. Within the Secret Service, Ornato held a number of roles in various departments, but in 2020 he did something that no Secret Service has done in the history of the nation: He took a political position within the White House, serving as deputy chief of staff to Donald Trump while simultaneously retaining his post at the Secret Service. After Trump reluctantly departed, Ornato was allowed to settle back into the service as the head of new agent training. Now Ornato is retiring, moving on to a private employer he will not name, and as he goes out the door, he is leaving some very big questions unanswered.
In June, Ornato was at the center of jaw-dropping testimony from former aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified before the House select committee on Jan. 6 about the amazing story Ornato told her on that day.
Hutchinson: “The president said something to the effect of, ‘I’m the f’ing president, take me up to the Capitol now!’ To which Bobby responded, ‘Sir, we have to go back to the West Wing.’ The president reached up to the front of the vehicle to grab at the steering wheel. Mr. Engel grabbed his arm and said, ‘Sir, you need to take your hand off the steering wheel. We’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol.’ Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge toward Bobby Engel. And when Mr. Ornoto told the story to me, he motioned toward his clavicle.”
Ornato was in his role as deputy chief of staff on Jan. 6. Now he is leaving after never discussing these events with either the Department of Justice or with the House select committee.
Since the day after Hutchinson’s testimony, CNN has been reporting that Ornato denied telling Hutchinson that Trump assaulted his Secret Service staff. However, that CNN report reportedly comes from “[a] Secret Service official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.”
The statements from CNN were part of a wave of immediate right-wing pushback that defended Trump and attempted to vilify Hutchinson, but exactly zero of those people seemed willing to step forward and swear to their statements. In fact, none of them were willing to make their allegations publicly, much less before the House committee or a grand jury. […]
If anything, CBS News misrepresents the story more than CNN, saying that “the U.S. Secret Service pushed back on Hutchinson’s account, signaling that both Ornato and Engel would be willing to testify in response,” but again all of that came from anonymous sources. There has been no official statement from the Secret Service, and none of those involved—not Ornato, not Bobby Engel, not the sources who “pushed back”—have appeared before the committee to dispute a word of what Hutchinson said.
Ornato did speak with members of the House committee twice, but the last time was in March, months before Hutchinson’s testimony revealed Ornato’s statements on Trump’s actions. Committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren has stated that the committee wants to hear from Ornato on this topic, but Ornato’s response seems to have been to “acquire private counsel.” No matter what CNN or CBS says, he has not voluntarily come to the committee to testify on this matter.
Ornato claims that now that he is leaving the Secret Service, he is not going back to work for Trump. However, he has refused to name his new employer.
What’s happening in Kherson isn’t exactly clear, and it’s likely to remain that way for some days. While so far Ukraine doesn’t seem to have taken any of what might be regarded as the most strategic targets—Vysokopillya in the north, Snihurivka guarding the routes east of Mykolaiv, or the city of Kherson itself—the territory that has reportedly changed hands does have considerable significance. On Monday and into Tuesday morning, reports filtered through Russian Telegram accounts and unofficial sources in Ukraine indicate that Ukraine has taken a number of towns and villages at multiple points on the line, several of which represent necessary steps toward liberating the region.
At the northern end of the line, Ukrainian troops have reportedly liberated Arkhanhel’s’ke. This allows Ukraine to completely encircle Russian forces in Vysokopillya. That location has been one of the most fortified—and fought over—sites in all of Kherson oblast. [map at the link]
Russia previously used Vysokopillya as the launching point for attacks in the direction of Kryvyi Rih, and it has used the town as both a supply depot and command outpost. It’s been nearly a month since Ukrainian troops secured areas to the north and east, coming close to cutting off access to this Russian hard point. If the reports of Ukraine capturing Arkhanhel’s’ke are correct, it seems almost impossible that Russia could continue to hold Vysokopillya for an extended period.
South of Davydiv Brid, Russian forces have at last acknowledged Ukrainan control of small villages along the Inhulets River as well as the capture of the Sukhyi Stavok. Ukrainian forces are reportedly sweeping east toward Bruskynske, which was the limit of attacks made shortly after Ukraine first secured its bridgehead on the east side of the river. Over the last month, numerous outlets have reported that Ukraine’s bridgehead across the Inhulets had been “wiped out” or was “no longer present,” but there has never been a direct Russian claim of recapturing those riverside villages.
Now Ukraine seems to have even more force across the river and is threatening to break into an area that would essentially be Russia’s backfield—sparsely occupied and lightly defended villages in the center of the oblast, behind what has been, until this week, a nearly static front line. If Ukraine can take Bruskynske, that would also renew the threat of an advance down the T2207 highway toward Beryslav and the bridge at Nova Kakhovka. [map at the link]
But if the advances in the south are accurate, then they’re by far the most significant. Among the villages reportedly captured by Ukraine on Monday were Tomyna Balka and the neighboring village of Novodmytrivka. If true, this represents a 10km cross country advance by Ukraine to secure a location it fought hard to reach—and failed to secure—in the previous counteroffensive. […] both Ukraine and Russia have recognized that it has a tactically important location in southern Kherson oblast. In all of the flat, clear, hard-to-hold territory, this is some of the flattest and hardest, but from Tomyna Balka, Ukraine can move south to encircle forces along the coast, or press east toward the Kherson suburb of Bilozerka. If these reports are accurate, Ukraine is now threatening Russian forces along two of the three main highways into Kherson, and well behind the front line on two sides.
[…] In addition to the reported capture of these locations that Russia has held since just days after the war began, reports of Russian shelling and Ukrainian advances suggest Ukraine has regained full control of formerly disputed Kyselivka, along with nearby Soldatske. This would seem to place all the Russian forces south of the major M14 highway in something of a salient. Maybe Ukraine can demonstrate those “pincers” that Russia can never seem to close.
It seems that Ukraine has renewed artillery or HIMARS strikes on bridges across the Inhulets. On that line, from Snihurivka down to Darivka, traffic over the river may be limited to barges and whatever pontoon bridges Russia can keep intact. This could leave Russian forces on the west bank of the Dnipro not just difficult to supply and support, but split in half north and south.
[…] Satisfying and exciting as all these reports may be, it’s worth remembering that even on the best days, the control over many of these locations is questionable. We know whose flag is flying in Mykolaiv and Kherson, but in between … everyone is reliant on a lot of Telegram reports, geolocated images, and FIRMS hotspots to put together the best estimate. […]
Whatever actually happened in Kherson over the last 24 hours, the most important effect may be this: Russia is reportedly trying to relocate forces from the Donbas region to Kherson to resist this attack. This is happening just hours after Russia received reinforcements in the form of their long-discussed 3rd Army. Any plans that Russia was making to immediately throw those forces into a renewed eastern offensive have now been utterly scattered by Ukraine’s sudden move in Kherson. All of the Russian activity in the east on Monday seems to have been restricted to a few failed movements near Bakhmut and Siversk.
It’s impossible to divorce what’s happening in Kherson from what’s happening in the east. Even if Ukraine succeeded in nothing more than giving Russia a good scare, forcing commanders to rethink how many battalion tactical groups are needed to hold the south, that would be entirely worth it. Reports out of Kherson in which Russian commanders seem to be blaming conscripts from Luhansk and Donetsk for Russian losses, further increasing reports of tension in the Russian forces, also can’t help but be a good thing.
This renewed counteroffensive also contributes to making Russia’s mock “referendum” much less likely. […]
Russia being forced to frantically move forces from the east, weakening an already stalled assault; increased tension between Russian forces and those of the DNR and LNR; and efforts to hold a fake election making Kherson “part of Russia” sidelined? All of that could make this Ukrainian effort a winner before the first meter of ground was taken.
PANIC IN BELGOROD
As the closest large Russian city to Ukraine and the location of a major Russian military base, Belgorod has been an instrumental location for Russia’s invasion. That’s particularly true when it comes to attacks on Kharkiv, about 50km to the south. Many of the rockets that have blasted apartment buildings in Kharkiv, as well as other Ukrainian cities, were launched from the area around Belgorod.
Ukraine has demonstrated ability when it comes to hitting targets around the city. That includes both a fast-flying, low-level helicopter attack that struck a fuel depot near Belgorod’s rail hub, and another attack, possibly involving a Ukrainian missile, that took out an ammunition depot to the southeast.
On Monday, panic surged in Belgorod with news that Ukraine was once again preparing to hit targets in the area. [tweet and video at the link]
It looks like that news was well-founded. [tweet and video at the link]
We now have a first video which confirms that missiles are striking the Russian city of Belgorod tonight.
Large crowds of Russians have gathered at the central station, trying to get on trains leaving for Moscow.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense had something to say about Russia’s recent missile attacks—which may help to explain why Ukraine feels more comfortable going on the offensive.
Last night, the invaders launched another missile attack on Kharkiv.
Unlike March 1, when they used “Kalibrs”, this time they shot air defense missiles.
The evil empire is running low on cruise missiles, but they remain evil. Trying to kill Ukrainians with everything they can.
THE ARTILLERY WAR
Another reminder of just how much artillery is being exchanged in this conflict:
“As of Aug. 24, the U.S. military said it had provided Ukraine with up to 806,000 rounds of 155 mm ammunition.”
[more in tweet shown at the link]
With recent reports that Russia is using artillery shells at a rate greater than any nation in World War I, it’s good to know that Ukraine isn’t exactly undersupplied. And remember that the U.S. is far from the only nation sending 155mm shells their way […]
Thanks to the ongoing valorization of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as “political prisoners” and patriotic heroes by Republicans and right-wing media, the Proud Boys and other violent “Patriots” currently awaiting trial for attacking the Capitol have naturally turned to doing what they do best: suckering their fellow right-wingers out of millions of dollars by claiming martyrdom at the hands of evil liberals.
Take William Chrestman of Olathe, Kansas, for example. This Proud Boy who helped breach police barriers, threatened police officers while wielding an ax handle, and loudly urged on his fellow rioters before entering the Capitol with the mob, has been busy raising money for his legal defense—and that of fellow Proud Boy Christopher Kuene, also from Olathe—as they await trial at their homes. So far, they’ve collected about $70,000, though that’s only about 10% of the goal.
Chrestman, who was arrested in February 2021, raises funds through a site, “Help Patriot Father,” set up by his daughter. So far, some 680 donors have contributed $38,530 to the cause, [snipped some details of funds raised]
Donors are absolutely convinced of their heroism. “Keep strong, this is an atrocity what is happening in this once free country taken over by demons who will stop at nothing to gain and keep their ill-gotten power,” wrote a woman who donated $20 to Chrestman’s fund. “God be with you and all the other political prisoners being unjustly locked up.”
A donor to Kuehne’s fund described himself as a retired veteran police chief. “I have never had a high opinion of the FBI,” he wrote. “This is outrageous! I worked every crime during my career including homicides, rapes, etc. I never treated the worst of the worst like this.” Another donor to Kuehne’s fund, who dubbed himself “Let’s go Brandon,” told him that “you will go down in history as a hero and a true patriot.”
[…] Federal authorities seized more than $62,000 from Jan. 6 defendant John Earle Sullivan of Utah, who shot extensive video footage inside the Capitol and has earned more than $90,000 from selling it to at least six companies. Prosecutors also are seeking to force a Maine man to surrender some of the $20,000 he’s raised for legal defense while relying on a public defender.
One well-known anti-vaccination activist who participated in the Capitol siege, Dr. Simone Gold, raised more than $430,000 for legal expenses for a misdemeanor charge—which netted her two months in prison—to which she pleaded guilty. Prosecutors pointed out that it “beggars belief” that her legal costs were that great, and the federal judge in her case called her fundraising appeal “unseemly.”
When New Jersey gym owner Scott Fairlamb, who punched a police officer on Jan. 6, used donations to a “Patriot Relief Fund” of over $30,000 to cover his mortgage payments and other monthly bills, prosecutors recommended a fine on top of his three-year prison sentence.
“Fairlamb should not be able to ‘capitalize’ on his participation in the Capitol breach in this way,” federal prosecutors wrote.
The insurrectionists are also following the familiar path of right-wing grifters who have discovered a fresh way to extract money from their fellows: Quarreling over the money, especially as the sums involved grow larger and their distribution becomes more selective.
Among the Jan 6. defendants being held at the D.C. Central Detention Facility—where a number of the people awaiting trial on the more serious charges are being held—bitter feuds have broken out over how the funds are being distributed, or aren’t. As NPR reported last April:
The main driver of this conflict, according to C2B inmates, along with their attorneys and family members, is the growing pool of money donated in the name of the Jan. 6 defendants. An alphabet soup of groups has sprung up to support the Jan. 6 defendants — from A4J (Americans For Justice Inc.), to CAPP (Citizens Against Political Persecution), to PFP (Patriot Freedom Project) and PMP (Patriot Mail Project). As donations have grown, so have resentments. And the conflict that has built inside the jail has been amplified outside by a kind of power struggle over who speaks for the so-called political prisoners.
The largest of these operations is the Patriot Freedom Project, which had raised some $1.2 million, bolstered by a $100,000 donation from right-wing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza. “These are people who have a very good, close to the ground assessment of who needs what,” D’Souza told his podcast audience, “so there’s no money going to administrative costs or any sort of rigmarole.”
Several defendants, however, were dismayed to discover that the money wasn’t going toward all of them. “I hear he donates $100,000 to us,” one inmate, who expected the funds to be distributed equally among all of the jailed Jan. 6 defendants, told NPR. “I divided it by the amount of people in C2B, and I got all excited,” he said.
That defendant noted that the Patriot Freedom Project featured his photo on its website, but: “I personally have not gotten a dime out of it,” he said.
[…] One Proud Boy who was recently handed a four-and-half-year prison sentence told federal Judge Timothy Kelly at his sentencing that he was “not happy that Jan. 6 happened at all,” but adamantly clung to his belief that Donald Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election: “I did believe the election was stolen. I still do.”
[…] as the judge in Chrestman’s case observed, these defendants are all charged with serious crimes: “Mr. Chrestman was much more—much, much more—than someone who merely cheered on the violence or who entered the Capitol after others cleared the way.”
As the Justice Department observed last October in one of its filings:
Indeed, the risk of future violence is fueled by a segment of the population that seems intent on lionizing the January 6 rioters and treating them as political prisoners, heroes, or martyrs instead of what they are: criminals, many of whom committed extremely serious crimes of violence, and all of whom attacked the democratic values which all of us should share.
My personal salute to #NAFOfellas. I’d like to thank each person behind Shiba Inu cartoon. Your donations to support our defenders, your fight VS misinformation is valuable.
I’m changing my profile picture for a few days. Cheers @marlowc2324
NAFO expansion is non-negotiatiable!
His profile pic is now Oleksii Fellaznikov. (See #19 above for background.)
[…] The problem is that Trump defending his classified document-stealing self is knocking every other message Republicans come up with off the front pages. He kicked off this week demanding that either he be immediately reinstated as president or that there be a do-over election. He followed that up Tuesday by posting 4chan and QAnon messages and conspiracy theories on his Truth Social account, everything from anti-vaxx comments to pushing the narrative that it was actually FBI and antifa attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
That feeds right into the message President Biden has turned to, blasting the “semi-fascist” MAGA Republicans who remain in Trump’s thrall. During his speech last Thursday at a rally for Maryland gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore, Biden warned that the Republican Party was destroying itself and threatening to tear the nation apart. He’s following that speech with another this week, where he will speak about “the continued battle for the soul of the nation” in a prime time address in front of Independence Hall.
It’s a message with resonance, with “threats to democracy” becoming the top issue facing the country in a recent NBC News poll. That’s ahead of inflation worries and the cost of living.
With gas prices experiencing a historic drop over the past two months, that worry is lessening for voters and becoming a far less salient talking point for Republicans. Not that they could stay on that message with Trump stomping all over it.
Voters are also stubbornly, persistently caring about abortion and planning to vote on the issue, dashing the expectations of plenty of pundits and Republicans. All of this is shaping up to be a difficult and Trump-dominated few months of campaigning for Republicans. They’re still in a position to take the House, and while the Senate is looking better for Democrats, it’s still a fight.
But it’s a fight for which Democrats are well positioned. I mean, even The New York Times has decided to take some time away from talking to Trump supporters in Rust Belt diners to talk about it. “Republicans in disarray,” reads a recent headline there. “The G.O.P. is still favored in the fall House races,” politics editor Blake Hounshell writes, “but Trump and abortion are scrambling the picture in ways that distress Republican insiders.”
Another Saudi Arabian woman has been sentenced to decades in prison by the kingdom’s terrorism court for using social media to “violate the public order”, according to court documents seen by a human rights group.
Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was sentenced to 45 years in prison after a specialised criminal court convicted her of “using the internet to tear [Saudi Arabia’s] social fabric”, according to documents that were obtained and reviewed by Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), an organisation founded by Jamal Khashoggi.
Dawn shared its findings, which it said were verified by Saudi sources, with the Guardian.
Few details are known about Qahtani, including her age or the circumstances around her arrest and conviction.
But the news of her decades-long sentence comes weeks after Salma al-Shehab, a 34-year-old PhD student at Leeds University and mother of two children, was convicted and sentenced to 34 years in prison after she returned home to Saudi for a holiday break.
Court documents in Shehab case revealed she had been convicted for the alleged crime of following the Twitter accounts of individuals who “cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security”. In some cases, she retweeted tweets posted by dissidents in exile.
Shehab told a Saudi court she had faced abuse and harassment during her detention, including being subjected to interrogations after being given medications that exhausted her.
In Qahtani’s case, Saudi authorities appear to have imprisoned her for “simply tweeting her opinions”, said Abdullah Alaoudh, the director for the Gulf region at Dawn.
“It is impossible not to connect the dots between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s meeting with President Biden last month in Jeddah and the uptick in the repressive attacks against anyone who dares criticise the crown prince or the Saudi government for well-documented abuses,” Alaoudh said.
Dawn was coming forward with the news, he said, in the hopes that people who know Qahtani might shed light on her case.
Saudi laws are designed to give authorities maximum discretion, including the power to detain individuals for vaguely defined anti-terrorism laws such as “disturbing public order” and “endangering national unity”.
Qahtani does not appear to have had a Twitter account in her own name. Other Saudis believed to have used pseudonyms to post satirical or critical content on Twitter have faced detention and arrest.
…
The US State Department on Monday said it has raised “significant concerns” with Saudi authorities about Shehab’s case…. [That should do the trick.]
For Europeans and North Americans, support for Ukraine may seem to be nearly universal. However, numbers released by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and widely published by German news site DW on Monday, indicated that Russia has been successful in targeting the developing [sic] world.
“Whoever thinks that Russia has lost the information war is sorely mistaken. Moscow might have lost the battle on Twitter but the Kremlin’s trolls fully operate on other social media globally. Russia is very successful in spreading its narratives in Latin America, Africa or Asia while portraying the US and the EU as nefarious actors who are responsible for the war in Ukraine,” said Ivana Stradner, one of the foremost experts on Russian disinformation.
…
Stradner said that “Russia is weaponizing information to destabilize and divide our allies. If the West wants to win the information war against Russia it must put the Kremlin on defense and counter Russian information operations globally.”
Echoing this sentiment, Cesar Villaroel, a television and communications expert in Latin America, indicated that he had seen an increase in the numbers of people tuning in to RT in Spanish to get the latest of current events. Villaroel indicated that, “Despite the fact that the war in Ukraine is a big story in the US, and in Europe, the fact is Ukraine’s message is not effectively reaching people across Central and South America.”
…
Irina Tsukerman, a lawyer and human rights expert in New York who studies Russian propaganda, noted that the “rapid growth of RT Arabic and other Russian state-backed media and social media pages in the Arab world underscores Moscow’s concern in retaining popular state support in Arabic speaking countries, which Russia views as a traditional sphere of influence since the Cold War days.”
Tsukerman continued that today, however, “the Kremlin is now also targeting Gulf states, and other countries which were considered traditional US allies, as a way to isolate the issue of Western sanctions on Russia and gain support in the energy market as well. Ukraine has largely focused outreach to the US and Europe, ignoring the significant information warfare effort by Russia in the Arab world, which is less focused on human rights concerns and more upon the economic potential of diversifying its relations, the impact of the food security crisis, and partnerships on defense and on political controversies.”
Seeing the overall situation as needing improvement, Tsukerman underscored that “Ukraine needs to develop a thoughtful approach targeted to the security and economic interests of the Arab states if it wishes a more effective and united front on sanctions and other forms of political support in the region suspicious of the West and susceptible to Kremlin propaganda.”
[…] We organize Native and rural communities in northeastern Arizona and connect with voters daily. Our first task is to genuinely help one another. We serve our communities. Then we get out the vote for Democrats.
Here’s what a typical week looks like for our campaign:
– Hire and train local Indigenous organizers to connect with their communities
– Phone banking customized for our communities
– Canvassing customized for our communities
– Postcards to voters
– Information booths at flea markets and other public spaces
– Weekly community service events and give back to families
– Family Votes Matriarch recruitment and more
– We started this effort because we want our communities to be heard
[…] In 2019, the Northeast Arizona Native Democrats was founded by folks from the Navajo Nation and White Mountain Apache and Hopi tribes, as well as allies from small rural towns across Navajo, Apache and Coconino Counties. […] It quickly became apparent that we needed a new model for combating bad policy and building power on sovereign lands and rural Arizona. […]
[…] Too often we’ve seen campaigns that burn out their best recruits. And too many campaigns come to our communities, ask for our vote, and then leave. Instead our model is based on investing in people and community.
Our network of tribal and non-tribal volunteers, organizers, and communities, has a lot of talent, knowledge, and strength. We encourage people to vote and get them to the polls, and we also see ourselves as partners who help our communities daily.
[…] Our communities matter, our votes matter
The Northeast Arizona Native Democrats is a diverse coalition set across three counties, sometimes four […] we are here to also help citizens with basic needs. About 30% of our organizers’ time is dedicated to helping the community, whether that’s picking up elders and taking them on a grocery store run, or hosting community clean ups. Others have regularly delivered water, firewood, PPE, food-boxes, and just recently thorough one of our phon-banks, assisted an elder whose roof was blowing off in a recent storm. Several of our team members also organized or assisted with back-to-school drives for families in need, one organizer continues to collect clothing and toiletries for local domestic violence shelters and much more.
[…] Last year we worked hard to educate folks on redistricting, helped community members testify before the redistricting commission. Redistricting didn’t go the way we wanted and Republicans drew maps that favored their candidates. In some districts, like ours, they increased the number of Republican voters with the goal of drowning out Independent and Democratic voters. We are not giving up.
Native and rural Democratic voters can win midterm elections
“The great thing about midterms is that if Native Voters turn out in large numbers, our impact is greater than at any other time.
[…] There are so many issues that we have to fight to protect–– abortion rights, public school funding, voting rights, climate, water, community safety, and so many more. […]
Northeast Arizona Native Democrats regularly let voters know how powerful their vote can be. Arizona Indigenous and rural voting blocs overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in 2020. They also voted for Mark Kelly and Tom O’Halleran. These voting blocs can help swing elections in favor of the Democrats. […]
We are excited about our new program, Family Votes Matriarchs.
