“NEW: @SecBlinken announced Monday that the warring factions in Sudan had reached a ceasefire, ‘starting at midnight on April 24, to last for 72 hours’.
The agreement between the SAF and the RSF came ‘following intense negotiation over the past 48 hours’, Blinken said.”
In the US, the two people Viktor Orbán invested in – and betted on – were Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson.
Hungary contracted a company for DC lobbying where Tucker’s father is a director, then flew Tucker to Hungary to speak at a government-funded organization’s event.
Meanwhile, Orbán and his people received tons or airtime and praise from Tucker on Fox News – and everyone seemed happy.
So happy that Hungary’s government even sacraficed bilateral relations with the US administration in favor of courting Trump and Tucker. And bracing for a radical right-wing shift in US politics.
In 2022, they betted on a landslide win for the Republicans in the midterms, and on Trump’s subsequent return – plus on Tucker remaining as influential as ever.
This genius strategy, of course, costed millions for us, Hungarian taxpayers, through the lobbying contracts and other money flows using Hungarian front organizations, think tanks and GONGOs.
Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC: the Atlanta Journal Constitution is reporting that Fani Willis has informed local police (to give them time to prepare) that she’ll announce this summer (July-September) whether she’ll be filing charges against Trump and his supporters.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis launched her 2026 campaign for governor Monday, making her the first candidate to seek to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will be termed out of office.
If elected, Kounalakis, 57, would be the first woman elected governor in California’s history…
Attorney General Rob Bonta is also considering a 2026 gubernatorial run. Last month, state Treasurer Fiona Ma said she would be running for lieutenant governor in 2026.
The prime ministers of Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia called for Ukraine to be given post-war security guarantees in a joint letter published by Foreign Affairs on April 24.
“Ukraine does not want to be at war with Russia. Nor do we. But it has become increasingly clear that Russia decided a long time ago that it is at war with us,” Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger wrote.
According to the prime ministers, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is the years-long culmination of political and hybrid warfare conducted by Russia.
The outcome of the war in Ukraine also has major ramifications for the security of the entire European continent, because “if Russia wins and Ukraine falls, Central Europe may well be next.”
That is why peace must come “on Ukraine’s terms,” including the return of all Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation.
The prime ministers also wrote that aiding Ukraine is not to the detriment of countries’ own defense capabilities and that “no type of conventional weapon should be excluded a priori,” because with “every hesitation, every delay is dangerous for Ukraine. Giving it the leverage it needs to win is the best way to avoid protracted war.”
Any self-imposed “red lines” regarding military aid to Ukraine must be crossed to ensure its victory against Russia, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said in an interview with Spiegel on April 24.
Nauseda’s reference to “red lines” arose when speaking about how Germany went from promising only protective helmets and vests to Ukraine to approving the export of Leopard 1 and 2 tanks, adding that “Germany’s decisions not only send a positive signal to Ukraine, but also to all other NATO allies.”
“It’s pretty clear to me that we have to cross all the red lines. Otherwise we lose time. Every day people are killed and tortured. The deportation of children is the order of the day, as is the bombing of infrastructure. In retrospect, we lost time because we hesitated for a long time to make certain decisions,” Nauseda said.
The Lithuanian president stressed that Western allies deciding to supply tanks so many weeks into the war came “a very high cost” and that it was imperative to understand Russia was a “very dangerous aggressor who knows no borders.”
That’s why another “red line” that should be crossed is supplying Ukraine with advanced western-style fighting jets, according to Nauseda.
…
Nauseda went on to say that pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table would allow Russia to “consolidate, pause, and then attack again.”
According to Nauseda, Russia “would demand unrealistic concessions. But no one has the right to ask an independent free country to sell its territory for peace. This is unacceptable. Ukraine alone can and must decide that.”
…
Nauseda also discussed the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, saying that it will be “a historically important moment” where the military alliance can show it is “aware of the danger” posed by Russia….
Ukrainian partisans blew up a Russian checkpoint in occupied Kherson Oblast, the Ukrainian military’s National Resistance Center reported on April 24.
According to the National Resistance Center, members of the Atesh partisan movement targeted a Russian checkpoint near the town of Oleshky with homemade explosives.
As a result of the attack, the Russian side suffered casualties, the report said.
The National Resistance Center also thanked local residents of the occupied territories for providing information on Russian occupying forces’ movements and positions.
Ukrainian partisans have been working in the occupied territories of southern Ukraine targeting both logistics supply lines and political and military officials working on behalf of the Russian regime.
Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t recuse himself from a 2004 appeals case, even though the company being sued was part of the real estate empire run by Harlan Crow, the GOP mega-donor who has showered Thomas with lavish trips starting in 1997 and more recently bought Thomas’ childhood home, according to Bloomberg.
Thomas previously told Bloomberg that it was OK for him to accept gifts from Harlan Crow because the GOP mega-donor did not have “business before the court.”
But the 2004 appeal ties the Crow family name to a case that did come before the Supreme Court: In January 2005, the court denied the appeal petition, a $25 million copyright claim brought by an architecture firm against Trammell Crow Residential Co., a development company that’s part of the real estate empire built by Crow’s father. The Supreme Court’s decision ultimately benefitted Trammell Crow Residential…
Protesters gathered outside the Montana state house on Monday over Republican legislative leaders’ decision to prevent a transgender lawmaker from speaking after she told colleagues they would have “blood on their hands” if they banned gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.
Zooey Zephyr, a Montana state representative, hasn’t been allowed to speak on the state house floor since Thursday because of her remarks.
Zephyr, a Missoula Democrat, was silenced and deliberately misgendered by some Republican lawmakers throughout last week. She was silenced for a second day on Friday as her Republican colleagues refused to let her speak on the chamber’s floor about a bill that would prevent minors from seeing pornography online.
She plans to keep trying to speak on the house floor Monday despite Republican leaders insisting that won’t happen until she apologizes. Matt Regier, the house speaker, and his Republican colleagues have indicated they have no plans to back down.
“There are 10,000 Montanans whose voice will not be heard because their representative will not be allowed to speak, and that makes me really sad,” said Representative Connie Keogh, another Missoula Democrat, as proceedings opened on Monday afternoon.
The standoff is the latest example of emergent discussions around civility, decorum and how to discuss political issues many perceive as life and death. Proponents of the ban on gender-affirming care see Zephyr’s remarks as unprecedented and personal in nature. She and her supporters say they accurately illustrate the stakes of the legislation under discussion, arguing that restricting gender-affirming care endangers trans youth, who many studies suggest suffer disproportionately from depression and suicidality.
Katy Spence, a constituent of Zephyr’s who drove to the Capitol from Missoula on Monday, said the standoff was about censoring ideas, not decorum.
“She’s been silenced because she spoke the truth about what these anti-trans bills are doing in Montana – to trans youth especially,” she said of Zephyr.
Zephyr’s supporters gathered outside the statehouse on Monday, waving pride flags and chanting “Let her speak!”. As proceedings began, they filled the statehouse gallery and supplemental Montana highway patrol officers stood by to monitor developments. Zephyr voted on various measures, but leadership pushed discussion of a bill she requested to speak on to the end of the agenda.
Last year, Zephyr became the first openly trans woman elected to the Montana legislature – putting her among a record number of trans lawmakers who began serving across the US.
…
The bill banning gender-affirming care for minors is awaiting Gianforte’s signature. He has indicated he will sign it. The bill calls for it to take effect on 1 October, but the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal have said they will challenge it in court.
If you missed it yesterday, I wrote about Ukraine’s potential directions in its coming big counterattack. While heading south to break the land bridge makes the most strategic sense, it’s also what Russia is most expecting. So I had a dream scenario that looked like this: [map at the link]
I’m still dreaming about this.
Given that the front lines are static (other than Russia moved or didn’t move two blocks in Bakhmut), today I want to talk about the hilariously pathetic state of Russian propaganda.
Late last week, Russian sources posted this unassailable proof of the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine. [Tweet and audio at the link] I mean, listen to it. You have to listen to it. It’s not as bad as, “Hello NATO troop, we need to move our NATO tank to support Ukraine. You ready for this NATO action?” But … it’s pretty close. It’s like a bad (or good?) Borat bit. For a country that used propaganda so effectively to help get Donald Trump elected, it’s a wonder at how bad they are at it—and consistently so!
Remember the towed tank, in reverse? [Two tweets and two videos at the link, second video shows crudely altered version that Russians used to claim the opposite] That was so amateurish that there is a watermark from Clideo, which has a reverse-image feature and sticks the watermark on free uses of the service. Also, there’s a Ukrainian tanker sitting and looking out in the direction of actual movement. Also, this particular T-90A was photographed and catalogued as abandoned by Oryx. None of this should’ve been controversial. But Russian cope is real.
Even better, remember the faked evidence in a supposed foiled murder attempt of Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov? [tweet, name and video] The intelligence officer was asked to put three cell phone SIM cards in the pile of supposed evidence, and the dumbass literally used three copies of the video game “The SIMS.”
That wasn’t all. The signature in the card below? Literally says “signature illegible.” [Tweet and image at the link] The agent was asked to sign a Nazi card, but make the signature an illegible scrawl. They also had supposed Molotov cocktails … in plastic bottles. And not only was the agent stupid enough to make these hilarious mistakes, but presumably several layers of superiors all failed to catch these obvious gaffes.
I mean, if nothing else, “Uh, why are there video games in this pile? Are they Nazi video games?”
I mean, even the whole “Ukraine is Nazi and must be ‘denazified’” propaganda is so hilariously bad that the Russian regime can barely be bothered to keep up appearances. After numerous attempts to try and define it, the best Russia managed was, “Nazism is hatred for Russia.” That’s why they eventually moved on to “desalinization,” though that hasn’t gotten much further.
What about “combat mosquitoes.” Remember those? This was Russia’s permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, at an official meeting of that group:
“According to the description, such a drone transports a container with a large number of mosquitoes, the carriers of infections, to a targeted area and releases them.
While biting, mosquitoes infect people with pathogens of particularly dangerous diseases. The explanation directly emphasises that an infected serviceman will be unable to perform the tasks assigned to him, to conclude “the disease can be a more valuable military tool than the most modern weapons and military equipment.”
It is noted that “such an infection among enemy servicemen would have a significant military effect”.
The laughter was so intense that I don’t think we ever heard about these combat mosquitoes ever again. Ukraine’s response was hilarious:
Combat mosquitoes, dirty bombs. It is already too late to treat patients there. They should be put and isolated in the chamber called Russia.
It’s amazing, given how bad Russia has been in justifying its invasion, that there’s still a cadre of Tankies out there willing to carry the Kremlin’s water. Though on that front …
I wonder how they’ll take the loss of their beloved Tucker Carlson.
Twitter accounts operated by authoritarian governments in Russia, China and Iran are benefiting from recent changes at the social media company, researchers said Monday, making it easier for them to attract new followers and broadcast propaganda and disinformation to a larger audience.
America’s regions are poles apart when it comes to gun deaths and the cultural and ideological forces that drive them.
Listen to the southern right talk about violence in America and you’d think New York City was as dangerous as Bakhmut on Ukraine’s eastern front.
In October, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed crime in New York City was “out of control” and blamed it on George Soros. Another Sunshine State politico, former president Donald Trump, offered his native city up as a Democrat-run dystopia, one of those places “where the middle class used to flock to live the American dream are now war zones, literal war zones.” In May 2022, hours after 19 children were murdered at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott swatted back suggestions that the state could save lives by implementing tougher gun laws by proclaiming “Chicago and L.A. and New York disprove that thesis.”
In reality, the region the Big Apple comprises most of is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence, while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s. On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute, regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.
[…] Deep South has highest rate of gun deaths among major regions [map at the link]
[…] Greater Appalachia has highest rate of gun suicides among major regions [map at the link]
[…] Deep South has highest rate of gun homicides among major regions [map at the link]
[…] after the recent shooting at a Nashville Christian school, Tennessee lawmakers ejected two of their (young black, male Democratic) colleagues for protesting for tighter gun controls on the chamber floor. Then the state senate passed a bill to shield gun dealers and manufacturers from lawsuits. […]
Much more at the link, including historical details that are relevant the cultural differences that shape different uses of guns, different attitudes toward gun control, and even how males treasure their honor and believe it can be diminished if an insult, slight or wrong were ignored. In contrast, some cultural legacies dampen deadly violence.
After repeated drone attacks by skilled drone operators to suppress the enemy, UA 2nd bn of the 54th brigade advance on foot and starts clearing the trenches. Intense as usual. [video at the link]
Hands down, the best videos of the war. The sound is fake but adds such realism to the video, much better than the usual blaring music.
The prequel to that video is here. Note that these are all graphic. [Tweet and video at the link]
Heck yeah! [Tweet and video of the 47th Motorized Brigade withe their new M2A2 Bradley IFVs] It’s exciting seeing all this new hardware in the hands of trained Ukrainians. There’s a lot riding on this spring offensive. They are drilling, drilling, drilling, likely waiting for the ground to dry, and for the proper “shaping the battlefield” conditions to be met. HIMARS has been working enemy rear positions and ammo dumps all across the front line.
People are all excited about this: [tweet and images at the link, integrated C4ISR system] Great thread. In short, the U.S. seems to have transferred to Ukraine a BRAND NEW air defense integrated control center that connects all their air defense systems into one unified system. And there are hints that the Ukraine and the U.S. have managed to plug in their legacy Soviet-era systems, as well.
So many people are complaining about the lack of new tanks, planes, and other heavy equipment in recent arms shipments. But what everyone seems to have decided is that Ukraine has enough hardware, and it now needs the ammunition and integrative systems to deploy these new assets effectively.
“Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday said she would announce this summer whether former President Donald Trump and his allies would be charged with crimes related to alleged interference in Georgia’s 2020 election.”
Willis says that the delay in announcing the charges until at least July will allow local law enforcement to be ready for “heightened security and preparedness” because she predicted her announcement “may provoke a significant public reaction.”
There is only one name that will provoke the kind of public reaction that needs three months to prepare for. In letters to Fulton Sheriff Patrick Labat, Darin Schierbaum, Atlanta’s chief of police, and Matthew Kallmyer, director of the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency, she wrote,
“Please accept this correspondence as notice to allow you sufficient time to prepare the Sheriff’s Office and coordinate with local, state and federal agencies to ensure that our law enforcement community is ready to protect the public.”
She added,
“We have seen in recent years that some may go outside of public expressions of opinion that are protected by the First Amendment to engage in acts of violence that will endanger the safety of those we are sworn to protect. As leaders, it is incumbent upon us to prepare.”
There are stormy seas ahead. What will the MAGAs do when Willis indicts Trump for trying to overthrow American democracy?
StevoRsays
Well, its official. Biden is running fro re-election. Via Aussie ABC :
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Ukrainian forces based on the western side of the Dnieper River are frequently carrying out raids on the eastern bank near the city of Kherson to try to dislodge Russian troops, a regional official said on Tuesday. Yuriy Sobolevskiy, deputy head of the Kherson regional administration, said the raids were intended to reduce the combat capability of Russian troops who have been shelling Kherson city since being forced to retreat. “Our military visit the left (eastern) bank very often, conducting raids. The Ukrainian armed forces are working, and working very effectively,” Sobolevskiy told Ukrainian television.
One person has been killed and ten wounded in a strike on a museum in Kupyansk in Kharkiv region. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said “The terrorist country is doing everything to destroy us completely. Our history, our culture, our people….”
…
The number of daily casualties Russia is suffering has fallen by about 30% in April, UK intelligence has said. In its daily intelligence briefing, the Ministry of Defence reported that the drop was probably due to the end of Russia’s winter offensive, which, it added, had largely failed. The MoD also said Russia was now likely to be preparing its troops for Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
Russia’s foreign ministry has said it is expelling a Moldovan diplomat in what it cast as retaliation for the expulsion last week of a Russian diplomat in Moldova. The ministry said in a statement it had summoned Moldova’s ambassador in Moscow to announce the expulsion, as well as to protest against what it called “unfriendly steps towards Russia” and “regular anti-Russian statements” from Chișinău.
Lithuania’s parliament voted on Tuesday in favour of allowing border guards to turn back migrants who illegally entered the country. Lithuania borders fellow EU states Latvia and Poland, as well as Belarus, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. In 2021, Latvia declared a state of emergency and Lithuania began planning a razor-wire fence to stop record numbers of migrants crossing their borders from Belarus. Authorities in the two Baltic states and Poland accused the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, of orchestrating the crossings in a form of “hybrid warfare”….
Also from there:
The Kremlin has rejected what it said were lies that president Vladimir Putin had lookalike body doubles who stood in for the 70-year-old leader and that he spent much of his time shielding in a nuclear bunker.
…
Speaking at a Moscow conference, Peskov said:
You have probably heard that he (Putin) has very many doubles who work instead of him while he sits in a bunker…Yet another lie…You see yourselves what our president is like: he always was, and is now, mega-active – those who work next to him can hardly keep up with him.
He added:
His energy can only be envied. His health can, God willing, only be wished for. Of course, he doesn’t sit in any bunkers. This is also a lie.
The decision, climate experts and advocates said, felt “like a dam breaking” after years of legal delays to the growing wave of climate lawsuits facing major oil companies.
Without weighing in on the merits of the cases, the supreme court on Monday rebuffed an appeal by major oil companies that want to face the litigation in federal courts, rather than in state courts, which are seen as more favorable to plaintiffs.
ExxonMobil Corp, Suncor Energy Inc and Chevron Corp had asked for the change of venue in lawsuits by the state of Rhode Island and municipalities in Colorado, Maryland, California and Hawaii.
Six years have passed since the first climate cases were filed in the US, and courts have not yet heard the merits of the cases as fossil fuel companies have succeeded in delaying them. In March, the Biden administration had argued that the cases belonged in state court, marking a reversal of the position taken by the Trump administration when the supreme court last considered the issue.
Rhode Island attorney general Peter Neronha said his state was now finally preparing for trial after “nearly half a decade of delay tactics” by the industry. A joint statement from the California cities of Santa Cruz, San Mateo and Richmond and Marin county said the oil companies knew the dangers of fossil fuels but “deceived and failed to warn consumers about it even as they carried on pocketing trillions of dollars in profits”.
The cases have been compared to tobacco lawsuits in the 1990s that resulted in a settlement of more than $200bn and changed how cigarettes are advertised and sold in the US.
“It was a really amazing feeling to see that the supreme court was ruling in a very logical way by continuing with the unanimous decisions that have been made in the previous courts to not [grant petitions for review] and to allow these cases to move forward,” said Delta Merner, lead scientist at the Science Hub for Climate Litigation.
“It removes this dam that industry has been building to prevent these cases from being heard on their merits,” she said. “We can finally have the real conversations about what the industry knew and what their actions were despite that knowledge.”
She hopes communities will have the chance to speak in court about the climate emergencies they are experiencing as a result of the industry’s actions.
As jurisdictional battles have dragged on, climate emergencies have added up.
…
The cases allege fossil fuel companies exacerbated climate change by concealing and misrepresenting the dangers associated with burning fossil fuels. The lawsuits say the companies created a public and private nuisance and violated state consumer protection laws by producing and selling fossil fuels despite knowing the products would cause devastating climate emergencies, including melting ice caps, dramatic sea level rise, and extreme precipitation and drought. Local governments are seeking damages for the billions of dollars they have paid for climate mitigation and adaptation.
…
The plaintiffs aren’t suing the companies to put them out of business, but the cases could ultimately affect the industry’s bottom line.
If the lawsuits are successful, they could limit the fossil fuel industry’s ability to greenwash and lie to consumers, Merner said. Rulings against the companies could also reinforce banking industry concerns that fossil fuels are a risky investment.
In state court, fossil fuel companies will attempt to have the cases dismissed.
…
If plaintiffs clear motions to dismiss, the cases move to discovery. The plaintiffs will use the process to try to gather more evidence of what the companies knew and when they knew it. Internal company documents will probably become public when the trials get under way.
…
Attribution science will play a key role in connecting local climate disasters to the industry’s responsibility. “Studies can explain how much hotter a heatwave is, or how much greater the intensity of a downpour is during a hurricane event due to climate change. And they can look to see where those emissions came from, and what percentage of those emissions tie into those direct climate impacts,” Merner said.
With each decision in favor of plaintiffs, the cases are snowballing and more local governments are filing new cases. “There’s a growing number of lawsuits. And I imagine after today, that will continue,” Merner said.
A court in Russia convicted a former police officer of publicly spreading false information about the country’s military for criticizing the war in Ukraine to his friends over the phone.
The ex-office[r], Semiel Vedel, was sentenced Monday to seven years in prison under a law the Kremlin adopted days after sending troops into Ukraine and has actively used to stifle dissent, AP reports.
In addition to the prison term, he was barred from working in law enforcement for four years after his release.
Authorities accused Vedel of spreading information about Russia’s military actions in Ukraine that deviated from the Defense Ministry’s official statements.
During three phone conversations with friends last year, Vedel referred to Russia as a “murderer country,” used “Glory to Ukraine” as a greeting and claimed that Russia was suffering “huge losses” in Ukraine, according to the case prosecutor.