We’ve hired a matriarchs coordinator and through our weekly phone-banks and in-person meetups, we’ve recruited over 140 potential matriarchs so far who will then register their families and get them to the polls.
[…] we have information to share in English and organizers who are fluent speakers in Navajo, Apache and Hopi languages can help make that connection. Thankfully this Biden-Harris administration has delivered a lot for tribal communities and makes our jobs a bit easier.
[…] Not only do we give guided training, but we make sure to customize our scripts and messaging so that they actually make sense and mean something to our communities. […]
Several field team members recently started canvassing in tribal and rural areas and this experience is not your typical door-knocking experience. First, the database system that every campaign uses (NGPVAN) does not work in our areas because this data system is based on physical addressing which we don’t always have in our regions. Most of our folks use PO Boxes and this is not accepted by many data based systems, including our voter registration systems. So we have to think of other models and other ways to collect data and record it. […] In addition to database systems that don’t work well, we have to tackle long distances (walking and driving) between homes and communities. And because we’re not in an urban area with apartment buildings and houses right next to each other or have physical street addresses, many voters we do connect with are excited to get a new visitor and want to learn more. For those who don’t want visitors, we respect the space. A big plus for our organizers and volunteers, they aren’t shy of driving 4 to 5 hours round-trip to canvasses in some of our communities. That’s the nature of organizing rural and tribal areas.
[…] Good shoes are a must because it’s all weather out there one can get stuck in mud, sand, or rough terrain
Be careful of the elements; heat, rain, high wind, and rez (reservation) dogs. […] Canvassers travel often with dog treats
[…] Help us do more
We need to hire more folks in targeted communities across our region and we need additional resources for ads and food. Local and tribal media (radio and newspaper ads) and signage, in addition to providing food, brings people out. It helps get folks’ attention and brings people together. […. Our districts combined are about the size of the state of Indiana.
[…] We don’t have to tell you how important Arizona is because we can hold on to a key senate seat, and re-elect Rep. Tom O’Halleran even though Republicans tried to defeat him with a map. We also have critical state and local offices that need our help to win and then deliver on the policy issues we care about.
Un an après l’arrivée au pouvoir d’un président ultraconservateur, la répression des autorités iraniennes cible le cinéma iranien, dont Jafar Panahi et Mohammad Rasoulof sont des icônes à l’étranger. Leur arrestation en juillet est le reflet des nombreuses pressions dont font l’objet les cinéastes et les acteurs.
“Qui sera le prochain sur la liste ?”. C’est l’état d’esprit qui a gagné le milieu du cinéma iranien depuis l’arrestation des réalisateurs Jafar Panahi et Mohammad Rasoulof en juillet à Téhéran.
Jafar Panahi, condamné à 6 ans de prison en 2010 pour “propagande contre le régime”, est l’un des cinéastes iraniens les plus primés. Il a obtenu notamment le prix du scénario à Cannes en 2018 avec “Trois Visages”, trois ans après l’Ours d’or à Berlin pour “Taxi Téhéran”. Quant au réalisateur Mohammad Rasoulof, il a remporté l’Ours d’or à Berlin en 2020 pour “Le diable n’existe pas”, et le prix de la catégorie “Un certain regard” à Cannes pour son précédent long métrage “Un Homme intègre” en 2017. Tous deux sont très connus et leur arrestation a été médiatisée à l’étranger, mais d’autres personnalités ont été touchées par cette vague de répression qui s’abat depuis quelques mois sur le cinéma iranien.
“Cette vague d’arrestations n’a pas commencé avec Panahi et Rasoulof”, indique Asal Bagheri, enseignante-chercheuse à l’université Cergy-Paris et spécialiste du cinéma iranien. À quelques jours du festival de Cannes, en mai, une douzaine de documentaristes ont été arrêtés, au rang desquels Mina Keshavarz et Firouzeh Khosravani, deux réalisatrices régulièrement invitées en France et récompensées dans des festivals internationaux.
“Et ce n’est que le début”, redoute Asal Bagheri. D’autres cinéastes ont été mis sous pression. Fin août, ce sont Majid Barzegar et Mohsen Amir-Yousefi, deux documentaristes engagés qui ont reçu une convocation de la justice iranienne. “Nous entrons dans une période de répression dommageable pour la culture”, regrette la spécialiste du cinéma iranien.
…
Le reflet cinématographique d’une société au bord de l’implosion
Si les rapports entre le pouvoir et les cinéastes iraniens sont tendus, c’est aussi à cause d’un contexte social explosif. L’Iran traverse l’une des pires crises économiques de son histoire avec une inflation galopante. En juin, le pays a connu d’importantes protestations contre les autorités, accusées d’incompétence et de corruption dans la ville d’Abadan après l’effondrement d’un immeuble.
“La société iranienne est devenue de plus en plus revendicatrice et audacieuse”, constate Asal Bagheri. “Or l’œuvre de cette vague de réalisateurs, qui s’inscrivent dans une forme de ‘cinéma social’, reflète les maux de la société. Ils ne sont que le reflet de cette colère”.
Des mouvements de protestation avec lesquels ces cinéastes n’hésitent plus à afficher leur solidarité. Une centaine de personnalités iraniennes, dont Jafar Panahi, Mohammad Rassoulof et de nombreux artistes ont signé, en juin, une lettre appelant les autorités à “baisser les armes” face aux protestataires d’Abadan. C’est d’ailleurs l’une des raisons invoquées par les autorités pour justifier les récentes arrestations. “Certains subissent toujours des pressions et doivent rendre des comptes. On leur demande de retirer publiquement leur soutien à cette pétition”, relate Asal Bagheri. Aucun pour le moment n’a accepté.
Akira MacKenziesays
They got me walking around. Getting up hell due to the incisions. They also had to pump my abdominal cavity with carbon dioxide so the robot can maneuver. Not all the gas escape so when sitting or standing for too long it rises causing my right shoulder to hurt. It should eventually pass through my system, but in the meantime… ouch.
Blake Masters, the GOP nominee for a Senate seat in Arizona, suggested in a sarcastic tweet this week that the sluggish economy and the high rate of inflation were tied to diversity in the high ranks of the Federal Reserve.
“Finally a compelling explanation for why our economy is doing so well,” Master, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, wrote Sunday in retweeting an Associated Press article with the headline: “Fed tackles inflation with its most diverse leadership ever.”
The article noted that more female, Black and gay officials are now weighing in on interest-rate decision-making than ever before in the central bank’s more-than-100-year history.
Masters defended his remarks Monday in a video on Twitter.
“I don’t care if every single employee at the Fed is a Black lesbian as long as they’re hired for their competence and not because of what they look like or who they sleep with,” Masters said. “News for Joe Biden: We are done with this affirmative action regime.”
Of affirmative action, Masters said, “I can’t think of a single policy since the end of Jim Crow that’s been worse or more divisive for race relations in this country.”
Masters has suffered recent setbacks and come under scrutiny for shifting positions in his effort to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.
Last week, Masters overhauled the policy page on his campaign website, scrubbing it of language that had taken a tough stance on abortion and rewriting or erasing five of his six positions on the issue.
Meanwhile, the Senate GOP’s top super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, has said it is slashing $8 million in ad spending in Arizona throughout September, as it looks for clear paths to boost Republicans’ chances of taking control of the chamber this fall.
Masters has frequently invoked race and drawn on culture wars in one of the most closely watched Senate races.
In an appearance on the podcast “The Jeff Oravits Show” in April, Masters said “Black people, frankly,” were responsible for America’s gun violence problem.
In May, he was among a group of conservative candidates who invoked versions of the “great replacement theory” — a conspiracy theory that claims there is a plot to weaken the influence of white Americans — by saying Democrats want to give amnesty to thousands of immigrants to claim them as voters.
Masters has also disparaged Black women, having previously argued that Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman confirmed to the high court, was “a horrible pick” and an “affirmative action candidate.”
In Monday’s video, Masters also attacked Vice President Kamala Harris, who he said was “so incompetent she can’t even get a sentence out.”
“There’s such a thing as fairness. We’re going to end this unfair and incompetent affirmative action regime,” Masters added.
ravensays
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo
@SarahAshtonLV
Kyiv has just issued strict orders stating that no media may accompany frontline soldiers or any military units over the next week in the active theatres of war including Kharkiv, Kherson, or the Donbas regions.
Doing so will result in potential loss of accreditation.
7:46 AM · Aug 30, 2022 from Ukraine·Twitter for Android
Haven’t heard much about that Kherson offense since it started.
Now we know why.
There is a news blackout for a week.
I’ve read some rumors here and there but with a news blackout, their reliability is too unknown to repeat.
…Interesting, @GeneralStaffUA statements referring to heavy Russian reliance on mercenaries as regular troops refuse to fight. Starts with a picture of Russian forces near Kherson road sign…
Day seems to be ending as it started, Battle of the Bridges.
@GeneralStaffUA evening update gives no details, just a long list of towns in Kherson which the Russians shelled. Also a comment on increased Russian personnel losses.
In one of the DK updates Lynna posted recently (I think), there was an insightful suggestion that they speak in code, so towns they talk about being under Russian shelling are those they (semi-)control. I can’t seem to find it. I hope that’s the case here, since it’s a long list (screenshot at the Twitter link).
“So now it comes out, conclusively, that the FBI BURIED THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY BEFORE THE ELECTION knowing that, if they didn’t, “Trump would have easily won the 2020 Presidential Election.” This is massive FRAUD & ELECTION INTERFERENCE at a level never seen before in our Country. REMEDY: Declare the rightful winner or, and this would be the minimal solution, declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately!”
Needless to say, everything in that post is a lie. To begin with, it has not come out, conclusively or otherwise, that “the FBI BURIED THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY.” What Trump is referring to is a recent interview of the chairman and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, by Joe Rogan. Trump, and most of the right-wing echo chamber, has falsely reported that Zuckerberg told Rogan that the FBI had asked or ordered him to suppress any news about Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop.
However, Zuckerberg said nothing at all about that. He actually said only that the FBI had warned him of the possibility that Russian disinformation was likely to be disseminated online prior to the 2020 election, just as it was before the 2016 election. Which is irrefutably true. Zuckerberg said that…
“The background here is that the FBI came to us – some folks on our team – and was like ‘hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that.”
Trump and his cult followers manufactured the version of that story that included Hunter’s laptop. And from that blatant distortion of reality, Trump baselessly asserted that he “would have easily won the 2020 Presidential Election” had there been more coverage of his fake Hunter news. He even put that in quotes, although he didn’t cite any source for what he was ostensibly quoting. And like everything else in Trump’s cartoon brain, it represented some horror that was “at a level never seen before.” For the record, Biden won by more than seven million votes and it’s highly unlikely that many Biden voters would have voted for Trump because of some controversy concerning his son.
[…] Trump impotently demands that someone “declare the rightful winner” (which was Joe Biden) or “declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election.” Of course, there is no one who has that authority, and there is nothing in the law or the Constitution that would provide for that preposterous “remedy,” even if it were warranted, which is isn’t.
As with almost everything that Trump yammers about these days, this is a pathetic fiction that he’s trying to elevate into a scandal. It isn’t working. And the more he fails, the more desperate and unhinged he becomes. Look for him to start accusing Biden of having stolen his strawberries or of blasting him with Jewish space lasers. It’s just a matter of time.
Georgia’s Senate race between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Trump-anointed Herschel Walker continues to expose the GOP as the party of vacuity. Walker’s past couple of weeks on the campaign trail have seen the former NFL running back attack minority small business programs as “affirmative action,” while having to admit he benefited from those exact programs. He also incoherently blamed trees for taxes as a part of his climate change policy. That’s not a typo.
There’s a reason why on Tuesday, Sen. Warnock tweeted out, “I guess ‘any day of the week’ sounded good to Herschel Walker until I committed to three debates.” Not to be outdone by facts and stuff, Walker tweeted out an image of his “Special Deputy Sheriff” identification card, writing “While @ReverendWarnock was calling law enforcement ‘thugs and bullies’ I was proud to serve the blue as an Honorary Agent and Special Deputy Sheriff of Cobb County for many years.”
Walker is likely hoping that Georgians don’t remember The Atlanta Journal-Constitution exposé on how he has repeatedly lied about his involvement and “work” with law enforcement. That June report included an interview with former DeKalb County District Attorney J. Tom Morgan who said Walker’s “special” card was something like a prize in a cracker jack box: ”It gives you absolutely no law enforcement authority. It’s like a junior ranger badge.” […]
Scroll down at the link to see many responses that mocked Walker for his ridiculous claim.
Was it awkward when you had to arrest yourself for domestic violence?
Pierce R. Butlersays
SC @ # 448: … regular troops refuse to fight.
Which reminds me of a question I hope you, or others who’ve followed the Ukraine war more closely than I have, might answer.
Shortly after the Russian invasion began, we saw multiple stories about Zelensky offering a large (by grunt standards) cash reward to those who deserted from the Russian army, along with housing and other perks. Since then, nothing (that I’ve seen) further, not even anonymized interviews with any such deserters.
Did that offer expire, or prove fraudulent? Did no potential side-switchers take it up? Did Kyiv run out of money and retract it? Or are the beaches south of Odesa packed with buff young Russian ex-soldiers sipping piña coladas?
Nuclear Inspectors Face Challenges in Reaching Zaporizhzhia Plant
As international nuclear safety monitors arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday with plans to inspect the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, a senior Ukrainian official said a number of issues remained unresolved, including safe passage to a facility that has been repeatedly shelled by artillery.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian president, said key aspects of the negotiations were in question but he was hopeful that monitors would reach the plant “one way or another.”
His comments underscored the host of challenges facing the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, as it races to get a team of 14 inspectors to the plant “within days” in the hopes of helping resolve technical problems that pose radiation risks.
On Monday, the plant was shrouded in smoke from wildfires touched off by combat nearby, and conditions have been unraveling for weeks. An image released Monday by a commercial satellite company showed blackened holes punched by artillery in the roof of one building.
As fighting intensified in the south, Mr. Podolyak said on Tuesday that Russian forces fired artillery at possible routes the monitors could travel to cross the front line to reach the plant, which is controlled by Russian troops but operated by Ukrainian engineers. The shelling seemed intentional, he said, rather than stray projectiles from the combat.
“The Russians are trying to put some psychological pressure on the delegation, so they panic” and cancel the visit, Mr. Podolyak said. The Russians did not comment on the claim, but it has regularly blamed Ukraine for shelling around the plant.
[…] Moscow has said it supports the work of the I.A.E.A., but has ignored pleas to withdraw military forces from the plant to create a demilitarized zone. Ukraine has insisted that the inspectors start out from government-controlled territory, to avoid giving legitimacy to the Russian occupation, meaning inspectors must pass through frontline positions.
“I underscore, that for Ukraine it’s really crucial that the mission travels through its territory and is not under any influence from Russia,” Mr. Podolyak said.
Mr. Podolyak said it was important that the monitors do a top-to-bottom review of infrastructure and safety equipment because workers there are under increasing strain. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of subjecting the plant’s staff to harsh interrogations, even torture, and of holding some of them at the site against their will.
New York Times article: “Serena Williams Rises to the Occasion, Like So Many Times Before”
Williams met a valedictory night at the U.S. Open with a win that was fitting, and with a second-round match on Wednesday, the farewell party at Arthur Ashe Stadium continues.
It was an opening night at the U.S. Open that could have been the closing night of Serena Williams’s 27-year professional singles career.
But win or lose, Williams was getting the ceremonial treatment in Arthur Ashe Stadium. The guest list and laudatory tone were set; the protocol and the videos narrated by Queen Latifah and Oprah Winfrey were in place.
It felt closer to a rock concert than a first-round tennis match as Williams walked into the sold-out stadium where she has experienced triumph and heartache in fairly equal measure only to be greeted this time by perhaps the loudest extended roar of support she has experienced in her nearly 41 years.
“Really overwhelming,” Williams said. “I could feel it in my chest, and it was a really good feeling. It’s a feeling I will never forget and that meant a lot to me.”
[…] A loss to the 80th-ranked Danka Kovinic would have been no surprise. Williams has struggled with her movement and timing since returning to action in June after nearly a one-year hiatus.
In her early comeback tournaments, she had looked late to the ball and late to the realization that time is undefeated. […]
Williams was hardly reassuring in the early going against Kovinic as she went down a service break with double faults and unforced errors piling up.
But with Kovinic serving and just one point away from a 4-2 first-set lead, Williams struck a backhand return that landed on the outside edge of the baseline for a winner that got her back to deuce.
[…] the winner rattled Kovinic, who double faulted twice in a row.
It was 3-3 in a hurry, and Williams took the hint and the momentum, sweeping the next three games to take the first set and then clicking into a gear she has not experienced in quite some time to take command.
[…] there were certainly nods to past glories as she began ripping ferocious full-cut return winners, closing on high balls with cocksure swing volleys and even holding serve at love.
[…] this tournament is not over. She has entered the doubles draw with Venus, with whom she has already won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles. And on Wednesday, she will face the No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in the second round of the singles tournament. […]
President Biden on Tuesday made a passionate plea for an assault weapons ban, invoking the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, to push Congress to pass such a ban.
Biden said during remarks in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., that parents had to use DNA to identify their children’s bodies following the incident at Robb Elementary School in May when a 18-year old shot and killed 19 students and two teachers.
“Could not identify the body,” Biden said, yelling into the microphone. “A 20 year old kid can walk in and buy one? DNA to say that’s my baby. What the hell’s the matter with us?”
“What are we doing?” he said.
His remarks in Wilkes-Barre, which is near his hometown of Scranton, were focused on community safety and on the bipartisan gun bill Biden signed into law in July.
“I’m determined to ban assault weapons in this country. Determined. I did it once and I’ll do it again,” Biden said.
Congress passed a 10-year ban on assault weapons in 1994 under former President Clinton, when Biden served in the Senate.
“It’s time to hold every elected official’s feet to the fire and ask them, are you for banning assault weapons? Yes or no? Ask them,” Biden said. “If the answer’s no, vote against them.”
He used the event on Tuesday to also voice his support for Democrat John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who is running against Republican Mehmet Oz for the open Senate seat currently held by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
Biden said that he has two shotguns at home, arguing that he is not opposed to the Second Amendment.
“We’re living in the country washed with weapons of war. Weapons that weren’t designed to hunt, they’re designed to take on an enemy,” Biden said. “For God’s sake, what’s the rationale for these weapons outside of war zone? They inflict severe damage.”
And, he cited the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who said that the rights granted through the Second Amendment are not unlimited.
“We have to act for all those kids gunned down on our streets every single day that never make the news,” Biden said. “You have to act so our kids can learn to read in school instead of learning to duck and cover.”
[…] He touted his executive actions towards federal law enforcement like banning choke holders and no-knock warrants and creating a database for officers to be held accountable. And, noted that parents have to tell their sons to keep their hands on the steering wheel if they get stopped or that people have been gunned down for “simply jogging.” […]
As part of an online tantrum, Donald Trump didn’t just promote QAnon content, he also pushed the line that Democratic leaders are Americans’ “enemy.”
It was two years ago last week when Donald Trump first started saying positive things about QAnon and its adherents. “I’ve heard these are people who love our country,” the then-president said from behind a White House podium. The Republican added that he didn’t know much about the deranged theory or its followers, “other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate.”
Even at the time, it was jarring. By that point, the FBI had already classified QAnon as a domestic-terror threat in an internal memo. A month before Trump made the comments, the West Point Combating Terrorism Center published a study characterizing QAnon as a burgeoning threat to public safety. The then-president didn’t seem to care.
Two years later, Trump isn’t just offering vague support to the mass delusion, he’s also promoting its adherents’ content by way of his Twitter-like platform. NBC News reported:
Former President Donald Trump spent Tuesday morning posting inflammatory messages on social media, including many explicitly promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory. While Trump has in the past promoted QAnon-inspired accounts and theories, the posts on his Truth Social account were his most explicit, unobscured, QAnon-promoting and QAnon-baiting posts to date.
[…] the basic idea behind QAnon is that Trump is secretly at war with nefarious forces of evil, including Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, the “deep state,” cannibals, and an underground ring of Satanic pedophiles that only adherents of the conspiracy theory are aware of.
Its followers routinely made bizarre predictions, which fail to come to fruition, though the failures are simply reincorporated into new and more outlandish conspiracy theories.
Common sense would suggest a former American president would want nothing to do with such madness. Trump, however, is embracing it without shame.
[…] a related aspect of the Republican’s online tantrum stood out for me. NBC News’ report added:
In addition to the QAnon-adjacent posts, Trump shared several conspiracy theories Tuesday on his Truth Social site and he re-posted a picture of [President Joe] Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with the words “Your enemy is not in Russia” written in black bars over their eyes.
There were actually two such items along these lines. This morning, Trump also used his platform to promote a separate image — featuring Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros — which also included the words “Your enemy is not in Russia” over the individual photographs.
It’s difficult to say why Trump is so eager to defend Russia during its brutal and unprovoked war with Ukraine, but even more alarming is the Republican’s support for the idea that Democratic leaders should be seen as Americans’ “enemy.”
[…] It’s one thing to think of political foes as rivals, opponents, or competitors. Each of these labels implicitly recognizes that the foes are your fellow citizens, worthy of legitimacy and some modicum of respect.
But to label political opponents as “enemies” is a qualitatively different kind of label. […]
Pierce R. Butler @ #451, I don’t know! It’s a good question! I was thinking about it because there was a little discussion of it in the responses to the tweet @ #426 (with some good points made).
In an appearance on the podcast “The Jeff Oravits Show” in April, Masters said “Black people, frankly,” were responsible for America’s gun violence problem.
Holy shit!
Quoted in Lynna’s #456:
There were actually two such items along these lines. This morning, Trump also used his platform to promote a separate image — featuring Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros — which also included the words “Your enemy is not in Russia” over the individual photographs.
Sandrine Rousseau, a leading figure in the EELV party and self-declared “eco-feminist”, has raised one of the most talked about topics of the end-of-holidays period.
In seeking to draw attention to the impact of meat-eating on climate change, she told an event at the weekend that the country needed “to change mentality so that eating steak cooked on a barbecue is not a symbol of virility.”
Citing figures from researchers, the 50-year-old former academic said that men ate twice as much red meat as women in the country of “steak frites” and “beef bourguignon”.
As French people return to work after the long August break, radio and TV stations as well as social media are sizzling with hot-headed views on Rousseau’s barbecue-bashing.
…
Rousseau cited work by French writer Nora Bouazzouni, author of the 2021 book “Steaksisme,” which explored attitudes to food consumption.
Bouazzouni argues that eating habits are not gendered — or driven by protein requirements — but are instead learned cultural behaviours.
Health scares, higher prices and growing awareness about animal rights have led to a gradual fall in meat consumption in France since the end of the 1990s.
But most French people remain proudly carnivorous and the majority of school children are fed meat at least four days a week despite recent efforts to introduce vegetarian options.
Rousseau has emerged as a leading face in the EELV party since seeking the party’s nomination for April’s presidential elections by promising “punk ecology”, though she lost out to rival Yannick Jadot.
Though EELV fared poorly in the presidential and parliamentary elections this year, they won control of a host of major towns and cities at the local level in 2020, including Lyon.
[Wikipedia: “2020 municipal elections : EELV won, as senior member of coalitions (mostly with left parties such as PS or LFI), some of the largest French cities, including Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Nancy and Besançon, while keeping the city of Grenoble (mayor reelected in first round). EELV was close to victory in Lille and Toulouse. The press called it a ‘green wave’, highlighting the importance of ecology in French politics.”]
Lyon’s Mayor Gregory Doucet caused another food-related scandal last year by taking meat off the menu in school canteens to simplify the feeding of children during the Covid-19 epidemic.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin attacked that move as an “unacceptable insult” to French farmers and butchers.
Media: Powerful explosions reported in Russian-occupied Kherson.
Volodymyr Litvinov, who heads the military administration of the town of Beryslav in Kherson Oblast, also said that Ukrainian troops had hit garages near Beryslav’s City Hall.
Oggie: Mathomsays
Yay Akira!
I spent today at the hospital, also. Wife had to have a tendon in her foot rebuilt. The tendon that goes over the outside of the ankle bone (torn there) and attaches to the little bone on the proximal 5th phalange (multiple tears there). Said injury (both) done by one of our three-year-old grand daughters rolling over her foot as she sat with here feet up.
Left here at 9:00am. Surgery at 11:30. Delayed due to earlier surgeries. Released at 5:30. Got home (normally a 35 minute drive) two hours later due to massive traffic jams on I-81, PA315, US11, River Road, Main Avenue, etc. due to Biden’s speech in Wilkes-Barre. Oh, well.
Wife is doing okay. No weight bearing for six weeks! And we are still watching the twins four days a week. Grumpy (that’s me grandfather name) will be exhausted by Saturday night.
ravensays
olexander scherba🇺🇦@olex_scherba
I’m in touch with a friend of mine liberating Ukraine’s south. He tells me good things. But like most Ukrainians, I’ll keep it shut for now. Apparently, silence is needed.
#StandWithUkraine #UkraineWillWin
12:44 PM · Aug 30, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
That is all I have about the Ukraine offensive tonight.
There is a news blackout. I wouldn’t take this twitter very seriously.
About all I got out of a web trawl is that there is heavy fighting and so far it hasn’t been a disaster for the Ukrainians.
PS Cthulhu, I can’t believe in 2022 in Europe that we are having once again a major war. Some people need to grow up.
StevoRsays
Sad news :
The last of his people, a Brazilian Indigenous man known only as “the man of the hole” has been found dead, decades after the rest of his uncontacted tribe were killed off by ranchers and illegal miners, officials said.
Having lived in complete isolation for 26 years, the man – whose real name was never known to the outside world – was found in a hammock in a hut in the Tanaru Indigenous territory in Rondonia state on the border with Bolivia on August 23, Brazil’s National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) said in a statement.
Since losing everyone he knew, the man had refused all contact with the outside world and supported himself by hunting and raising crops. His nickname derived from his habit of digging deep holes inside the huts he built, possibly to trap animals in but also to hide inside.
This article points out a key point about this war.
If Russia lays down their weapons, they go home, open a bottle of vodka, and see what is on TV.
If Ukraine lays down their weapons, they get genocided and disappear forever.
Ukraine fights because they have no choice.
Six months into war, Ukrainians say they have ‘no choice’ but to keep fighting –
National | Globalnews.ca 08/31/2022 edited for length
Before Russia began its invasion of Ukraine just over six months ago, Artur Chenakal was living a peaceful life in Kyiv with two cats while working as a cook.
Now, he’s fighting on the front lines in the eastern Donetsk province, which has been bombarded daily by Russian attacks. He and his fellow volunteer fighters and soldiers are sleeping in tents and destroyed homes as explosions are heard nearby.
Despite the living conditions, “the morale and physical condition (among the Ukrainian troops) is high,” he told Global News in audio messages recorded from his position near the city of Bakhmut — a key Russian target where destroyed infrastructure has made communication difficult.
In conversations with Global News, fighters and paramedics who have spent the past six months witnessing the horrors of war first-hand expressed the same urgency, along with a resolve to not give up.
“We will fight, we will finish this war and we will kick out the invaders,” Chenakal said.
Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the top commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said Monday that about 9,000 fighters have been killed on the front lines. He did not say if that number, which has not been independently verified, includes all branches of the military or whether the number encompassed the entire six months of the war.
He added in a speech to veterans that those on the front lines are living a “constant hell.”
The United Nations, meanwhile, has confirmed 5,587 civilians killed and another 7,890 wounded since the war began, though the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights believes the numbers are far higher.
Amidst the constant barrage, paramedics have had to risk their own lives getting victims out of harm’s way while tending to their injuries.
“Every time there’s a military operation or attack, we thank God that we’re able to return to base or go back home alive this time,” Sidorova said through Zoom, with the help of an interpreter.
“It’s a miracle every time.”
The missile attacks are less frequent than they were in the early weeks of the war, yet first responders are still on edge.
“We are all exhausted and tired, but I try not to think about it,” he said. “If I do, then I start to worry and it becomes much more terrible, more exhausting … and I still have a job to do.”
Sidorova says she learned coping mechanisms during the revolution, but also says she can’t afford to fall back into the depression she suffered back then.
“This is not a regular war, it is a war about good and evil,” she said. “We can be depressed or tired or whatever, but we have to keep fighting for the good.”
What fighters and first responders do need, however, is equipment and training, which Western countries have continued to provide throughout the war.
Chenakal, now providing medical aid while fighting on the front lines in the Donbass, says his battalion is still suffering losses “but thanks to God not so many.” Injuries have also been relatively minor, he adds.
As the war enters its seventh month, many other challenges remain. Attacks on a nuclear power plant in the Zaporizhzhia province has heightened fears of a catastrophe. Russian President Vladimir Putin is looking to grow his beleaguered army. And about 13 million Ukrainians are estimated to be stranded in affected conflict zones with no way to escape.
First responders are hoping the rest of the world doesn’t forget the hardships still being faced in their country, nor the ongoing threat to their sovereignty as Russia keeps up its assault.
“We have to protect the world from this aggression,” Sidorova said. “And unfortunately, it’s not over yet.”
BBC Russia: Russian occupiers refuse to issue passes for Zaporizhzhia plant to IAEA delegation.
The delegation is standing in line at a checkpoint in Ukrainian-controlled territory, as Russian occupiers argue that they could reach the plant from Russia without any obstacles.
quotetheunquotesays
@SC #453
I know that the popular consensus is that Gorbachev is “yesterday’s man” (and has been for decades), but his passing makes me a little sad. I think his legacy is unfairly downplayed, these days, and that’s unfortunate.
As a person who lived through the Reagan years, I credit this man for saving my life – probably all our lives. I went through most of the eighties thinking that we could all be vapourized at any moment. While I am well aware that this is still true (the guy in the Kremlin now being worse than Brezhnev and Andropov put together), it doesn’t feel like it to me any more; thanks to glasnost and perestroika, the world shifted onto a completely new track, and it’s not going back. And it wasn’t Reagan, or Bush, or the American armed forces that did it – it was the new guy charge of the USSR.
I remember well a Doonesbury Sunday cartoon*, which really caught the mood of the time. It concerned a summit meeting between Gorbachev and GWH Bush, which took place at sea, off the island of Malta, in December 1989. The Captain of the USN vessel that is taking Bush to the meeting is watching the Soviet cruiser approaching, eagerly trying to catch a glimpse of the Soviet leader:
Captain: “You gotta give it to Gorbachev, he really makes things happen! The guy gets up in the morning and alters the course of history!”
[A few moments pass; then it is revealed that Bush has been standing next to the captain the whole time.]
Bush: “So what am I, chopped liver?”
Captain: “No, sir, you’re … Hey, look, there he is!”
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Russian military units are reportedly locking conscripts in hot rooms without water until they agree to sign up to fight in Ukraine, Russian media has reported.
Russian outlet Ridus has reported that a local military recruitment centre in the Tver region has received complaints that conscripts are being coerced through psychological pressure into signing military contracts….
Grain silos in Ukraine’s second biggest port, Mykolaiv, caught fire after they were struck by Russian shelling of the city, Ukraine’s emergency service has said….
Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have said they are considering barring Russian travellers from entry if the European Union as a whole fails to do so.
In a joint statement obtained by AFP, the four countries, which all border Russia, said the suspension of a 2007 visa facilitation agreement between the EU and Russia was “a necessary first step”.
The move, proposed by the presidency and backed by many EU members, would make EU visas more costly for Russian travellers and lift a deadline on visa issuance times….
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said today that the agency’s first planned visit to Ukraine‘s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant will last a few days.
Russian-installed officials in the area near the power station previously suggested the visit might last only one day, Reuters reports.
But Grossi told reporters at a hotel in Zaporizhzhia:
The mission will take a few days. If we are able to establish a permanent presence, or a continued presence, then it’s going to be prolonged. But this first segment is going to take a few days.
We have a very important task there to perform – to assess the real situation there, to help stabilise the situation as much as we can.
He added that the IAEA team had guarantees from both Russia and Ukraine enabling it to enter the war zone.
When Ellen Reddy learned of a predominantly white school district in south-west Missouri that reinstated corporal punishment as a last resort for disciplining students, Reddy, who raised two Black boys and is a grandmother, became upset. Even in modern day US, Black children like her grandchildren are still twice as likely to be beaten in schools than white children.
The return of corporal punishment in Cassville, Missouri, where school board officials once abandoned the practice in 2001, departs from a national decline in the use of corporal punishment in schools.
Yet experts and activists told the Guardian that its re-emergence in Missouri reflects just how the practice has continued in certain school districts affecting tens of thousands of students nationally, especially in 19 states where corporal punishment – physical discipline by spanking, paddling, or other means – are allowed.
Decades of research shows that such practices exacerbate behavioral issues for children of color and children with disabilities in the long run. Activists have renewed calls to end the practice nationally.
“Schools are the only public institution where you can legally hit a child,” Reddy, executive director of the Nollie Jenkins Family Center, a nonprofit in Mississippi that advocates for abolishing corporal punishment in schools statewide. “It’s not OK whether the child is white, Black, or Latino. The violence needs to stop.”
Sarah Font, an associate professor of sociology and public policy at Pennylvania State University, told the Guardian that the Missouri district’s decision was unusual. “Corporal punishment in schools has been on the decline for such a long time,” Font says. “There’s increased awareness of how ineffective it is as a discipline strategy and the potential for harm.”
Corporal punishment is more likely to be allowed in southern states, particularly in districts in poorer, rural areas and with a high proportion of Black children. She added that districts that allowed corporal punishment were also located in Republican-leaning area that are also more evangelical, where social conservatism is at play.
…
Black children and students with disabilities are disproportionately beaten by discipline in public schools, whether through suspensions, restraint, or seclusion, even among preschoolers.
Dick Startz, a professor of economics at University of California Santa Barbara, found in a Brookings Institution study that three states accounted for 71% of corporal punishment incidents against Black children: Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi. . In Georgia, Black children are 50% more likely to be beaten in schools than white children, even as incidents declined between 2012 and 2018, Startz found.
…
Stacey Patton, a research associate professor at Morgan State University’s Institute for Urban Research, argued that the persistence of corporal punishment in southern states results from a “continuation of that racialized coercion and violence against Black bodies” that draw from the early days of slavery and lynching. A November 2019 study in the journal Social Problems concluded that the concentration of schools located in states where the highest number of lynchings occurred were “particularly predictive of corporal punishment for black students”.
…
Though most states do not allow corporal punishment, the US remains an outlier: Gershoff’s research found that as of 2016, just 69 countries allowed corporal punishment in schools, noting that the practice is barred throughout Europe and in much of South America and eastern Asia.
In September 2021, Representative Donald McEachin of Virginia, Representative Suzanne Bonamici and Senator Chris Murphy introduced the Protecting Our Students in Schools Act, which sought to make the practice illegal throughout the US. In the 1970s, the US supreme court ruled that schools can engage in corporal punishment as a form of discipline in schools and left it to states and school districts to decide on where they stand.
Meanwhile, Reddy has worked with residents in Holmes county, Mississippi, for six years to lobby to ban the practice. She helped create the Mississippi Coalition to End Corporal Punishment to stop the practice across the state, which has the highest number of reported incidents in the country, according to federal data….
He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes. These words provided generations of American Christians with the justification for physically disciplining their children, in ways that range from spankings to brutal beatings. This learned and deeply disturbing work of history examines both the religious roots of corporal punishment in America and its consequences — in the minds of children, in adults, and in our national tendencies toward authoritarian and apocalyptic thinking. Drawing on sources as old as Cotton Mather and as current as today’s headlines, Spare the Child is one of those rare works of scholarship that have the power to change our lives.
Akira MacKenziesays
I had my first substantive meal. I’m off the IV and the catheter is out. I should be discharged this afternoon.
Oggie: Mathomsays
Sounds good, Akira. Hope your trip home is swift and uneventful.
This month, the Horniman museum in London announced it was returning 72 treasured artefacts, including its collection of Benin bronzes, to Nigeria. It makes the Horniman the first government-funded institution to hand back treasures looted by British forces from Benin city in 1897. About 10,000 objects looted during the raid on Benin are held in 165 museums and many private collections across the world. The British Museum in London holds 900 objects, the largest collection in the world.
Artist Victor Ehikhamenor tells host Michael Safi about the significance of the artefacts while Prof Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford and author of The Brutish Museums – The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, examines whether this announcement will increase the pressure on the British Museum to change its position on the return of artefacts.
Museums in France, Germany, and the U.S. are returning looted artifacts from the Kingdom of Benin, some of which now appear in a major new exhibition that’s sparked a resurgence of interest in West Africa’s cultural heritage….
NEW YORK (AP) — Amid the bright lights and electronic billboards across New York’s Times Square, city authorities are posting new signs proclaiming the bustling crossroads a “Gun Free Zone.”
The sprawling Manhattan tourist attraction is one of scores of “sensitive” places — including parks, churches and theaters — that will be off limits for guns under a sweeping new state law going into effect Thursday. The measure, passed after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June expanded gun rights, also sets stringent standards for issuing concealed carry permits.
New York is among a half-dozen states that had key provisions of its gun laws invalidated by the high court because of a requirement for applicants to prove they had “proper cause” for a permit. Gov. Kathy Hochul said Friday that she and her fellow Democrats in the state Legislature took action the next week because the ruling “destroyed the ability for a governor to be able to protect her citizens from people who carry concealed weapons anywhere they choose.”
Under the law, applicants for a concealed carry permit will have to complete 16 hours of classroom training and two hours of live-fire exercises. Ordinary citizens would be prohibited from bringing guns to schools, churches, subways, theaters and amusement parks — among other places deemed “sensitive” by authorities.
Applicants also will have to provide a list of social media accounts for the past three years as part of a “character and conduct” review. The requirement was added because shooters have sometimes dropped hints of violence online before they opened fire on people.
[…]
The list of prohibited spaces for carrying guns has drawn criticism from advocates who say it’s so extensive it will make it difficult for people with permits to move about in public. People carrying a gun could go into private business only with permission, such as a sign posted on the window. …. in Times Square, visited by about 50 million tourists annually, and many less crowded places carrying a gun will be illegal starting Thursday.
[…]
The Supreme Court ruling also led to a flurry of legislation in California to tighten rules on gun ownership, including a new law that could hold gun dealers and manufacturers responsible for any harm caused by anyone they have “reasonable cause to believe is at substantial risk” of using a gun illegally.
Earlier this month, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed into law a measure that would require gun permit applicants to undergo personal interviews with a licensing authority.
New Jersey required people to get training before receiving a permit and would require new residents to register guns brought in from out of state.
Hawaii, which has the nation’s lowest number of gun deaths, is still weighing its options. Since the Supreme Court’s ruling, the state has only granted one new gun permit.
The photograph of highly classified documents strewn across the floor at Mar-a-Lago beside a box of framed Time magazines had already gone viral Wednesday morning as perhaps the defining image of the ongoing investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified information.
The image was attached to a 36-page filing from the Department of Justice in the ongoing court battle by Trump to have a special master review the documents seized by federal agents when they searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private Florida club and residence, in August. And it’s by no means the most damning claim from the overnight court filing, which you can read below.
– In the filing, the DOJ asserts that Trump was likely taking efforts to obstruct justice: “The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
– Trump’s lawyers claimed to the DOJ there were no other classified documents at Mar-a-Lago in June. After handing over what they claimed were the remaining classified documents in a sealed legal envelope, a Trump lawyer “represented that there were no other records stored in any private office space or other location at the Premises and that all available boxes were searched.” That envelope contained “38 unique documents bearing classification markings including . . . 17 documents marked as TOP SECRET.”
– The August search warrant at Mar-a-Lago produced “over a hundred classified records including information classified at the highest levels,” including three classified documents that “were located in the desks in the ’45 [Trump’s personal] Office.’”
The filing also contains detailed arguments against the appointment of a special master to review the documents, which Trump has claimed is necessary to review the documents to determine if they contain any privileged material. The DOJ noted a review by a filter team for any privileged information had already been completed. It also pushed back against Trump’s claims of executive privilege to justify holding on to the documents that the National Archives had requested under the Presidential Records Act, noting that there is no precedent for invoking executive privilege “to prohibit the sharing of documents within the Executive Branch.”
Trump’s lawyers are due to file a response on Wednesday, and a hearing is scheduled for Thursday in the matter before Aileen Cannon, a Trump-nominated federal judge in South Florida….
The legal arguments are compelling, but what is most striking are the facts outlining how the former president and his team knowingly put our national security at risk.
Here’s what stands out to me:…
Twitter thread with highlighted text from the DoJ filing at the link.
Head of RT Margarita Simonyan is here with another helpful reminder that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not about NATO, but part of Putin’s grotesque intent to revive the USSR.
[…] Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas on Fox News this morning:
“No one trusts the FBI or the DOJ anymore. I don’t trust them any further than I can throw that entire building…. Who knows what they got out of [Mar-a-Lago]? I don’t trust these people at all. They came in; they spent nine hours in there; they walked in with backpacks; they kicked out the president’s lawyers and Secret Service agents. Who knows — in my opinion, I’m just going to say, if they told me that they found something, I wouldn’t that they actually found it there or if they just said they found it there.”
Around the same time, Kristi Noem, South Dakota’s Republican governor, pushed a similar line:
“What was in those documents and folders? Do you know? We deserve to know, and I don’t know if the DOJ and FBI can be trusted to tell us what was in there. That’s the thing. You can see folders and big words on the — do we know that is really what President Trump brought to his home? Do we know that he put them there?”
[…] As recently as last week, the former president was still pushing the possibility that the FBI “planted” evidence.
This morning, against fresh evidence that federal law enforcement found highly sensitive secret at Mar-a-Lago, Republicans like Noem and Jackson believe the smart move is to distrust the FBI — since it might not have been Trump who put the materials in his own office.
[…] it’s worth pausing to emphasize two simple points. The first is that there’s literally no reason whatsoever to suspect the FBI agents themselves of criminal misconduct.
The second is that the only folks who peddle claims like these are those who are deeply afraid of where this investigation is headed.
KGsays
quotetheunquote@466,
I feel the same. Gorbachev’s liberalising reforms provided the best chance the world had to transcend the post-WW2 “peace” which meant only that the great powers were not actually engaged in all-out war, and turn to solving the dire environmental problems that threaten us all and were already evident. Unfortunately, western leaders such as Reagan, Bush and Thatcher were only interested in extending and deepening US-NATO hegemony and unrestrained exploitation by capitalist elites. With the results we see around us.
After the FBI executed a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump issued a written statement that did not help his cause. After the Justice Department announced plans to unseal the search warrant, the former president issued another statement, which also didn’t help him. After a redacted version of the search warrant affidavit was unsealed, [Trump] issued yet another written statement, which managed to make him look worse, not better.
This morning, Trump kept the pattern alive, issuing a new statement, by way of his Twitter-like platform, in response to the Justice Department’s brutal court filing from last night.
“Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see. Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified!”
Some of this is unintentionally funny. After all, the guy complaining about the FBI handling classified materials “haphazardly” is the same guy who, according to federal law enforcement, found “a lot of classified records“ alongside assorted miscellaneous print-outs and newspaper articles in boxes from Mar-a-Lago.
It’s also worth pausing to appreciate the juvenile, “Thought they wanted them kept Secret?” as if federal law enforcement releasing a photograph of cover sheets is dangerous. It’s not. What is dangerous is keeping highly sensitive national security secrets at a glorified country club frequented by spies.
Also note, Trump didn’t deny any factual claims from the Justice Department, and made no effort to suggest the evidence was “planted.”
Instead, the Republican concluded his pitch with a three-word boast: “Lucky I Declassified!”
[…] some former officials from the Trump White House dismissed the talking point as nonsense, and more importantly, the Justice Department noted in its court filing last night that Trump’s lawyers “never asserted that the former president had declassified the documents.”
[…] For a year and a half, federal officials have been trying to retrieve the materials the former president took and didn’t want to give back. At no point did Trump or his representatives tell anyone — the National Archives, the Justice Department, et al. — that he’d declassified any of these documents.
Even now, Trump’s own attorneys continue to make relevant legal filings as part of the controversy, and they’re not arguing that he declassified the materials, either.
In other words, the former president isn’t just lying, he’s peddling a lie his lawyers are afraid to echo. Indeed, we’ve seen this dynamic before: After the 2020 election, there was a gap between what Trump would say in public and what his lawyers would say in court. There was no great mystery as to why: Trump knew he could lie to the public with impunity, just as his attorneys knew they had no such luxury when presenting arguments to judges.
[…] there’s also a disconnect between the underlying claim and the broader controversy, since the relevant criminal statutes operate separately from the executive branch’s system of classifying documents anyway.
Andrew Weissman, a longtime Justice Department veteran and an MSNBC legal analyst, added this morning, “Trump is now sticking to the ‘I declassified everything’ defense. Not the smartest move: making another false statement that is also legally irrelevant is not a way to endear yourself to a jury.”
It’s far from clear what kind of governing priorities Republicans intend to pursue if voters give them a congressional majority, but there’s no mistaking one of the GOP’s principal political priorities. The Hill reported yesterday:
Republicans hoping to seize control of the House in November are already setting their sights on what is, for many of them, a top priority next year: impeaching President Biden. A number of rank-and-file conservatives have already introduced impeachment articles in the current Congress against the president…. Those resolutions never had a chance of seeing the light of day, with Democrats holding a narrow control of the lower chamber. But with Republicans widely expected to win the House majority in the midterms, many of those same conservatives want to tap their new potential powers to oust a president they deem unfit. Some would like to make it a first order of business.
The article quoted a variety of GOP lawmakers and their spokespersons, including Rep. Bob Good of Virginia insisting that the Democratic president “should be impeached for intentionally opening our border,” despite the fact that this never happened in reality.
[…] One of the first Republican lawmakers to broach the subject of impeaching Biden was Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who raised the prospect two years ago — long before the Delaware Democrat had even secured his party’s nomination. […]
Such chatter was far too ridiculous to be sustained, and even Ernst stopped talking about the idea. But after Biden’s inauguration, several House Republicans filed articles of impeachment against the Democratic president, and earlier this year, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas added that he believes a Republican-led House would likely consider impeaching Biden on “multiple grounds.”