Officials deemed the conversations public because Vedel’s phone was wiretapped and an investigator listened in on the calls. [That is extremely Russian.] That reasoning, which Vedel’s lawyer rejected as absurd, had not been previously used in cases involving spreading misinformation charges.
Vedel, who was born in Ukraine, has said he was merely sharing information he got from his friends in the Kyiv police department whom he trusted.
For nearly two years beginning in 2015, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sought a buyer for a 40-acre tract of property he co-owned in rural Granby, Colo.
Nine days after he was confirmed by the Senate for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, the then-circuit court judge got one: The chief executive of Greenberg Traurig, one of the nation’s biggest law firms with a robust practice before the high court. Gorsuch owned the property with two other individuals.
On April 16 of 2017, Greenberg’s Brian Duffy put under contract the 3,000-square foot log home on the Colorado River and nestled in the mountains northwest of Denver, according to real estate records.
He and his wife closed on the house a month later, paying $1.825 million, according to a deed in the county’s record system. Gorsuch, who held a 20 percent stake, reported making between $250,001 and $500,000 from the sale on his federal disclosure forms.
Gorsuch did not disclose the identity of the purchaser. That box was left blank.
Since then, Greenberg Traurig has been involved in at least 22 cases before or presented to the court, according to a POLITICO review of the court’s docket.
They include cases in which Greenberg either filed amicus briefs or represented parties. In the 12 cases where Gorsuch’s opinion is recorded, he sided with Greenberg Traurig clients eight times and against them four times.
In addition, a Denver-based lawyer for Greenberg represented North Dakota in what became one of the more highly publicized rulings in recent years, a multistate suit which reversed former President Barack Obama’s plan to fight climate change through the Clean Air Act.
Gorsuch joined the court’s other five conservative judges in agreeing with the plaintiffs — including Greenberg’s client — that the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped its authority by regulating carbon emissions from power plants in the decision that makes it more difficult for the executive branch to regulate emissions without express authorization from Congress.
…
Supreme Court rules do not prevent justices from engaging in financial transactions with people with interest in court decisions, but Gorsuch’s dealings with Duffy expose the weakness of the court’s disclosure procedures. For instance, in reporting his Colorado income, Gorsuch listed as his source only the name that he and his two co-owners gave themselves, Walden Group, LLC. The report didn’t indicate that there had been a real estate sale or a purchaser.
…
Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a frequent critic of Supreme Court ethics rules, sent a statement responding to POLITICO’s inquiry about Gorsuch’s sale of the Colorado property.
“We have seen a steady stream of revelations regarding Supreme Court Justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and of public servants,” said Durbin. “The need for Supreme Court ethics reform is clear, and if the Court does not take adequate action, Congress must. The Senate Judiciary Committee will be closely examining these matters in the coming weeks,” said Durbin, who has asked Chief Justice John Roberts to testify next month on the court’s ethics rules.
…
At the time of Gorsuch’s appointment, his ownership of the Colorado property drew attention only for the fact that his co-owners were major figures in the oil and gas industry. Gorsuch’s ties to the oil and gas industry run deep.
As a lawyer at a Washington law firm nearly 20 years ago, Gorsuch represented oil and gas billionaire Philip Anschutz on a variety of matters as outside counsel, and it was through this connection that Gorsuch befriended his future real estate partners.
Anschutz helped Gorsuch win an appointment to an open seat on a federal appeals court in Denver, including directly lobbying the George W. Bush White House.
Gorsuch’s connections to Anschutz extend to both of his prior real estate partners.
The Walden Group included Kevin Conwick, who had advised Anschutz in deals to buy sports teams and other projects like the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and Cannon Harvey, who oversaw Anschutz’s venture capital investment division.
…Cette quête de vérité est cruciale en Russie, face à l’instrumentalisation par les autorités de l’histoire de l’Union soviétique et de la Seconde Guerre mondiale pour justifier leur attaque contre l’Ukraine.
“Les autorités russes cherchent à réviser l’histoire soviétique en éludant les millions de victimes, pour célébrer une URSS victorieuse lors de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, résume Ilya Nuzov, directeur du programme Europe de l’Est et Asie centrale de la FIDH. En combattant le travail des historiens, le régime de Poutine amalgame la guerre contre l’Ukraine à la résistance des Soviétiques contre les nazis.”
Marchant sur les traces du régime communiste, Vladimir Poutine n’hésite pas à recycler certaines des techniques soviétiques. L’avocat moldave Alexandru Postica compare ainsi les méthodes employées par l’armée russe lors du massacre de Boutcha, en mars 2022, à celles de l’armée rouge en Moldavie. Dans le village de Fântâna Albă, 2 000 à 4 000 personnes ont ainsi été exécutées par le NKVD (ex-KGB) en avril 1941.
De même, la condamnation d’Alexeï Navalny en mars 2022 pour “escroquerie” et celles de militants biélorusses, jugés pour “détournement de fonds”, évoquent les nombreux prisonniers politiques condamnés à l’époque soviétique pour des motifs fallacieux de droit commun….
Il y a tout juste dix ans, l’usine textile du Rana Plaza s’effondrait au Bangladesh. Les Occidentaux découvraient le sort funeste de plus de 1 130 travailleurs, morts en fabriquant leurs vêtements dans des conditions indignes. Si les multinationales de la fast-fashion ont depuis été contraintes de rénover leurs usines dans le pays, les ONG réclament toujours de réelles contraintes légales et continuent de se battre pour inciter les marques de mode à changer de modèle….
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó said he was expelled from Colombia hours after he crossed the border from Venezuela to try to meet with some participants at an international conference Tuesday to discuss his country’s political crisis…. [Good.]
Air pollution still causes more than 1,200 premature deaths a year in under 18’s across Europe and increases the risk of chronic disease later in life, the EU environmental agency said Monday….
Ukraine’s military claims it is achieving “impressive results” against forces on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson says former spokesperson for Zelenskiy.
A Tweet by Iuliia Mendel quotes the spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern command Natalia Humeniuk as saying:
We have managed to hit and destroy artillery pieces, tanks, vehicles, armored vehicles, and enemy air defense systems…In other words, our work on clearing the front line of the east bank is quite powerful, but we are still working in a counter-battery mode.
South Africa’s president has said his ruling ANC party had resolved they should quit the International Criminal Court, which last month issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant against Putin in March meaning Pretoria, due to host the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa bloc summit this year, would have to detain him on arrival.
“Yes, the governing party… has taken that decision that it is prudent that South Africa should pull out of the ICC,” president Cyril Ramaphosa said during a press conference co-hosted with the visiting President of Finland Sauli Niinisto, AFP reports.
Ramaphosa said the decision, which follows a weekend meeting of the African National Congress (ANC), was reached “largely” because of what is perceived as the court’s unfair treatment of certain countries….
Steve Rosenberg, BBC: “One Russian paper today asks ‘Can [US & Russia] ever be allies again?’ Responses include ‘Not for a hundred years’ & ‘only if Martians land’. Another paper warns against underplaying Stalin’s Terror: ‘If we don’t condemn Stalin’s crimes, our souls are empty’.”
Video at the (Twitter) link. That second article is noteworthy.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo personally altered a state-driven study about Covid-19 vaccines last year to suggest that some doses pose a significantly higher health risk for young men than had been established by the broader medical community, according to a newly obtained document.
Ladapo’s changes, released as part of a public records request, presented the risks of cardiac death to be more severe than previous versions of the study. He later used the final document in October to bolster disputed claims that Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were dangerous to young men.
The surgeon general, a well-known Covid-19 vaccine skeptic [denier], faced a backlash from the medical community after he made the assertions, which go against guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and American Academy of Pediatrics. But Ladapo’s statements aligned well with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ stance against mandatory Covid-19 vaccination.
Researchers with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and University of Florida, who viewed Ladapo’s edits on the study and have followed the issue closely, criticized the surgeon general for making the changes. One said it appears Ladapo altered the study out of political — not scientific — concerns.
“I think it’s a lie,” Matt Hitchings, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, said of Ladapo’s assertion that the Covid-19 vaccine causes cardiac death in young men. “To say this — based on what we’ve seen, and how this analysis was made — it’s a lie.”
The newly released draft of the eight-page study, provided by the Florida Department of Health, indicates that it initially stated that there was no significant risk associated with the Covid-19 vaccines for young men. But “Dr. L’s Edits,” as the document is titled, reveal that Ladapo replaced that language to say that men between 18 and 39 years old are at high risk of heart illness from two Covid vaccines that use mRNA technology.
…
Hitchings chastised the integrity of [?] Ladapo’s study after it was released last fall but is now much more critical.
“What’s clear from the previous analysis, and even more clear from Dr. L’s edits, is that absolutely there was a political motivation behind the final analysis that was produced,” Hitchings said. “Key information was withheld from the public that would have allowed them or other experts to interpret this in context.”
Ladapo’s edits also shed new light on an anonymous internal complaint he faced last year. The complaint, which the Florida Department of Health’s inspector general investigated, accused Ladapo of “scientific fraud” for allegedly manipulating the final draft of the study.
The inspector general stopped probing the complaint after the anonymous person failed to respond to emails. In a previous interview with POLITICO, Ladapo said the accusations were “factually false.”
It is also the committee’s first video that is 100% generated by AI software meant to create images that look and feel real (in this case an imagined dystopia look at the future of Biden wins)”
Video at the (Twitter) link. When one of our two major parties is doing this, things are pretty dystopian already.
SC @34, I like the way Biden featured lots of women, including Kamala Harris, in that campaign ad. He also seems to be determined to take back the word “freedom” and to use it the way it was intended, unlike the MAGA doofuses.
Meanwhile, speaking of campaign ads, Trump’s campaign released a new ad slamming DeSantis for “failing to show enough gratitude to Trump,” as Steve Benen put it.
StevoRsays
Anzac Day. Gallipoli.
Lest we forget?
Could we fucking remember before we start planning & making rhetorical sel fulfulling prophecy of WW III with China please?
Democrats have an opportunity to reverse the terms of the debate over “freedom.” As the Biden campaign helped show, it’s a fight the party expects to win.
When Gov. Ron DeSantis delivered his State of the State address last year, he declared Florida as the nation’s freest state. In fact, the governor used the word “freedom” more than a half dozen times in his prepared remarks, concluding that the Sunshine State “has stood as freedom’s vanguard.”
Given the degree to which DeSantis has curtailed Floridians’ freedoms, there was some irony to the rhetoric. But soon after, a growing number of prominent Democratic voices started taking steps to turn the rhetorical tables.
[…] This came to mind this morning, when President Joe Biden and his team launched their re-election campaign and released a video titled, “Freedom.” In case the name was too subtle, consider some of the transcript:
“Freedom. Personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as Americans. There’s nothing more important. Nothing more sacred. … Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms away. Cutting Social Security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. Dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote. When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are. The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom.”
For good measure, the Democratic incumbent went on to say that “this is our moment” to “stand up for our personal freedoms.”
[…] California Gov. Gavin Newsom aired an ad on Fox News, taking aim at GOP officials such as DeSantis. “It’s Independence Day, so let’s talk about what’s going on in America,” the Democratic governor said in the commercial. “Freedom, it’s under attack.”
Newsom proceeded to point to DeSantis’ restrictions on free speech, voting rights, and abortion before urging Floridians not to let the Republican “take your freedom.”
A few days later, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell published a memorable tweet that read, “What’s the Democrats’ message? I hear this all the time. Simple. We are the party of freedom. Freedom to make your own health care choices. Freedom from your fear of gun violence. Freedom to have your vote counted. Our message is our values. Freedom for all.”
Over the last few years, Republicans have tried to define “freedom” in a narrow way that runs counter to public health: To be free, they’ve said, is to reject mask requirements, vaccine requirements, and anything that might vaguely fall under some amorphous definition of “woke.” [Correct. That’s a good analysis of the doublespeak that Republicans use when they define freedom.]
All of which has led Democrats to try to change the nature of the conversation.
[…] Democrats are ready for a fight over which party can claim the mantle of “freedom.” As Biden’s new message helps show, it’s a fight Democrats think they can win.
Joe Biden’s actual record wasn’t scary, so the RNC found it necessary to peddle literally fake, made-up images referring to events that have not occurred.
In the summer of 2020, as the presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden took shape, the Republican incumbent launched a memorable campaign ad. The on-air commercial warned voters, “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America,” and to bolster the point, the 30-second spot showed footage of street violence that had unfolded in recent years — during Trump’s presidency, while Biden was still a private citizen.
It was one of the strangest political ad campaigns I’ve ever seen. In effect, the then-president’s political operation was effectively telling the American electorate, “The horrible things happening under Trump might also happen under Biden, so go ahead and vote for Trump.”
It was incoherent and ultimately ineffective. But as deeply odd as that messaging was, the Republican National Committee’s response to Biden’s newly announced re-election campaign seems quite a bit worse. Axios reported on Tuesday:
The Republican National Committee responded to President Biden’s re-election announcement Tuesday with an AI-generated video depicting a dystopian version of the future if he is re-elected. The video features AI-created images appearing to show Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris celebrating at an Election Day party, followed by a series of imagined reports about international and domestic crises that the ad suggests would follow a Biden victory in 2024.
Just so we’re all clear, I understand that the gimmick is part of the point […] this was an ad designed to spark conversation and attention, and the RNC is probably delighted to have folks like me go along with the party’s plan. […]
It’s a straightforward pitch: The RNC wants the public to believe that if Biden wins a second term, bad things might happen. “What if international tensions escalate? What if financial systems crumble? What if our border is gone?” and so on.
Viewers are confronted with fake reports and computer-generated images of events that have not occurred, all in the hopes of convincing people that scary things might unfold if the president serves another four years. [video of RNC "Beat Biden" ad is available at the link]
[…] The RNC is supposed to be able to criticize the incumbent’s record, but instead, Republicans are asking voters to imagine a hypothetical dystopia about a president who clearly hasn’t produced the results we’re supposed to worry about.
[…] The RNC, in other words, accidentally stumbled onto an important point: As Biden eyes a second term, his opposition party struggled to find anything wrong with his actual record while in office.
[…] Maybe there’s actually no reason at all. Rupert Murdoch is a 92 year old man. He just suffered one of the biggest professional humiliations of his life. It cost him almost $1 billion. Maybe he felt the need – the impulse really – to do something dramatic, dominating and by design almost inexplicable simply to demonstrate being in charge. A sort of blood sacrifice to bring the gods and animal spirits back on side.
One of the things powerful men do is act crazy sometimes. By design. Some of them don’t have to act it. Some do. Being predictable can be dangerous. Being unpredictable and unbounded warns people off. I may be too much under the influence of Succession. Because it has the feel of something Logan Roy would do. But I think Succession has a lot of insight into this world.
It’s been reported that Suzanne Scott, CEO of Fox News, didn’t tell Carlson why he was being fired when she gave him the news. If that’s true, that pushes me more to consider this possibility. It also might explain why you have all this miscellany of often contradictory theories and explanations about what “contributed” to the decision. Maybe no one at Fox has any idea and all the sources are basically speculating about possible vulnerabilities they believe must be the answer. Yes, this is speculation. But when something doesn’t fit you have to consider all the possibilities.
I likely would have kept all this to myself if I hadn’t seen this Semafor piece by Max Tani: “Rupert Murdoch’s management grows erratic.” The piece lists a series of odd and drastic events over the last year and suggests, though not explicitly, that Murdoch may be losing it. As Tani puts it, “the sudden moves, the endless leaks, and the general sense of an out-of-control train has also raised questions in the middle and top ranks of the company about the elder Murdoch’s state of mind and temperament.” […]
Carlson was in the midst of negotiating a new 5-year contract when he was fired. Or so says Gabriel Sherman, referring to a “source” in a Vanity Fair article.
Other details, as reported by Talking Points Memo:
Donald Trump and MAGA World were reportedly “stunned” by the news.
Carlson, who made $20 million a year, will be paid the remainder due on his current contract. [JFC]
Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott seem to want credit for the decision to fire Carlson.
[…] Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett summed up DeSantis plight in a tweet: “Media folks get caught up in ideology, or policy, or debate skills—when in reality, a candidate’s weirdness can tank them the fastest. DeSantis is weird. He talks weird, he lacks charisma, and he can’t win.” […]
Even Republican far rightwing whackos are weirded out by Ron Desantis’s strange personality traits. Maybe Ron can just skip that whole announcing-as-a-candidate-for-president thing. It would be a relief to dispense with him now.
As well as performing global hits such as Day-O (The Banana Boat Song), winning a Tony award for acting and appearing in numerous feature films, Belafonte spent his life fighting for a variety of causes. He bankrolled numerous 1960s initiatives to bring civil rights to Black Americans; campaigned against poverty, apartheid and Aids in Africa; and supported leftwing political figures […].
[…] The cause was congestive heart failure, said his spokesman Ken Sunshine.
Mr. Belafonte was born to Jamaican immigrants, grew up in poverty in Depression-era Harlem and became a major Black crossover success in popular music. He went on to smash a series of barriers during five decades as a movie, TV and stage star. His artistic and humanitarian work frequently overlapped, reflecting his belief that “the role of art isn’t just to show life as it is but to show life as it should be.”
A confidant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Belafonte spent years as a liaison between the civil rights movement and the entertainment capitals of Hollywood and New York City. He also used his clout to promote the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and famine relief through efforts such as the “We Are the World” recording and concerts in 1985.
Mr. Belafonte once said he spent his life “in a constant state of rebellion.” He sharply rebuked American presidents — Democrats and Republicans — as not doing enough to end squalor in the United States or end conflicts abroad. He criticized George W. Bush’s White House over the 2003 invasion of Iraq and created a furor when he likened Colin Powell, also of Jamaican parentage and secretary of state at the time, to a “house slave.”
He also was critical of the nation’s first African American president, saying that “for all of his smoothness and intellect, Barack Obama seems to lack a fundamental empathy with the dispossessed, be they White or Black.” Providing fuel to his detractors, Mr. Belafonte associated himself with oppressive left-wing leaders such as Fidel Castro of Cuba and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
“I wasn’t an artist who’d become an activist,” Mr. Belafonte liked to say. “I was an activist who’d become an artist.”
Hoping perhaps to gain some new relevance after 50 years of pushing its reactionary agenda, the Heritage Foundation on Friday published the latest edition of its “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” a rightist manifesto of 900 pages spread over 30 chapters—some of it written by former Trump officials—on how to wreck federal agencies, including kneecapping environmental regulations.
In a statement, Heritage President Kevin Roberts said:
“For over two years, the Left has ignored the voice of everyday Americans leading to crippling inflation, biological males dominating women’s sports, rampant violence, and a crisis in education not seen in decades. Our country is all but unrecognizable.” [What a load of BS]
The authors of those 30 chapters include William Perry Pendley, who on an acting basis headed up the Bureau of Land Management under Trump. He wrote the chapter on the Interior Department, asserting that the department has been controlled by environmental radicals since the Carter administration. [More BS] He didn’t mention the crooked extremist James G. Watt, who ran Interior for two years under Ronald Reagan or the extremist Gale Norton who ran it for five years under George W. Bush.
Ken Cuccinelli, who formerly served as a U.S. senator, attorney general of Virginia, and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, wrote the Homeland Security chapter. Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, who formerly led the Housing and Urban Development, wrote the HUD chapter.
Kelsey Burger at E&E New wrote on Friday (paywall):
Bernard McNamee, a former commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, wrote the section on the Department of Energy and FERC. And by Mandy Gunasekara, the former Trump EPA chief of staff and Heritage fellow, wrote the EPA chapter.
“The challenge of creating a conservative EPA,” she wrote, “will be to balance justified skepticism toward an agency that has long been amenable to being coopted by the Left for political ends against the need to implement the agency’s true function: protecting public health and the environment in cooperation with the states.”
Gunasekara suggests reversing or easing many environmental regulations, like on air quality and superpollutants known as hydrofluorocarbons, and removing the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program for operations not currently being regulated. [Of course the suggestion is to “ease” environmental regulations. Sheesh.]
McNamee argues for “American energy dominance,” code for promoting more fossil fuel projects, and wants a future Republican administration to eliminate “climate-change interference” in Department of Energy approvals of liquefied natural gas exports. […]
You can pay $35 to buy a copy of the “Mandate for Leadership” if you wish.
For some time now, Tucker Carlson’s nightly broadcast of white nationalism and anti-Biden conspiracy theories has been fodder for Russia’s propaganda machine. Its government has specifically directed Russian media to use clips from Carlson’s broadcasts as a part of the failing war campaign against Ukraine: “It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson.” They have done so virtually every night since.
On Monday, Tucker Carlson was relieved of his job at Fox. Fox News ownership did not give Tucker one last chance to promote Vladimir Putin’s war effort. No goodnight episode. No official reason. No nothing. In fact, some might even say that Fox News canceled Carlson. As you might imagine, the news of Carlson’s release was met with an enthusiastic freak out from the Russian state media establishment.
The Daily Beast reports Russian media personalities were beside themselves with grief and bewilderment over the Carlson news. During “The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov,” host Solovyov called the firing of Carlson “a total outrage!” He also reportedly began the conspiracy theory ball rolling by speculating that the “timing” of President Joe Biden’s official presidential campaign announcement was peculiar.