Cruz added a few weeks ago that, in the wake of the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search, “the pressure to impeach Biden is going to be enormous.” Rep. Jim Jordan — a Republican positioned to chair the House Judiciary Committee — has said he wants to see his party at least begin a conversation about impeaching the president.
[…] For now, let’s put aside the obvious fact that the incumbent president hasn’t committed any high crimes; the border isn’t open; Biden wasn’t involved in the justified Mar-a-Lago search; and this partisan fixation is plainly ridiculous. Let’s also put aside the fact that if voters reward Republicans with a House majority, and the GOP uses its power to impeach the president, it wouldn’t have much of a practical impact since the Senate wouldn’t convict him anyway.
Let’s instead consider how the Republican leadership intends to deal with this nonsense.
In the months leading up to the 2014 midterm elections, more than a few Republicans talked up the idea of impeaching then-President Barack Obama for reasons they struggled to articulate. As we’ve discussed, the chatter grew loud enough that Democrats started fundraising on the issue — which proved to be a good idea when the Democratic base had a strong response.
It reached the point that GOP leaders had to start downplaying the talk — then-House Speaker John Boehner told reporters the idea was “a scam started by Democrats,” which was the opposite of the truth — not because they were sympathetic to Obama, but because they feared the effects of a Democratic backlash.
Eight years later, will Republicans stick to the same plan? In April, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appeared on Fox News and seemed to reject the idea of impeaching Biden. Some in his party were not pleased, but the talk soon faded.
Now the talk is back — and GOP leaders are no longer eager to talk about it. […]
“NEW: DOJ says FBI found one current and one expired official passport, and one expired personal passport, with classified documents in a desk drawer — seemingly tying Trump himself to the unauthorized retention of govt docs: ‘The location of the passports is relevant evidence'”
The newest Justice Department filing, which Team Trump made necessary, paints a brutal picture that makes the former president look even worse.
[…] as NBC News reported, that’s [argue that a special master would be unnecessary] precisely what federal law enforcement did overnight.
The Justice Department said Tuesday night that it had evidence classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate were “likely concealed and removed” before the FBI search to retrieve them. In its late-night court filing, the Justice Department said that Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the documents “is unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.”
Andrew Weissman, a longtime Justice Department veteran and an MSNBC legal analyst, wrote overnight that the Team Trump filings that led to these new disclosures were “a huge misstep.” Weissman added that the Justice Department used its latest response “to disclose damning proof of a series of crimes, which it would not otherwise have been able to do.”
Quite right. Federal law enforcement knew it had his damning evidence of alleged crimes at Mar-a-Lago, but at this point in the investigation, it couldn’t share any of this information publicly. But thanks to Team Trump and its infinite wisdom, the Republican and his attorneys effectively forced the Justice Department’s hand, insisting that federal officials make their case to a judge.
And what a case it is. The Justice Department’s filing, for example, argues that it gathered evidence “that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” with government records “likely concealed and removed” before the FBI’s search.
The implication seems to be that, as far as investigators are concerned, as Trump came to believe officials really did expect the return of the materials the former president took, he and his team may have taken deliberate steps to hide them.
The filing also added a rather brutal photograph. From the NBC News report:
The Justice Department attempted to bolster its case to the court by including an FBI photo showing documents and “classified cover sheets recovered from a container” in Trump’s “45 office,” a reference to his being the 45th president. The photo shows documents marked “secret,” “top secret” and “SCI” — which stands for highly classified “sensitive compartmented information.”
The filing added that some of the seized materials were so sensitive that FBI personnel and DOJ attorneys “required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents.”
Walter Shaub, the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, summarized the significance of this in an important and straightforward sentence: “If the FBI found these documents in your home, you would go to jail.”
And, of course, if you took steps to conceal the fact that you had these documents in your home, you would likely remain in jail.
Making matters just a bit worse, the Justice Department went on to note in its filing that a few classified documents were found in desks inside Trump’s office at Mar-a-Lago.
Again, we wouldn’t know any of this if the former president’s lawyers didn’t make an odd request for a special master. Their strategy created conditions that made their client look worse.
[map at the link]
[…] Taking Kherson city would likely be a bloody affair, decimating large parts of the city. Russia would then bombard the liberated city in retaliatory fury, giving it the Kharkiv treatment. What if, instead, Ukraine pushes hard to Nova Kakhhovka, which feeds Crimea’s water supply and is in the path of supply lines from both Crimea in the south and Russian-held territory in eastern Ukraine? On the way down they could liberate Beryslav, the location of one of those concentration camp “filtration centers.”
Indeed, there’s a reason Ukraine keeps hitting supply depots in Nova Kakhovka—because its major railway is a critical supply hub for Russia’s entire operation in the region. That’s why we get these sorts of attacks every day and night: [tweet and video at the link]
That explosion shattered windows at least a kilometer away. Do you know how much ammunition you need to make that happen? That’s a lot of explosive power that will no longer kill Ukrainians.
But that’s just the latest strike. Ukraine has been systematically degrading Russia ammunition stockpiles in the region, while simultaneously hitting the three bridges connecting the region on a daily basis. Yesterday and last night, the Antonovsky bridge got hit four times. Here are two of them: [tweets and videos at the link]
Satellite imagery should prove interesting. Two pontoon bridges in the area were also destroyed.
So what does this mean? Think artillery shells and fuel—the two highest consumption items in Russia’s arsenal. Take away artillery and Ukraine can better move over Kherson’s flat, wide-open fields. That wastes fuel, and Russia won’t be able to maneuver its defenses, or retreat when the time comes. If all goes well, we could soon be seeing the return of Ukraine’s Tractor Brigade.
Look at how much space a single artillery 122mm shell takes in its packing: [tweet and video at the link]
Now multiply that unpacking by 10,000 a day, or more. Ukraine claimed that at one point, Russia was firing upwards of 50,000 such shells a day. Even if it was half that in reality, it’s important to understand just how thirsty Russian artillery is. They can’t operate without it. Yet how are they going to transfer thousands of those shells to their troops in their field without bridges, without barges, and with limited fuel?
We’re only two days into this counteroffensive, and Russians already report artillery shortages. This is from the Telegram channel Grey Zone, catering to Wagner mercenaries. It mocks official Russian claims of massive Ukrainian casualties as believable only to those who “[do] not think.” And then it describes one Kherson battle:
We will talk about those who held back this offensive. About the guys who went to the task without a question, and were on one of the main directions of the breakthrough. A handful of commandos and paratroopers were jumped by 9 tanks, 7 infantry fighting vehicles and a horde of infantry. They held on ask best they could, even after the issues began with the requested artillery (there are more and more questions regarding the request—strike sequences, sending regards to aviation too). Yes, they did not all stay there, dying heroically and “destroying 500 enemy men and 50 tanks.”
That last line is meant sarcastically, again poking fun at the ridiculous casualty claims from the Russian side. But what’s salient is that Russian aviation is nonexistent, and they did not get any artillery support.
This Russian military reporter is also asking questions about the lack of artillery support:
Questions:
1. How did the Ukrainians manage to secretly concentrate their forces?
2. Occupation of settlements.
After the front has stabilized, we spend weeks learning the name of the village that our troops are storming, but they immediately occupied the settlements.
3. We have figured it out with our aviation, but our artillery … However, I know the answer to this.
Obviously, Ukraine didn’t secretly concentrate their forces. They’ve been announcing this counteroffensive since June. Russia flooded forces into the region as a response to those announcements. So seriously, not sure what that guy is talking about.
The second likely means that it takes Russia weeks to take some small town, yet Ukraine has taken at least half a dozen, likely more, in just a couple of days.
But that last one, that last one is key. It’s always best when you read frustrated sarcasm into such statements. “We have figured it out with our aviation” means that they’ve come to expect nothing from it. It is nonexistent. But, he expected better from their artillery.
Want another sign of Russia’s artillery challenges in this theater? See this guy: [tweet and video at the link]
Expand video if you don’t see the subtitles. In it, he talks about the difficulty of crossing a mined field under fire from drone-dropped grenades. It’s not until 30 minutes into their crossing that Russia manages to fire some artillery and tank fire, which he says Ukraine immediately suppresses. Given the delay, I would even guess that they got hit with shorter-range mortars rather than Howitzer artillery. A properly supplied Russia would’ve been hitting the advance the second they set foot on that open field.
Whatever supply issues Russia is having at the moment, they’re only going to get worse as they burn through whatever ammo are currently sitting with line units. Then the question becomes whether to fight with waning supplies, or run. Check this out: [tweet and video at the link]
[…] Yes, I’m feeling a little smug, but really, this wasn’t rocket science. The map is easy to read, there are only so many supply lines to Kherson, and it was easy to see how they would be cut. Ukraine doesn’t even need to liberate Tokmak, it is already close enough that regular artillery can cut the rail line. Maybe that’s what was literally happening last night: [tweet and video at the link]
What’s amazing is that Russia didn’t see the trap coming.
Ukraine has been announcing this counteroffensive precisely to lure reinforcements into the area, knowing how easy they could be cut off. I wasn’t the only person to see Russia’s predicament […] here we are, with Russia seemingly being the only people unaware of the trap.
That Russian “military reporter” thinks Russia was unaware of secret Ukrainian forces? Heck no, that’s ludicrous. What Russia was unaware of was how easily their forces would be cut off, or they simply didn’t care. As a result, Kherson now hosts the largest concentration of Russian forces in the entire country, tens of thousands of them, thousands of pieces of equipment … and they are effectively cut off.
[…] Ukraine has been hitting the end points of the bridge, sparing the dam from damage. HIMARS’ accuracy allows for surgical precision. So not even trucks are getting across. […]
Oggie: Mathomsays
Now multiply that unpacking by 10,000 a day, or more. Ukraine claimed that at one point, Russia was firing upwards of 50,000 such shells a day.
One of the things that the Red/Soviet/Russian Army is famous for is not throwing shit away. In the 1980s, there were still tens of thousands of T-34/85 tanks, left over from the Great Patriotic War, maintained as weapons for third level reserves. Most of the Russian artillery — 105mm, 152mm, and 203mm — has been in use since the 1930s. Okay, all of the 1930s stock was used up 100 times over during the Great Patriotic War, but, after the war, most of the weapons plants — those that were not converted to civilian and consumer goods — and all of the dual-use plants — those producing, say, trucks — remained in full production. Stalin fully expected a full-scale war with the capitalist west.
Stalin’s successors (other than Beria who tried to liberalize the USSR like Gorbachev did in the 1980s) continued with full-scale production of war-making material. Some was given/traded/sold to their socialist allies or to freedom fighters trying to liberate capitalist or imperialist countries. Most went into storage. Millions of tons of munitions ended up in storage across the Soviet Union.
The Afghan War and the wars following the dissolution of the Soviet Union used up some war material. Production virtually ceased in the 1990s, and under Putin, production of war materials has increased, but still doesn’t hold a candle to Soviet production from 1945 until the late 1990s. Putin’s military has, most likely, burned through this century’s production and is now, for artillery and small arms, using the Soviet over-production.
Old artillery shells tend to become less stable over time. Propellent charges also become less stable. Moving the shells from storage to forward dumps to the consumer requires multiple loadings and unloadings — storage to truck, truck to train, train to truck, truck to dump, dump to truck, truck to stacks at the tubes (I have no idea why, but the Russian Army has never learned to palletize boxes and crates for forklift handling) — and each step creates chances for damage to the projectiles and propellant. Which, for old shells, that are less stable, can create (to put it mildly) incidents.
The old shells also create more wear to the artillery tubes which degrades accuracy. The old shells also are more likely to be duds (which is littering Ukraine with unexploded ordnance). And they are more likely to have defective fuses which can lead to duds or premature explosion. I have not found any hard numbers regarding the number of Russian Army tubes that have been taken out of action through Ukrainian counter-battery fire or accidents.
Either way, I would expect, as the war continues, and the Russians use older and older munitions stocks, the number of usable artillery tubes will continue to decline even without Ukrainian Army action. And the profligacy of Russian artillery usage is most likely compounding the problem of artillery failure in the Russian Army.
ravensays
More news from the other war, the GOP War on Women.
What is new is that it is estimated that 100,000 Red state women will go the DIY abortion routes, one way or another.
Another 200,000 will travel to Blue states.
It is hard to estimate how many of that 100,000 DIY will end up in the ER for aftercare. With medication abortions it is .9%, mostly for bleeding.
I put some of my own comments in there, in bold.
The Conversation When abortion at a clinic is not available, 1 in 3 pregnant people say they will do something on their own to end the pregnancy
Lauren Ralph, Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, University of California, San FranciscoSee Wed, August 31, 2022 at 5:26 AM Edited for length
A self-managed abortion is the termination of pregnancy outside the formal health care system, often with self-sourced abortion pills.
The big idea
One in three people in need of abortion will consider doing something on their own to end the pregnancy if they are unable to get an abortion at a clinic. These are the findings of a study I recently published after surveying over 700 people seeking abortions in three states across the U.S.: Illinois, California and New Mexico.
These findings offer a clear snapshot of what lies ahead as states move to ban abortion outright or severely restrict access.
This might include turning to self-sourced abortion pills, alcohol or drugs, herbs or physical methods.
These restricted-abortion states are home to just over one-half of U.S. women of reproductive age. Putting these numbers together with data on who seeks abortion in the U.S., researchers estimate that over 100,000 pregnant people per year will soon face insurmountable travel distances to their nearest abortion provider and be unable to get an abortion at a clinic. My note: The number of women getting abortions in Red states is around 300,000. That 100,000 is the estimate of those women who can’t travel out of state.)
If people do as they project in our study, around 33,000 pregnant people per year will consider doing something on their own to end a pregnancy.
What still isn’t known
One yet unanswered question is how many of those in need of abortion and unable to get to a clinic will be able to end a pregnancy on their own with a safe and effective method such as the FDA-approved medications mifepristone and misoprostol, or misoprostol alone – versus how many will turn to other, likely less effective, methods with potentially harmful outcomes.
What is also unknown is how many pregnant people will face legal repercussions for doing something to try to end a pregnancy. Although public support for criminalizing a pregnant person for self-managing an abortion is low, state legislators are actively proposing such policies. Between 2000 and 2020, more than 61 people were investigated or arrested for such attempts. (My note. Self managed abortion is already a crime in many Red states. In Georgia it is First degree murder and carries the death penalty.
This will spread rapidly as Red states realize pregnant women won’t be passive victims like they want.)
Our research underscores that even when abortion is restricted, people will move forward with abortion on their own. My note. This was known decades ago. It is one reason why abortion was legalized in the USA.),
Faced with photographic evidence of top secret material recovered at a private citizen’s home, a Twitter account representing Republican members on the House Judiciary Committee focused on… a TIME Magazine cover.
“That TIME Magazine cover was huge [sic] threat to national security,” the House Judiciary Committee’s Twitter account snarked Tuesday night, along with an emoji with eyes rolling.
It wasn’t clear why the Judiciary Committee Republicans didn’t offer a substantive response [LOL, nicely understated snark] to news that federal prosecutors had recovered dozens of classified documents from former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida, and that they suspected a likely effort to obstruct attempts to recover the documents.
But the TIME Magazine distraction was representative of a broader trend: There’s no unified Republican message on the apparent federal criminal investigation into the president’s actions. And attempts to defend the President or attack the feds in the wake of raid-related revelations this time around have been uneven at best.
[…] Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, typically a weathervane of GOP lawmakers’ feelings, said Wednesday, “I don’t have any observations about that.”
Others did have observations to share – though none of them very sensical.
Boris Epshteyn – reported to be corralling Trump’s response to the raid as something of a “legal quarterback” – focused on the image of the documents itself, accusing the feds of wrongfully including a highly redacted photograph of evidence in a court filing.
[…] Perhaps the most perplexing take on the Mar-a-Lago situation Wednesday came from Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, falsely claiming the court filing from federal prosecutors had conceded that “this unprecedented and unnecessary raid had NOTHING to do with any crimes, but rather a dispute over Presidential Records.”
It’s not clear how Budowich reached that conclusion. The document he referenced, a Tuesday court filing from federal prosecutors, at various points discusses “the government’s ongoing criminal investigation,” the potential “crimes” for which federal investigators obtained a search warrant, and “a criminal investigation into the handling of the records.” Two-thirds through the filing, prosecutors laid out the potential crimes again, explicitly […]
Some Trump allies tried to cram a few different defenses into one jumbled response. Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota with her own ethical concerns, offered one such effort Wednesday morning.
In an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Noem claimed Americans “don’t trust the DOJ,” echoing Trump’s two-weeks-after-the-fact call for a “special master” to sort through the recovered materials.
“We don’t know what was in there,” she added next, after Fox News’ Steve Doocey pressed her on why Trump had highly sensitive material at his house more than a year after leaving the White House.
Then, in a pivot, Noem implied that we did know, and that these were classified materials that Trump had declassified: “President Trump declassified all this information,” she said.
Then, Noem went back: “What was in those documents and folders?” She was on her way to another point, implying that federal investigators or someone else may have planted documents.
“Do we know that that is really what President Trump brought to his home?” Noem wondered aloud. “Do we know that he put them there? Do we know what’s inside?”
Various tweets and videos are available at the link.
Never forget: Trump’s defense is that he declassified documents that were planted.
Karl Rove [Karl Rove!]:
Let’s be clear on this. None of these documents are his.
chigau (違う)says
Good to hear, Akira.
Oggie: Mathomsays
“Do we know that that is really what President Trump brought to his home?”
For the classified documents, at higher levels of classification, yes. Or, I should say, the government does. Classified documents carry numbers. Those numbers are tracked. Copy 01 went to the White House with advisor X. Copy 02 went to the NSC with NSC member Y. Copy 03 was filed in thus-and-such location, drawer, folder, safe. Copy 4 etc.
The responsible agencies (those responsible for creating and classifying the documents) know who took what to the White House. And, more important, what did not come back. So, yes, we (that is, the government agencies) do know what was at Mar-a-Lago.
Former Alaska state Rep. Mary Peltola (D) was projected to defeat former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) to win the special election to fill the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s (R-Alaska) term in the House, a stunning upset that makes her the first Alaska Native in Congress.
Peltola, a Yup’ik Eskimo, will also be the first Democrat to hold the seat in decades. The last time a member of her party was was elected to represent the state’s at-large congressional district was in 1971.
Her apparent victory came after votes were tabulated late Wednesday as part of the state’s new ranked-choice voting system.
Prior to her congressional run to fill Young’s seat, Peltola represented the southwestern Bethel region as a state lawmaker for a decade. She has also served on the Bethel City Council and Orutsararmiut Native Council Tribal Court.
Peltola also ran in the primary for the same seat but whose term would begin in 2023. She advanced in the primary, as she was one of the top four vote-getters in Alaska’s open primary system. […]
Alaska election officials carried out the instant-runoff process Wednesday for the Aug. 16 special election for the state’s only House seat, and former Democratic state Rep. Mary Peltola has scored a dramatic pickup for her party by defeating Republican Sarah Palin 51-49.
Peltola, who will replace the late GOP Rep. Don Young, will be the first Democrat to represent the Last Frontier in the lower chamber since Young won his own special election all the way back in 1973. The new congresswoman, who is of Yup’ik ancestry, is also set to become the first Alaska Native to ever serve in Congress.
[…] Republicans, though, will have the chance to regain this seat in a few months. Peltola, Palin, and Begich, as well as Libertarian Chris Bye, will be on the ballot again in November for another instant-runoff election, and the dynamics could be very different for this second round.
Yes, Donald Trump had endorsed Palin. So this is a loss for both Trump and Palin. Double schadenfreude points!
StevoRsays
On a really good new museum with dinosaurs – specifically Muttaburrasaurus :
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
The chairman of Russia’s second-largest oil producer Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, has died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, according to reports.
The company confirmed his death but said Maganov, 67, had died following a “serious illness”.
Several Russian outlets reported that he died after falling out of a window of a Moscow hospital. According to the Russian state-owned news agency Tass, Maganov had taken his own life.
Maganov is the second top Lukoil executive to die in mysterious circumstances in recent months, after the billionaire Alexander Subbotin was found dead in a shaman’s home in Mytishchi in May.
Lukoil was one of the few major Russian companies to call for an end to the Ukraine war. In March, it released a statement calling for a “fast resolution” to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and expressing its “sincere empathy for all victims, who are affected by this tragedy”.
Nightmarish.
Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom has confirmed that the IAEA mission has arrived at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.…
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has warned Moldova that any actions seen as endangering the security of Russian troops in the breakaway region of Transnistria would be considered an attack on Russia.
Russia has stationed peacekeeping troops in Transnistria since the early 1990s, when an armed conflict saw pro-Russian separatists wrest most of the region from Moldovan control. Russian forces also guard a large ammunition dump in the region.
Russia has said its army is there to maintain peace and stability, but Moldova wants Moscow to withdraw its forces.
In April, tensions in Moldova soared after a series of sporadic attacks were reported in Transnistria.
In an address at Russia’s top foreign affairs school, Lavrov said:
Everyone should understand that any action that would threaten the security of our troops (in Transnistria) would be considered under international law as an attack on Russia.
…Ravil Maganov, the chair of the board of directors of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company, “fell from a window at Central clinical hospital,” the Interfax news agency wrote on Thursday, citing a source. “He died from injuries sustained.”
Lukoil said Maganov had “passed away following a severe illness”. The company did not say what Maganov was being treated for.
It was not immediately clear whether his death was an accident, a suicide, or could be tied to foul play. Russian state media agencies citing an unnamed source reported that Maganov had been admitted to the hospital with a heart condition and had been on antidepressants.
Baza, a Russian news site with close ties to the police, suggested he may have slipped from a balcony while smoking.
Half a dozen businesspeople with ties to the Russian energy industry have died in apparent suicides or in mysterious circumstances since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. None of the deaths have been classified as murders….
“Ultimately comes down to what he had all that secret stuff at Mar-A-Lago,” Doocy said. “I know his team said that they’ve declassified it, but that’s news to the agencies that those documents belong to and, governor, he had apparently three classified documents in his desk, and as Brian [Kilmeade] detailed, the stuff on the floor, it shows five yellow folders marked top-secret and another says secret SCI, which means sensitive compartmentalized information. Those are the biggest secrets in the world.”
The government has been asking for those documents for months, but Trump turned over only a portion of what had been requested, and investigators said his attorneys filed false statements about what he had and where those materials were located.
“Apparently the former president went through them in January,” Doocy said. “Why wouldn’t he say, ‘You know what? I need to turn that back over.’ Why would he have all that stuff at Mar-A-Lago?”
(The article is from RAW Story, but the link is to a Microsoft Start feed.)
We know what Donald Trump did: He absconded from the White House with classified and top secret documents that belonged to the US government; he mishandled these highly sensitive records in his Mar-a-Largo lair (see this photo); he resisted the efforts of the government to retrieve these records; he employed a legal team that falsely certified that all classified material had been returned; and his actions prompted the Justice Department to investigate whether he and his crew obstructed justice or violated other federal laws, including the Espionage Act.
The big question is why. Why did FPOTUS, as he has been dubbed in Justice of Department court filings, run off with the most classified of documents, including records based on confidential human sources? It seems clear that this was no accident.
Corn writes that the probable answer to why comes down to: Double Agent Theory; They’re Mine!; Gimme Ammo; or We Can’t Let Anyone Know This! I lean towards Gimme Ammo — stop trying to put me in jail or I’ll dump lots of secrets into the public realm — or We Can’t Let Anyone Know This! — maybe secret communications with Putin? Who knows. Of course, given his infantile behaviour, the They’re Mine! can’t be ruled out.
Reuters:
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous 500 comments on this thread.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2022/07/15/infinite-thread-xxiv/comment-page-2/#comment-2145265
Why Trump’s message to AG Merrick Garland was so provocative
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2022/07/15/infinite-thread-xxiv/comment-page-2/#comment-2145264
“Wildfires in Europe burn area equivalent to one-fifth of Belgium” (and other subjects)
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2022/07/15/infinite-thread-xxiv/comment-page-2/#comment-2145263
In the 41 states that have held nominating contests this year, more than half the GOP winners so far — about 250 candidates in 469 contests — have embraced Trump’s false claims about his defeat two years ago, according to a Post analysis of every race for federal and statewide office with power over elections.
Trump Demands FBI Give Back Documents He Rightfully Stole
Another link back to previous comments:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2022/07/15/infinite-thread-xxiv/comment-page-2/#comment-2145244
Apologies to Reginald Selkirk @ #494 in the previous chapter of the thread – I had missed your post about the reported hit on the Wagner headquarters.
Ukraine Update: Butcher Wagner mercenaries post their location, HIMARS make them pay
Hahaha – Dr. Oz goes shopping for what he believes to be the makings of crudités. (Twitter link.)
Wonkette: “Fox News Dullard Pretty Sure Trump Can Bend Law To His Will, Just Like Presidential Hero Richard Nixon”
SC @7, that’s a fuckton of carrots!
Why do I get the feeling that Dr. Oz does not usually do his own shopping at the grocery store?
Quoted in Lynna’s #6:
Including Moscow, where his company, having been corruptly awarded a contract to supply food to schools, proceeded to poison (though fortunately not kill) 130 kindergartners.
Lynna @ #9, it is! I assume they’re to dip in the…salsa? So relatable.
“BREAKING: Rudy Giuliani has been told that he is a target of the criminal investigation in Georgia into election interference. He is scheduled to testify in Atlanta later this week.”
I wonder how Trump’s idiots feel about Oz buying crudites (including salsa and guacamole?!?!?!?!)? And you can tell, watching that, that Oz has almost never been in a grocery store. An elitist shopping. Again, who thought that was a good idea?
Sebastian Gorka Pretty Sure FBI Bugged Trump’s Toilet In Act Of War On Real American Hobbits
Josh Dawsey reported this on Twitter: In Donald Trump’s latest fundraising pitch, the former president is telling would-be donors, “THEY BROKE INTO MY HOME — the home of the 45th President of the United States. I could really use your help right now. Can I count on YOU to rush in a donation by the end of the day? Your support cannot wait.”
Nobody broke in. Trump’s “home” is a members-only club. Trump is grifting off his most recently-revealed crime(s).
As Steve Benen reported:
Inside Trump Promises To Match Donor Contributions By Eyebrow-Raising Amounts
Update: John Fetterman has weighed in on Twitter.
Lynna @ #9 and Oggie @ #13, I haven’t seen anyone mention it but it’s driving me crazy that he doesn’t have a basket or a cart. He has no idea what he’s doing. And he seems to think it’s Mexican or something.
Yorkshire Bylines – “The doges of war: how a Twitter meme is helping fight the Russian war in Ukraine”:
More at the link.
From the Guardian US liveblog:
hmmm … this is interesting.
Kash Patel Admits Top Secret & Classified Docs Trump Stole Were NEVER Declassified
Say what now?
USDA says religious schools will be granted automatic Title IX exemption
USDA regulations do not require religious educational institutions to submit a written request for a Title IX exemption in order to claim one, the department said.
More at the link.
BREAKING: All Investigations Into Fake Elector Ratf*cking Scheme Blowing Up At Once
John Scott-Railton:
Aric Toler:
I watched the
Drquack Oz crudités alleged-shopping video (sound off). From other comments (in this thread and elsewhere), some people seem surprised there’s a Mexican-influenced version of the dish.There is, albeit I’ve never heard it referred to as crudités (except, possibly, in Mexican(-ish) restaurants here in France (cannot recall, nor the Spanish name)). And yes, the dips would usually include guacamole and salsa (also various cheese dips), and typically served with some sort of crisps and / or tortillas. In some cases, in addition to assorted raw veggies, edible insects are also available.
There are also other cultural variants — whilst the name is French, dishes of the sort are widely known — I’ve had wonderful crudités in Portugal, and in Greek restaurants here in France.
None of which is to say quack Oz has any idea what he is doing. Other than an probably excessive amount of carrots (and the lack of a basket and presence of a camera operator), I didn’t see anything weird in that video per se (but again, I wasn’t listening to his burbling). I myself would make my own guacamole — but probably not salsa (which I find trickier to do) — that’s a matter of time, preference, etc., but would probably be more inclined to do the French(-ish) version, with olive oil, vinegar (probably balsamic), and mustard — and of course cheese — dips. And I would have — season allowing — tomatoes and cucumbers, at least, possibly also chilies, MUSHROOMS!, and maybe some olives, câpres, and / or artichoke hearts, and perhaps other items which caught my fancy at the (usually outdoor) market. (Yes, my crudités tend to be more of a main dish than an appetizer / starter.)
blf:
OK, here in the northeastern US – I have no idea what percentage of the population I speak for – we do actually use the word, but we call the whole thing a crudité or crudité platter. They sell them pre-made, often labeled as such. They’re sliced raw vegetables with a dip or dips, and I think the general idea is that they’re Mediterranean – so you’ll have a standard herby dip but also maybe hummus andor a tapenade. Guac could be there, because it’s delicious, but it’s borderline. (Not to be confused with the wonderful mezze platter…which can and should be vegan.) He’s Turkish and so should be aware of the appropriate dips.
I’ve never seen a Mexican crudité, and the thought of dipping carrots in salsa or broccoli in guacamole is quite odd. The introduction of chips or significant bread in my view just makes it a dips platter and no longer a crudité.
In any case, I don’t think he has in mind a Mexican version. I think he thinks the word is Spanish and it’s a Mexican dish – hence the reference to tequila.
Literally just made some.
I imagine it’s cheaper to make your own dips and buy pre-cut vegetables – especially “baby” carrots, which are made for this! The thought of peeling and slicing those giant-ass carrots and piling them on a platter next to some salsa is funny.
he doesn’t know the name of the store
he has no basket or cart
he doesn’t know how to read the prices
he thinks this is some man-of-the-people shit
the proportions are weird
the dips are weird
those prices aren’t even very high (he just doesn’t know what anything costs)
it has nothing to do with tequila WTF.
I think: he asked his wife what sort of dish he could use as a pretext for a Biden attack ad and she suggested a crudité platter and he for some reason thinks that’s a Spanish word and Mexican dish. And hasn’t done real shopping in a supermarket in years.
Just a quick question (er, series of questions) in re #17 above:
I know that Trump has a PAC in order to raise money (and siphon it away from the RNC and CPAC), but does he have an exploratory committee to raise money specifically for his campaign?
Can a PAC raise money for a specific campaign, or are they limited to fund raising only for amorphous issues (which we all know is code for ‘candidates who are willing to kiss our asses)?
Can an exploratory committee raise funds for a campaign?
Is Trump actually asking for campaign contributions, or is he avoiding that word so it can all go into his slush fund? Errrr. Campaign Fund?
I know non-candidates have gotten into trouble for misusing PACs and other campaign/political monetary systems, but has a candidate, or campaign, at the national level ever gotten into serious, like jail-time, trouble for fucking about with PACs and other devices?
I know that a whole world of search engines is out there. I have spent the last hour (well, minus the time I spent making stuffed zucchini, Amaretto peaches, and grilled tuna for dinner) searching and cannot find the answers to these. I keep heading into a rabbit hole of right-wing idiocy.
Okay, I have to add a question 6:
Is it possible to make a search involving politics which does not go down the right-wing tunnel of lies?
No, his wife would have provided a list. This was from one of his just-out-of-college campaign aids. Probably.
Hmmmph. Real American men do NOT make their own dips. We buy premade. But we make sure we get the real thing. None of this sissy pansy-pants fresh-made-in-the-store. Hello, no! We want the real stuff. Old El Paso or nothing! Well, maybe Tostito’s salsa if things are really desperate.
And BABY CARROTS???!?!?!??!?! Real American men know that when it come to vegetables, bigger is always better. Always.
And you can trust me on that.
Why?
I’m white, older (57), retired, white, male, white, a grandfather, and a white male.
Oggie @ #28:
LOL.
In related news, I just had one of my favorite dishes: a tofu scramble (extra firm tofu, pressed; Vegenaise, turmeric; nooch; salt) with guacamole. I fry the scramble up and add the guacamole towards the end, serving it with tortilla chips. The colors are lovely and it’s very flavorful!
Alex Wagner is going to be on with Rachel Maddow tonight at 9 ET on MSNBC. Her Tuesday-Friday 9 PM show begins tomorrow.
Recent podcast episodes:
MIA – “John Read and Jeffrey Masson – Biological Psychiatry and the Mass Murder of ‘Schizophrenics'”:
Transcript at the link. Masson is a fairly controversial figure, for reasons that (well, some) become evident during the interview. Tangentially, I’ll again recommend The Gallery of Miracles and Madness: Insanity, Modernism, and Hitler’s War on Art.
The Dig – “Britain After Empire w/ Kojo Koram”:
This seems (I haven’t read it yet) like a great complement to works like Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain, in which capitalism is insufficiently appreciated.
One response to Michael McFaul’s “What is a crudité?”:
“Pretty sure its not asparagus with guac. But maybe things are different in Jersey.”
MEE – “Saudi Arabia: Women’s rights defender given 34 years in prison over tweets”:
Another right wingnut arrested by the FBI for threats.
Death threats are felonies.
They are also so common that unless you are famous and/or a politician or FBI agent, the police won’t do anything.
This guy doesn’t seem very coherent mentally. He is an antivaxxer which isn’t a good sign. He is waiting for all the vaccinated people to drop dead. It isn’t going to happen.
Putin calls Russian arms to rivals:
Meduza has an article about that Yale (Sonnenfeld, et al.) paper claiming Russia’s economy has suffered significantly since (and as a result of) Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, ‘A commendable effort’ — A widely cited report predicting doom for the Russian economy has come under scrutiny from economists. The article — which I won’t attempt to excerpt — points out several inconsistencies, etc., have been found in the paper. However, the overall conclusion is perhaps still broadly sound (Meduza edits in {curly braces}), “[Alexander Isakov, the head of Bloomberg’s economics team:] ‘Understanding conditions on the ground in {Russia} is more important than ever,’ he concluded, ‘and {the} report is a commendable effort to do just that.'”
All of mainland France is currently under warnings (most Yellow, such as where I live, some Orange, slightly to the West of here) for severe thunderstorms, rain, and flash floods starting tonight(-ish) and continuing to (possibly into) the weekend. This won’t do much to alleviate the drought — the water will largely run off the parched hard soil — but it does break the heatwave, perhaps until next week, when it is forecast to return. I presume lightening strikes could start some new fires, but also presume the rain will help keep them contained. Locally, I anticipate the only(?) immediate problem is I may have to close the skylights.
@ 34
Helloooooo… Democrats? Biden? There seems to be a large and growing army of well-armed, racist, Christo-fascist shitkickers in the so-called Red States who are fixing to start an insurgency. Some of them control whole state governments. They got a lot of friends in our military and law enforcement too. They might be a–you know–problem. You might want to do something about them.
Oh, I forgot. Joe still pins for the days when he could site down and talk with his old segregationist buddies. He’ll work something out if he just talks with them. That and it might scare off those “undecided” voters and conservative Dems they think are so fucking important.
@38,
” There seems to be a large and growing army of well-armed, racist, Christo-fascist shitkickers in the so-called Red States who are fixing to start an insurgency.”
Biden seems to be sleepwalking into the next election steal attempt, and this time the christofascists already have had some practice, and had enough time to install so many more criminal MAGA fanatics as to make the whole idea of “free and fair elections” a farce. Well, 400 years is a half decent run for an empire, not quite as long as the Anasazi, but hey, if you base your country’s foundational values on religious lunatics, what can you expect. The nukes are a bit of a worry for when DeSantis takes over.
@ 39
The mainstream Dems/liberals live in a rose-tinted world. They never took the Christian dominionist, white-supremacist, and militia-kook right as a serious threat. They thought democracy, the process, the system, and the constitution would protect them. They thought that all the racial and sexual progress we’ve made were all resolved issues that would never be challenged or reversed.
Time to take off the pink-colored shades and see the true ugliness that infects this stinking country.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
@40,
“They thought democracy, the process, the system, and the constitution would protect them.”
I think the US constitution did not account for someone like Trump to come along, in combination with foreign controlled assets like McConnell or Manafort, or for a situation where facts and truth itself are no longer binding, and up for debate and feelings and interpretation after decades of declining education standards and the rise of Facebook disinformation.
Estonia begins removing Soviet-era war monuments
“Just in: #Finland to slash the issuance of #Schengen visas to #Russian nationals by 90% starting September….”
Followup to campaign news in SC’s comment 42.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee launched its first general election ad campaign in Arizona. The ad reminds voters that Republican Blake Masters’ proposed privatizing Social Security
Oh, FFS.
Ron Johnson [a Republican doofus], who chaired the Senate Homeland Security Committee for six years, said Mar-a-Lago is “a pretty safe place” and “a secure location.” It’s not.
Link
Which is another problem with the American constitution: It’s out of date and written by men who thought that the prosperity of white, male property-owners (and that property often included other human beings) was evidence that the system worked and didn’t need changing. Therefore, it’s meant to be vague, open to interpretation, and extremely difficult to amend, update, and clarify. Defenders will point to the fact that the document has been amended 27 times. but that’s nearly enough and I seriously doubt we’ll ever be able to do it again–especially in this political climate. (Remember what happened to the ERA?)
Reginald @44 and SC @45, yeah, Putin can claim to have lots of friends and allies, but in reality he is being shunned by most of the world. No matter how much military hardware Putin promises to sell to his friends, he cannot overcome the overwhelming condemnation he has earned by invading Ukraine. (Also, Russian military weapons have been proven to be inferior. Battle tested … and the proof is in.)
Jim Jordan points to secret sources in the FBI to bolster claims
The Ohio Republican claims to have secret sources inside the FBI who’ve confirmed Republican conspiracy theories. Some skepticism is in order.
Maybe Jim Jordan’s imaginary FBI friends are the same people talking inside Trump’s head?
BBC – “Rwanda asylum scheme: Warning over political killings before UK flight”:
Guardian liveblog:
The bridge from Crimea has seen record traffic as tens of thousands of Russians leave.
Ukraine update: More explosions in Crimea as ‘secret weapon’ strikes again
Tweet with image showing damage to Crimean railway also available at the link.
From today’s Democracy Now! headlines:
Kansas Man Offers His House, Dips Into Retirement Savings to Fund Abortion Vote Recount
Link
West Virginia Governor Denies Request to Put Abortion Vote to the People After Seeing What Happened in Kansas
“Breaking: Chairs Thompson and Maloney say the Trump-appointed DHS IG has refused to cooperate with their inquiry into missing Secret Service texts — even blocking employees from testifying — and threaten to use ‘alternate measures’ to ensure compliance.”
Oh, you’re all going to love this:
Sen. Rand Paul Aims To Repeal Espionage Act To Save Trump
Seem par for the libertarian course: If you get busted for pot or soliciting a hooker, you call for the legalization of drugs and prostitution. You found to have stolen classified documents, you legalize espionage.
@ 58
Once again, another part of the American government in open revolt and the Dems won’t do shit to punish them.
Guardian liveblog:
Guardian liveblog:
More hilarious Ukrainian trolling (and I presume not staged), Як виглядає дронофобія (video) (What does dronephobia look like?). The music is not Yakety Sax (the Benny Hill closing theme), but it so easily could be.
Akira MacKenzie@60, Again, NO, law enforcement is NOT what political parties do. You seem to keep making this very basic mistake, confusing enforcement of laws with enacting laws.
Follow-up to @37, essentially all of the S.France (Mediterranean) coast — including where I live — is now under Orange alert for severe thunderstorms for at least the next 24-ish hours.
@ 64
No, governments handle law enforcement. Who supposedly is in charge of said government in the United States and has all kinds of police and military powers at his disposal to eliminate this threat once and for all? What was his name? White. Catholic. Old Fart. Likes to reminisce about his segregationists buddies?
Guardian – “England must reduce meat intake to avoid climate breakdown, says food tsar”:
More at the link.
Chris Geidner at Bolts – “Michigan Supreme Court Restricts ‘Cruel’ Treatment of Youth in Run of Major Decisions”:
Much more at the link. Informative.
Most Democrats, or at least anti-Republicans, know Liz Cheney is a committed conservative whose one saving grace is her attitude (and actions) on Trump. Who’s about to replace her? Well, let’s see.
NYT:
Lawyer Set to Defeat Cheney Spent Career Fighting Environmental Rules
By Trip Gabriel / Aug. 16, 2022
Kyiv Independent:
Tweet o’ the day.
(LOL, from the responses: “It’s only crudité if it comes from the crudités region of France, otherwise it’s just sparkling Wegners veggie tray.”)
NO. If the quoted nonsense was true, then you are perfectly happy with hair furor and / or the thugs (republicans) deciding who to prosecute and for what, with hair furor et al. using the military — without much of anything in terms of legal basis — to deal with, e.g., BLM protestors. You are perfectly happy with hair furor tricking General Miller into marching with him — after having protestors violently cleared away — to a staged pseudo-religious photo-op. And numerous other cases of abusing various real and imagined powers.
FECK OFF. I’m not buying your nazi(? Putin?) worship now, previously, or in the future. You far too often appear to have neither a concept nor an understanding of civil society or rule-of-law. Hint: Rule-of-law does not mean the party / coalition in power decides on prosecutions, punishments, etc.
An anti-fascist socialist being accused of fascism. That sounds familiar. Are you sure your not an American right-winger yourself?
If you’re wondering what Trump’s plans are for a second term, the Washington Post is here to help you.
Six drastic plans Trump is already promising for a second term
By Isaac Arnsdorf / August 16, 2022
Much more detail from Trump’s speeches and allies, filling out these proposals, at the link.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Items in Things I learnt today, so I guess everyone knows about the Humpback Whale but did folks know there’s also a Humpback Dolphin – in fact a whole category of different Humpback Dolphin species? See :
https://www.sousateuszii.org/dolphins/
Plus : https://www.marinebio.org/species/atlantic-hump-backed-dolphins/sousa-teuszii/
As well as this beautiful nine min video featuring them here .
Guardian liveblog:
Meanwhile, in space explotration news NASA is preparing its new SLS rocket, the successor to the Saturn V for its first ever launch here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-17/nasa-space-launch-system-moon-rocket-test-flight/101344304
which is carrying a mission even further than our Moon – to an asteroid with solar sailing :
https://www.space.com/artemis-1-asteroid-solar-sail-cubesat
With the vee-rery slow roll out able to be watched here although the actual launch isn’t for another 11 days, 21 hours from now.
Republicans can’t let go of their interest in the 17th Amendment
Imagine looking at the landscape and concluding that one of the problems with our politics is that Americans are able to elect their own senators.
Team Pence notes how it didn’t improperly take classified docs
Mike Pence’s team is quietly letting us know: The former vice president was careful not to take materials that didn’t belong to him — unlike some people.
@ 80
Looks like a certain gutless, Bible-humping wonder is groveling for the Oval Office.
George Monbiot in the Guardian – “Welcome to the freeport, where turbocapitalism tramples over British democracy”:
New from NBN – “Paris Marx, Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation“:
Vice:
Trump scrapes the bottom of the well for defense attorneys, and can’t even find them there
Ukraine update: Russia’s dependence on massed artillery and brute force is its greatest weakness
More drone footage available at the link. The operators have to be really good.
Guardian liveblog:
Link
Sign of the times.
Link
Link
Kinzinger: Some people ‘equate Donald Trump with the person of Jesus Christ’
From a review of Jared Kushner’s new book:
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657876110
More at the link.
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657874749
From Newsweek (about a week old, so it may have been mentioned before):
Russia has, apparently, learned nothing. During World War II (sorry, the Great Patriotic War), the Soviets used massed artillery, massed armour (both tanks and self-propelled-guns), and massed infantry (sometimes to clear the minefields for the follow on infantry) to achieve breakthroughs in the relatively thin Wehrmacht lines. At that time, even tactical air strikes seldom hit anything more than 100km behind the opposition’s line. Anti-aircraft defenses were primitive. Anti-tank weapons were primitive. The German Army had a modest technological advantage (their glass and optics industry, based out of Dresden, was remarkable) over the Soviets. And that modest technological advantage, against the massed attacks of the Soviet Army, allowed Germany to hold on far longer than it should have on the Eastern Front. Short story, the Soviet steamroller succeeded. Eventually. Bloodily.
And the Soviets spent a great deal of time analyzing what went right during the war. And those lessons were adapted for an expected armour and nuclear war in Western Europe. Which never happened.
In Afghanistan, the Soviet military used conscript soldiers and tried to overwhelm the Afghans. Even later in the war, when the Soviets were trying to be more flexible, more pro-active, but it still ended up coming down to ‘how many troops can we get into that area.’ Whether the troops had the equipment or the training to actually do anything once they got there (and if they got there through the ambushes) had nothing to do with it. Helicopters seemed like a winner until modern anti-aircraft weapons arrived and, even against an enemy with no air force, the Soviets failed to achieve air superiority. The Soviet technological advantage was uneven — they had modern tanks and APCs, modern artillery, lots of trucks to supply the troops, but the mujahideen had decent anti-armour and anti-aircraft weapons. Short story, the Soviet steamroller failed.
And the Soviets spent a great deal of time analyzing what went wrong in Afghanistan. And the researchers at the General Staff pointed to things like poor signals security, poor security of supplies, poor security of command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) apparatus and locations, use of poorly trained troops in large numbers, artillery battalions and regiments parked almost wheel to wheel to supply fire support, inability of small unit commanders to use operational intelligence, rote tactics by almost all commanders up to, and including, colonels and generals, inability to coordinate combined arms tactics, and then the researchers pointed to what needed to be done (part of this was published in the West as a book called The Bear Went Over The Mountain).
And did the Soviet Army/Russian Army learn? It would appear not. They are still trying to use WWII tactics (the same ones which failed in Afghanistan) in Ukraine. They are making most of the mistakes that they made in Afghanistan. But now they are fighting a nation and an armed forces that has access to much of the advanced military technology that was been developed during and after the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq (and, yes, the US fell into some of the same behaviours that defeated the Soviets in Afghanistan).
So. The new Russian Army has managed, in Ukraine, to operate with poor signals security, poor security of supplies, poor security of command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) apparatus and locations, use of poorly trained troops in large numbers, artillery battalions and regiments parked almost wheel to wheel to supply fire support, inability of small unit commanders to use operational intelligence, rote tactics by almost all commanders up to, and including, colonels and generals, and an inability to coordinate combined arms tactics. And the Ukrainians are running rings around the Red Army/Soviet Army/Russian Army. Which is still fighting not the last war, but the war before that.