One of his guests, Dmitry Drobnitsky, metaphorically told the Russian host to hold his beer and proceeded to imply that Fox News is a secret liberal think tank propaganda machine. “The main issue is that he started to discuss, in harsh terms, all of the goals that the liberal establishment is pursuing abroad,” Drobnitsky explained, which is a truly fantastical thing to say about the motivations of Fox News ownership. Solovyov also implored Carlson to “come work with us! ‘Solovyov Live’ is waiting for you, Tucker!”
The loss to Russian propaganda efforts is considerable. Carlson’s clips were a cornerstone of the nightly Russian war promotion. He not only provided state television with content, he basically allowed them to argue that what they were saying was supported by an important and popular American voice. His nightly rants on America’s support of Ukraine had become almost indistinguishable from straight Russian talking points. The only other Fox News personality doing much of any rambling about foreign policy is Tulsi Gabbard—and well, she’s Tulsi Gabbard.
Right after the news broke, Russia’s state broadcast network went to Twitter to formally offer Carlson a job. [Tweet and video at the link]
Responses to Tucker’s possible job prospects abroad came:
[…] “Well, I guess this frees Tucker Carlson up to put on a uniform and go fight for Russia in Ukraine.” [more examples at the link.]
[…] When I met the recently defenestrated Fox host in the late 1990s, he styled himself as a facts-driven reporter who happened to work for the conservative Weekly Standard. His schtick was that he was a journalist, not an ideologue. Sure, he had right-of-center opinions, but he wanted to be known as a get-out-the-truth digger who reported on politics with panache and gonzo-ish attitude. He wore a bow tie. […]
Carlson prided himself on a strategic use of nastiness in his journalism but insisted he was not a partisan hack in the tank for Republicans and right-wingers. He even feared being tagged a “wing-nut.” In an interview with Howard Kurtz, then the media reporter for the Washington Post, Carlson explained his creed, “You try not to distort the truth because someone you’re profiling you think is on the right side of abortion or trade or any other issue. That would be dishonest.” [OMFG, ROTFL] Bill Kristol, the founding editor of the Weekly Standard, praised his young star: “Some Republicans and conservatives think he’s a fellow conservative and he’ll give them a break. Tucker, to his credit, reports it like it is.” (Yes, Kristol, now a dedicated Never Trumper and foe of GOP authoritarianism, helped give us Carlson, as well as Sarah Palin.)
It all worked. Carlson was hailed by the punditry and rewarded with a gig on CNN. Eventually, he became a host of Crossfire, the network’s much-watched debate show. I occasionally filled in for the from-the-left cohost, Bill Press, and jousted on air with Carlson. While always a conservative, he was more ideologically independent than Pat Buchanan, […] Carlson was […] more focused on showing off his own smarts. […] He went on to gigs at MSNBC and PBS.
Two decades later, I wonder if it was all a farce. […] someone had to be the conservative journalist who conventional outlets and the DC establishment embraced […] He came across as believing his own story. But what better way to sell it?
When I ask people who worked with and knew Carlson well what happened to him, mostly I get shrugs and puzzled looks. How did this fellow who professed to be an honest broker of truth become a racist demagogue and promoter of far-right disinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories? As evidence in the Dominion lawsuit revealed, there is no longer any question that Carlson sold his integrity. On air, he was a champion of Donald Trump and provided a platform for Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election. Off air, he told his colleagues that Trump was a liar and that he despised Trump. […] From crusading journalist to con man—that’s quite the trip.
[…] one clear turning point came in 2010 when he and Neil Patel (a former aide to Dick Cheney) created the Daily Caller website, which was funded by a prominent conservative and GOP funder named Foster Friess. Echoing his earlier self-description, Carlson insisted that the Daily Caller would not be an ideological endeavor and that it would concentrate on “breaking stories of importance.” But that was not what happened.
The Daily Caller was launched as the Tea Party—a movement of racist grievance, tribalism, and conspiracy theory—was gaining control of the GOP and the conservative world, and the site embodied the spirit of that spreading right-wing extremism. Though the Daily Caller occasionally published investigative articles that could easily have appeared elsewhere, it mostly became a conservative outlet that blasted liberal targets, often wielding conjecture and poorly sourced information. It ran false articles about climate change. It aired misleadingly edited hidden-camera videos filmed by right-wing activist James O’Keefe. One of its editors published racist and antisemitic articles under a pseudonym in white supremacist publications. Several prominent scoops it touted turned out to be wrong or overblown. […]” The site ran sensationalized articles about supposed Bill and Hillary Clinton scandals that were debunked. […]The Daily Caller was what Carlson had claimed it wouldn’t be: a key participant in the alt-right echo chamber of reality distortion.
Columnist Mickey Kaus quit the Daily Caller after Carlson spiked a piece Kaus had written criticizing Fox’s coverage of immigration policy. […] Carlson had told him, “’We can’t trash Fox on the site. I work there.’” Soon after, Carlson began hosting his primetime weekday show on Rupert Murdoch’s network. So much for Carlson the great seeker of journalistic truth. He had become the type of media whore he had once deplored. […]
The Daily Caller was a dependable media ally of Trump […] In June 2020, Carlson sold his stake in the Daily Caller. As Fox’s top loudmouth, he continued on his toxic course of amplifying noxious lies that encouraged right-wing authoritarianism and boosted Trump’s and the GOP’s war on democracy. […] he also functioned, wittingly or not, as a key ally of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign designed to weaken American support for Ukraine. […]
Back to the question at hand: What happened to Carlson? Perhaps nothing. Maybe from the start he was nothing but an opportunistic guy on the make. […] he reinvented himself as an angry populist cheerleader of the Trumpish right. That’s where the audience and the big bucks were—and the influence. […] the likely explanation is that truth never mattered: It was all about status and money.
[…] He was a pro-MAGA, for-mega-profit propagandist. Carlson’s personal journey is a tale of the Trump era. Like the GOP, he was already on the path to right-wing demagoguery before Trump oozed down that escalator. As those dark political winds grew stronger, he eagerly raised the sails and exploited the Trumpfication of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. […] ending up a Fox cast-off whose phoniness has been thoroughly exposed, Carlson has finally provided something of a public service. He has both emblemized and revealed the fundamental truth of the network: We distort, and we divide. […]
Trump is too afraid to stand on the debate stage. He’s making excuses:
Former President Trump on Tuesday raised the prospect of skipping the two Republican White House primary debates that have been announced thus far, suggesting he should not have to subject himself to such scrutiny given his commanding lead in the polls.
“I see that everybody is talking about the Republican Debates, but nobody got my approval, or the approval of the Trump Campaign, before announcing them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “When you’re leading by seemingly insurmountable numbers, and you have hostile Networks with angry, TRUMP & MAGA hating anchors asking the ‘questions,’ why subject yourself to being libeled and abused?”
Trump also took issue with plans to hold the second planned GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, noting that Fred Ryan, publisher of The Washington Post, is chairman of the board of trustees at the Reagan library.
The first GOP primary debate is set for August in Milwaukee. The date of the second has not yet been announced. […]
The weird Tucker Carlson defenses are coming out. There’s the Glenn Greenwald kind, which is worshipful and wailing and lasts for days at a time and feels almost religious in nature.
About the same time last night as when Glenn started singing the Portuguese section of the funeral mass he had written for his slain friend, Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire jotted down his letter to Penthouse about the time Tucker brushed up against him and it gave him a starburst. [Tweet available at the link]
“Tucker sent me a text message out of the blue several years ago just to tell me he appreciates my work. I had a much lower profile back then. I didn’t think he even knew who I was. He took the time to track my number down and reach out. Very few people like that in this business. Extremely rare that someone much higher on the totem pole will send you a word of encouragement when they stand to gain nothing from it. There are only a few people in the business who will do something like that and one of them is Tucker Carlson. Great talent and a good man.”
What a shock, we thought, that Tucker Carlson would reach out to an aspiring white fascist with clear masculinity issues and a preternatural obsession with using his work to stir up hatred against LGBTQ+ people like that. How big of him to take the time out of his day for another creepy white guy like that.
One of Ron DeSantis’s creepy white guys, Nate Hochman, wrote his own letter to Penthouse about Tucker last night. [Tweet available at the link]
“Tucker Carlson once called me, out of the blue, because he had heard through friends that I was going through a rough patch. We had never spoken before, but he took 45 minutes out of his night to offer support/advice. It remains one of the most surreal experiences of my life. One of the most powerful men in conservative politics took the time to sit down and call some random 23 year old kid he had never met — just to tell him to hang in there, and to ask if there was anything he could do to help. It’s something I will never forget.”
In response, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes [tweeted]:
Was the rough patch when you were caught effusively praising a Nazi intel as a great role model for young men?
Well, that sure could have been what it was. Hochman was neither “random” nor a “kid” at the time, but he was 23 as he says. And before he was slobbering over Tucker Carlson, he was slobbering over actual Nazi incel Nick Fuentes. (To be fair, he was probably slobbering over both at the same time.)
The Bulwark explained last month when Ron DeSantis hired the dude:
As first reported by the Dispatch last year, Hochman participated in a Twitter Space with white nationalist virgin Nick Fuentes—and lavishly praised him. “We were just talking about your influence and we were saying, like, you’ve gotten a lot of kids ‘based’ and we respect that for sure,” Hochman said. “I literally said, I think Nick’s probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservative.”
He went on to discuss the merits and demerits of one of America’s most vile humans, saying the fact that he has said “super edgy things means that there’s a pretty strong ceiling to what you can actually accomplish in politics.”
These aren’t the only stories of Tucker’s well-documented sexxxy white nationalist kindnesses we’ve seen so far. We even saw a video of Tucker being nice to somebody who asked him why he was fishing.
You would think he had died, the way they are acting. […]
Additional links to sources backing up the Wonkette article’s facts are available at the main link.
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Fox News has announced that it has replaced Tucker Carlson with a state-of-the-art lying Chatbot.
In a brief statement, the Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch thanked Carlson for his service but said that he had been “rendered obsolete by swift advances in lying technology.”
A dry run of the Chatbot showed it emitting nine lies per minute, besting Carlson’s average of eight.
News of the Chatbot’s arrival sent shock waves down the corridors of Fox’s midtown Manhattan headquarters. “I’ll be next,” a reportedly shaken Sean Hannity said.
It’s been four days since the last updated map of Russian and Ukrainian locations in Bakhmut, but that’s okay. Because in the last four days, those positions have barely changed. In fact, just about the only change worth noting might be that Ukrainian forces advanced into formerly Russian-held positions north of the T0506 highway. This move may not have restored the highway to reasonable use—it’s still easily under mortar fire from Russian positions near Yahidne and Berkhivka, but there might be an opportunity to remove some of the debris of shattered vehicles from the path and treat the road as an access line of last resort.
Something similar may have happened to the south, as Russian forces appear to have been backed slightly away from the T0504 highway where it enters the southwestern edge of Bakhmut. That change is likely only in the area of a block, but it’s just possible that Ukraine could make a fast run along that route, if it really had to. Once again this week, Bakhmut is expecting five days of rain, with little sunshine in between, so the unpaved roads that currently provide much of the access for Ukrainian forces moving in and out of the city are not going to get any less muddy.
Meanwhile, there continue to be rumors that Russia is building up forces in Bakhmut, preparing for that one final push that will drive Ukraine from the city in time for Putin to celebrate during the reduced-sized “Victory Day” parades on May 9. And, according to the Russian state-owned news agency RIA, there’s a new star in town—Russia’s hypermodern T-14 Armata tank.
On Tuesday morning, the Russian propaganda outlet announced that the T-14 was in Bakhmut, where it had been used to “fire on Ukrainian positions.” However, the agency also said the T-14 had “not yet participated in direct assault operations.” The number of the tanks supposedly sent to the beleaguered city of Bakhmut wasn’t reported.
RIA also claimed that the T-14 has been further upgraded with additional armor and better protection for the crew, which are not in the turret of the Armata, but ride in an “isolation capsule” behind the front hull. That capsule reportedly includes both a mini-kitchen and a toilet for the crew so they can stay enclosed in the capsule for an extended period. RIA alleges that the crews of the tanks had been given training in “combat coordination” at a special location within Ukraine to make their appearance in Bakhmut more effective.
The T-14 is the first all-new Russian tank design in decades. It’s been in development for more than 11 years, and the original order called for 2,300 vehicles to be produced. However, since the first T-14 showed up in a 2014 parade, estimates of the number actually made range from around 40 to closer to 100. However, many of these are not actually full tanks, but only shells or other components produced for testing. A handful have been seen riding in parades (and breaking down in parades), as well as in Russian videos showing the tanks reportedly undergoing testing. Recent reports claim that Russia will produce 40 of them over the next two years.
There have been several statements that the T-14 would be joining the effort in Ukraine, especially in response to initial reports of Western tanks being sent to Ukraine. Social media posts from pro-Russian accounts have even produced images that supposedly showed the tank somewhere in Ukraine, but all of these were fakes. This appears to be the first time Russian state media claims that the T-14 is present at a specific location.
Reports that Russia was building forces at Bakhmut, preparing for a final push to force Ukrainian troops out of the city in time for the next Victory Day parade on May 9, have been building for a week. If Vladimir Putin is seeking a propaganda victory by taking the city, then rolling a T-14 carefully through the streets after the fighting ends might make sense.
It seems highly unlikely that Russia would actually risk losing one of these tanks in combat because the scenes of a T-14 taken out by ordinary anti-tank weapons—or worse still, shot down by one of the older Soviet tanks in Ukraine’s arsenal—would be too, too sweet. Russia has already lost at least 60 of its T-90 tank, the most modern main battle tank it actually fields. That includes export models Russia has begun using in Ukraine to bolster its shrinking tank fleet.
Even more fun: Back in January, U.K. intelligence reported that Russia had attempted to send a small group of T-14 tanks to units in Ukraine, only to have the tanks rejected because the rough prototypes were in such “poor condition” that they could not be used. [LOL]
The T-14 might not be much of a threat at the moment, but the reports of building forces in Bakhmut are certainly concerning. Russia’s lines have not advanced since last week, but the small area of the city still controlled by Ukraine makes it possible to concentrate a great deal of artillery fire on Ukrainian positions. Russia has reportedly been building up troop strength and ammunition in advance of that final push.
Of course, all that ammunition being built up to support this push also leads to some … opportunities. [Tweet and video at the link.]
Scenes of Russian ammunition dumps being destroyed were common some months ago, especially just after Ukraine got HIMARS and other long-range precision ammunition into service. Since then, Russia has moved its major ammunition depots back, often situating them over 150 km from the front lines, and used only smaller caches of material nearer to active fighting. That’s complicated Russia’s already poor logistics, but it has kept them from seeing tens of thousands of shells all going up simultaneously.
The range of the JDAMs used at Bakhmut is short (15 km), but it seems that to support their reported upcoming push, Russia needed that ammo close at hand. Close enough for Ukraine to reach out and touch it.
Russia may launch an offensive in Bakhmut in an attempt to take the city before May 9. On the other hand, they may not. After all, there were even more reports that Russia was going to accelerate the capture of the city so that Putin could gloat about it on the first anniversary of the invasion. Before that, there were claims that Putin wanted the city for a Christmas present. Whenever there have been reports that Russia would “take Bakhmut by date X,” X turned into Y, and then to Z with Ukrainian forces still in Bakhmut.
Maybe they’ll do it this time. Maybe not. And maybe the T-14 will be there … even if they have to drag it onto the scene.
There’s no proof, there’s just the Republican farce playing over and over again.
House Oversight Committee chairman and Republican big dog James Comer attempted to prove on CNN last week that President Joe Biden and his children (including his late son, Beau) were a corrupt crime family. (Like the Trump family.) He did this by trying to somehow connect Hunter Biden’s penis pictures, taken in the middle of a mental health crisis, to Joe Biden being Vice President in 2015. It’s an absurd task—they never bother to make the connection, they just point to two dots instead and claim they are magically connected.
Comer has made inflammatory declarations that he and his Committee know the Biden family should be indicted for all kinds of things. Yet Comer hasn’t offered any evidence of any crimes or corruption. So when CNN’s Chief Investigative Correspondent Pamela Brown asked Comer, “Have you found anything illegal while he was actually in office?” it was his big chance to show the “liberal media” his proof.
“Well, we found a lot,” Comer vaguely drawled, “That’s certainly unethical. We found a lot that should be illegal, although the line is blurry as to what is legal and not legal with respect to family influence peddling.” Asked a direct question on what he’d been wasting taxpayer resources on, Comer’s answer proved how baseless the Republican witch hunt has been.
“Family influence peddling” probably “should be illegal”! If Republicans want to propose laws that restrict things like trading stocks and target nepotism among politicians serving in office, we’d likely support such legislation. But that isn’t what Comer is offering up at all. The House Oversight Committee’s big revelation is that nepotism stinks, but we knew that already. We all just lived through four years of the worst examples of failing upwards as a family in the history of the country.
Unsatisfied with the answer, Brown tried a different tact, asking once again for a single shred of evidence of illegality. (Spoiler Alert: Comer doesn’t have any.) [video at the link]
Re: Lynna, OM @ #53…
I’ll look forward to seeing a report in a couple of days that the Ukraine forces have caused the T-14 Armata to set a new turret tossing record.
A Japanese company tried to land its own spacecraft on the moon early Wednesday, but its fate was unknown as flight controllers lost contact with it moments before the planned touchdown…
However, roughly 10 minutes later, Ispace founder and chief executive Takeshi Hakamada spoke in front of a sober-looking team.
“At this moment we have not been able to confirm a successful landing on the lunar surface,” he said. “We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface.” …
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) on Tuesday announced he is blocking all of the Biden administration’s nominees to serve on Amtrak’s board of directors due to the lack of representation for Western states.
Tester made the announcement in a video on social media, noting that five of the nominees are from the Northeast corridor and none of the six is from the West…
U.S. prosecutors who introduced Russian spy intrigue into the case of a couple accused of living for decades in Hawaii under identities stolen from dead babies are now saying they don’t want jurors to hear about photographs showing them wearing foreign uniforms.
A U.S. judge granted the request last week, ruling that the uniforms are not relevant to the upcoming trial for charges involving identity theft and passport fraud. Defense attorneys have said from the start those uniforms were worn once for fun.
When the former U.S. defense contractor and his wife were arrested last year, prosecutors suggested the case was about more than just identity theft.
According to prosecutors, Walter Glenn Primrose and Gwynn Darle Morrison are the real names of the couple who have been fraudulently living for decades under stolen identities Bobby Fort and Julie Montague. Prosecutors say Primrose spent more than 20 years in the Coast Guard as Bobby Fort, where he obtained secret-level security clearance. After retiring in 2016, he used the secret clearance for his defense job, prosecutors said…
ODD COUPLES
It was always clear that the collection of Western weapons being sent to Ukraine was going to take some … creative planning. With Challenger 2, Leopard 1, Leopard 2, and Abrams M1 all coming in quantities ranging from a squadron to a brigade, and a mix-and-match set of armored personnel carriers, fighting vehicles, anti-aircraft guns, trucks, transports, and support vehicles, Ukraine faces a monumental task in putting people with the right training with the right vehicles, supporting it all with the right logistics, and finding a tactical means of putting the whole mess to best use. [tweet and video of US-supplied Oshkosh M-ATV MRAPs and French-supplied AMX-10 RC AFVs in service with the newly generated Ukrainian 37th Marine Infantry Brigade.]
Last week we got a glimpse of Ukraine’s new 47th Air Assault Brigade, where highly upgraded T-55 tanks given to Ukraine by Slovenia (hey, I think I got that right for once) were paired with U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Today, another new Ukrainian unit is coming into focus.
This is surely not all that’s in this brigade, but even at first glance, the combination of the M-ATV and the AMX-10rc suggests that the Ukrainian 37th Marine Infantry Brigade is going to be all about one thing: Mobility. This is a pairing that can deliver force quickly, though it probably doesn’t want to come nose to nose with a heavily armored enemy or get bogged down in picking its way through defensive trenches.
Seems like the kind of unit that might be built so that, once more tank-centric units have punched through, the 37th could rush ahead, liberate areas, and flank Russian forces. Both of these vehicles share speed and a reputation for toughness. The AMX-10rc may not be technically a tank, but it can deliver a big gun in a hurry–and thanks to its much smaller than a tank 280hp engine, it can do so with a reported driving range of up to 1000 km.
The 37th looks like a unit that will have to take care it doesn’t outrun its supporting vehicles if things start to move at high speed.
CHALLENGER 2 TANKS SUPPLIED WITH DEPLETED URANIUM SHELLS
One of the tanks that definitely is in Ukraine right now is the British-made Challenger 2. Fourteen of the main battle tanks have now arrived, and images circulating on Tuesday suggest that some are actually off the training grounds and moving somewhere closer to active fighting. However, some of those images are suspect, and others are out-and-out fakes. So beware of any hint that Challengers are about to actually see action.
Everyone wants the counteroffensive to be successful. But it seems some people are so anxious to see it begin that they’re willing to make it look as if it has already started. Some pro-Russian forces also report that the Challenger 2 is in action for the express purpose of reporting that it’s no big deal, or even that some of the tanks have been destroyed. So, information buyers, beware.