@ 91
To paraphrase the Deteriorata:
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most theist souls
Would scarcely get your feet wet.
Also @ 91
What did Kinzinger expect? His side of the spectrum has vilified anyone to the left of them as literal baby murders, child rapists, Stalinists, and Satanists from the start of the John Birch society, though Reagan and Dubya, culminating with Trump. Sooner or later, it was going to result with millions of Americans out to smite the great “evil” that dwells in in what should be a “Christian Nation.”
The left should have at least done the same in return (at least our accusations of misogyny, racism, superstition, and greed would be real) but nooooooooo. I’ve been told by certain liberals that fascists are people too and they just need hugs and Obamacare to make them right as rain.
Gag me with a bottle of Fair Trade Kombucha. .
Excerpts from “Donald Trump and the Sweepstakes Scammers,” [an article written by Jeff Maysh]
New Yorker link
Sleazy, pathetic scams … and Trump is still running them.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Associated Press:
“Source confirms Allen Weisselberg will implicate the Trump Organization and Trump Payroll Corp when he pleads guilty to criminal tax fraud charges in the morning — and he will agree to testify against them at trial in October if called as a witness.”
There have been competing reports, but the most recent (past few hours) seem to converge on this. It’s seemed more likely to me, but I guess we’ll see.
Associate Press link
More re #33 – “Saudi snitching app appears to have been used against jailed Leeds student”:
Lynna @ #101, I remember reading about that story when it was first emerging. It should be getting so much more media attention.
Florida is going to force a pregnant 16 year old to give birth.
Because she isn’t mature enough to make a decision about her own body and life.
The absurdity of this court ruling is obvious.
She isn’t mature enough to decide to get an abortion but she is mature enough to give birth and become a mother? There is a contradiction here.
She also lives in some sort of highly dysfunctional environment. Her parents don’t exist any more, a close friend died recently, she isn’t in school although she is in a GED program, and she doesn’t have a legal guardian.
Doesn’t look like a good place to…be a teenage mother.
Andriy Yermak:
Video at the (Twitter) link. The death toll is rising.
CREW – “Secret Service held onto Pelosi threat until after insurrection.”
The Secret Service (and DHS) appear to be in full cover-up mode. This will be ugly.
Kyiv Independent – “Illia Ponomarenko: Stop whining about the war in Ukraine”:
After DeathSantis removed an elected DA, a lot of people thought there was something drastically wrong here. There is.
.1. Warren didn’t actually do anything!!! He said some stuff about the Florida Forced Birther law. This is making speech and thoughts a crime.
.2. DeathSantis doesn’t have the authority to remove an elected DA according to people who know Florida law.
This has to be done by the state legislature.
Since the legislature is controlled by the GOP, they may well remove Warren anyway, but so far, due process hasn’t been followed.
@ 109
Average American Wingnut: “HE WAS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR BY (((GEORGE SORSOS))) TO PUNISH PATRIOTS AND CHRISTIANS TO BRING ABOUT THE WILL OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER!!!”
Yes, that’s exactly what Alex Jones has been claiming lately and I’m sure that DeSantis is pandering to that very group if he doesn’t actually believe it himself. Also, demographics may have changed since my youth, but doesn’t Florida have a significantly large Jewish population that wouldn’t stand such obvious antisemitism, or have they died off only to be replaced by the Trumpist old fart gentiles living in The Villages and the equally fascist Cuban exile community who is still pining for the return of Batista?
SC @103, I agree.
In other news: Former Trump Organization CFO pleads guilty in fraud case
Initially, Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, pleaded not guilty to tax fraud. Today, he changed his mind.
Steve Benen noted this bit of scary news (posted on Maddowblog):
As Steve Benen noted, Chuck Grassley seems to be really confused:
Political Wire:
Commentary:
Link
And that hard core of Republican voters is also slowly shrinking. I would like to see Trump’s cult diminish more rapidly, but I’ll take holding the line for now.
Trump’s cult is noisy and persistent, but they are definitely not winning over any Democrats.
Axios
Boston Children’s Hospital faces threats over gender-affirming care
Steph Solis / August 18, 2022
@ 115
All I can say is “Yikes!”
Link
Newsweek:
Ukraine update: Russia delivers dark hints of a ‘man-made catastrophe’ at occupied nuclear plant
Andrew Perpetua:
The Compact Disc is now 40 years old.
My compacted discs are 57. Nyaah, nyaah.
The Psychiatrist Who Warned Us That Donald Trump Would Unleash Violence Was Absolutely Right
Much more at the link.
Wonkette: “Godly Christian Pastor Knows How Commie Biden-Voting CNN-Loving Abortion Whores Are Made”
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657883349
Wonkette: “Here’s Tucker Making High-Pitched Tucker Giggles About Liz Cheney Getting ‘Spanked'”
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657880868
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. Their most recent summary:
Why today’s court hearing on the Mar-a-Lago affidavit matters
The DOJ confirmed that the Mar-a-Lago investigation is in its “early stages” — a point that probably ought to cause Donald Trump considerable discomfort.
GOP candidate says he was kidding about AG Garland’s ‘execution’
Carl Paladino was already one of the nation’s most controversial congressional candidates. Then he joked about the attorney general’s “execution.”
I know that I already know the answer to this. I know that. But I still have to point out the hypocrisy.
Hillary Clinton was subjected to seven (count them, SEVEN) investigations because of what happened at the temporary diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Seven congressional investigations. And the worst that can be said, officially, is that there were systemic failures (which are at least partly explained by the budget cuts for diplomatic security made by the GOP in congress (that’s added by me)) and poor performance by senior officials in two departments. One of the GOP congressmen involved in the investigation accidentally said, on camera, that they were continuing the investigations to keep it in the public eye for 2016.
Then there was the kerfluffle about the emails. Which is still brought up buy right wing news and GOP on a regular basis.
And one of the constant refrains from the right — news and GOP — is that ‘where there is smoke, there is fire.’ And all those investigations proved that Hillary Clinton was the most evilist commie socialist NAZI ever to be involved in US politics. But when Trump, the darling of the GOP (and (especially) the GOP hard-core voters) is under investigation for attempting to overthrow the US government, is under investigation for attempting to steal United States Government property, is under investigation for unlawful possession of classified materials, is the defender in a civil lawsuit regarding tax and real estate fraud in New York, has been accused of bank fraud regarding personal wealth and worth of real estate, is under investigation for tax and real estate fraud in New York, is under investigation for attempting to interfere with a legal election in Georgia, is under investigation for attempting to introduce illegal electoral college slates, and is the defender in a lawsuit charging him with responsibility for the death and injury of multiple law enforcement officers, these are all just dreamed up politically-based persecutions (yes, I know that some of these ‘under investigation’ (and one is still, as far as I know, only an accusation) are, at this point, not confirmed, but, well, damn!).
So. Why are self-admitted politically based investigations against Hillary Clinton regarding Benghazi treated as ‘well, all those investigations means that she did something wrong,’ while all of the investigations, NONE of them are investigations brought outside of the legal system (I have not listed the House January 6 Committee, so don’t go there), are treated as partisan witch hunts? This is not the same group of GOP congress-critters holding what were essentially the same hearings seven times. This is multiple investigations, in multiple jurisdictions, at multiple governmental levels.
So, I guess my real question is, are Republicans really that fucking stupid?
Oggie @127, in answer to your closing question, I would say “willfully ignorant.’
In other news, as posted by Axios:
NBC News:
So, yeah, expect a long timeline. It could be while before we see results.
New York Times: A Black family in Maryland had their home appraised at $472,000. Then they had a white man they knew pretend to be the house’s owner. Then the same house was valued at $750,000. (Other Black families have had the same experience elsewhere.)
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Oggie at 127 wrote:
In Finland we seem to have a homegrown version of the “but her emails” narrative, with the media and opposition wringing their hands about the partying habit of the Social Democratic prime minister Sanna Marin (a relatively young leftish woman leader, who has been in office for nearly three years and is facing an election months from now).
Just yesterday, another incident of Marin partying and being drunk on her free time (Gasp !!!!) was brought up, with a new added allegation about possible illicit drug use. Or allegation of partying with people who use illicit drugs. Or something. Frankly, this new twist is so far fetched it’s more akin to “Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth” or “Hunter Biden’s laptop”. Here’s a decent review of it in English:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/18/supporters-defend-finnish-pm-sanna-marins-right-to-party
Now, there’s furious debate on Finnish social media on what the blurry words shouted on the video clip actually are, and whether “flour gang” (jauhojengi) is even a real slang reference to drugs, and whether some blurry white pixels seen on the video are a coke line laid on table or not. And there’s cringey demands from some opposition politicians like this (Kärnä is a noted contrarian populist):
Also, here’s an interesting Twitter thread in Finnish:
https://twitter.com/p0mmiina/status/1560487626804690945
This isn’t getting any mainstream attention (yet), but it seems that the “Sanna Marin uses drugs” meme has been quietly cultivated on chan-type boards for months now, only to be turned into an active disinformation operation when there was something to give it the faintest plausibility. The smell of Russian information manipulation stinks to high heaven here. Finnish mainstream media jumped to the bait, and now some outlets are backtracking, while others are doubling down or quietly going back to wringing hands about mere alcohol-fueled partying.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Guardian – “James ‘Whitey’ Bulger: three charged with 2018 prison killing of Boston crime boss”:
Guardian liveblog:
Here is an unbiased evaluation of the war in Ukraine from CNN.
I spend time on Ukrainian websites and they sort of try to be objective but are definitely slanted.
.1. The Ukrainian assault to take Kherson isn’t going to happen soon. For good reasons.
The Russian tactics of war are the meatgrinder, throw bodies and tanks into the attack and take heavy casualties. They can do that because they don’t care about their soldiers, from poor areas and often minorities.
.2. Ukraine can’t do that. Their soldiers are representative of their society and often the best of it. They are taking heavy casualties right now as it is.
.3. So, their strategy is to sit back and selectively attack the Russians with guided long range equipment, guided artillery shells, Javelin etc.. anti-tank missiles, HIMARS, planes, etc..
This is going to slowly degrade the Russian’s war fighting ability.
.4. So what is going to happen next?
Who knows? It looks like more of the same, a war of attrition without much change in the lines between the two sides.
It gets cold in the winter in Ukraine. The Sea of Azov and the Black Sea even freeze over. Even in New England, the sea almost never freezes in winter.
Not a good time to camp out in a trench.
It is going to be a miserable, long winter for both the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.
New from NBN – “Tom Zoellner, Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire“:
About those competing claims concerning attacks, or planned attacks, on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant: a reporter interviewed on MSNBC says that launches of missiles can be tracked (seen?) and that the impact only 3 seconds later shows that missiles fired near the nuclear power plant are being fired by Russia, and those missiles target (land) near the power plant on purpose.
More:
Link
Ukraine Update, Key Takeaways :
Link
Additional link: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-18
Ukraine update: Another strike into Russia results in a spectacular explosion at ammunition depot
Georgia Recorder:
Federal judge allows Georgia ban on handing voters food, water to stand
BY: ROSS WILLIAMS – AUGUST 19, 2022
You can find the opinion here.
I wonder how much training would be required to allow people to hand out water.
Followed by stories about fasting, drinking less water, eating moldy food, and the fun of blackouts. Yeah, everything’s fine.
Twitter link
@ 142
Watch, while handing out bottled water to people waiting in line will be declared a form of “buying votes,” armed Proud Boy “election watchers” menacing those same people WON’T be ruled as voter intimidation.
Akira @144, too true.
Update on Ron DeSantis’ stupidity and his voter suppression tactics: In Made-For-TV Political Event, DeSantis Says 20 Votes Out Of 11.1 Million Were Criminal
Yikes. Sounds a lot like blackmail.
Louisiana attorney general withholding flood funds over abortion ban is anti-Black climate terrorism
Cartoon: Inside Trump’s treason trove
Wonkette: “New Congresswoman Nuttier Than Squirrel Poop, Greene And Boebert To Amp Up Crazy Accordingly”
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657889228
Wonkette link
I have met people who object to Dr. Suess’ ABCs because of ‘u’:
My granddaughters’ favourite book. Well, that, and Green Eggs and Ham.
Another abortion horror story in a Red State.
This woman is being forced to carry a headless, nonviable fetus to term. The abortion bans are weeks old and already it is getting hard to track the horror stories.
And they are just getting started.
“As horror stories of immeasurable suffering pour in on a near-daily basis, we can’t afford to become desensitized to any of it.”
In the coming years, the horror stories will be in the hundreds and thousands or more. And, yes, will be desensitized to them. They will only rarely make the news.
During the Bush disaster, bombings and fire bombings of family planning clinics were happening often. So often, that after a while they stopped making the national news and sometimes never even made the local news.
CNN’s new CEO met with GOP lawmakers to promise CNN will become more Republican
Axios:
Trump wants “special master” to review evidence taken from Mar-a-Lago: Attorney
Herb Scribner / August 20, 2022
tomh @153, that sounds like more stall tactics on Trump’s part.
In other news, here is the Ukraine update: Russian ambassador calls for genocide as U.S. buys grain to stave off food crisis
More at the link, including the official list of what is in the latest aid package; and there’s also a video of a “Russian” parade in downtown Kyiv (parade of lots of captured Russian vehicles, tanks, etc.).
Graham Ordered to Appear Before Atlanta Grand Jury Investigating Trump
A federal judge declined to stay her order that Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina appear on Tuesday before a special grand jury in Atlanta.
Richard Fausset / Aug. 19, 2022
Graham is still appealing for a delay to the 11th Circuit, one of the most conservative Circuit courts. Of the 11 judges, 6 were appointed by Trump, one by Bush, jr.
YouTube still hasn’t removed Spanish-language videos falsely claiming 2020 election stolen for Biden
Wonkette: “Texas Schools Just Going Full Christian Nationalist Now”
Daughter of Putin ally Alexander Dugin killed in car bomb in Moscow. Allegedly, the car belonged to her father and he was due to be with her, but changed his mind at the last moment. One of Putin’s puppet separatists in Ukraine has blamed the Ukrainian government, but on no evidence that I’ve heard of. I suppose it could be an attempt by the Ukranians to show Putin’s supporters they are not safe anywhere, but it seems unlikely the Ukranian government would risk branding themselves as terrorists. Could be domestic anti-Rascists, a dispute among Rascists, or an FSB false flag.
Further to #158,
Dugina herself was a prominent Rascist.
With drive-in movies, barbecues and ax throwing, Twin Cities churches aim to beckon people back
No time left for theology.
Chutzpah
Donald Trump says Mitch McConnell should do more to help Republicans get elected: ‘Broken down political hack’
Dugin’s daughter wasn’t just an innocent bystander.
The Ukrainian government is saying they had nothing to do with the assassination.
It’s Russia. Human life is cheap and you can die any time someone with money or power wants you dead.
I’d heard the name Alexandr Dugin before as the Russian Fascist theoretician.
That means something like the Marjorie Taylor Greene/Tucker Carlson of Russia.
He is a troll and loon.
If you try to unpack and understand what Dugin wrote in his 30 books, it is mostly troll garbage that doesn’t make much sense.
A few examples:
.1. He wants to recreate the USSR empire and fight the West, meaning Europe, South America, and North America.
Rolls eyes. Because the USSR was such a success and pleasant place to live that they had to fence it in to keep everyone from running away.
And the Cold War, which lasted most of my life, was a great example of a pointless conflict that cost a huge amount and produced nothing worthwhile.
Russia has nothing we want or need all that much and nothing to offer the West. If they would just shut up and leave us alone, we would never think about them.
.2. He hates the internet.
It is a crucial part of our modern society, it has its downsides like Facebook and its upsides, as a channel for information flows.
.3. He hates chemistry and physics.
This is equivalent to hating reality.
Chemistry and physics are our best descriptions of the real world and have proven very useful in elevating our technology from stone tools to computers and cars.
There are page and pages of equally dumb troll assertions and ideas from this guy.
He is a philosopher like Elron Hubbard, Reverent Moon, or the Reverent Jim Jones were.
Wonkdette: “Florida Protects School Children From Dictionaries And All The Naughty Words Inside Them”
NYT:
Federal Appeals Court Halts Graham Testimony Before Atlanta Grand Jury
Richard Fausset / Aug. 21, 2022
The three-judge panel consisted of two Trump appointees and one by Clinton.
A Russian soldier’s journal: ‘I will not participate in this madness’
Washington Post link
Meet the new dark money Republican hoax and troll group, ‘Citizens for Sanity’
GOP nominee for Michigan governor says rapists’ babies can provide ‘healing’ to child rape victims
There have been numerous estimates of how many people would die in a US-Russia full scale nuclear exchange.
I have several on my book shelves titled, for example, On The Beach. Their estimates are very few survivors.
This is a new one, incorporating our latest data and models.
They use the recent mega-forest fires that totally aren’t due to climate change that doesn’t exist as analogues for a nuclear exchanges.
A US Russia exchange would loft 150 Tg of soot into the atmosphere, and cool the earth by blocking sunlight.
The estimate is that 5 billion of the 8 billion people on earth would die of starvation.
For people in North America or Russia, our chances of surviving are close to zero.
(FWIW, we are as close to a major nuclear exchange as at any time in my life since the Cuban crisis.)
Isn’t that pretty much what we’re on the road to anyway? I mean, it’ll take longer, sure, but there’s no way we’re all living under the current system, nukes or not.
Is there some plausible path that doesn’t include the death of over half of humanity?
In Texas, resentment builds as border crackdown ensnares local drivers
U.S., Germany salute ‘courage’ of jailed Russia critic Navalny
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Guardian – “‘They said it was impossible’: how medieval carpenters are rebuilding Notre Dame”:
Recent podcast episodes:
War On the Rocks – “Awaiting a Ukrainian Counter-Offensive”:
The Bunker – “Murder in Moscow – Start Your Week with Gavin Esler”:
So I just learned that Kees van der Pijl, whose The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class I read years ago, has gone full-on conspiracy theorist and is tweeting that “#Bellingcat is a UK intelligence operation.”
From his Wikipedia page:
Dude had to resign his emeritus status.
From the description of his latest book:
It’s not an entirely surprising development (I might try to find the old book to see if it hinted even more strongly at his future trajectory than I realized at the time…), but it was weird to see the name pop up in this context in 2022.
Shane Goldmacher:
NYT link at the (Twitter) link.
Today show on YT – “After Weeks Of Drought, Heavy Rain And Flash Floods Hit Southwest”:
Seriously:
GOP embraces a familiar strategy with Pennsylvania’s Mastriano
Republicans saw Doug Mastriano as so extreme that they tried to derail his campaign. Now they’re rallying behind the radical election denier anyway.
Trump’s condemnations of the FBI reach a startling new level
At his age I’m just glad he has a “new chapter” to pursue.
Fauci Will Step Down As Top Medical Adviser In December To ‘Pursue Next Chapter’
Ukraine Update: The curious case of Daria Dugina’s car bomb assassination
Votebeat.org:
Election officials brace for onslaught of poll watchers
By Carrie Levine Aug 22, 2022
Followup to comment 183.
Link
Sounds to me like an all-too-convenient excuse for Russia to attack Estonia. It also sounds suspiciously like this excuse was concocted before the car bombing.
Commentary:
Crazy people living in a mafia-like nightmarish Russia. I still think Putin is likely responsible.
Shaun Walker at the Guardian – “Russian security service claim to have identified killer of Darya Dugina lacks credibility”:
Wonkette: Violent Misogynist Andrew Tate Banished From TikTok, Pretty Much Everywhere Else
https://www.wonkette.com/andrew-tate-tiktok-ban
Judge says FBI’s evidence for searching Mar-a-Lago is ‘reliable’
Tweet o’ the day.
Wall Street Journal:
HuffPost:
How 2 astrophotographers teamed up to capture a stellar image of the moon
I seriously doubt that will happen. Estonia is a member of NATO.
Reginald @193, good point.
Trump Had More Than 300 Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago
New York Times link
More at the link
Republican infighting, an update:
Link
More details at the link, including this:
That must have hurt.
DOCO ALERT : On tonight, 8.30 pm ABC TV c2, ‘Australia’s Favourite Tree’ Part 2. Details :
Australia’s Favourite Tree
Tuesday, 23 Aug
Series 1 | Episode 2
8:32 PM – 9:36 PM [64 mins]
gCCRepeated on Thursday 25 Aug at 10:35 PM, ABC TV
Dr Ann Jones and Paul West travel across Australia to investigate the extraordinary lives of Australia’s oldest, largest and most iconic trees and a panel of judges will crown Australia’s Favourite Tree! (Final)
For those in Oz. Loved the first ep of this last week.
See also :
https://www.scienceweek.net.au/favouritetree/
PS. See also although I think voting may be over now :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-07-29/vote-for-your-favourite-australian-native-tree/101210764
It is no surprise that the Covid-19 virus is evolving.
That is why we see new variants every few months.
One of the trends is evolving for shorter incubation periods.
This might be a reflection of another evolving trend, for higher transmission due to higher viral levels in the upper airways.
The Covid-19 virus pandemic is still going on and likely will go endemic and never really end.
I’m still seeing the victims although the pace as slowed and more people are getting very sick but fewer are dying.
The latest was an old friend, old in both senses. He is 80.
He caught Covid-19 virus at the start of summer and was sick but not that sick. This was because he was vaccinated. Without that, it would have likely been fatal.
Got over that.
Then came down with a severe case of shingles which went for his eyes.
Two months of intensive antivirals therapy and he can now see again and move around.
It turns out that Covid-19 viral infections can reactivate the chickenpox virus. Formally, we can’t say definitely that his infection caused his shingles but the timing is such that this is probably what happened.
The shingles vaccine is looking like a good idea to him now.
Followup to comment 195.
Link
Why a legislator in a battleground state is abandoning the GOP
A Colorado state senator switched parties yesterday, citing the GOP’s conspiracy theories on elections and climate. It’s a move with national relevance.
How bad is Team Trump’s new court filing? A conservative professor said many actual lawyers “are giggling at Trump’s motion, and how poorly it was done.”
Russia has cut off its natural gas deliveries to western Europe.
The Europeans were threatening to stop buying Russian natural gas anyway. At least someday in the indefinite future.
The price of natural gas in Europe is going up rapidly.
Needless to say, it is going to be a cold winter in parts of western Europe, mostly Germany.
The lesson here is obvious. Russia is an unreliable trading partner and it is suicidal to depend on Russian energy. Why buy natural gas from a country that keeps threatening to vaporize you with nuclear weapons anyway?
There are alternatives but nothing that is going online in a month. Germany has significant gas reserves that they refuse to drill for because fracking is a scary word.
So many reasons to get off of fossil fuels.
I doubt if either approach can produce a change in direction. The shift of “respectable centre-right” parties to the conspiracist far right is AFAIK a new phenomenon; previously, right back to the 1930s, we’ve seen new far-right parties arise and take vote-share from the centre-right (and often from the left too), while centre-right parties have at most shifted rightwards to shore up their vote without abandoning liberal-democratic norms altogether. But with both the Republicans in the USA, and Fidesz in Hungary, we’ve seen a more-or-less complete transformation to far-right conspiracism. Arguably, the Conservatives in the UK and Canada, the Liberal-National Coalition in Australia, the LDP in Japan and maybe others I’m not aware of are at various points along the same trajectory. I suspect there’s a point beyond which the shift is irreversible, and the party must be destroyed if it is not to destroy democracy.
raven@204,
Restarting fracking in Germany now would do very little to prevent shortages this winter. And there’s an excellent reason for not doing so – there’s something called “climate change” going on, and the more fossil fuels are extracted, the worse it’s going to get. Russia invading Ukraine hasn’t repealed any of the laws of physics.
Team Trump leaks National Archives letter, hurts its own cause
The leak of a May letter from the National Archives to Team Trump about classified documents is a classic example of a political “own goal.”
Campaign news, as posted by Steve Benen:
Trump finally makes a move against the FBI in court—and the result is universal laughter
Wonkette: Yes, Junior, Tell Us More About Which State Secrets Would Be SO COOL For Daddy To Steal!
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657901845
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog (which is now closed). Their last summary:
Guardian – “Twice as many people died with Covid in UK this summer compared with 2021”:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there (further to Lynna’s #112):
Tony Ortega on Substack – “Academics line up to help Scientology gaslight the US Supreme Court”:
Guardian liveblog:
“Breaking news in Gov. Whitmer kidnapping case: Jury finds Adam Fox and Barry Croft guilty of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. Croft also guilty of possessing an unregistered destructive device”
Meduza – “Another assassination attempt on employee of occupation administration in Kherson”:
Josh Marshall re the Axios report that Rick Scott is vacationing on a yacht in Italy:
RFE/RL tweeted a video about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed on this date in 1939.
The Russian MFA also tweeted about it today, bizarrely.
@ 220
And nine days later they started WWII.
This tweet has a screenshot of the Russian MFA’s tweet.
“your reminder that Reality Winner swiped one document and was quickly arrested and did four years in prison. no polite requests. no gently-worded letters. no pretty-pleases. no second chances. no months-long negotiations. one document. four years”
NBC News:
“Moderate” Republicans has been leaving the Republican Party for decades. See for example It’s My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America (2006).
The GOP has been on an accelerating positive feedback loop of crazy since the days of Ronald “The Great Communicator” Reagan. If the person mentioned in your story felt at home in the party up until Jan 6 2021, just think of all the evil that they were OK with. Voodoo economics, tax breaks for billionaires, illegal wars for oil, increasing power for religious wackos, repeated shutdown of the U.S. government, and on and on.
In 2009, Barack Obama was awarded a Nobel peace prize just for not being George W. Bush.
Rebuking new climate law, Herschel Walker asks: ‘Don’t we have enough trees around here?’
CNN – “Former Louisville detective pleads guilty to federal charges in Breonna Taylor case”:
Bolts – “What to Watch in the August 23 Primaries”:
Some have already been filled in as polls are now closed in Florida.
And here’s the Daily Kos’s live coverage of tonight’s elections.
More on the Russian kidnapping of Ukrainian children.
This is BTW, quite disturbing and it gets worse the more you look at it.
The source for this claim is Russian which means it is likely real.
.1. The number of children involved is in the thousands.
.2. It is not clear what happened to their parents. Or other relatives.
They are from Mariupol which is destroyed. There are thousands of dead civilians buried in new graveyards there. I’ve seen photos and video of them. They are very large.
.3. The places they are being sent to are remote. I looked up ” Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo and Altai Krai.” These are all in Siberia.
This can’t be an accident. They don’t want these children around and don’t want them available to be retrieved in the future.
.4. They seem to be having a hard time finding people to adopt these children.
Not surprising since Russia is poor.
One of the signs of a dysfunctional society is the number of children in orphanages. Russia has a high number of institutionalized children (see below).
Not a sign of a healthy society.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their most recent summary:
DK – “Democrats hold key New York swing seat in massive upset with campaign focused on abortion rights”:
Jared Smith, the idiot Florida judge who decided a teenager was too “immature” to get an abortion (see raven’s #104 above; she testified that she got Bs in school but he said her GPA was 2.0 so her testimony “evinces either a lack of intelligence or credibility, either of which weigh against a finding of maturity pursuant to the statute”), lost his race to challenger Nancy Jacobs.
Robert Reich in the Guardian – “The changes at CNN look politically motivated. That should concern us all”:
I don’t like this piece in the Guardian! – “I was obsessed with the shimmering rainbow glory of tropical fish – then I found drag.”
I was hoping it would celebrate both these things, but instead the fish are contemptuously tossed aside.
OK so far, but already beginning to take a solipsistic turn.
At 15, after a particularly disturbing nightmare, they once again turned to their aquarium for comfort:
WTAF? They were the caretaker of these fish, who they professed to love! The fish no longer served their emotional purpose, so they could be destroyed or abandoned to die? I’m glad they did quit their job, if this was the nature of their alleged “love” for the animals. (I have sympathy for the 15-year-old, but the person writing this is an adult: “Amrou Al-Kadhi is a British-Iraqi writer, drag performer and film-maker.”)
I’m happy that they found this. But also, animals don’t exist for our use; nor should we impose our self-centered fantasies on them, much less punish or destroy them for being real, independent beings and not metaphors.
Guardian liveblog:
Guardian liveblog:
Twitter thread by Ruth Deyermond (links and images at the link):
From the Guardian liveblog summary:
Some new podcast episodes:
Maintenance Phase – “The Scarsdale Diet Murder feat. Sarah Marshall”:
Fever Dreams – “Andrew Tate Explained w/ Nikki McCann Ramirez”:
The Daily – “The Rise of Workplace Surveillance”:
Followup to SC’s comment 234.
Cherry-picking a few more bits of good news, (in addition to Democrat Pat Ryan winning in a special election upset by defeating Republican Marc Molinaro 51-49 in New York’s 19th District, which SC already discussed):
Trump confesses to a crime … again.
Link
@ 242
I was listening to Knowledge Fight this morning and they mentioned Loomer’s defeat and how she’s refusing to concede and claiming “voter fraud.”
Akira @244, yeah. Loomer is determined to reveal that she can be stupid and anti-democracy on all levels. So glad to see her defeated. I don’t think she’ll get anywhere with her “voter fraud” claims.
In other news, here are some excerpts from the latest Ukraine Update, (a followup of sorts to SC’s 239):
Link
Democrats campaign on ‘rights and freedoms’ while Republicans look for more to take away
The Biden Administration Just Announced Sweeping Student Loan Debt Cancellation
Utah Court Strikes Down Ban On Transgender Girls On School Sports Teams
August 24, 2022
RelgionClause
@ 245
She doesn’t have to get anywhere and I’m certain she knows that. All she has to do is to keep the idea circulating in conservative circles until they believe any election where a right-winger loses is “rigged,” justifying voter suppression laws (at best) or another insurrection (at worst).
@ 247
Sadly, this isn’t going to help everyone who got stuck taking loans during Bush’s regime when public student lending was handed over to private institutions.
From the closing summary at the Guardian liveblog:
Tweet o’ the day.
“Estonian Prime Minister @kajakallas just now on on @cnni said high inflation in Estonia is ‘a war tax that we can easily pay in euros, while Ukrainians pay in blood’.”
Guardian – “At least 22 killed in Russian strike on rail station on Ukraine’s independence day”:
Daily Kos – “Donald Trump and Dr. Oz teamed up to pressure FDA into skipping tests, pushing ineffective drugs”:
Daily Kos – “‘I think he’s just had it’: Oz campaign gets nasty in wake of crudités-gate.”
Re the text of the ruling @ tomh’s #248 – so nice to see the reasoned, evidence-based argument laid out so simply and clearly in a court decision, especially one from Utah!
“Emily Maitlis says BBC rebuke over Dominic Cummings remarks made no sense”:
Humor from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
New York Times:
Politico:
Congress may be on a recess, but the Jan. 6 committee is working.
Wall Street Journal:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Guardian – “UK’s former Myanmar ambassador arrested in Yangon, report says”:
Guardian – “Starbucks creating ‘culture of fear’ as it fires dozens involved in union efforts”:
More at the link.
Dystopian corpspeak meets 19th-century union busting:
Stay Tuned – “In Brief: Trump’s Declassification Defense (with Bradley Moss)”:
Kyiv Independent:
Sec. Blinken tweeted: “Russia’s missile strike on a train station full of civilians in Ukraine fits a pattern of atrocities. We will continue, together with partners from around the world, to stand with Ukraine and seek accountability for Russian officials.”
Here’s a clip (Twitter link) from Maitlis’ speech @ #259.
Pfffft…Only the defeated ever face punishment for “war crimes” and this whole thing looks like it’s going to grind down into years and years of attrition until everyone gives up and let’s Putin (or his successor) have their way. Besides, if the USA is never punished for the atrocities we’ve committed during our bouts of military adventurism, why would Russia?
Guardian liveblog:
Hanna Liubakova: “Today #Belarus marks Independence Restoration Day. On this day 31 years ago, the Declaration on State Sovereignty came into force. Lukashenka was among the 3% of MPs who did not vote for independence. We see it today since he and Putin are the main threats to our sovereignty”
WRAL/AP – “Soviet-era monument’s iconic obelisk comes down in Latvia”:
Here’s video of it coming down. I’m enjoying these videos immensely (although in this case I worry about any animals in the pond). I hope someone makes a montage of them from the US, UK, Eastern Europe, etc.
Sarah Rainsford, BBC:
Video at the (Twitter) link.
Kaja Kallas:
“SCOOP: Starbucks illegally withheld raises and benefits from baristas at hundreds of unionized and unionizing stores, according to the NLRB.
The board seeks to require CEO Howard Schultz to read a statement to workers about their labor rights”
WaPo link at the (Twitter) link. (See also #266 above.)
The Republican plan on inflation is still nowhere to be found
Voter fraud at a Florida GOP stronghold leads to a light sentence (again)
Quite a few Republican voters were caught casting illegal ballots in the 2020 race. In each case, judges didn’t exactly throw the book at them.
Opposite opinions from federal courts, one by a Clinton appointee, one by a Trump appointee. This often means it will end up in the Supreme Court.
Court Enjoins Idaho Abortion Ban When It Conflicts With Federal Emergency Treatment Requirement
Court Enjoins Enforcement In Texas Of HHS Emergency Abortion Guidance
Religion Clause
Ukraine update: Meanwhile, in Russia … Putin’s war brings a ‘catastrophically’ failing economy
Who thought it was a good idea to fight a war around a nuclear power plant anyway?
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was cut off from the power grid.
If the nuclear reactors shut down, it takes a month to cool them down to where they don’t need flowing cooling water. Which takes electricity.
That is one reason why they should stay connected to the power grid.
If the reactors shut down, they still need electricity from somewhere to run the cooling water pumps.
<a href=”>Florida voters decide abortion-denying judge not ‘mature’ enough to continue on the bench
Link
Text quoted above is excerpted from a much longer article.
From 2017:
Dr Oz: White Mulberry Health Benefits
Dr Oz: White Mulberry Leaves Block Sugar
From today’s NYT:
Death of Rep. Tom McClintock’s Wife Tied to White Mulberry Leaf
Christine Chung / Aug. 25, 2022
And frauds like Dr. Oz become multi-millionaires from these scams.
NBC News:
We have to wait just a bit longer.
Followup to comment 279.
Reuters:
Fair to middling economic news. Rick Scott, (and other Republicans), won’t like that.
NBC News:
Good news.
NBC News:
Bad news.
Why Team Trump’s interference with the Covid response still matters
The Trump administration’s political interference with the Covid response happened in 2020, but for a few reasons, it’s still highly relevant in 2022.
FBI adds to Jan. 6 arrests by taking ‘B Squad’ militiamen who led attack on tunnels into custody
New York Times: “The U.S. State Department and Yale identify 21 detention sites in Russian-controlled territory.”
For those who are following this, the results of ‘Australia’s Fave Tree poll” are bing live blogged and announced here now going in reverse order :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-26/australias-favourite-native-tree-winner-count-down-live-updates/101372644
Not only that, but those white conservative men broke the law INTENTIONALLY!
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Fuck. Off.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian US liveblog. From there:
Here is our daily threat to use nuclear weapons against someone for something.
The dictator of Belarus, Lukashenko, is claiming that his airplanes have been converted to carry nuclear weapons. “God forbid, if there are some serious provocations against Belarus, we have defined the targets already. We know about their decision-making centres. ”
Pretty vague. Those decision-making centres are probably cities like Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga, Talin, Berlin, Kyiv, and London.
We of course, have no idea that the capital city of Belarus is Minsk and don’t have any maps of Belarus.
FWIW, I don’t believe for one second that Russia will ever transfer nuclear weapons to Belarus. Lukashenko is very unpopular with 85% of the population against him. He is only propped up by the Belarusian army and mostly the Russian army.
It wouldn’t take much for those nuclear weapons to end up in Western leaning hands.
Guardian – “US government diet guidelines ignores climate crisis”:
The Guardian has an abridged transcript of Emily Maitlis’ lecture @ #s 259 and 271.
Guardian – “Hungary officials warn education is becoming ‘too feminine’”:
What the hell? Guardian liveblog:
Guardian – “Revealed: leaked video shows Amy Coney Barrett’s secretive faith group drove women to tears”:
More at the link.
The other ‘F’ word: Biden sees Trumpism as akin to ‘semi-fascism’
President Biden equated radical Trumpism with “semi-fascism,” and while Republicans weren’t pleased, the underlying conversation seems worth having.
Link
Trump’s TRUTH Social Owes its Web Hosting Service Millions and Hasn’t Made a Payment in Months
I couldn’t even begin to excerpt this new Bellingcat piece – “Socialite, Widow, Jeweller, Spy: How a GRU Agent Charmed Her Way Into NATO Circles in Italy” or even Elliot Higgins’ entertaining Twitter thread about it:
Guardian liveblog:
White House shines light on Republicans who are criticizing student debt cancellation after getting their PPP loans forgiven
The White House used its Twitter account to point the finger at a handful of GOP lawmakers.
The Guardian US liveblog (linked @ #296) has a link to the unsealed Trump-search affidavit.
Apologies – the link is to the order to unseal the affidavit. Still waiting for the affidavit itself.
Guardian:
The affidavit has now been unsealed and is available at the Guardian liveblog.
Here’s a link to the affidavit
Or not. Their link doesn’t work. They’re pretty discombobulated at the Guardian liveblog right now, LOL.
Thanks, tomh @ #313.
Heavily redacted affidavit says 184 classified docs found at Trump residence
From the affidavit:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/read-redacted-trump-affidavit-is-released
From the affidavit: “HUMINT Control System, or ‘HCS’, is an SCI control system designed to protect
intelligence information derived from clandestine human sources, commonly referred to as ‘human intelligence’. The HCS control system protects human intelligence-derived information and information relating to human intelligence activities, capabilities, techniques, processes, and procedures.”
Followup to comments 312 through 318.
Posted by readers of the articles:
Holy Shit! This is the kind of information that gets people killed.
The report from #301 – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – “Inventing Anna: The Tale of a Fake Heiress, Mar-a-Lago and an FBI Investigation.”
Affidavit for Mar-a-Lago search: ‘fruits of crime,’ ‘obstruction,’ and ‘criminal confederates’
Guardian liveblog:
The news today is a bit much.
Wonkette: “The Mar-a-Lago Affidavit Is Here.”
Hmmm. I wonder what else is missing? Remember, these documents are numbered. The creating office of the document keeps track of where each numbered product goes, who reads it, when it is returned, and disposal (filing or destruction) of each copy.
Oggie @ #321, it’s jawdropping.
Lynna @ #305, I don’t understand why RightForge hasn’t just shut it down.
Andrew Weissmann:
Retweet by Neal Katyal:
Scroll down here: https://twitter.com/neal_katyal
to view a video of Neal Katyal explaining the significance of the unsealed affidavit. It’s a good video. It is only about a minute long, but Katyal covers a lot of ground in that minute.
SC @328, yeah, I was wondering the same thing. If Trump is not paying the bill, then the services provided should just be shut down. Cut it off.
Steve Benen hammers home this point:
Facts:
The letter by Corchran (sp?) entered as evidence as part of the affidavit is breathtaking. It should be used in law schools for ages to come. Specifically, it should be used in law schools as an example of professional ignorance of the law. The President of the United States is above the law?
Maybe they are laying the groundwork in the hopes that it goes all the way to SCOTUS and that the Trump judges will declare that the POTUS is above the law. Which they won’t. Not even for Trump. Because they know that Biden (or any other President with a D) would also be covered.
“On live Russian TV, propagandist Solovyev calls Olaf Scholz a ‘nazi’ and a follower of Hitler, suggests striking Ukrainian training camps in Germany.”
Video at the (Twitter) link.
Ukraine update: Russia vs. Russia as Putin adds a host of paper soldiers
From HuffPost</a href>
Gee. What a surprise. Despite lots of evidence showing that Trump and his ‘lawyers’ were lying about cooperation, Trump continues to lie. And he attacks the judge. Who he appointed.
“WE GAVE THEM MUCH” of what they had illegally stolen from the US Government. And kept even more of it in an unsecure location. Some of the documents he illegally had, stored improperly, in an unsecured location, were given back to their rightful owner — the National Archives. He still has no idea that what he did is wrong, illegal, and dangerous.
Of course he wanted an unredacted affidavit for his personal use, not necessarily for public release, so that he would know who the disloyal traitors are.
What a rapidly oxidizing rectum.
Sorry I borked the hatemail* tags. My daily homage to Tpyos.
html
Tweet o’ the day.
He knows it is wrong, and illegal. The endless deflection and ever shifting excuses are admissions of guilt. It’s just that that he has never once been held to account for lying, thieving, income tax evasion, colluding with Russia, attempting a coup, etc
Now it’s time for all those dominoes to start falling, and the people in charge of all these investigations are pissed off and far smarter than him.
It’s obvious that several branches of lawyers are cooperating in getting him convicted. Pissing off the DOD, DOJ, CIA, and FBI is supernova grade stupidity.
Today’s Calvin and Hobbes at gocomics.com has the perfect description of Donald Trump:
I pray for
<
blockquote>The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t and the incapacity to tell the difference.
Texas can’t bar adults under 21 from carrying handguns, federal judge rules
By Derek Hawkins / August 26, 2022
Trump’s lasting legacy.
Reuters – “EXCLUSIVE Pennsylvania candidate Mastriano posed in Confederate uniform at Army War College”:
“As a state senator, Mastriano represents Chambersburg, Pa., which the confederates burned to the ground in 1864″
One response to another tweet about this was something like “So he won’t mind losing, then.”
Kyiv Independent:
What air defence doing, man.
More terrorism from the right wingnuts.
These terrorists claimed (flat out lied) that a hospital was doing hysterectomies on Trans children.
Which they don’t do.
Trans surgery isn’t done on children. The usual practice is to wait until age 18 or later.
Intelligence agencies fear that Trump has been leaking information on U.S. spies overseas
From MSNBC
And, I would add, the Trump Dream Team (the team seems to be a really bad dream at this point) is populated by lawyers who are not even good enough to be second tier. They know they won’t get paid but are, most likely, looking to use their representation of Trump as a footstool to elected office as MAGA Fascists.
And, as Wife just told me, ‘Doing a post-mortem on a dumpster fire is messy.”
The New York Times Drops A 100 Megaton Print Bomb On One Donald J. Trump.
Okay, I was wrong. Those documents regarding HUMINT DID get people killed.
Trump is a traitor.
I remember way back in the fall of 2016, Trump went off the deep end when Saturday Night Live did a live open in which someone playing the Russian ambassador called Trump “Not the candidate, the Manchurian Candidate.”
How Much Longer Can Trump Outrun the Law? The Week in Editorial Cartoons, Blowback Edition.
Scroll down to view all the cartoons.
Wonkette: “Ron DeSantis Suspends Four Broward School Board Members, Appoints Loyal Republicans”
New York Times:
re Lynna @348:
Yeah, it would have been over because he would have granted everything to the USSR. That is how “great” his negotiation skills are.
Link
I think it is a safe bet that Ted Cruz could not do a barista’s job.
I KNOW I couldn’t do that job. I have listened to baristas taking orders. And it amazes me that ANY of the product even comes close to matching what the customer wants. Just the vocabulary needed is amazing.
Then again, almost any job requires a special vocabulary. When my son, his wife, and my daughter (all of whom work in a warehouse (making far more money and with far less stress then their degree fields)) start talking about work, I am lost halfway through the first sentence. I developed two professional vocabularies. One for work at the park, a second for federal incidents (like forest fires). Wife and son have both worked in restaurants. A whole ‘nuther vocabulary.
I guess, even for Cruz, Congress requires a specialized vocabulary — definitions of socialism, communism, fascism, radicalism and capitalism that all have little or no relationship to the historical meanings, historical and academic usages, or, even, reality. My whole time studying history, I never knew that ‘socialism’ meant “Things I, and my Constituents, do not Like!”
Actually, socialism means “Things that would help my constituents but I do not like!”
Arguably, that would have been a good thing! It would have given Gorbachev more leeway to enact his liberalising reforms, which were bound to cause short-term problems. While people in much of eastern Europe benefited from the collapse of the USSR, it intensified the shift to the right across the rich capitalist countries by removing a potential alternative which acted as a restraint on the greed of the 1%. And while Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is Putin’s responsibility, a revanchist Russia was an obvious possible outcome of the USSR’s disintegration.
Ukraine Update: Russia fields its new volunteer battalion, and it’s … it’s just weird
Marc Caputo:
Armando (NDK):
emptywheeel:
Cartoon: Jubilee for me, but not for thee
Thirty million Pakistanis endure a ‘climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.
@ Lynna #360
There were predictions that this judge would do something like this. She was appointed after Trump lost the election, and is known as among the most right-wing of all his judicial appointees.
Voters with disabilities face new barriers over Texas voting law
STEPHEN PAULSEN / August 27, 2022
Courthouse News Service
tomh @363, thanks for the additional information.
tomh @364, I hear that. Disabled people are being treated like second class citizens. They have every right to vote … and the government has an obligation to make voting convenient and easy.
Missouri turns back the hands of time: First an abortion ban and now, corporal punishment in schools
Whelp… tomorrow will be the second attempt at the surgery I was supposed to have earlier this month. Due to a worldwide recall, I couldn’t get ahold of the bottle of magnesium citrate need to clean out my system. Instead I had to drink down 238 grams of Myralax dissolved in 64 ounces of Gatorade. While it didn’t make me nauseous like the magnesium citrate did, its going to be a while until I can look at a bottle of sports drink. I took my the first of my two pre-op showers using surgical soap. I had a sumptuous dinner of beef broth and lime gelatin. Now I’m lying in bed wondering how much sleep I’m going to get tonight. This going to be fun.
On today’s launch of the first Artemis (SLS) flight there’s a good news article linked here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2022/08/28/unpalatable-on-all-counts/#comment-2146989
Plus this from space dot com :
https://www.space.com/artemis-1-moon-mission-nasa-zero-hour-preview
in addition to Scott Manley’s great 15 minute long video here about it.