However, one piece of news about the Challenger 2 has been confirmed: The tanks come complete with “thousands” of shells, including some made with depleted uranium. The sheer density of uranium slugs makes them highly effective in penetrating armor, but the U.S. has been reluctant to share these shells with anyone, because … uranium. However, the uranium used in such shells is the opposite of enriched. It’s so low in the isotopes necessary to make nuclear weapons that it’s literally worse than uranium fresh from a mine.
Back in March, the U.K. government listed these shells among the weaponry that would be accompanying the Challenger 2, setting off a storm of controversy among nuclear disarmament activists, but calling these shells nuclear bombs is like calling a Coke can a missile just because they use the same metal.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason to be concerned. There have been reports of increased cancers in areas where these shells have been tested or manufactured. That includes widely publicized reports of health issues in Iraq after the shells were used in the Gulf War and in Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion. The U.S. military has been sued repeatedly over claims of cancers, ranging from lung cancer to lymphoma to leukemia, supposedly resulting from exposure to depleted uranium.
However, the CDC has something to say about this.
No human cancer of any type has ever been seen as a result of exposure to natural or depleted uranium.
Obviously, some people and groups don’t believe this. […] One thing is sure—being on the wrong end of a depleted uranium shell is going to result in a bad day. The depleted uranium shells are sometimes known as “tank busters” for their stopping power. Over 320 tons of such shells were used in the Gulf War.
—————————–
We’ve seen these being built, and Ukraine reportedly has a thousand. Now it seems that 100 are going to be put to use in Bakhmut. [Tweet and image about kamikaze drones being sent to the Bakhmut front.]
After another devastating school shooting, the familiar clamor for increased security sounds through Republican echo chambers. Some lawmakers, driven by a reckless belief in the power of firearms to deter violence, insist on arming our educators and transforming schools into fortresses. Yet we must consider the impact of such decisions on our children’s education and well-being and resist the temptation to militarize our schools.
In a tweet on March 31, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said, “When you go to the bank and you deposit money in the bank, there are armed police officers at the bank. Why? Because we want to protect the money we save. Why on earth do we protect a stupid deposit more than our children?” A mass shooting that left five dead and more injured happened just days later at a secured bank in Kentucky. As we’ve learned the hard way, the presence of firearms, no matter who carries them, doesn’t make us any safer.
The argument for arming teachers is rooted in the belief that it would deter potential shooters and minimize casualties in the event of an attack. However, this idea has been dispelled by a number of researchers, experts, and educators who argue that this policy is based on the assumption that teachers, many of whom have no prior experience with firearms, could effectively engage a shooter in a high-stress situation. It also neglects the potential for accidental discharges and other mishaps, which could pose an even greater danger to students and staff and sets extreme, unfair expectations on teachers in moments of crisis. After all, if trained cops don’t always respond quickly or correctly, like happened in Uvalde, Texas, then how could we expect that of teachers who are paid even less?
In fact, several studies suggest that such policies are ineffective in reducing the likelihood of school shootings or disarming shooters. In fact, they may actually increase violence in schools. A 2021 study examining nearly 40 years of school shootings found that the rate of deaths was 2.83 times greater in schools with armed guards. A number of national studies also found that armed guards lead to more arrests and expulsions in a way that disproportionately impacts Black students, other students of color, and disabled students.
[…] We must address the root causes of gun violence in our society rather than merely responding with reactive measures that do little to address the underlying issues. Comprehensive gun reform, including universal background checks and closing loopholes, must be a priority for lawmakers. Investment in mental health resources and early intervention programs can also help identify and support at-risk individuals before they pose a threat to themselves or others.
Arming teachers and increasing the presence of armed police in schools primarily serves the gun lobby, not our children and communities. In reality, these measures only perpetuate a culture of fear and violence. Instead of sacrificing our children’s sense of security and well-being for an illusion of safety, we should focus on evidence-based solutions that promote a nurturing and safe learning environment.
Mackenzie Hayes was an employee of the second judicial circuit of Florida, working for Jack Campbell’s State Attorney’s Office (SAO) as a prosecutor. Mackenzie tells her story and shocking details of racism in the second judicial circuits office with Our Tallahassee, including a memo that directs staff to offer harsher penalties for Hispanic people…
A Barbie with Down’s syndrome is the latest doll to be released by Mattel in a bid to make its range more diverse.
The US toy giant had faced previous criticism that the traditional Barbie did not represent real women.
In recent years it has created dolls with a hearing aid, a prosthetic limb and a wheelchair.
Mattel’s goal was for “all children to see themselves in Barbie” as well as “play with dolls who do not look like themselves”. …
Oggie: Mathomsays
whheydt
I’ll look forward to seeing a report in a couple of days that the Ukraine forces have caused the T-14 Armata to set a new turret tossing record.
Doubtful. The T-14 Armata (well those that have actually been completed which could be as low as 45 (minus, of course, the ones that are test mules for finding out if the high-tech technology actually works)) have an autoloader for the main gun which stores the ammunition in the turret. I have been unable to confirm, but it is extremely likely that the ammunition storage has a fireworks factory roof — thick walls to direct the blast upwards with a really thin roof to direct the blast upwards (as used in the M1 Abrams series (though, given the prevalence of drone mounted anti-tank rockets, having a thin roof over the ammo may be problematic) to ensure that a cook-off will be directed upwards and not into the rest of the turret) — which would, in the event of a cook-off, tend to drive the turret into the tank hull rather than up. There may be additional ammo storage in the rear hull under the after side of the turret, which makes me wonder just how strong the armour is on the rear side of the crew capsule. Anyway, a cook-off would most likely not flip the lid, just bottom out the suspension.
I suspect that this will be a difficult platform to fight from (sorry about the preposition at the end of the sentence). Situational awareness is essential to fight a tank. Even the most modern western tanks often have the vehicle commander partway out of the hatch to keep track of what is going on around the vehicle — sensors and periscopes only show so much.
Also, I was writing about ammunition cooking-off and started to wonder whether the kitchen unit built into the crew capsule is built to modern Russian standards. Naah, I’m sure that the Russians have fully taken into account the dangers of fire in the wrong area . . . .
Damnit, Ukraine, capture one of these so we can answer the questions.
whheydtsays
Re: Oggie: Mathom @ #65…
I watched the video embedded in the Daily Kos article this is all from. One of the points made rather strongly (other than that the T-14 is unreliable and is a probably just for show) is that there are no backups for the sights and periscopes. Thus, if a Bradley encountered a T-14, the basic tactic would be to destroy the gunsights and driver’s periscopes and then maneuver to get a good TOW shot to take it out.
Lawmakers have filed an amendment to give Florida the power to inspect Walt Disney World’s monorail system.
It’s part of the package of retaliations against the company after it undermined the governor’s newly handpicked board.
But that amendment could get lawmakers in trouble.
The law is clear that the government can’t target a company. This amendment doesn’t mention Disney by name, but it doesn’t hide which monorail this is really about…
In an amendment to a license plate reader bill, lawmakers said monorail systems in special districts that cross county lines would be subject to state inspections – rules that only apply to Disney’s monorail…
Dictatorships of the last century had some famous youth groups. Hitler had his Youth, Lenin had his Young Pioneers, and Mussolini had his Opera Nazionale Balilla.
Such groups once attracted huge followings but have largely fallen out of favor in the West. But, like so much else with the irredentist Vladimir Putin, he’s bringing it back.
To help us understand this new youth movement and what it means for the future, we have the perfect guest.
Ian Garner is a historian and analyst of Russian culture and war propaganda. He’s got a new book that’s coming out this spring Z Generation Into the Heart of Russia’s Fascist Youth. He’s also a professor. Queens University Kingston Ontario.
How is that a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman posted government secrets to a private Discord group for almost a year before anyone noticed? On today’s episode of Angry Planet, Bellingcat’s Aric Toler walks us through the culture that created poster and edgelord Jack Teixeira.
Toler also talks about working with The New York Times, dodging phone calls from the FBI, and the digital forensics he used to identify Teixeira. We talk about the Something Awful Forums, 4chan and KiwiFarms, and why Teixeira isn’t a “leaker” at all, he’s a poster.
A young man caught between his socialist father and Thatcherite uncle falls in love with a young National Front street punk while building a laundromat. We watched MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE (1985) and discuss the context that birthed it. PLUS: Fiery hot takes on Bruceploitation and Ron DeSanctimonious.
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough” were the infamous words U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote in 1927. In Buck v. Bell, an almost unanimous Court upheld a Virginia law allowing the sterilization of people the state found to be “socially inadequate” and “feebleminded.” This landmark decision allowed the eugenics movement to take full effect, with multiple states passing similar laws.
In Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022), Dr. Paul Lombardo unpacks the case of an individual – Carrie Buck – to argue that the case not only represents the collective power of the eugenics movement in the early 20th century but an individual miscarriage of justice. Using extensive archival sources, Dr. Lombardo demonstrates that Carrie Buck was neither a “moral degenerate” or “feeble-minded.” She was a rape victim of sound mind. Her sterilization was based on fraudulent evidence. The powerful eugenics lobby manufactured a case – and a sympathetic court gave them a precedent that justified Carrie Buck’s sterilization – and over 60,000 sterilizations in the following decades.
Three Generations, No Imbeciles frames the history of sterilization as essential to understanding contemporary legal fights over birth control and abortion. Does the constitution’s promise of “liberty” include the right to become pregnant or end a pregnancy? Dr. Lombardo’s epilogue and afterward outlines the connections between Buck and modern cases involving abortion, disability rights, and reparations for those sterilized. Originally published in 2008, the book has been updated in 2022 with a terrific epilogue and afterward with an eye towards contemporary events in reproductive politics.
The “values and lifestyles” of people crossing the Channel in small boats threaten the UK’s social cohesion, the immigration minister has claimed, in comments that have been described as “dog-whistling to the far right”.
Amid predictions that there could be a new surge in crossings by people fleeing the conflict in Sudan, Robert Jenrick said “uncontrolled illegal migration” threatened to “cannibalise” the UK’s compassion and argued that recent protests at hotels should be heeded as a warning to politicians.
In a speech at a Policy Exchange event in central London, Jenrick defended the government’s illegal migration bill, which will be debated by MPs on Wednesday.
“Excessive uncontrolled migration threatens to cannibalise the compassion that marks out the British people,” Jenrick said. “And those crossing tend to have completely different lifestyles and values to those in the UK and tend to settle in already hyper-diverse areas, undermining the cultural cohesiveness that binds diverse groups together and makes our proud multi-ethnic democracy so successful.
“Conservatives believe that elected governments should carefully control the pace of change, not least because a shared national identity bound by shared memories traditions and values is a prerequisite to generosity in society. There is an extensive body of research that demonstrates the damaging effects on social trust and cohesion on uncontrolled migration.”
He said housing people seeking refuge in hotels could result in destabilising local communities, and said politicians should take heed of protests in Knowsley, widely reported to have been fuelled by far-right activity.
“I firmly believe that we have to tackle that [housing migrants in hotels] or we will lose the trust and respect of the British public,” Jenrick said. “With some of the protests that we have seen in places such as Knowsley – while I would always condemn violence, I think those protests are a warning to be heeded, not a phenomenon to be managed. We need to listen to public concern and act on it.”
Asked about the government’s response to Sudan’s civil war, he said Sudanese people had been “consistently in the top 10 countries of individuals crossing the Channel in small boats” and that the conflict in the country would probably lead to an increase in those numbers.
“We should expect in time for this to lead to new challenges, whether here in the UK or elsewhere in Europe,” he said.
…
Mary Atkinson, the campaigns and networks manager at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “These comments are straight from the far right’s playbook. We are used to dog whistles and nudge-wink rhetoric from this government – but with these comments, the mask has come off.
“In contrast to Jenrick’s claims, it is this government’s ministers who have ‘completely different values and lifestyles’ from the rest of us,” she added….
I have been informed that during tomorrow’s floor session there will be a motion to either censure or expel me.
I’ve also been told I’ll get a chance to speak. I will do as I have always done—rise on behalf of my constituents, in defense of my community, & for democracy itself.
OAN tweeted that it “would like to extend an invitation to Carlson to meet for negotiation”, with CEO Rob Herring telling Times of San Diego he “might give him around $25 million” to join them.
Ardern, a global icon of the left and an inspiration to women around the world, has been appointed to dual fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School. She will serve as the 2023 Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow and a Hauser Leader in the school’s Center for Public Leadership beginning this fall.
A federal judge in Iowa on Tuesday tossed out a defamation lawsuit that former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) filed in 2019 against reporter Ryan Lizza over an article he wrote for Esquire in 2018 about the Nunes family dairy farm, NuStar Farms, and why it had quietly relocated to Iowa from California. Nunes, who left Congress last year to head up former President Donald Trump’s social media company, had sought $77 million from Lizza and Hearst Magazines, Esquire’s publisher.
U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams, a Trump appointee, ruled that Nunes had neither shown he had been harmed by the article nor that Lizza’s reporting on NuStar’s heavy reliance on undocumented immigrants was false. In fact, Williams wrote in his 101-page opinion, “the assertion that NuStar knowingly used undocumented labor is substantially, objectively true.” …
Florida Republicans are poised to change state law to allow GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis to run for president without having to leave office, according to legislation filed Tuesday.
The proposal would exempt presidential candidates from Florida’s so-called resign to run law, which prohibits elected officials from qualifying as a candidate for another office that would overlap with their current term…
RT, the state-run news channel in Russia that was known as Russia Today, made an offer to Carlson on its Twitter account only hours after Fox decided to cancel his role as the anchor.
The Moscow-based news channel tweeted on April 24, “Hey @TuckerCarlson, you can always question more with @RT_com.” …
“We’ll happily offer you a job if you wish to carry on as a presenter and host! You are always welcome in Russia and Moscow, we wish you the best of luck.” …
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian liveblog. From there:
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Wednesday he had held a “long and meaningful” phone call with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and hoped it would give impetus to relations with Beijing.
“I had a long and meaningful phone call with…President Xi Jinping,” he wrote on Twitter.
“I believe that this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine’s ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations.”…
As mentioned earlier in the blog, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met with the Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday, and held a news conference which touched on Ukraine.
Lula criticised the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday, but said there was “no use now in saying who is right” in the conflict.
His comments came after he set off a storm among western allies by stating earlier this month that they were prolonging the fighting by supplying arms to Ukraine.
“No one can doubt that Brazilians condemn Russia’s territorial violation of Ukraine. The mistake happened and the war started,” he said during an official visit to Spain.
“There is no use now in saying who is right, who is wrong. What we have to do now is stop the war,” he added at a joint press conference with Sánchez, Reuters reports.
“No one in the world is talking about peace except for me, it is like being alone screaming in the desert.”
Lula, a 77-year-old former metalworker who served two previous terms as president from 2003 to 2010, has resisted taking sides over the conflict, neither with Europe and the United States, nor with China and Russia.
He raised hackles earlier this month by saying Washington should stop “encouraging” the war by supplying weapons to Kyiv.
Lula also angered Ukraine in recent days by suggesting it should agree to give up the Crimea peninsula, which Russia forcefully annexed in 2014 in a prelude to its invasion of Ukraine last year.
His comments were criticised by Europe, Ukraine and the United States, with Washington accusing him of “parroting Russian and Chinese propaganda”.
Asked again during his visit to Madrid about Crimea, Lula said, “it is not up to me to say who Crimea belongs to.”
“When you sit at a negotiating table you can discuss anything, even Crimea,” he added.
“But I am not going to discuss that, it is the Russians and the Ukrainians who will discuss that.”
JFC.
(They also have UK, US, and Sudan liveblogs today, which I don’t have time to share.)
Disney has filed a lawsuit against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, sharply escalating the battle between the entertainment giant and the top Republican politician.
In the filing, the company’s theme park division alleges it has been the target of “government retaliation” after it spoke out against a law backed by the governor.
It comes as a board appointed by Mr DeSantis was preparing to void a development agreement concerning the company’s Florida amusement park.
On this week’s Fever Dreams, a look at the ecosystem of grifters and gadflies who made a living appearing on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show—and what comes next for them. Plus! What is pronatalism, and why are all the Silicon Valley dudes talking about it?
(Link @ #479 in the previous chapter of the Thread to the Know Your Enemy episode about the DeSantis book. “Petulant” is a great descriptor for him.)
Temperatures in the world’s oceans have broken fresh records, testing new highs for more than a month in an “unprecedented” run that has led to scientists stating the Earth has reached “uncharted territory” in the climate crisis.
The rapid acceleration of ocean temperatures in the last month is an anomaly that scientists have yet to explain. Data collated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), known as the Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) series, gathered by satellites and buoys, has shown temperatures higher than in any previous year, in a series stretching back to 1981, continuously over the past 42 days.
The world is thought to be on the brink of an El Niño weather event this year – a cyclical weather system in the Pacific, that has a warming impact globally. But the El Niño system is yet to develop, so this oscillation cannot explain the recent rapid heating, at a time of year when ocean temperatures are normally declining from their annual March and April peaks.
Prof Mike Meredith of the British Antarctic Survey said: “This has got scientists scratching their heads. The fact that it is warming as much as it has been is a real surprise, and very concerning. It could be a short-lived extreme high, or it could be the start of something much more serious.”
Warming oceans are a concern for many reasons. Seawater takes up more space at higher temperatures, accelerating sea level rise, and warmer water at the poles accelerates the melting of the ice caps. Hotter temperatures can also be dire for marine ecosystems, as it can be difficult or impossible for species to adapt. Corals in particular can suffer devastating bleaching.
Some scientists fear that the rapid warming could be a sign of the climate crisis progressing at a faster rate than predicted….
…
Mark Maslin, professor of Earth system science at University College London, said the climate crisis was taking hold before our eyes. “Climate scientists were shocked by the extreme weather events in 2021,” he said. “Many hoped this was just an extreme year. But they continued into 2022 and now they are occurring in 2023. It seems we have moved to a warmer climate system with frequent extreme climate events and record-breaking temperatures that are the new normal. It is difficult to see how anyone can deny climate change is happening and having devastating effects around the world.”
E Jean Carroll, the advice columnist suing Donald Trump for rape, was expected to testify on Wednesday in the civil trial of the former president for alleged battery and defamation. [She’s testifying now, MSNBC is reporting.]
Before she could do so, the judge in the case, Lewis A Kaplan, rebuked Trump for an “entirely inappropriate” statement on his social media platform…shortly before proceedings began.
Kaplan warned the former president’s lawyers that such statements about the case could bring more legal problems upon himself.
Trump, who has not attended so far, called the case “a made-up scam”. He also called Carroll’s lawyer “a political operative” and alluded to a DNA issue Kaplan has ruled cannot be part of the case.
“This is a fraudulent and false story – Witch Hunt!” Trump wrote.
Lawyers for Carroll, whose suit includes claims Trump previously defamed her by publicly calling her case a “hoax”, “scam”, “lie” and “complete con job”, mentioned his new statement to Kaplan.
The judge told Trump’s lawyers: “What seems to be the case is that your client is basically endeavoring, certainly, to speak to his quote-unquote public, but, more troubling, the jury in this case about stuff that has no business being spoken about.”
He also called Trump’s post “a public statement that, on the face of it, seems entirely inappropriate”.
The Trump attorney Joe Tacopina noted that jurors are told not to follow any news or online commentary about the case. But he said he would ask Trump “to refrain from any further posts about this case”.
“I hope you’re more successful,” Kaplan said, adding that Trump “may or may not be tampering with a new source of potential liability”….
A Ukrainian reporter working as a fixer for Italy’s daily newspaper Repubblica has been shot dead by snipers in Kherson, while his Italian colleague was wounded, the newspaper said Wednesday.
“Our correspondent Corrado Zunino and his fixer Bogdan Bitik were victims of an ambush by Russian snipers today on the outskirts of Kherson, in southern Ukraine,” the Repubblica said.
“Bitik unfortunately did not make it and died: he leaves behind his wife and a son. Corrado, who was wounded in the shoulder, is in the civil hospital in Kherson,” it said.
Both reporters, who had extensively covered the conflict, were wearing bulletproof vests with “press” written on them, it added.
“We were hit. I saw Bogdan on the ground, he wasn’t moving,” Zunino said in a telephone conversation with someone at the newspaper, the daily said.
“I crawled until I got out of the line of fire. I ran until I came across a civilian’s car. I was covered in blood, I got myself taken to the hospital in Kherson.
“I tried several times to call Bogdan, he didn’t answer. He was a great friend of mine, the pain is excruciating”, he was reported to have said.
The reporters were ambushed near the bridge in Kherson, the Repubblica said.
“It’s difficult to recover Bitik’s body at the moment, due to the presence of snipers,” it said.
Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani said his ministry and the Italian embassy in Kiev were working with the Ukrainian authorities on returning Zunino to Italy.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville is blocking several dozen military promotions as part of an anti-abortion tantrum. The impact on our national security matters.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville tends to make news for saying ridiculous things. […] it was shortly after the Alabama Republican was elected in 2020 when the former college football coach flubbed the basics of World War II. He soon after struggled with how recent presidential elections have been resolved.
A few months later, Tuberville misstated the three branches of the United States government. Last year, the Alabaman made the case that Russia invaded Ukraine in order to acquire “more farmland,” which really didn’t make any sense, before making ugly comments about race, crime, and reparations.
But sometimes, the far-right senator generates headlines, not because of his unfortunate rhetoric, but because of his unfortunate policy decisions. USA Today reported:
Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama blocked 184 military promotions Tuesday in the latest chapter of his protest against the Pentagon’s new abortion policy. The drama unfolded in the Senate as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, moved a request to allow the promotions and Tuberville blocked the action.
In case this isn’t obvious, for generations, the Senate has confirmed promotions for U.S. military officers as a matter of course. Congress can be slow and frustrating, but this process has always been simple, quick, and efficient — the nominees are usually packaged together for one uncontroversial vote — not only to benefit those in uniform, but because senators don’t want to be seen as anti-military.
Tuberville, whose only military experience was coaching the losing team in the 2014 Military Bowl, doesn’t seem to care.
By all appearances, the Alabama Republican doesn’t have any concerns about the 184 military officers, their records, or their qualifications. Rather, as MSNBC’s Alex Wagner explained last night, Tuberville objects to a Pentagon policy that provides troops and their family members paid leave and stipends to travel for abortions or for fertility treatments.
The senator has told the Department of Defense that he’ll impose a blockade against military promotions unless the policy ends.
For months, senators have tried to convince Tuberville to be more responsible. Warren tried again yesterday, hoping that the Alabaman would be satisfied that he’d made his point. It didn’t matter: The blockade continued.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made clear that many of these promotions are directly relevant to military readiness, including positions related to military intelligence and international alliances. A New York Times report noted that even some GOP officials are “wringing their hands over the potential national security repercussions” of Tuberville’s tantrum, while senior DOD leaders have said the Republican’s tactics are making life harder for many military families.
[…] As outlandish as these tactics are, I’m also struck by the underlying mentality. Tuberville — a member of the Senate minority — has a problem with the Pentagon’s policy on reproductive rights. The Republican knows that most of his colleagues, like most of the country, disagrees with him.
But since he can’t win a debate or pass a bill, the senator is abusing his position in the hopes of forcing the Defense Department to bend to his will, apparently indifferent to the consequences.
The next time the Republican Party presents itself as a champion of the military and its interests, keep Tuberville’s indefensible antics in mind.
Biden picked up union support yesterday. After he officially announced his campaign for president, the following unions endorsed him:
Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)
International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers (IW).
In a series of nine (9) tweets published Monday night, Lee pleaded for his anti-abortion colleagues to join their crusade of not supporting the troops. “What message does this Pentagon policy send to female service members who are or may become pregnant? If the Pentagon really, really didn’t want women in the military to have babies, wouldn’t it adopt something that looks a lot like this policy?” Lee wrote in part. “[Tuberville] and I are actively opposing this. We need every pro-life senator supporting this effort in any way they can.”,,,
Republican megadonor Peter Thiel won’t be financially supporting political candidates in 2024, following losses by his midterm candidates. Reuters reported that the former backer of Donald Trump isn’t pleased with how the GOP has focused on culture war issues like abortion and anti-trans bills…
1) It’s not an election year.
2) He will probably change his mind at some time before the next elections.
3) The position of the GOP on social issues is hardly news.
4) No matter his decision, Thiel is still an awful person.
Maria Bolotnikova from Vox had linked to this oped by an activist named Curtis Vollmar in the Salt Lake Tribune a few days ago – “Is free speech dead in rural Utah?”:
“Do you realize you’re not wanted in this community?”
No, those are not the words of the late Brian Dennehy portraying Sheriff Will Teasle in “First Blood.” Those are the words of Sgt. Warren Woolsey of the Beaver County Sheriff’s Office.
On Pioneer Day 2022, I joined several other concerned citizens at a public park maintained by Beaver City to peacefully leaflet, gather petition signatures and engage in conversation with local residents about the cruel practices of Smithfield Foods and a high-profile criminal trial involving the rescue of two piglets from this factory farm. However, we were met with hostility from Beaver County officials who cited me for disorderly conduct despite doing nothing more than having conversations with the public. I’m now being forced to stand trial myself.
All Americans cherish our constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly, but Beaver County violated these fundamental rights. Sgt. Woolsey and Deputy Sheriff Lonnie Laws repeatedly interrupted my outreach efforts and even went as far as to tell passersby “don’t talk with these people” and that “these are the people that are trying to shut down Smithfield.” Woolsey made it clear that it was the content of my speech that he didn’t like; violating his sworn oath to defend the Constitution. I recorded the entire incident and submitted the video to the popular police accountability YouTube channel “Audit the Audit.” That video has gone viral, garnering 2.7 million views, with many calling for the officers involved to be stripped of their badges.
Smithfield Foods has a significant presence in Beaver County, with a massive factory that sends 1.2 million pigs to their death annually. This operation has been linked to numerous environmental and labor violations, as well as an expose of animal welfare violations in The New York Times in 2017. The expose and rescue of two piglets resulted in a felony prosecution of two other activists. A jury found them not guilty this past October. That felony prosecution along with the incident involving myself highlight a larger issue of corporate influence over small town U.S.A.
The Salt Lake Tribune has reported that 25% of Beaver County residents rely on Smithfield for employment and that Smithfield is in the process of significantly downsizing the operation. While I sympathize with jobs being lost, I do not believe a multi-billion dollar corporation controlled by the Chinese government should have such a chokehold over local residents to the point that local officials declare a state of emergency when this company pursues greater profits elsewhere.
The actions of the Beaver County officers were a clear violation of my First Amendment rights, and it is disheartening to see corporate influence at play in the local government. It is crucial that we hold elected officials and law enforcement agencies accountable and not be deterred by government intimidation or corporate influence. This should concern not just animal rights activists, but anyone who cares about preserving free speech….
BREAKING: DxE activist @curtis_v0llmar was just found GUILTY of “criminal trespass” and “disorderly conduct” for simply leafletting about Smithfield Foods at a park in Beaver, Utah.
The Judge, Shadrach Bradshaw, is a retired dairy farmer who never went to law school, and Smithfield is the largest employer in Beaver County. Curtis will be appealing and having another trial. He has also filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that Beaver police violated his First Amendment right to free speech. This is a political prosecution and another example of Smithfield weaponizing the cops, the courts, and the legislature to silence critics and shield its practices from the public.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #87..
Or as the old comment has it, “An officer and a gentleman…by Act of Congress.”
Since my father was a commissioned officer in the US Maritime Service, he would have been on such a list four times, I think. He left the Maritime Service as a Lt. Commander.
[…] Donald Trump […] delivered his own video [It is] one misleading attack after another. Here’s a line-by-line dissection.
“You could take the five worst presidents in American history, and put them together, and they would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done to our nation in just a few short years. Not even close.”
This is rhetorical overkill. For what it’s worth, the Siena College Research Institute in September released rankings of the worst and best presidents based on a survey of historians, political scientists and presidential scholars. Trump ranked 43rd, third from the bottom. Biden ranked 19th, between Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Barack Obama, whom Biden served as vice president, ranked 11th.
“Thanks to Joe Biden’s socialist spending calamity, American families are being decimated by the worst inflation in half a century.”
The reasons for inflation are complex. Biden’s 2021 coronavirus relief bill may have contributed to the sudden increase in prices. But inflation spiked around the globe after the pandemic, increasing faster in many other countries, suggesting that this is not a problem resulting only from presidential spending priorities. Trump throws in the word “socialist” for no apparent reason, except that it’s red meat for his supporters.
“Banks are failing. Our currency is crashing and the dollar will soon no longer be the world standard, which will be our greatest defeat in over 200 years.”
Some banks have failed because they didn’t properly manage inflation-rate risk. The U.S. dollar soared early in Biden’s term — up as much as 8.9 percent in the Wall Street Journal’s dollar index during 2022, the biggest yearly rise since 2014. Now it’s come back to earth. The dollar only became the world’s reserve currency in 1944.
“Real wages have been falling 24 months in a row — in other words, under Biden, workers have gotten a PAY CUT each and every month for two straight years.
There are various ways to measure “real wages,” but real disposable personal income per capita, a measure favored by economists, is basically flat from December 2020 to February 2023. Ordinarily, however, one would expect it to increase year over year.
“We have surrendered our energy independence, just like we surrendered in Afghanistan, which we had just a short time ago — and the price of gasoline just hit a five-month high, and it’s going much higher than that.”
As president, Trump would falsely claim the United States had achieved energy independence. That was never the case, but now he’s suggesting Biden is at fault. Trump’s reference to a five-month high for gasoline prices is an implicit acknowledgment that prices have dropped sharply since the high reached after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Under my leadership, we had the most secure border in U.S. history, by far. Never had a border like this. Under Biden, the southern border has been abolished — and millions of illegal aliens have been released into our communities. What’s happening now is beyond belief. They’re coming in from mental institutions and prisons. They are all being emptied. They are being dumped into the United States of America. Many of these people are very dangerous, they are being dumped. We are like a dumping ground.”
This part echoes a notorious section of Trump’s 2015 campaign announcement: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re bringing … drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” As president, Trump was obsessed with undocumented immigrant crossings. It spiked at various times during his presidency. But then it dwindled to virtually nothing in 2020 during the pandemic — the basis for his claim that he had the “most secure border in U.S. history.” Since Biden became president, undocumented immigrant crossings have risen to record highs, but it’s ridiculous for Trump to say the border “has been abolished.” Many migrants captured at the border are sent back, but by some accounts, at least 1.2 million migrants were seen by authorities but not apprehended.
“Our cities have been overrun with homelessness, drug addicts and violent criminals, who are being released from jail in mass with no retribution whatsoever, while law enforcement is weaponized against law-abiding conservatives or Republicans, or people they just don’t like.”
This is a mishmash of grievances. Trump appears to be referencing the Manhattan district attorney who indicted Trump on felony charges related to his role in hush money payments to an adult-film star and a Playboy model. Crime in New York has increased since 2020 — though it remains far below 1980s levels — and city statistics show that of the seven severe categories of crime, five are down relative to this point in 2022.
“Our children are being indoctrinated and mutilated by left-wing freaks and zealots.”
This jaw-dropping line appears to be an attempt to tap into objections to critical race theory, and anti-transgender sentiment that has emerged on the religious right.
“The senior ranks of our military have gone completely woke, and our military is suffering greatly.”
This is a theme lifted from Fox News and conservative media outlets. Military officials have pushed back at these claims in congressional hearings. “When I looked at it, there is one hour of equal-opportunity training in basic training, and 92 hours of rifle marksmanship training,” Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston told lawmakers in a March hearing. […]
“Iran is days away from a nuclear bomb — not even thinkable.”
Trump is blaming Biden for one of his own errors. In 2017, Trump terminated the agreement with Iran negotiated during the Obama administration — by Iran, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China), Germany and the European Union — that was intended to restrain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. He said he would get a better deal but never did. By the time Biden became president, Iran was no longer interested in reviving the agreement, though the Biden administration tried hard to engage with the regime. Iran appears to have enriched enough uranium to build several weapons, a United Nations agency says, but how quickly that could be accomplished is uncertain.
Chris Hayes on Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News: “There is no cosmic justice. There’s no guarantee that people that act awfully will face any comeuppance. But in the aggregate, over time, being a cruel, misogynistic, bullying menace might just come back to get you.”
With only one-quarter of the sea floor mapped with sonar, it is impossible to know how many seamounts exist. But radar satellites that measure ocean height can also find them, by looking for subtle signs of seawater mounding above a hidden seamount, tugged by its gravity. A 2011 census using the method found more than 24,000. High-resolution radar data have now added more than 19,000 new ones.
[…]
Besides posing navigational hazards, the mountains harbor rare-earth minerals […] for deep-sea miners. Their size and distribution hold clues to plate tectonics and magmatism. They are crucial oases for marine life. And they are pot-stirrers that help control the large-scale ocean flows responsible for sequestering vast amounts of heat and carbon dioxide […] When ocean currents curl around seamounts, they create turbulent “wake vortices” that can provide the energy to push cold water up
The problem […] has existed for decades.
[…]
trains park in the middle of neighborhoods and major intersections, waiting to enter congested rail yards or for one crew to switch with another. They block crossings, sometimes for hours or days, disrupting life and endangering lives. […] Ambulances can’t reach patients […] Fire trucks can’t get through
[…]
getting worse […] “The length of the long trains is 100% the cause […],” said Randy Fannon […] of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
[…]
The Federal Railroad Administration […] started a public database in late 2019 for complaints […] 28,000 reports of stopped trains last year alone.
[…]
[Courts in many states have ruled] that only the federal government held power over the rails. […] Buttigieg believes federal lawmakers must intervene to give the Federal Railroad Administration the power to compel rail companies […] Democrats introduced the Don’t Block Our Communities Act in early March, but it has not yet gained bipartisan traction.
In an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukrainian forces along the eastern front, warned that Russia had a new secret weapon. It’s not a new artillery system or thermobaric bomb. It’s not a new drone. It’s a software app. Using this app, Russian forces are able to enter the location of Ukrainian resources, identifying troops, equipment, or supply caches. This location can then be shared with other Russian forces in the area.
With the shared coordinates, those closest to the identified target are able to coordinate their attacks. A drone operator in one platoon may spot a group of Ukrainian soldiers and pass that info to a second platoon better positioned to go after the target with artillery, or with another drone equipped with a bomb. Syrskyi worries that, using this system, Russia has located not just equipment, but routes along which Ukrainian forces move, places where soldiers are known to congregate, and have even been able to tag Ukrainian units by their mission.
The use may make it seem that this is a custom-made tool, created and maintained by Russia’s vaunted army of hackers. But what Russia actually seems to be using is a free, off-the-shelf application designed for hikers that’s been around for a decade. An app which is available to everyone right out of the Google app store. It’s just one of several apps that are becoming ever more important in the war.
If the functionality that Russia is drawing from the Alpine Quest tool sounds familiar, that’s because Ukraine already has something similar designed for just this purpose, built in-house by Ukrainian developers. The Ukrainian version allows sharing of near real-time data all along the front line, so that targets moving out of range for one group can be picked up by the next, and has been reportedly key to helping Ukrainian forces hold their positions in western Bakhmut.
The app used by front-line soldiers—an expansion of the app GIS Arta—is just one of a number cranked out by Ukrainian military and government teams since the war began. They’ve also built a multi-purpose app named “Diia” (which translates as “Action”) which can be used for everything from acting as a driver’s license to signaling the Ukrainian equivalent of 911. It also includes reporting the location of Russian drones. That app is currently installed on over 460,000 phones in Ukraine and has assisted in shooting down Iranian-made Shahed drones before they reached their targets.
Ukrainian coders have built special apps that help the armed forces manage their ever more complicated logistical trains. Forward units can use this app to request supplies or report broken equipment.
There’s an app that warns people when there is an air raid alert in their area, checks their location, and provides the quickest route to the nearest shelter. For civilians close to the front, there’s an app that helps them locate and coordinate with volunteers working to help them evacuate the area. There’s an app named Eppo (an acronym for electronic air defense in Ukrainian) that lets every Ukrainian assist in protecting their nation by reporting Russian drone sightings. A similar app allows for tagging any video or image to note the appearance of Russian troops or other equipment.
All of this has been so quickly assembled that there has already been talk that, after the war, Ukraine could be “the next Israel,” in terms of being a nation that attracts huge investments from technology companies looking to tap into local coding and technical prowess. [Maps from applications, available at the link]
Russia has also developed a number of apps. That includes one potentially very clever use of smartphone technology in the form of an app that registers the sound of artillery being fired, then uses the timing from Russian soldiers around the area to triangulate and pinpoint the origin of the sound, giving them the location of the Ukrainian gun. It seems very unlikely that this could provide accurate coordinates in an area of varied terrain, with multiple guns being fired and echos pounding back from buildings and hills … but it’s not impossible to work that out with some good filtering and comparison of waveforms.
So far, the Russian software to find artillery through sound doesn’t seem to have generated a cluster of Ukrainian artillery being taken out, but it’s still a good example of taking advantage of just how incredible the technology held in an ordinary smartphone really is.
Three decades ago, when I was working for a company that was highly dependent on a fleet of large, heavy equipment, we invested in special hardware that would allow us to track some of that equipment across the workday. Installing the hardware on each piece of equipment costs around $40,000, and the special software and infrastructure to support its use cost still more, but when you’re operating a fleet of massive $5 million trucks, $20 million shovels, and $100 million draglines, you kind of need to know what they’re up to. Especially when they’re spread out across work sites (mines, we’re talking about mines) that can easily encompass a hundred square kilometers.
Being able to “see” what each of these vehicles was doing allowed trucks to be rerouted when the queue at one shovel became too long, or dozers to be sent out to repair the way when data showed that the path had become too difficult. In a way, it was similar to the kind of issues that the Ukrainian military works with when it’s trying to get equipment and parts where they’re needed.
The cost of installing and maintaining the system made it difficult to justify in many locations, or for it to be mounted on less expensive pieces of hardware, but when it made sense, it really paid off well.
Then, about 15 years ago, I was hit by the realization that the $40K boxes we were installing had a very specific set of hardware: a GPS system, communications, a data display, and a means for the operator to signal what they were doing or warn of an issue. It turned out that we had another box available that could do that and more–the average smartphone.
By that time, the coding tools developed for smartphone apps had improved enough that I was able to write a tool that could replace the multi-million dollar system that ran on top of that old custom hardware with a simple, lightweight app. Almost overnight, we were able to track nearly everything–every truck, every dozer, even the light boxes used to illuminate the working areas after sunset. You could even use the sensors in that phone to figure out exactly how rough every meter of roadway might be. Add a small interface, and now you knew what everyone at the mine was doing at all times … earning me a lot of hate from the guys driving those trucks and dozers.
The average smartphone, even a cheap one, is an extraordinary device. Such a raft of sensors–still camera, video camera, GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, magnetometer–all that and more is in almost any phone you can purchase. And it can communicate with Cellular, WiFi, Bluetooth, and often several other protocols. Some can even make limited use of satellite communications.
For the same reasons, it’s not unusual that Russia should be using a piece of commercial software in their mix. Think about the things that almost every piece of software you own now promises. Secure communication. Data encryption from end to end. Ease of use. Flexibility. Russia doesn’t have to build those things, because they’re already done.
It would be great if the makers of Alpine Quest would put in place restrictions that would limit Russia’s ability to integrate their software into locating and attacking Ukrainian positions. However, if they did, Russia would likely just move to one of many alternatives. It is not hard to find applications that allow you to locate something on a map, tag that location in some way, and share the information with “friends.” That’s all Russia really needs here. They could practically militarize Pinterest.
If need be, Russia could likely slap the necessary tool together themselves. I did something similar, and that was better than a decade ago with much less powerful phones and much cruder tools.
But Alpine Quest is really nice. Great maps. Good tools. Terrific capabilities. It’s no wonder it’s maintained a strong user base for over a decade.I do have to wonder, though … is Russia getting by with just the free version, or do Russian commanders pop for the €10 version?
It’s little wonder there are so many stories of soldiers being saved when their smartphone deflected a bullet. Because that phone is vital equipment. They need it as much as their weapon or helmet. Also, it can call home. It can maintain connections to people who are many kilometers away, but never far away from the minds of those engaged at the front. That may be the most vital function of all.
[Note: Daily Kos attempted to contact Psyberia, makers of AlpineQuest Off-Road Explorer, for this story, but they have not yet replied.]
The start of the Carroll v. Trump defamation and battery civil trial was unlike anything I’ve seen in a federal courthouse.
On Tuesday, I walked into the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in Manhattan, a gleaming marble tower where this lawyer-turned-journalist spent considerable time over the last 20 years — but never quite like this.
That’s because the opening statements in the civil trial for writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation and battery lawsuit against Donald Trump were unlike anything I’ve seen in a federal courthouse. It was a searing, vivid account of a nearly 30-year-old alleged sexual assault that could easily devolve into a “he said/she said” but for intrepid lawyering, fortuitous photos and videos, and Trump’s own spigot of speech.
While legendary litigator Roberta Kaplan has been the face of Carroll’s case, there are several other, less visible lawyers on her team with serious trial chops. And Carroll began her case with one of them, a woman named Shawn Crowley, who not only spent several years as a prosecutor in the same courthouse, but also was a law clerk to Judge Lewis Kaplan, who is presiding over the trial.
Crowley started with the basic allegations: Trump sexually assaulted Carroll in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room while on a shopping trip to find a gift for a woman Trump knew.
When Carroll confided in two friends shortly thereafter, they gave her opposite advice, Crowley alleged. One allegedly explained to Carroll that she had been raped and urged her to call the police. Days later, the other friend allegedly warned that Trump would “ruin her life and her career” if she spoke.
Carroll, born in 1943 and raised to “grin and bear it,” chose silence, Crowley alleged, until “silence became impossible” in the wake of The New York Times’ Harvey Weinstein reporting, which set in motion the #MeToo movement.
Having newly embarked on a book project about women’s experiences with men, Carroll was forced to re-examine her own life experiences and ultimately wrote not about others, but about herself. And she finally confronted a trauma long buried: the alleged assault by Trump, which she included in that book and in an excerpt published in June 2019 in New York magazine.
But after she came forward, Trump’s “explosive” response, a denial that claimed Carroll was “not my type” (or code for “she was too ugly to assault,” as Crowley put it), made her a target for online attacks and then unraveled her career as an advice columnist.