Best wishes for your surgery and commiserations on the unpleasant but necessary preliminaries, Akira@367!
Well, the first scheduled Artemis launch has been scrubbed for today. Been waiting a lifetime to see us return to the Moon, I’ll have to wait a few more days. Could be much worse. Still, sigh.
Source : https://www.nasa.gov/content/live-coverage-of-nasas-artemis-i-mission-to-the-moon
Best wishes, Akira!
Best wishes from me too Akira MacKenzie.
I got a couple of hours before I go in. Nervous as heck.
Hope the surgery’s going well, Akira!
Oh, you haven’t gone in yet! Best of luck with the surgery, Akira!
Quoted in Lynna’s #355:
It seems within the realm of possibility that Cruz doesn’t know what a barista is and thinks it means someone who frequents bars.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
“The most prominent collaborator assassinated since the Russian invasion : Aleksey Kovalyov, a Ukrainian lawmaker from Zelensky’s party who switched sides to become deputy head of the Russian administration in Kherson, overseeing grain theft, has been gunned down in his home.”
More on the Ukrainian offensive in Kherson. They are claiming early successes as the Russians flee.
This surprises me a little.
The Ukrainians are going to take heavy casualties in this sort of fighting. So are the Russians but the Russian leadership doesn’t care about them and they are all replaceable.
Reportedly, the Russians have fled the battlefield so far.
If true, that would be the smart thing to do.
It is like the Vietnam war.
Who wants to be the last soldier killed in a war so pointless that we were going to lose it anyway? That means your death is absolutely meaningless and accomplishes nothing. At the end of the Vietnam war, the US soldiers were just sitting in their bases and trying to not get killed before they could go home.
Yikes, Akira. Get it done, get it over with, and get better!
“Ukrainian HIMARS and M270s continue to hit Russian forward positions all across the Kherson frontline.”
Meduza – “‘True patriots are willing to defend the Motherland with arms in hand’ Russia’s ‘patriotic’ curriculum for the upcoming school year”:
Akira @367, best of luck. Hope all goes well. Let us know.
Ukraine Update: Ukraine launches major Kherson counteroffensive
Republicans now want people to believe the Mar-a-Lago investigation is proof of “election interference.” Even by 2022 standards, this is deeply silly.
Lindsey Graham expects ‘riots in the streets’ if Trump is charged
In Lindsey Graham’s vision, if Donald Trump is indicted and there’s violence, Americans should blame law enforcement, not the suspected criminal.
FBI completes review of docs, cutting Trump legal strategy off at the pass
I will emphasize that the FBI had a “filter team” that looked through the material to see if any “privilege” applied to any of the documents, and to see if any of the documents should be returned to Trump. The filter team was independent, not associated with the investigation.
Europe’s Plan to Wean Itself off Russian Gas Just Might Work
Russia has made good on threats to reduce supply—leaving the EU in a bind.
Wonkette: “Black Duke Volleyball Players Served Racist Abuse During Brigham Young Match”
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657957812
Wonkette: “Herschel Walker Gonna Keep Talking Raphael Warnock Into Another Senate Term”
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657957394
Greenland ice sheet set to raise sea levels by nearly a foot, study finds.
Washington Post link
New research suggests the massive ice sheet is already set to lose more than 3 percent of its mass, even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today.
U.N. inspectors head to Ukrainian nuclear plant at the center of radiation disaster fears
The International Atomic Energy Agency mission is set to arrive at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia power plant in southern Ukraine later this week.
More at the link.
Dan Froomkin at Press Watch – “Coverage of Ron DeSantis shows the media has learned nothing from Trump”:
Much more at the link.
“Poland asks France to urgently increase weapons deliveries, financial aid for Ukraine.
The call was made by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki during his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Aug. 29 in Paris.”
“There’s a Russian disinformation shitstorm going down 0n Telegram at the moment.
Kherson offensive has them spooked”
Thanks everyone. I just finished with the nurses and now I’m waiting to talk to the doctors. Unfortunately, they are are behind schedule… grrrrr.
“NEW: U.S. believes that any additional troop strength that Russia can muster by the end of the year may not improve overall combat strength in Ukraine: senior U.S. defense official
Putin has announced plans to add 137,000 personnel to the Russian military by January 2023.”
Akira, so you’re out of surgery?
I’m still waiting to go in. There’s a bit of a delay. I spoke with the doctor and I’m waiting on the anesthesiologist. I’m told everything should be ready for me in about an hour.
The word “should” is doing A LOT of heavy lifting.
Followup to SC’s comment 393.
Trump Pretty Sure Ron DeSantis Going Single White Fascist On Him
https://www.wonkette.com/-2657958331
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
NBC News:
Also from NBC News:
Ben Collins:
Video at the (Twitter) link.
Iran sends first shipment of drones to Russia for use in Ukraine.
Washington Post link
Russian cargo planes left Tehran 10 days ago with UAVs, some of which have already malfunctioned, U.S. and allied officials say.
AFP live tweets over the last several hours:
Video from Baghdad (Twitter link).
Kyiv Independent:
RFE/RL:
Video at the (Twitter) link. “Today it’s a ‘Z’ sticker, and tomorrow you will come with a tank to my land, to Kazakh land.”
Happy dance – CNN – “US Secret Service Assistant Director Tony Ornato leaves agency”:
“President Biden will deliver a prime-time address in Philadelphia Thursday on the fight for democracy in America and ‘the continued battle for the soul of the nation’, a White House official said Monday.”
Biden gave a speech to the American Constitution Society during the 2016 campaign that I remember thinking was very good. I don’t have time to listen to it again to confirm my recollection, but here’s the video.
I live..
Akira MacKenzie @ # 411 (how apropos!): I live..
Good deal – keep doing that!
Yay, Akira! Hope you’re feeling OK.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From there:
This website from Ukraine is claiming that the Russians killed 90,000 in Mariupol.
I tried to determine the reliability of this source with Google. It’s a safe site but the reliability is unknown.
The story isn’t made up but the source is the Mariupol morgue, whoever they are.
The numbers aren’t unbelievable though. Mariupol is all but completely destroyed and almost everyone is gone one way or another. I’ve seen photos and videos of the new graveyards.
They are very large.
I looked it up.
The irony was that Mariupol was the most pro-Russia city in Ukraine. It was 90% native Russian speakers.
I’m sure the ones alive still speak Russian. I’m also sure they aren’t pro-Russia any more.
OK kids, here’s the sitrep: They had to take the whole kidney, but that was the most likely result. They also checked the surrounding orders and again found that spread. Thanks to the wonders of modern opioids, I was able to sleep with limited interruptions. Doctor’s sayy labs and vitals look good. And I just had a superstitious breakfast of organ jello and grape juice.
They may keep for a few day. Fortunately I have my phone, a charger, my air pods, and a few books to entertain me.
Thanks for all the well wish and see you all soon!
EDIT: “…surrounding organs…”
Edit: …found that nothing has spread…
Forgive the typos.
Well, that was good news at least.
Glad to hear that you are still with us and the worst is over with.
FWIW, an old friend of mine had the same thing, kidney cancer and one kidney removed.
That was 30 years ago.
He is 85 and has his share of medical problems. Kidney cancer isn’t one of them.
Best wishes for a full recovery Akira!
It’s absolutely understandable for Ukranians to feel that way, but “closing the sky” over Ukraine would require bombing targets within Russia, as well as shooting down Russian planes. The risk that that would lead to nuclear armageddon is and was just too great. Not only those hundred thousand, but hundreds of millions or even thousands of millions more, might already be dead.
Neil Hauer:
From the Guardian two weeks ago – “‘A referendum is not right’: occupied Kherson looks to uncertain future”:
If it’s true that Stremousov has left the city (there are Kremlin trolls in the responses to Hauer’s tweet claiming he just decided to visit Russia right now, LOL) and it’s not a fake-out to convince the many people gunning for him in Kherson that he’s no longer around, it would be a good sign.
That edit was a relief! Best wishes for your recuperation.
Actually, even if it’s a fake-out by Stremousov it’s a good sign.
Guardian liveblog:
“This intercepted call published by GUR reveals discussion between two Russian soldiers in Kharkiv Oblast who have been surrounded, and discussing a defeat of a 7th company, but no more details were provided.”
Audio with translation at the (Twitter) link.
@ 424
Yeah, I’m still a little groggy. Sorry for the scare.
Hahaha – more on Stremousov – Kyiv Post:
Kyle Cheney:
Screenshots at the (Twitter) link.
Glad to hear from Akira that the disease was surgically removed from his body, and that it had NOT spread. Still a tough situation, but we are glad to hear some good news.
“In case you have lost track of the latest nonsensical conspiracy theory on Fox, it’s that Biden’s support for Ukraine is designed to ‘completely destroy the West and make way for China’s global dominance’. Also, Russia is winning and should be negotiated with.”
Video of Tucker Carlson at the (Twitter) link.
“Explosions are taking place all over southern #Ukraine. This video is from #Tavriisk, #Khersonska Oblast.”
Twitter link. That’s a lot of explosions.
Pjotr Sauer at the Guardian liveblog:
Followup to SC’s comment 409.
Secret Service official who told story of Trump attacking driver is resigning without testifying
Ukraine update: Kherson counteroffensive off to a flying start, and Russian city boils over in panic
The Underground Bunker (Tony Ortega) – “For Q patriots, Trump is still president and always will be.”
One exchange:
“Fuck your commiealendars! This year ends when Trump says it ends!”
Oh, look, another opportunity to run a grift.
J6 insurrectionists tap into right-wing gullibility about ‘political prisoners’ to enrich themselves
Ukrainian MoD Oleksii Reznikov:
His profile pic is now Oleksii Fellaznikov. (See #19 above for background.)
Yep, that’s an accurate description:
Link
Guardian – “Saudi woman jailed for 45 years over social media use, says group”:
Kyiv Post – “The Information War of Ukraine Falters”:
Arizona Indigenous and rural organizers beat back Republican extremism
France 24 (I don’t see it in English) – “En Iran, la répression des ultraconservateurs contre les cinéastes va crescendo”:
They got me walking around. Getting up hell due to the incisions. They also had to pump my abdominal cavity with carbon dioxide so the robot can maneuver. Not all the gas escape so when sitting or standing for too long it rises causing my right shoulder to hurt. It should eventually pass through my system, but in the meantime… ouch.
Not to enjoy my coup of broth.
Cup of broth.
NBC News
Senate GOP candidate Blake Masters suggests diversity at Federal Reserve is harming the economy
Masters, of Arizona, defended the remarks in a video and lashed out at what he called President Joe Biden’s “affirmative action regime.”
Haven’t heard much about that Kherson offense since it started.
Now we know why.
There is a news blackout for a week.
I’ve read some rumors here and there but with a news blackout, their reliability is too unknown to repeat.
Phillips O’Brien:
In one of the DK updates Lynna posted recently (I think), there was an insightful suggestion that they speak in code, so towns they talk about being under Russian shelling are those they (semi-)control. I can’t seem to find it. I hope that’s the case here, since it’s a long list (screenshot at the Twitter link).
Debunking some of Trump’s nonsense:
Link
Herschel Walker cosplays as a sheriff and gets hilarious blowback
Scroll down at the link to see many responses that mocked Walker for his ridiculous claim.
Examples:
https://twitter.com/jzembik/status/1564651710437621761
https://twitter.com/NovusDivus/status/1564636790253920259
SC @ # 448: … regular troops refuse to fight.
Which reminds me of a question I hope you, or others who’ve followed the Ukraine war more closely than I have, might answer.
Shortly after the Russian invasion began, we saw multiple stories about Zelensky offering a large (by grunt standards) cash reward to those who deserted from the Russian army, along with housing and other perks. Since then, nothing (that I’ve seen) further, not even anonymized interviews with any such deserters.
Did that offer expire, or prove fraudulent? Did no potential side-switchers take it up? Did Kyiv run out of money and retract it? Or are the beaches south of Odesa packed with buff young Russian ex-soldiers sipping piña coladas?
New York Times link
Nuclear Inspectors Face Challenges in Reaching Zaporizhzhia Plant
Mikhail Gorbachev has reportedly died. (TBH, I didn’t know he was still alive.)
New York Times article: “Serena Williams Rises to the Occasion, Like So Many Times Before”
Williams met a valedictory night at the U.S. Open with a win that was fitting, and with a second-round match on Wednesday, the farewell party at Arthur Ashe Stadium continues.
Biden makes plea for assault weapons ban: ‘What the hell’s the matter with us?’
Trump promotes barrage of QAnon content via social media platform
As part of an online tantrum, Donald Trump didn’t just promote QAnon content, he also pushed the line that Democratic leaders are Americans’ “enemy.”
Pierce R. Butler @ #451, I don’t know! It’s a good question! I was thinking about it because there was a little discussion of it in the responses to the tweet @ #426 (with some good points made).
Quoted in tomh’s #446:
Holy shit!
Quoted in Lynna’s #456:
Holy shit!
Related to #s 67 and 298 above – France 24 – “French Green MP’s attack on ‘macho’ barbecue culture stirs backlash”:
Kyiv Independent:
Yay Akira!
I spent today at the hospital, also. Wife had to have a tendon in her foot rebuilt. The tendon that goes over the outside of the ankle bone (torn there) and attaches to the little bone on the proximal 5th phalange (multiple tears there). Said injury (both) done by one of our three-year-old grand daughters rolling over her foot as she sat with here feet up.
Left here at 9:00am. Surgery at 11:30. Delayed due to earlier surgeries. Released at 5:30. Got home (normally a 35 minute drive) two hours later due to massive traffic jams on I-81, PA315, US11, River Road, Main Avenue, etc. due to Biden’s speech in Wilkes-Barre. Oh, well.
Wife is doing okay. No weight bearing for six weeks! And we are still watching the twins four days a week. Grumpy (that’s me grandfather name) will be exhausted by Saturday night.
That is all I have about the Ukraine offensive tonight.
There is a news blackout. I wouldn’t take this twitter very seriously.
About all I got out of a web trawl is that there is heavy fighting and so far it hasn’t been a disaster for the Ukrainians.
PS Cthulhu, I can’t believe in 2022 in Europe that we are having once again a major war. Some people need to grow up.
Sad news :
Source : https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/the-genocide-of-this-indigenous-people-is-complete-last-member-of-uncontacted-brazilian-tribe-found-dead/zn9ximurd
This article points out a key point about this war.
If Russia lays down their weapons, they go home, open a bottle of vodka, and see what is on TV.
If Ukraine lays down their weapons, they get genocided and disappear forever.
Ukraine fights because they have no choice.
From the last few minutes:
Kyiv Post:
Kyiv Independent:
@SC #453
I know that the popular consensus is that Gorbachev is “yesterday’s man” (and has been for decades), but his passing makes me a little sad. I think his legacy is unfairly downplayed, these days, and that’s unfortunate.
As a person who lived through the Reagan years, I credit this man for saving my life – probably all our lives. I went through most of the eighties thinking that we could all be vapourized at any moment. While I am well aware that this is still true (the guy in the Kremlin now being worse than Brezhnev and Andropov put together), it doesn’t feel like it to me any more; thanks to glasnost and perestroika, the world shifted onto a completely new track, and it’s not going back. And it wasn’t Reagan, or Bush, or the American armed forces that did it – it was the new guy charge of the USSR.
I remember well a Doonesbury Sunday cartoon*, which really caught the mood of the time. It concerned a summit meeting between Gorbachev and GWH Bush, which took place at sea, off the island of Malta, in December 1989. The Captain of the USN vessel that is taking Bush to the meeting is watching the Soviet cruiser approaching, eagerly trying to catch a glimpse of the Soviet leader:
Captain: “You gotta give it to Gorbachev, he really makes things happen! The guy gets up in the morning and alters the course of history!”
[A few moments pass; then it is revealed that Bush has been standing next to the captain the whole time.]
Bush: “So what am I, chopped liver?”
Captain: “No, sir, you’re … Hey, look, there he is!”
*link to the comic
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
More re Lynna’s #366 – Guardian – “Return of spanking in Missouri school district highlights a lingering and unequal practice”:
Philip Greven’s Spare the Child: The Religious Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse is from 1992, but it’s excellent:
I had my first substantive meal. I’m off the IV and the catheter is out. I should be discharged this afternoon.
Sounds good, Akira. Hope your trip home is swift and uneventful.
Great news, Akira.
From the Guardian:
“‘Grey rocking’ – how to bore a toxic narcissist out of your life.”
“How car culture colonised our thinking – and our language.”
Yesterday’s podcast – “The Benin bronzes and why their return to Nigeria matters”:
Ehikhamenor’s art is beautiful. Here’s a recent piece at Surface – “Returned Benin Bronzes Spark an ‘Artistic Awakening'”:
“Putin’s Russian TV loves @LindseyGrahamSC’s ‘riots in the streets’.”
Video (no subtitles, but the tone is evident) at the Twitter link.
New York sets the standard on how to fight back against the Supreme Court’s endorsement of guns for everyone.
AP News
New York to restrict gun carrying after Supreme Court ruling
By MICHAEL HILL, MAYSOON KHAN and BOBBY CAINA CALVAN
August 30, 2022
Vox – “The DOJ’s latest filing has even more damning claims against Trump”:
Rep. Schiff:
Twitter thread with highlighted text from the DoJ filing at the link.
Julia Davis:
Simonyan tweeted:
Followup to SC @475.
Some Republicans try to resuscitate the ‘planted evidence’ claim
quotetheunquote@466,
I feel the same. Gorbachev’s liberalising reforms provided the best chance the world had to transcend the post-WW2 “peace” which meant only that the great powers were not actually engaged in all-out war, and turn to solving the dire environmental problems that threaten us all and were already evident. Unfortunately, western leaders such as Reagan, Bush and Thatcher were only interested in extending and deepening US-NATO hegemony and unrestrained exploitation by capitalist elites. With the results we see around us.
Trump as his own worst enemy:
Link
Why Republicans’ intensifying focus on impeaching Biden matters
“NEW: DOJ says FBI found one current and one expired official passport, and one expired personal passport, with classified documents in a desk drawer — seemingly tying Trump himself to the unauthorized retention of govt docs: ‘The location of the passports is relevant evidence'”
DOJ tells court Team Trump likely ‘concealed and removed’ classified docs
The newest Justice Department filing, which Team Trump made necessary, paints a brutal picture that makes the former president look even worse.
Ukraine update: Tens of thousands of Russians cut off in Kherson, their artillery dwindling
One of the things that the Red/Soviet/Russian Army is famous for is not throwing shit away. In the 1980s, there were still tens of thousands of T-34/85 tanks, left over from the Great Patriotic War, maintained as weapons for third level reserves. Most of the Russian artillery — 105mm, 152mm, and 203mm — has been in use since the 1930s. Okay, all of the 1930s stock was used up 100 times over during the Great Patriotic War, but, after the war, most of the weapons plants — those that were not converted to civilian and consumer goods — and all of the dual-use plants — those producing, say, trucks — remained in full production. Stalin fully expected a full-scale war with the capitalist west.
Stalin’s successors (other than Beria who tried to liberalize the USSR like Gorbachev did in the 1980s) continued with full-scale production of war-making material. Some was given/traded/sold to their socialist allies or to freedom fighters trying to liberate capitalist or imperialist countries. Most went into storage. Millions of tons of munitions ended up in storage across the Soviet Union.
The Afghan War and the wars following the dissolution of the Soviet Union used up some war material. Production virtually ceased in the 1990s, and under Putin, production of war materials has increased, but still doesn’t hold a candle to Soviet production from 1945 until the late 1990s. Putin’s military has, most likely, burned through this century’s production and is now, for artillery and small arms, using the Soviet over-production.
Old artillery shells tend to become less stable over time. Propellent charges also become less stable. Moving the shells from storage to forward dumps to the consumer requires multiple loadings and unloadings — storage to truck, truck to train, train to truck, truck to dump, dump to truck, truck to stacks at the tubes (I have no idea why, but the Russian Army has never learned to palletize boxes and crates for forklift handling) — and each step creates chances for damage to the projectiles and propellant. Which, for old shells, that are less stable, can create (to put it mildly) incidents.
The old shells also create more wear to the artillery tubes which degrades accuracy. The old shells also are more likely to be duds (which is littering Ukraine with unexploded ordnance). And they are more likely to have defective fuses which can lead to duds or premature explosion. I have not found any hard numbers regarding the number of Russian Army tubes that have been taken out of action through Ukrainian counter-battery fire or accidents.
Either way, I would expect, as the war continues, and the Russians use older and older munitions stocks, the number of usable artillery tubes will continue to decline even without Ukrainian Army action. And the profligacy of Russian artillery usage is most likely compounding the problem of artillery failure in the Russian Army.
More news from the other war, the GOP War on Women.
What is new is that it is estimated that 100,000 Red state women will go the DIY abortion routes, one way or another.
Another 200,000 will travel to Blue states.
It is hard to estimate how many of that 100,000 DIY will end up in the ER for aftercare. With medication abortions it is .9%, mostly for bleeding.
I put some of my own comments in there, in bold.
I‘be been discharged and I’m head home.
Akira @487, Yay! Keep on keeping’ on.
In other news: GOP In Disarray Over Picture Proof Of Classified Docs At Trump’s House
Various tweets and videos are available at the link.
Followup to comment 488.
Mehdi Hasan:
Karl Rove [Karl Rove!]:
Good to hear, Akira.
For the classified documents, at higher levels of classification, yes. Or, I should say, the government does. Classified documents carry numbers. Those numbers are tracked. Copy 01 went to the White House with advisor X. Copy 02 went to the NSC with NSC member Y. Copy 03 was filed in thus-and-such location, drawer, folder, safe. Copy 4 etc.
The responsible agencies (those responsible for creating and classifying the documents) know who took what to the White House. And, more important, what did not come back. So, yes, we (that is, the government agencies) do know what was at Mar-a-Lago.
They also know what is still missing.
Thanks for keeping us updated, Akira. Glad you’re back home.
LOL. (Twitter link.)
“Just your average Russian headline in 2022:
‘St Petersburg police attempt to arrest man in kilt under gay propaganda law'”
Good news!
Democrat Mary Peltola defeats Sarah Palin in Alaska special election
Followup to comment 494.
Sarah Palin loses Alaska’s lone House seat to a Democrat in a special election upset
Yes, Donald Trump had endorsed Palin. So this is a loss for both Trump and Palin. Double schadenfreude points!
On a really good new museum with dinosaurs – specifically Muttaburrasaurus :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-01/yeppoon-architect-awarded-for-dinosaur-tourism-facility-design/101391584
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Nightmarish.
From the Guardian article on Maganov’s death:
Doocy of Fox News actually asked the right question:
(The article is from RAW Story, but the link is to a Microsoft Start feed.)
From David Corn over at Mother Jones:
Corn writes that the probable answer to why comes down to: Double Agent Theory; They’re Mine!; Gimme Ammo; or We Can’t Let Anyone Know This! I lean towards Gimme Ammo — stop trying to put me in jail or I’ll dump lots of secrets into the public realm — or We Can’t Let Anyone Know This! — maybe secret communications with Putin? Who knows. Of course, given his infantile behaviour, the They’re Mine! can’t be ruled out.