Crowley made clear that she was “proud to represent” Carroll and help clear her name. And while maintaining that the jury could hold Trump liable on the basis of Carroll’s testimony alone, she insisted this case is not a “he/said, she/said” because so many other witnesses can — and will — corroborate her account.
Those witnesses include the assistant manager and chief of operations at Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-90s, who Crowley said can confirm key details about the store and why no one saw Carroll and Trump on the night of the alleged assault; Carroll’s sister, who Crowley said can explain why, given their shared, rural Indianan upbringing, Carroll’s decades-long silence is unsurprising; two experts who are expected to opine on the psychological and reputational impact on Carroll; and of course, the two friends to whom Carroll revealed the alleged assault in real-time.
[…] Crowley’s opening went from compelling to can’t-look-away: She wove the stories of Carroll, Leeds and Stoynoff into “three women, one pattern,” all of which she said tracks Trump’s own statement on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. (The court has already ruled that Carroll can introduce that tape as evidence.)
Referencing that tape, Crowley continued, “He thought no one was listening,” but it was “not locker room talk.” Instead, she asserted, the tape describes exactly what Trump did to each of them: Forcibly kiss without consent, grab, grope, and “do anything” because he was a “star.”
And in each of the cases, Trump lied, denying the assault, Crowley said, before demeaning the accuser as “not his type.” The problem, of course, is that Carroll was exactly his type. How do we know, she asked? Because there is photographic proof that he met Carroll at an event in the late 1980s.
Crowley then put that photo up on a screen for all present to see, showing Carroll, now an elegant 79, in her mid-40s, all bouncy hair, shining eyes and gleaming teeth. And Crowley then revealed that at Trump’s deposition, the former president testified, under oath, that Carroll was Marla Maples, his second wife, who he has said was exactly his type.
Before she finished, Crowley reminded the jurors: This isn’t a criminal case. All they have to decide is whether he was lying in his October 2022 post on Truth Social, in which he called her story a “hoax and a lie,” and is it more likely than not that he assaulted her? And Crowley assured the jury that Carroll’s team would show them how the evidence supports only one conclusion: that Trump is liable for both defaming Carroll and assaulting her.
On Wednesday morning, Carroll’s team will start their case in earnest with witness testimony. Will they deliver what they’ve promised? And can their witnesses withstand the withering cross-examinations Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina committed to in his opening on Tuesday? […]
Washington State approved a package of gun control measures on Tuesday that includes a ban on the sale of military-style semiautomatic weapons, making it the ninth state to join efforts to prevent the distribution of AR-15s and other powerful rifles often used in mass shootings.
UKRAINE GETS A SURPRISE GUEST
With all the Western gear that’s been headed to Ukraine over the last few months, it was already hard to track the increasingly complex menagerie that is the revised Ukrainian ground force. However, it turns out that even some vehicles that aren’t on announced lists of those loaned or sold to Ukraine are turning up in country. [Tweet and video at the link]
The Pandur is an armored personnel carrier developed in the late 1980s by an Austrian firm that is now part of General Dynamics European operations. Versions of the APC have been sold to several nations, and that included about 85, which had gone to Slovenia … before Slovenia, which has proven to be one of Ukraine’s big supporters over the last year, slipped them over the border to Ukraine.
This appears to be the Pandur I. Slovenia is replacing these in their own military with their own variant of the 8-wheeled Pandur II, so it’s likely these vehicles were headed for the sidelines in any case. But that doesn’t make them in any sense bad or obsolete. The Pandur has a good reputation for being able to handle a variety of terrain and for being able to travel at higher speeds than other APCs. It also carries an interesting collection of weapons, including a 20 mm autocannon. Slovenian models are also outfitted with grenade launchers and a variety of different types of grenades.
In any case, be sure to slot this one into your game card. I’ll be looking to see if we find out which Ukrainian unit is going to get the Pandurs.
ZELENSKYY SPEAKS WITH XI JINPING
On Wednesday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy got on the phone with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine. In recent weeks, China has been positioning itself as a potential third-party negotiator for peace between Russia and Ukraine (something that could easily be achieved by Russia simply leaving Ukraine), and there have been vague descriptions of a “Chinese peace plan.”
From the snippets that have appeared online so far, Xi insisted that he wanted the fastest route to peace in Ukraine. It’s a relief not to see China explicitly supporting Russia by sending it artillery shells or missiles, but supporting a “fast peace” that leaves Russia in control of large areas of Ukrainian territory is a kind of implicit support of Russia and of the whole concept of an aggressive war for territory.
Even so, Zelenskyy described the conversation as “long and meaningful.” However, Zelenskyy seems to have been less focused on listening to Xi’s ideas on how quickly a cease-fire should be established in Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion but in building stronger diplomatic relations between Ukraine and China.
Following the conversation, China announced that it would send an envoy to Ukraine and other countries to begin talks about how the conflict can be brought to a “political end.” What countries are being talked to, or what that ending might look like, wasn’t clear. However, in a meeting between Xi and Vladimir Putin two weeks ago, one of the things they agreed about was their shared distrust of the United States, so it seems likely that China will try to cut the U.S. out of the conversation, at least in this initial stage.
BAKHMUT
It’s amazing just how little is left of the city at this point. When Ukrainian soldiers report that they have nowhere left to take shelter except in rubble, and Russia is bombing the rubble, they’re not kidding.
Gen. Viktor Khorenko, the head of Ukraine’s special forces, visited the city on Wednesday and said that the fighting remained heavy, the situation remained difficult, but Ukrainian forces were still holding their positions and making Russia pay a heavy price for each attempted assault.
For the first time in several days, Russia does appear to have gained territory, taking a few blocks in the southwest and securing more territory in the area between the train station and the medical school. [map at the link]
For a week now, there have been reports that Russia was building force in Bakhmut for one big push, and there have been reports that Putin wants this to happen in time for Victory Day parades on May 9. Considering how parades in some Russian cities have been canceled, and even in Moscow, things could be considerably reduced from past years, rolling over the remaining ruins of Bakhmut would give them something to “celebrate.”
On the other hands, there have been warnings circulating on Russian telegram channels that when Ukraine is actually pushed out of Bakhmut, that will be the signal for the counteroffensive to begin. This claim doesn’t make much sense, but if Russians believe it, it makes them less enthusiastic about attacking in Bakhmut … good.
YOU GET A PRIVATE ARMY, AND YOU GET A PRIVATE ARMY, YOU ALL GET PRIVATE ARMIES!
Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin is back again this morning, and he has a really peculiar message. In addition to once again fuming about not being given all the artillery ammunition he wants–probably because Russia doesn’t have any more to give–he sails right into a discussion of how private armies are becoming the in thing for Russian oligarchs. [Tweet and video at the link]
For decades, Putin’s biggest concern has been that some alternative leader would rise up from the military and take his place. That’s a big part of why Putin has done his best to keep military leadership weak, fearful, and incompetent. Gutting the officer ranks and knocking off anyone who seemed to have two functioning neurons might have made Putin feel better, but it’s certainly contributing to Russia’s failures in Ukraine.
Now Putin is getting this kind of treatment from the guy running what was once thought of as Putin’s private army. It’s hard to believe that the man with the very long table is going to be ecstatic about the idea of every one of his rivals being at the head of their own military … especially when 97% of the actual Russian military is currently melting away in Ukraine.
Of course, Putin does have a force that’s supposedly loyal to him alone: Rosgvardiya. That force is reportedly enormous and reports directly to Putin, but it seems like we haven’t seen much of them in the last few months. I wonder why. [Tweet and video at the link]
[Tweet and image from NOËL, with image, “[…] top general of the US in Europe stated that more than 98% of the military equipment promised to Kyiv has already been delivered.]
[Tweet and image showing a Ukrainian POW freed from Russian captivity. ]
Ukraine today announced a program to foster innovation and fund technologies that help in the fight against Russia. [Tweet and video highlighting BRAVE1, a coordination platform for Ukrainian defense.]
WonketteRon Johnson: What If Global Warming Is Awesome
Economist Michael Greenstone, who has a brain in his head, spoke to the Senate Budget Committee Wednesday, where he tried to explain the health impact of climate change. Sen. Ron Johnson, whose head is filled with Laffy Taffy, wondered why Greenstone couldn’t comprehend the obvious bright side of a rapidly warming planet.
“I actually found that chart of yours somewhat comforting for at least America,” Johnson said, holding up one of the exhibits on global climate change and increased temperatures that we’re sure he didn’t understand. “When you take a look at the mortality — which, these are all, again, projections. I don’t — I don’t put any stock in them at all …”
Johnson still somehow represents Wisconsin in the Senate […]
He went on: [video at the link]
“But by your own projections throughout the United States because of climate change, we’re actually going to have a reduced risk of mortality in the United States,” he said, “and, um, wouldn’t that really tie in with what the study Lancet in 2021 said we suffer about 600,000 deaths due to heat every year but 4.5 million deaths because of cold?”
Johnson refers to one specific Lancet study, out of context and without regard for ongoing impacts of a warming climate. In fairness, though, he is a very stupid man.
“So, in terms of excess deaths, a warming globe is actually beneficial,” Johnson said out loud. “In my own state, your study shows that we’d have a reduction in mortality of somewhere between 54 and 56 people per, I guess it’s a hundred thousand. Why wouldn’t we take comfort in that?”
Greenstone, to his credit, didn’t laugh or cry, both of which are reasonable responses to Johnson’s nonsense. He explained that global warming’s impact “will be very unequal.” So, maybe, in the short term, you’d have fewer snow days in Wisconsin or Greenstone’s home town of Chicago. However …
“But if you look more carefully at that,” Greenstone said, “there are large swaths of the country where the damages will be much larger and I — ”
Johnson cut off Greenstone so he could spread more fertilizer:
“But again, if you want to balance it out globally, if you’re trying to mitigate harm globally, isn’t it true that the number of deaths according to this Lancet study caused by heat are 600,000 per year and deaths caused by cold are 4.5 million annually. So the fact — in terms of world health, in terms of excess death, we’re actually in a better position by having the climate increase in temperature a little bit, right?”
No, moron, because increased temperatures can result in more severe snowstorms, because a warmer planet evaporates more moisture into the atmosphere. Prolonged droughts in parts of the country increase food prices nationwide. Global warming has led to more frequent wildfires, more severe hurricanes and possibly tornadoes, all of which cause billions of dollars in damage annually and fucking kill people.
Greenstone tried to reason with Johnson, who is devoid of reason.
“Senator, I’m not familiar with that study. What I am familiar with is my own study,” he said. “Your characterization of it is incorrect.”
“But your study is very favorable to my state,” Johnson insisted, and Greenstone had to remind a sitting US senator that there are 49 other states in the country.
“Many of them will suffer,” Greenstone said like a normal person. “Many of them will suffer more than Wisconsin will gain, and that is the nature of climate change. It’s very unequal.”
This is all maddeningly consistent with Johnson’s overall antipathy toward science and specifically climate change, which he’s called “bullshit.” He’s not a serious person, and he’s in office for another six years. Let’s hope the planet can endure.
Fox News agreed Wednesday to hand over thousands of documents to voting machine company Smartmatic, which is suing the network for defamation in a case similar to Dominion Voting Machines’ just-settled lawsuit.
Smartmatic says Fox bears financial responsibility for airing false allegations that the company rigged the 2020 presidential election against former President Donald Trump…
Abortion providers in Kansas will soon face additional criminal penalties if they do not provide care to infants “born alive” in an abortion after lawmakers approved the first anti-abortion bill since voters overwhelmingly opted to retain the state-level right to the procedure last year.
The Kansas Legislature voted Wednesday to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the bill, which goes beyond existing federal law protecting infants “born alive” in abortions to create new criminal penalties.
The House voted 87-37 to and the Senate voted 31-9 Wednesday override the veto on the “born alive” bill. The new law will take effect in July…
House Republicans on Wednesday narrowly voted to pass House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) legislation to raise the debt ceiling through 2024 and slash government spending…
The House voted 217-215 to pass the bill along party lines on Wednesday afternoon.
In the end, four House Republicans voted against the bill, after overnight revisions ended the objections from Corn Belt Republicans as well as demands from conservative members to tighten work requirements for food stamps and Medicaid.
Three of the four “no” votes were from members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus who felt the bill didn’t go far enough: Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Ken Buck (Colo.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.).
The fourth, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), has long expressed discomfort about the idea of raising the debt ceiling on principle…
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Relations with European countries are at their “lowest possible level”, the Kremlin has said, adding that each wave of expulsions of Russian diplomats was reducing the space for diplomacy.
Countries including Moldova, Sweden and Norway have all expelled Russian diplomats in recent days. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said all such measures would be responded to in kind.
…Germany is one of the latest country to send diplomats home, expelling 20 on Saturday. Russia responded by expelling 40.
Russia’s foreign ministry has rejected a bid by the US embassy to visit the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in prison on 11 May.
It said the measure was taken in response to Washington’s failure to process visas for “representatives from the journalistic pool” of Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov during his visit to the United Nations on Monday….
Britain’s opposition Labour party has asked the government why there has been no new weapons announcements since February and no fresh update from ministers to parliament since January.
In an urgent question to defence minister Andrew Murrison, shadow defence secretary John Healey said: “I am concerned momentum behind our military help is faltering, and our UK commitment to Ukraine is flagging.
“No statement on Ukraine from the Defence Secretary since January. No new weapons announced for Ukraine since February. No 2023 Action Plan for Ukraine, despite being promised last August. No priorities set for the London Ukraine recovery conference in June,” he told MPs.
“The prime minister said in February the UK “will be the first country to provide Ukraine with longer-range weapons”. What? And when? The defence secretary said on Friday that “delivery is accelerating” of military aid. How? And what?”
Defence minister Ben Wallace was not present to give a response, but one of his deputies Murrison, said the UK was “one of the leading providers of military support for Ukraine”.
A total of 14,000 Ukrainian troops had been trained by the UK so far, and the total is expected to reach 20,000 this year he added.
…Nato allies have delivered almost all their promised combat vehicles to Ukraine, the transatlantic defence alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has said. “More than 98% of the combat vehicles promised to Ukraine have been delivered,” Stoltenberg said at a news briefing, adding that Kyiv “now has the military capabilities it needs to recapture territory”.
A California judge has tentatively ordered Elon Musk to be interviewed under oath about whether he made certain statements regarding the capabilities of Tesla’s Autopilot features after the company questioned the authenticity of the remarks, claiming Musk is a “target for deep fakes”.
The ruling came in a lawsuit against Tesla, filed by the family of Walter Huang who was killed in a car crash in 2018.
Huang’s family argues Tesla’s partially automated driving software failed. The carmaker contends Huang was playing a video game on his phone before the crash and disregarded vehicle warnings.
The attorneys for Huang’s family sought to depose Musk regarding recorded statements from 2016 in which he allegedly said: “A Model S and Model X, at this point, can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person. Right now.”
Tesla, however, opposed the request in court filings, arguing that Musk, the Tesla CEO, cannot recall details about the statement and questioning the authenticity of the recording.
“[Musk], like many public figures, is the subject of many ‘deepfake’ videos and audio recordings that purport to show him saying and doing things he never actually said or did,” Tesla said.
Judge Evette Pennypacker tentatively ordered a limited, three-hour deposition where Musk could be asked whether he actually made the statements on the recordings, and called Tesla’s arguments “deeply troubling”.
“Their position is that because Mr Musk is famous and might be more of a target for deep fakes, his public statements are immune,” Pennypacker wrote, adding that such arguments would allow Musk and other famous people “to avoid taking ownership of what they did actually say and do”.
In June 2016 video of Musk speaking at a conference was uploaded to YouTube, and shows the Tesla CEO making the statement that the attorneys for Huang’s family refer to.
…
The lawsuit is scheduled to go into trial on 31 July, adding to growing legal and regulatory scrutiny over Tesla’s Autopilot system.
A California state court jury on Friday found Autopilot did not fail in what appeared to be the first trial related to a crash involving the software.
…As part of US anti-communist operations in south-east Asia – commonly known as the Vietnam war – between 1964 and 1973, American pilots flew 580,000 attack sorties over Laos, an average of one planeload of bombs every eight minutes for almost a decade. By the time the last US bombs fell in April 1973, a total of 2,093,100 tonnes of ordnance had rained down on this neutral country.
To this day, Laos, a country of just 7 million people, retains the dubious accolade of being the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita.
Bombs don’t just kill during wartime, they remain live for decades. While no one knows the exact figures, upwards of 20,000 Laotians have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance (UXO) since the end of the war. There were 63 accidents in 2021 alone. Even though the numbers are falling, Laotians are still being killed and injured as a result of a conflict that ended five decades ago. Of these, 45% are children.
“Mortar, BLU-26, grenade …” Dawang, an eight-year-old member of the Hmong Indigenous group, wears a pink hoodie branded with Disney’s Frozen, her long black hair tied in a ponytail. She is being asked to identify pictures of different types of ordnance. A mile down the road from Thaiyang’s house, a class of 30 girls is taking an explosive-risk education session at the primary school.
They sit at rows of wooden desks while two energetic Mag [Mines Advisory Group] staff in khaki uniforms use roleplay and cartoons to educate them about the dangers lurking in their rice paddies and forests.
Most Hmong fought with the US against the communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese allies. Yet all these years later, the Hmong still live with the daily, persistent threat of being injured by bombs dropped by their former brothers in arms….
More at the link. They have a link at the end to “Laos: The Most Bombed Country on Earth” on BBC Radio 4.
Paris Marx is joined by Shoshana Wodinsky to discuss the unconvincing arguments being made for a TikTok ban in the United States, then by Daniel Greene to explore how the turn against Chinese technology signals a shift in US policy on the internet and technology.
Shoshana Wodinsky is a freelance reporter, previously at Marketwatch and Gizmodo. She writes the Tubes newsletter. Daniel Greene is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies and the author of The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope….
Trans Montana St. Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who is a Democrat, discusses the state house GOP barring her from the House chamber for the remainder of the session after she spoke out against a measure to restrict gender affirming care in the state. “Behind the scenes Republicans are expressing they wished that the far-right contingent of their party didn’t push this, but they’re afraid of being primaried,” Montana’s first transgender legislator tells Joy Reid….
Hours after National Guard member Jack Teixeria was arrested for leaking classified information, @RepMTG praised him, and referred to him as a hero and patriot.
Court documents and text messages show he was likely very close to carrying out a mass shooting.
h/t: @EliotHiggins
Among the MAGA leaders who praised and defended Jack Teixeira was @DonaldJTrumpJr and @TuckerCarlson.
In addition to his treasonous leak of classified information, Teixeira was highly likely planning to carry out terrorist attacks against Americans.
All of the texts, documents and many others pieces of evidence against Jack Teixeira can be researched or reviewed at:…
One more brief moment in time when Pence is smarter than Trump:
Former Vice President Mike Pence didn’t want to testify to the federal grand jury investigating Jan. 6 and the Republican efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In fact, the Hoosier fought to get out of it.
But a federal judge recently ordered Pence to comply with a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith’s office, and a few weeks ago, the former vice president said he’d forgo the appeals process and answer prosecutors’ questions.
“We’ll obey the law, we’ll tell the truth,” Pence told CBS News last week, in an interview that aired on “Face the Nation.”
For Trump, the idea that his former White House partner would obey the law and tell the truth wasn’t at all encouraging. Indeed, the former president filed suit in the hopes of blocking Pence from testifying.
As NBC News reported, that effort isn’t going especially well.
A federal appeals court Wednesday rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to block former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying before a federal grand jury that’s investigating the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington refused to block Pence’s subpoena after Trump filed an appeal this month to halt a lower court decision ordering Pence to testify. The decision is under seal, but the denial of Trump’s emergency motion was referenced in the court docket.
The former president and his lawyers might yet take their chances with the U.S. Supreme Court, but it’s not yet clear whether they’ll bother.
Pence recently told a conservative media outlet that he has “nothing to hide.” It would appear his former boss has a very different perspective in mind.
As for how we arrived at this point, let’s revisit our earlier coverage for those who might benefit from a refresher.
As part of the special counsel investigation into Trump’s efforts to stay in power despite his defeat, Smith recognized the former vice president as a uniquely important witness. Pence was not only hunted by Trump’s radicalized followers during the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, but he was also pressured by the then-president to participate in an illegal scheme to overturn the 2020 election results.
For those investigating possible crimes surrounding the “Big Lie” and the insurrectionist riot, few people, if anyone, have more relevant insights than the Indiana Republican. His sworn testimony would likely be foundational to the broader case.
So, to no one’s surprise, the special counsel’s office recently subpoenaed Pence. The Hoosier balked, claiming the summons was, in his words, “unconstitutional.” It was an odd claim, which didn’t fare well, and it now appears the former vice president will finally answer questions under oath — possibly as early as this week.
No constitutional amendment is more misunderstood than the First, despite being just a handful of plain English words. And there’s nothing like Tucker Carlson’s firing at Fox News to bring out the ignorance in full force, with too many people thinking that a right to free speech somehow also means a right to a platform. […]
Turkish police have detained at least 126 people suspected of links to a banned Kurdish militant group, ahead of an election that could bring down President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkish reports said those held across 21 provinces were suspected of financing and helping to recruit for the outlawed PKK.
The suspects included lawyers, journalists and politicians.
The main pro-Kurdish party said the arrests were timed to affect the vote.
Nineteen days before Turks vote in presidential and parliamentary elections, the HDP said those detained included lawyers who could scrutinise election security, independent journalists, who could cover potential voter fraud, and party campaign managers.
…
The HDP denies links to the militant PKK, which is considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and European Union. It is considered Turkey’s second largest opposition party but has seen thousands of its members jailed, including former joint leader Selahattin Demirtas.
In 2019, dozens of elected HDP mayors were removed because of “terror charges”, condemned by their party as a coup against voters.
In a bid to avoid a possible court ban on running for parliament on 14 May it has nominated its candidates under the banner of a new Green Left party.
The elections are being seen as Turkey’s most significant for years, with six opposition parties uniting behind a single candidate in Kemal Kilicdaroglu. The HDP is not part of that so-called Table of Six but has backed his candidacy.
Mr Kilicdaroglu leads the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and opinion polls give him a realistic chance of defeating Turkey’s long-time leader Mr Erdogan, who has been in power for more than 20 years.
He has accused Mr Erdogan’s ruling AK Party of stigmatising millions of Turkish Kurds as terrorists to consolidate nationalist votes.
President Erdogan has obtained sweeping powers in recent years, turning a largely ceremonial role into an elected post with the ability to appoint judges and declare a state of emergency, with the resulting power of ruling by decree.
His popularity has been dented by soaring inflation of over 50% and by his response to the double earthquake in February, which killed more than 50,000 people in 11 provinces and has left thousands homeless.
…
The first round of the presidential election takes places on the same day as the parliamentary vote. If no presidential candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, a second round run-off follows two weeks later on 28 May.
Ben Collins tweeted: “Been on BlueSky for hours now and have not been called a pedophile for saying I like sandwiches yet. It’s euphoric. Kind of incredible how low the bar is for me to be happy online.”
On a lighter note, I was trying to figure out how to get one of my stainless steel saucepans clean (I accidentally carbonized some sauerkraut while making a sausage/sauerkraut/apple caserole) and I started humming the theme from one of the shows my granddaughters love to watch” “Work it out, work it out, work it out, wombats . . .
Jack Teixeira…
During the FBI’s investigation, they found a gun locker located only two feet from Teixeira’s bed containing handguns, bolt-action rifles, shotguns, an AK-style high-capacity weapon, and a gas mask. They also found a silencer-style accessory in his desk, and a military-style helmet and mounting bracket in the dumpster outside the house. All weapons were seized, but a search of his parent’s residences found bolt-action rifles, AR and AK-style weapons, and a bazooka.
The memo states there is a concern for the public given that Teixeira’s parents’ weapons weren’t seized, and if released to his father’s custody, he would have access to them.
He is going to get free housing at a federal facility for a very long time!
For several days, the situation in Bakhmut was relatively calm. Relatively. Meaning that it only looked like one of the middle tiers of hell instead of the lowermost bolgia. Having reached the railroad station at the center of town, Russian forces seemed to reduce their pace and for nearly a week not only did Russia show little advance, Ukraine actually pushed Wagner forces back in at least two areas of the city.
Rumors that Russia was preparing for a final push to clear Ukrainian troops from the city before Russian Victory Day parades rolled around on May 9 seemed to get a boost when Ukraine identified several new ammunition depots in the city. On the other hand, Ukraine identified those ammo dumps by blowing them, so any actual push has apparently been somewhat deflated.
However, over the last two days, Russia has started moving again. Not in the sense of “one big push,” but with the same kind of grinding, high-cost, block by block, artillery plus infantry advance they have been making since Soledar was captured by Russian forces at the end of 2022.
On Wednesday, Russia destroyed a four-story building in the southwest of Bakhmut, reportedly Ukraine’s local HQ for some weeks. Some accounts put that destruction down to missiles launched from planes circling kilometers to the east. Others pin the destruction on a weapon that Russia has driven into the city: the largest mortar in the world.
According to Euromaidan Press, Ukraine has been stepping up air defenses around Bakhmut, shooting down more drones and incoming missiles launched from aircraft. However, Russia destroyed several blocks of high-rise buildings northwest of the train station using 500-kilogram air-launched glide bombs safely released kilometers from the front. Ukrainian snipers had been striking at Russian forces around the rail line from those taller buildings, which are now all but gone.
There are concerns that with Ukraine deprived of these positions, Russian forces can advance through the streets of Bakhmut more rapidly.
At the same time, Russia has reportedly brought into Bakhmut several 2S4 Tyulpan self-propelled heavy mortars. Though it can move relatively quickly down the highway, the 2S4 has a very slow rate of fire (about one round per minute) and a short range of less than 10 kilometers. That lack of range and slow rate of fire has allowed Ukraine to destroy seven of the (as few as) nine that were in active service at the start of the war.
Vulnerable as they are, there’s a reason that Russia still uses these things and why it may have pulled more of the moldering 40+ year old guns out of storage and patched them together to send to Bakhmut: The 2S4 Tyulpan has an astounding 240 mm diameter barrel. That makes it larger than many naval guns.
Why does it take so long between shots? Because each 130 kilogram shell (that’s nearly 300 pounds!) has to be wrangled into position by hand with the help of a small crane. It really seems ridiculous to call these things a “shell” in the same sense as the ammo used by most guns. [video at the link]
The 2S4 is really the last word in giant mortar systems. It’s the last word because … people stopped making giant mortars.
Once upon a time (mostly meaning in the 19th century) armies on all sides rolled out mortars of almost unfathomable size. That included the 610 mm “Monster Mortar” of Belgium, and the U.S. made “Little David,” which had a diameter of 914.4 mm and shells roughly the size of a small car. These guns are all pretty famous for being enormous wastes of time and money. In World War II, the Germans, who could never resist trying to make a super weapon, rolled out the 600 mm “Karl-Gerät” (built by the same guys who build Leopard tanks today). But hauling a gun that size around led to building a 124-ton vehicle that couldn’t go faster than a walking pace and its 2,170-kilogram (2.4 tons) shells were … unwieldy.
Still, various armies were building relatively large mortars up until the 1960s, when they were largely replaced by the combination of air and ground-based missiles, including MLRS systems. The Soviet Union’s last massive mortar, the 420 mm “Oka,” never really entered production. The 280 mm Soviet M1939, their biggest gun of World War II, was finally retired in the 1970s.
Now the 2S4 Tyulpan lingers on as the one of the last of a fading age, which doesn’t make those massive shells hit Bakhmut with any less effect. It also doesn’t make the falling shells any easier to stop. Their relatively short arc apparently makes them more difficult to intercept than incoming drones or missiles.
The best way to stop them is to just do what Ukraine has done at least seven times already: Destroy the guns.
[…] Trump debuted a new web ad on Wednesday night that is chock full of allusions to globalist conspiracy theories and a modified version of his famous slogan. […]
Trump’s ad paints the country under Biden as “a nation in decline” beset by crime, economic woes, “an invasion” from across the border, and a nation facing “the threat of nuclear annihilation.” It also identifies another culprit for these issues.
“The global elitists who send your kids to war, who tell you a woman is a man and a man is a woman, who teach your children their country, their faith, their beliefs are a lie. They have corrupted every facet of American government,” a narrator intones dramatically in the clip.
It’s a mix of culture war red meat and far right conspiracy theorizing. This dire description of “global elitists” is set against a backdrop showing logos from the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset.” That initiative, which was launched in mid-2020 as an effort to reduce economic inequality and promote environmental protection in the wake of the pandemic, has become a fixation among far right activists who have suggested it is proof of a sinister effort by hidden forces eager to control society. Experts have suggested the narrative was successful in part because it builds on what the Anti-Defamation League described as “long-standing and familiar right-wing conspiracy tropes” that have persisted in other conspiracy theories about the “New World Order.”
Along with directly hinting at concerns about the “Great Reset,” Trump’s ad refers to sinister “globalists.” […]
In the web ad, which was paid for by Trump’s campaign and promoted by the former president on Truth Social, the narrator presents Trump as the solution to the problems plaguing the nation [“ONE MAN, ONE MOVEMENT]. The clip concludes with a variation of Trump’s famous “Make America Great Again” slogan.
“This is Joe Biden’s America, failing, weak, but one man, one movement can change all that for us, put America, the middle class first and put the globalists, the elitists, and the corrupt in their place,” the narrator declares. “One man focused on the true owners of this great land, one movement focused on the true priorities: Make America Great For Us Again.”
Trump’s slogan was a staple of his successful 2016 campaign and his first re-election bid that became the namesake of his “MAGA” movement. Over the years, some commentators have suggested it also functions as a dog whistle by evoking nostalgia for a country that was less diverse and equitable. The modified version that appears in Trump’s new ad seems to be a more exclusionary version of the slogan [Make America Great For Us Again.] with the implication he wants a return to greatness for one group that he is characterizing as the “true owners of this great land.” […]
whheydtsays
Re: SC (Salty Current) @ #126…
When correcting the proofs for a book, my late wife cited a different Swift work. (The copy editor had changed “little endian vs. big endian” to “little Indian vs. big Indian.” She changed it back and wrote a marginal note, “See, J. Swift.”)
Trump must be flushed with pride.
—————–
Ten or Fifteen Flushes
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Ein Reich
Ein Fuhrer
Ein Volk
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So now “MAGA” is out? The new branding is “MAGFUA”? I’m not feeling it
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Trumpyism is a cult not a political party.
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“Concerns about “globalism” have been a feature of the far right in recent years with experts suggesting they can serve as a “dog whistle” for racism and anti-Semitism. Despite those concerns, Trump has consistently leaned into the terminology.”
A triumph of barbarism
A very sad farewell this morning. Among the buildings that have just been destroyed in Bakhmut is the building that contained the famous mural of a mother holding up a young girl. That building, with its joyous image of hope for the future … is gone. Just completely gone. [Tweet and images at the link]
This mural … in a way, it was Bakhmut. For people driving into the city along the T0504 highway from Kostyantynivka, this was the first sight that greeted them on reaching the city. This happy scene defined expectations and framed the entrance to the city.
The mural was not a person. So far as I’m aware, no one died in the destruction of this building. But the loss is incalculable. Where there were once such scenes of faith in the future and the wonder of everyday life, now there is this. Only this.
Unless something changes, Bakhmut is nearing the end
Right now in Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces are still clinging to the western edge of the city, but “clinging” definitely seems like the right word. In spite of talk about potential reinforcements, claims that Ukraine was building forces north and south of the city, and days in which small areas were returned to Ukrainian control, the Russian advance continues. Right now, Russia holds somewhere between 85% and 90% of what falls within the city boundaries of Bakhmut. No matter what ISW or anyone else has been saying for months, it seems unlikely that Wagner Group or other Russian forces will culminate anywhere short of capturing 100% of the city.
There are reports today that Ukraine is preparing a “surprise” for Russian forces in Bakhmut, but such reports have circulated so often that it’s hard to take them seriously at this point. In spite of everything that’s been said, what’s visible on the ground is that Russia takes a block, then takes another block, then … etc.
The cost of this may be extremely high. U.S. intelligence estimates that Wagner Group has lost as much as 65% of its total force at Bakhmut. Total Russian losses may top 30,000 in the attempt to capture this single city.
But Russia is apparently willing to pay that cost, and so far Ukraine either hasn’t found the right tactics to stop the Russian advance, or hasn’t been willing to dedicate the necessary resources to push Wagner back. [NOEL report tweet and video. “The enemy is shelling our positions with artillery and aviation around the clock. Heavy flamethrower systems are widely used. […]”]
In the area around the city, Ukrainian forces reportedly had some success in fighting both to the north and south near Ivaniske. However, Russian forces made another push at that bend in the road west of Khromove, making any attempt to move down the former “road of life” not just difficult, but suicidal. The Ukrainian general staff reports that Russia made at least eight assaults directly toward Khromove on Tuesday. These were apparently repelled, but taking that location, permanently closing off this route, and threatening even the dirt roads that remain are definitely high on Russia’s agenda.
If Ukraine isn’t going to lose Bakhmut completely, something has to change, and it has to change within a matter of days, because a couple of weeks is probably all that remains at the current rate of Russian advance.
Russia is finding it difficult to hold onto what it has taken
An estimated 97% of Russia’s military is in Ukraine. And as images showing abandoned bases behind the lines demonstrate, most of those Russian forces are now at the front. That’s causing Russia some difficulties in those areas they claim to have annexed.
On Wednesday, Radio Liberty reported that a shortage of personnel is preventing Russia from holding onto full control over occupied areas. […] Russia originally had over 27,500 members of its National Guard in Ukraine to exert control over occupied areas.
However, many of these units have since been pulled to the front and have suffered significant casualties. Shortage of other personnel has also required these forces to tackle everything from police work to managing local infrastructure. That lack of Russian forces behind the lines is opening up occupied areas to increased activity by partisans.
The latest example, as Ukrainian Pravda reports, appears to be a large explosion in Melitopol, in buildings where Russian officials and collaborators worked to conduct “law enforcement.”
98% of promised Western vehicles now in Ukraine
On Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that 98% of the combat vehicles that Western nations promised would be in Ukraine this spring have been delivered. This doesn’t include the U.S. M1 Abrams tanks, which were never expected to arrive before fall.
What has been delivered totals 1,550 armored vehicles, 230 tanks, ammunition, and other supplies. Included in these figures are both Western tanks and additional upgraded Soviet-era tanks delivered to Ukraine since the first of the year.
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Well, this could make things awkward. [Image of Intelligence Update noting that Russian forces have established sandbag fighting positions on the roofs of several of the six reactor buildings at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant […]]
YouTube link to Ari Melber’s segment in which he discusses “CRUZ TAPES”: NEW HEAT ON GOP SENATOR OVER 2020 PLOT.” It’s basically about what Cruz did to try to help Trump steal the election.
YouTube link to the next Melber segment, an exclusive in which actual tapes of Cruz speaking are revealed.
Cruz is caught pushing a fake “commission” to steal the 2020 election and outlining his plot just four days prior to January 6th, 2021.
Melber breaks down the damaging “Cruz tapes” and how Cruz went from a Trump foe to a planner of 2020 plot for Trump.
Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared Thursday before the federal grand jury convened as part of the special counsel investigation into former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and remain in power, according to a source familiar with the matter.
That looks like progress. Pence was at the courthouse from 9 AM to 4 PM.
GerrardOfTitanServersays
Re Bakhmut
As long as the Ukrainian tactics mean that many more Russian soldiers are wounded and killed compared to the Ukrainian soldiers, and they’re getting a better ratio than they could elsewhere, then this is a great deal for the Ukrainians, and they should keep it up. It doesn’t matter if they lose the city. At least not strategically. Bakhmut was never important militarily. It was always a political objective for Russian to claim some kind of victory, and perhaps unfortunately, Ukraine decided to also make Bakhmut a symbol of resistance and so Ukraine might have committed more to its defense than they should have. And maybe Ukraine chooses to fight there because Bakhmut is already destroyed, and better for Ukraine to fight in a city that is already destroyed compared to fighting in another city and having that other city be destroyed too.
More western military aid cannot come fast enough, and more western sanctions on the whole Russian economy including its oil and gas exports cannot come fast enough.
Rep. Jamie Raskin has completed chemotherapy with a preliminary diagnosis of being ‘in remission,’ he revealed in an open letter Thursday. In the letter, the Maryland Democrat detailed a scan that came up negative for discernible cancer cells, with a 90 percent prognosis of no relapse in a preliminary report. Having heard the news, the lawmaker described ringing a cancer bell with his nurses and doctors.
A voting rights group is suing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R-FL) administration for its “byzantine” voter registration process, which has led to the arrests of dozens of formerly incarcerated people who accidentally voted illegally.
The League of Women Voters of Florida filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd (R) for allegedly failing to comply with federal requirements for voter registration. Their complaint cites the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), a 1993 statute that outlines minimum standards for the process to increase registration and enable state governments to promote, rather than impede, eligible citizens’ rights.
“The State of Florida has chosen to defy that law,” the complaint said. “Florida enacted a byzantine statutory scheme for the restoration of voting rights following felony convictions that made it ‘sometimes hard, sometimes impossible’ for returning citizens (Floridians with past felony convictions) to determine their eligibility to vote.”
[…] “Due to the State’s NVRA violation and maze of voter-eligibility rules, returning citizens struggle to accurately complete the Application and voter-registration organizations struggle to assist returning citizens in answering the Application,” the complaint said.
[…] The League of Women Voters had been helping formerly incarcerated citizens in the state regain their right to vote since 2015. In 2018, voters elected to reinstate suffrage for former felons through a historic ballot initiative known as Amendment 4. Once the constitutional amendment was passed, about 1.4 million residents regained their right to vote.
But state Republicans weren’t too happy with the development and introduced legislation to add new restrictions on when a previously incarcerated person is eligible to vote in the state. […]
In 2019, the Florida GOP tweaked the amendment so that it required returning citizens to pay their court-ordered fines and fees before their rights were reinstated […]
[…] 20 Floridians were arrested last August for voting illegally, even though they’d acquired registration cards and thought they were allowed to vote.
“Florida laid a trap for its citizens,” Bowie said.
South Carolina and Nebraska, two conservative states that have been pushing to ban abortion, on Thursday both failed to pass new bills prohibiting the procedure, preserving wide access to abortion in those states and handing surprise victories to abortion rights advocates.
In Nebraska, a bill to ban most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — a strict prohibition that would outlaw the procedure before most women know they are pregnant — failed to advance in the state legislature, making it unlikely to move forward for the remainder of this year’s legislative session.
The bill fell one vote short of the 33 needed in order to advance, after two senators did not vote. Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican who had supported the bill, said after the vote that it was “unacceptable for senators to be present not voting on such a momentous vote.” Mr. Pillen, who described himself as “a staunch defender of life” said he was “profoundly disappointed” by the outcome.
In South Carolina, the senate rejected a bill that would ban most abortions in the state. The bill had already been passed by the House, but the Senate’s five women — three of whom are Republicans — opposed the bill and spoke forcefully against it.
The bills, if they had passed, were likely to be signed into law by Republican governors, and would have been a significant change for state residents. Currently, both South Carolina and Nebraska allow abortion up to around 22 weeks.
During discussion of the bill, State Senator Mia McLeod, an independent, appealed to her colleagues to protect the rights of women and girls. “If this bill passes, a baby will be forced to carry and deliver another baby, even if it costs her her life,” she said.
KGsays
The Chair of the BBC, corrupt Tory (but I repeat myself) Richard Sharp, has resigned following the publication of a report pointing out his corruption (or “possible perceived conflict of interest” in its mealy-mouthed terms – Sharp helped arrange a large loan for Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson at the same time Johnson was appointing him, and failed to declare this to Parliament). Now Sunak will have to find another corrupt Tory (but I repeat myself again) who is less obviously corrupt, to replace Sharp.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Ukraine’s forces are concluding their preparations for a long-expected spring counteroffensive against invading Russian troops, the country’s defence minister has said, and are broadly speaking ready. Oleksii Reznikov told an online briefing on Friday: “As soon as there is God’s will, the weather and a decision by commanders, we will do it.” He gave no date for when the counteroffensive would start but said: “Globally speaking, we are to a high percentage ready.” Kyiv has been preparing a counterattack for several months aimed at repelling Russian forces from the east and south.
Russia launched a wave of missile attacks across many of Ukraine’s biggest cities before dawn on Friday, killing a mother and young child in the port city of Dnipro, and fourteen people at a high-rise apartment building in the central city of Uman.
Air raid alarms were active across Ukraine in the early hours of Friday morning, while explosions were heard in Kyiv, and southern Mykolaiv was targeted again.
The New York Times has reported that Amnesty International has been sitting on an independent review criticising its controversial allegation that Ukrainian forces were illegally endangering civilians. Amnesty’s accusation that Ukrainian troops were illegally putting “civilians in harm’s way” by basing themselves nearby and launching attacks from populated areas caused widespread anger when it was published last August. Russia claimed it as vindication but critics – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – said it was poorly researched, ignored wartime realities and drew a moral equivalence between Russia, the aggressor, and Ukraine, the victim.
Reports are emerging that the Russian colonel general Mikhail Mizintsev, known as the “Butcher of Mariupol”, has been removed as deputy defence minister in charge of logistics and supplies. Reuters cites a military blogger, Alexander Sladkov, and the news website RBC as saying Mizintsev, who orchestrated the siege of the devastated city of Mariupol last year, was no longer in the role he was appointed to last September….
Russian cruise missiles have killed at least 17 people in the central Ukrainian cities of Uman and Dnipro, days after Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, begged his allies for more air defence supplies.
The attacks were part of a wave of Russian missile and drone strikes in the early hours of Friday morning, the most intense aerial bombing of major Ukrainian cities in weeks.
Footage from Uman, where at least 15 people were killed including two children, showed a building in flames and partly reduced to rubble. A mother and her three-year-old daughter were killed in their home on the outskirts of Dnipro.
Fragments of a missile shot down by air defences appeared to have fallen on the house, in the rural area on the outskirts of Dnipro, police told neighbours. “It was loud enough to understand that someone was probably hurt,” said Oleksandr Kalinichenko, a neighbour who lives about 300 metres away.
…I cannot say that Malm is wrong, and that non-violent action is more likely to succeed. After all, none of us have been here before. But if you are pushing other people towards decades in prison while risking a backlash that would close down the last possibility of success, you need to be pretty confident that the strategy will work. I have no such confidence….
…Before the FAA granted the license, environmentalists had pressed for a more extensive environmental impact study. Margolis said the launch mishap proved the original environmental analysis was inadequate….
Kansas enacted what may be the most sweeping transgender bathroom law in the US on Thursday after Republican lawmakers overrode the Democratic governor’s veto of the measure.
The state’s governor, Laura Kelly, had blocked the bill, suggesting it was discriminatory and would hurt the state’s ability to attract businesses. But supporters had exactly the two-thirds majority they needed to pass the new law, which will take effect 1 July.
The legislation comes as conservative states across the US crackdown on trans rights with extreme laws restricting bathroom access and banning gender-affirming care to minors, and severely restricting such treatment for adults. In Montana, Republicans barred a trans lawmaker from the statehouse floor after she told them they would have “blood on your hands” if they voted to ban gender-affirming medical care for trans children.
Kansas joins at least eight others states that have enacted laws preventing trans people from using the restrooms associated with their gender identities. Most of the laws apply to schools, but the Kansas legislation applies also to locker rooms, prisons, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers. It is not clear how the new law will be enforced.
…
The Kansas house speaker, Dan Hawkins, told GOP colleagues after the vote that the override was “truly the icing on the cake” among conservative policy victories this year and said that he was “just giddy”.
…
Kansas’ law doesn’t create a new crime, impose criminal penalties or fines for violations or even say specifically that a person has a right to sue over a trans person using a facility aligned with their gender identity. Many supporters acknowledged before it passed that they hadn’t considered how it will be administered.
The bill is written broadly enough to apply to any separate spaces for men and women and, Kelly’s office said, could prevent trans women from participating in state programs for women, including for female hunters and farmers. As written, it also prevents trans people from changing the gender markers on their driver’s licenses – though it wasn’t clear whether that change would occur without a lawsuit.
The new law is part of a larger push by Republicans across the US to roll back LGBTQ+ rights, particularly trans rights. At least 21 states, including Kansas, restrict or ban female transgender athletes’ participation in female sports. At least 14 states – but not Kansas – have restricted or banned gender-affirming care for minors.
…
Ex-state representative Stephanie Byers, the first elected trans Kansas lawmaker who now lives in Texas, predicted that legal chaos is coming to her former home state.
While the attack on trans people is not physical, Byers said, “they’re taking us out in every possible way”.
From the Guardian UK liveblog (linked by KG @ #144):
Downing Street was forced to relent on its plans to host an invitation-only press briefing with Rishi Sunak in Glasgow after Scottish political journalists gate-crashed the briefing room en masse on Friday morning.
The prime minister’s attempts to focus on the Tories’ record in government instead became a furore over No 10’s attempts to control the media. In his opening speech an hour earlier, the Scottish Tory chairman Craig Hoy had attacked the Scottish National party for its repeated transparency failures.
Despite complaints from the Scottish Parliamentary Journalists Association – complaints vocally supported by reporters from the six hand-picked titles – No 10 had originally insisted no other newspaper would be allowed into the briefing.
In chaotic scenes, around 24 newspaper reporters – who were all accredited to attend the Scottish Conservatives’ annual conference – pushed past Tory officials and went into the briefing room.
They were then joined by reporters and camera crews from Sky News, STV and BBC Scotland, who asked to be allowed to ask Sunak a single question on his reaction to Richard Sharp’s decision to quit as BBC chair.
Downing Street officials refused to allow TV crews to do so, insisting instead they agree to a very brief interview with Sunak outside the briefing room. After a heated debate about that proposal and a lengthy delay, No 10 then threatened to abandon the entire briefing claiming Sunak had too little time.
When the briefing took place almost an hour late, Sunak was pressed about the chaotic handling of the briefing by a Scottish Sun reporter. He denied the press had been blocked from attending it:
That’s absolutely not my understanding of what’s happened. Just yesterday, I filmed quite an extensive interview with BBC Scotland … I’ve just done another pool clip and I’m speaking to half a dozen of you, which was always the plan.
The SPJA said:
Journalists expect to be able to hold the prime minister to account when he is in Scotland as a vital part of the democratic process. Today’s actions to restrict access are unprecedented and undermine that important principle.
[Foreign Secretary] James Cleverly has been pictured meeting Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party.
On Sunday, the Guardian published a leader which argued that her government remains a threat to core European values.
He tweeted: “From protecting European security to tackling people smugglers, the UK and Italy are united.” They also report that he met with Ron DeSantis earlier.
Listen to Amanda Zurawski testify about the physical and psychological trauma that Texas’ abortion bans inflicted on her after her pregnancy failed. It’s a horrific story that has played out again and again since the Supreme Court abolished the right to abortion….
An anti-abortion advocate on the panel, Dr. Skop, told Zurawski that her doctors should have taken the risk of violating Texas’ ban—up to 99 years’ imprisonment—to terminate her failing pregnancy, and that Texas’ law is perfectly clear. Here’s Zurawski’s response….
On @tedcruz & @JohnCornyn: “I nearly died on their watch. And as a result of what happened to me, I may have been robbed of the opportunity to have children in the future. And it’s because of the policies that they support. What happened to me was horrible, but I am one of many.”…
And more Supreme Court: Revealed: Senate investigation into Brett Kavanaugh assault claims contained serious omissions. This based on a 28 page report released by Chuck Grassley who chaired the hearings in 2018. What they are calling “omissions” seems more like outright lies. One of Brett’s sexually inappropriate incidences at Yale was defended by someone saying they thought it was another student. Turns out the person they named was a senior in high school and not even in New Haven.
[T]he bill Mr. McCarthy introduced … also carries a second big objective that has little to do with debt: undercutting President Biden’s climate and clean energy agenda and increasing American production of fossil fuels. … More than half the 320 pages of legislative text [is designed] to speed up leasing and permitting for oil and gas drilling. … The Republican plan also gives priority to removing clean energy incentives that were included in Mr. Biden’s signature climate, health and tax law.
Commentary:
[…] In other words, for all intents and purposes, the GOP’s debt ceiling hostage note is also an anti-climate bill. [The Republican bill refuses to address climate change.]
To the dismay of those concerned with the planet’s future, it’s not the first. The House Republicans’ H.R. 1 — a bill number set aside for the party’s top legislative priority — was designed specifically to undo measures to combat climate change. It passed the lower chamber about a month ago with the support of 99.5% of the House GOP conference.
A Politico report added yesterday that Republicans now believe that “pushing more fossil fuels” will be an electoral winner for the party. [JFC]
I can appreciate why all of this has a dog-bites-man quality. Republican indifference toward the climate crisis is not new, and it hardly comes as a shock to see so many GOP officials take steps to undo the important work that’s already being done.
But in the recent past, the party seemed at least a little interested in a less dangerous direction.
It was a couple of years ago when The New York Times reported that some Republican officials had come to an uncomfortable conclusion: Climate denialism was a political loser for the party.
“[M]any in the Republican Party are coming to terms with what polls have been saying for years: Independents, suburban voters and especially young Republicans are worried about climate change and want the government to take action,” the article explained.
As we’ve discussed, it led some GOP leaders to believe they should at least pay lip service to global warming […]
The more Republicans were seen as climate deniers, the argument went, the more the national party put itself at a political disadvantage. Some in the GOP even felt the need to form the Conservative Climate Caucus and the Energy, Climate, and Conservation Task Force as a way of demonstrating an interest in the issue.
These weren’t developments from decades past. The Conservative Climate Caucus was formed in 2021. The Energy, Climate, and Conservation Task Force took shape just last year.
And yet, here we are, watching Republicans abandon the pretense of interest. For voters concerned about climate change, GOP leaders aren’t even bothering to keep up appearances anymore. They don’t care, and they’re indifferent to whether the public notices their apathy.
At first blush, The Washington Post’s new reporting on Donald Trump hiring researchers to uncover election fraud, only to come up empty, might seem familiar. But don’t click away just yet, because this is going somewhere.
Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were “all false,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at,” he said. “Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was false.”
At this point, some readers are probably asking, “Didn’t we already know this?” The answer is, “Not exactly.”
What we already knew is about a different group of researchers hired by the Trump campaign.
In February, the Washington Post reported on the Berkeley Research Group, which is well known in legal and corporate circles as a leading consulting firm with prominent clients. As we’ve discussed, when Trump’s political operation set out to scrutinize the 2020 presidential election, and it sought out expert researchers to bolster the former president’s conspiracy theories about voter fraud and election irregularities, it turned to BRG to do the heavy lifting.
[…] Berkeley Research Group couldn’t generate the evidence Team Trump was looking for, because it didn’t exist. […]
The new reporting from yesterday adds a new dimension to all of this: The Republican operation, refusing to accept the legitimacy of the election results, also hired Simpatico Software Systems to conduct a separate investigation — but it couldn’t find any evidence for Team Trump, either.
The obvious significance of revelations like these is that the former president, who continues to lie about his defeat, was well aware of the truth. Trump wrote sizable checks to some of the industry’s top researchers, but they told him the same thing his campaign manager, campaign data team, and campaign lawyers did: He lost, fair and square.
Presented with these facts, the former president not only kept lying, he also launched a scheme to remain in office, hoping to claim power he hadn’t earned. What’s more, he turned all of this into a lucrative fundraising scheme, collecting money from people who believed — and continue to believe — his lies.
But the less obvious significance to the revelations is that the findings from the Berkeley Research Group and Simpatico Software Systems are highly relevant to federal prosecutors. […]
The “Limit, Save, and Grow Act” passed by House Republicans Wednesday is extortion, plain and simple. Speaker Kevin McCarthy is telling President Joe Biden that he has two choices: Destroy the economy with a default on the nation’s debt, or destroy the economy by accepting ruinous cuts to government operations. Then next spring, as the presidential election is heating up, they’d go through it all over again.
The dirty little secret is that the debt ceiling is just the hostage in this scheme. McCarthy had to put it in there as the mechanism to try to force Biden to negotiate with him. It had to be included so McCarthy could claim, “We lifted the debt limit; we’ve sent it to the Senate; we’ve done our job.” The hike was set at $1.5 trillion, a small enough number to ensure that this exercise is repeated again next year, when it can be used again as a cudgel against Biden.
The meat of the bill is those spending cuts the Freedom Caucus demanded, and got. That includes rolling back overall appropriations for all discretionary programs, meaning the ones that Congress has to approve spending for every two years, to 2022 levels. All the programs, that is, except defense. Exempting the huge defense budget, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young explained in a White House statement, “means that everything else in annual appropriations—from cancer research, to education, to veterans’ health care—would be cut by much more.”
“The math is simple, but unforgiving,” Young wrote. “At their proposed topline funding level—and with defense funding left untouched as Republicans have proposed—everything else is forced to suffer enormous cuts. In fact, their bill would force a cut of 22 percent—cuts that would grow deeper and deeper with each year of their plan.” It would make those cuts grow by capping annual spending growth to just 1% for the next decade.
Young spelled out just some of those impacts:
– A 22 percent cut would impact 25 million students in schools that teach low-income students and 7.5 million students with disabilities, which could force a reduction of up to 108,000 teachers, aides or other key staff.
– A 22 percent cut would mean 200,000 children lose access to Head Start slots and another 180,000 children lose access to child care—undermining our children’s education and making it more difficult for parents to join the workforce and contribute to our economy.
– A 22 percent cut would mean 1.7 million women, infants, and children would lose vital nutrition assistance through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), significantly increasing child poverty and hunger.
– A 22 percent cut would take away nutrition services, such as Meals on Wheels, from more than 1 million seniors. For many of these seniors, these programs provide the only healthy meal they receive on any given day.
– A 22 percent cut would result in 7,000 fewer rail safety inspection days next year alone, and 30,000 fewer miles of track inspected annually—enough track to cross the United States nearly 10 times.
[…] Layoffs, hiring freezes, furloughs, postponing technology upgrades: all of that and more […] It could mean losing 11,000 FBI agents, and 2,400 Border Patrol agents. The 4,468 new full-time positions for wildfire fighters would be cut by 1,754 jobs, and pay levels would have to be lowered for those who remain. About 1,000 current firefighters could lose their jobs, and plans to increase their pay and improve working conditions would have to be scrapped.
Beyond all these cuts, Republicans would further punish people on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by forcing them to prove they meet a work-reporting requirement or qualify for an exemption, and taking those benefits away if they can’t comply.
It would also eliminate Biden’s one-time student debt-relief plan, depriving more than 40 million Americans of student loan forgiveness.
Meanwhile, the Republicans double down on protecting wealthy tax cheaters by including the first bill they passed right after taking the House majority. That bill rescinds the more than $70 billion in IRS funding included in the Inflation Reduction Act to help the agency modernize and more effectively do its job. The Congressional Budget Office determined that this bill actually adds to the deficit, finding it would cost the nation more than $114 billion in the next decade.
All of these cuts, the White House veto statement notes, citing a Moody’s Analytics report, “would lead to 780,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2024 and would meaningfully increase the risk of recession.”
“Altogether, this legislation would not only risk default, recession, widespread job loss, and years of higher interest rates, but also make devastating cuts to programs that hard-working Americans and the middle-class count on,” the statement continues. “The bill would make it easier for wealthy tax cheats to avoid the taxes they owe […]
It’s not about the deficit. It’s not about keeping the nation from going into default. It’s about wrecking Joe Biden’s economy. Oh, and more tax cuts for the wealthy. […]
Republicans want to wreck the economy so that they can campaign on the lie that President Biden is wrecking the economy.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Just remembered a story from February that I don’t recall seeing here.
When do you ever just sit and think about the fact that Ian Katz [formerly the deputy editor] of the Guardian (recently boycotted for its transphobia) and [then editor at] the BBC (routinely protested for its transphobia) [and now head of programming for Channel 4] was married to Justine Roberts of Mumsnet (a primary radicalizing hub for UK transphobia) for twenty-five years? Most people don’t! I didn’t, until I heard
[…]
Imagine that Tucker Carlson was not always Tucker Carlson. Imagine that he used to be something more like Anderson Cooper or Dan Rather: Reputable […] Imagine that it was only after Tucker Carlson got married […] that he became what he is […] imagine that you found out Tucker Carlson had been married to the guy from Stormfront this entire time.
Russia has suspended the import of dairy products from Kyrgyzstan, ostensibly citing concerns about quality control. But the report on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty suggests that the move is retaliation after the Kyrgyz National Commission on State Language & Language Policy announced that the country is to begin a transition from Cyrillic to a Latin-based alphabet. Barring of dairy imports hs apparently been used several times over past years as a “blunt foreign policy instrument against former Soviet states whose actions Moscow dislikes,” including Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
The move to switch the script also appears not to have the support of Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, who is said to have met with language commision chair Kanybek Osmonaliev to “harshly criticize” him for the April 19 announcement.
While Japarov is perceived as tilting to Moscow, there are evidently divisions within his government. US Assistant Secretary of State for South & Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu met with Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubaev in capital Bishkek on April 24, to discuss “development of bilateral relations.”…
The report on RFE/RL (itself linked to the US State Department) notes that other regional countries have been dropping Cyrillic for Latin-based script, portraying it as “in part driven by political considerations in order to distance the Turkic-speaking nations from years of Russian influence and develop a stronger national identity.” Kazakhstan has been in the process of switching to the Latin alphabet since 2017, with the transition slated to be complete by 2025. Uzbekistan also adopted a Latin-based script for all official purposes this year. Turkmenistan dropped Cyrillic for Latin script in 1993, while Azerbaijan replaced its Cyrillic-based script with a Latin-based one immediately upon independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Pending legislation imperils ordinary Texans—but it’s great for the gas industry.
Ever since brutal winter storms blacked out much of Texas and killed hundreds of residents in February 2021, the state’s government has constantly talked a big game about bolstering its grid and shielding Texans from future disasters. There is shockingly little to show for it. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced that the Texas Senate, with “a strong bipartisan majority,” had passed a “power grid reform package” of bills purportedly intended to “make sure that Texans have reliable power under any circumstance.”
Featuring nine pieces of legislation and a joint resolution, the package appears impressive at a glance; there are new rules governing energy costs, power-transmission incentives, and protection against grid attacks. […]
Yet a keener analysis of the Senate bills reveals that they hardly do anything to keep the grid running—and, in their current form, would actually make Texans’ power woes even worse. Should they pass, the result wouldn’t just be an ill-equipped Texas grid, but an even weaker electrical system than the one that failed two years ago.
One of the headline bills from the package is SB 6, which establishes the Texas Energy Insurance Program—namely, a plan to construct new natural gas plants that would generate and hold up to 10,000 gigawatts of backup power when needed. These multibillion-dollar facilities would be weatherized to hold against severe storms and sit idle more than 97 percent of the time, as the Houston Chronicle noted. In addition, SB 6 would set up an insurance fund to keep older natural gas plants online so they can also provide 24/7 backup should the grid collapse again.
The other major piece of legislation is SB 7, which provides incentives for private companies to set up energy plants that can “come on within two hours and run for at least four hours”—which means even more natural gas. The key word is dispatchable energy, referring to energy sources that can be turned on and put into effect at all hours of the day. That language is meant to exclude renewables, since sunlight and wind currents are not available 24/7 in almost any climate. Of course, several providers have solved this oft-cited “intermittency” issue through various means: storage of renewable-generated energy in batteries, interconnected home-and-public-power transmission, compressed air. That doesn’t seem to matter to SB 7’s authors, who explicitly position their bill as an alternative to “low non-dispatchable power production.”
You don’t have to peruse that much more to detect a pattern: These are bills meant to boost fossil fuels and crowd out renewables. SB 1287 requires energy companies to cover more of the costs of connecting to the grid depending on distance—in what amounts to an added tax on renewable generators that often operate farther away from the central source and depend on lengthy transmission lines. Then there’s SB 2012, which would “incentivize the construction of dispatchable generation” and “require electric companies to pay generators to produce power in times of shortage.” Definition: more gas buildout, and more levies on electricity providers instead of gas producers. SB 2014 “eliminates Renewable Energy Credits” so as to “level the playing field” with gas sources—never mind the generous tax breaks that already benefit fossil fuel producers. SB 2015 “creates a goal of 50% dispatchable energy” for the central grid, essentially mandating that gas sources provide at least half of Texas’ electricity at all times. Senate Joint Resolution 1 hopes to enshrine SB 6’s gas backup program in the state constitution as a new amendment.
[…] SB 624, which, according to the Texas Tribune, “would require the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to review environmental impacts for wind and solar projects” and also make clean energy developers “hold public meetings” before any of their projects are approved. Doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, until you consider the fact that “other kinds of development don’t automatically have to host a community meeting or undergo the same level of environmental review before breaking ground”—and that all fossil fuel projects are far more environmentally ruinous than solar and wind appliances.
[…] impose extra fines on Texans who complain to the government about environmental-law violations if those complaints don’t result in enforcement actions, an apparent effort to dissuade citizens from alerting authorities to pollution. […]
On Tuesday, both legislative chambers passed a bill to forbid Texas cities from enacting any California-style future bans on sales of gas-powered cars. That comes right as the Statehouse considers imposing a new annual fee for electric cars registered in Texas, which will inevitably hurt clean-car sales—even though EVs can be used to share power with and help stabilize the grid.
[…] the “power grid reform” is less concerned with grid protection than with subsidizing Texas gas […] Weatherized gas backup, as delineated by Senate bills 6 and 7, might appear to be a reasonable solution, if not for the fact that much of 2021’s crisis stemmed from the failures of lines transmitting natural gas. […]
To be clear, renewable power did suffer failures in 2021 as well—all aspects of statewide electricity supply were battered by the storms. Still, as the Texas Tribune has explained, gas was and still is Texas’ dominant power source, and “more than half of the state’s natural gas supply shut down” during the storm “due to power outages, frozen equipment and weather conditions.”
It’s not just that gas failed Texans back then, but that renewables have often saved them ever since. In recent years, properly constructed solar-and-battery installations across the US have proved to be reliable and resilient electricity providers in the midst of hurricanes, floods, and wildfires—even during last summer’s Texas heat waves, when solar and wind helped meet at least one-third of the surge in power demand that stemmed from air conditioning and other cooling methods […]
One of the most bizarre features of Texas’ new energy-legislation blitz, as various state residents have pointed out, is that it goes against every free-market instinct otherwise embraced by the current government’s hyperlibertarian regime. Texas is the nation’s largest wind-energy developer, and is on track to install more solar power this year than any other state (something Texas could rub in California’s face if it wanted). […]
they’re lashing out against renewables as part of the national GOP’s fossil fuel death grip. It wasn’t just clean-energy advocates and climate activists who opposed the “power grid reforms”—so did many of the state’s utilities, who were upset that the bills would impose an inefficient power structure and drive up operating expenses for electricity providers. […]
There are further concerns that, due to the complex and insular nature of Texas’ lone-standing state grid, simply providing more energy that sits idle most of the time (as proposed in SB 6) would drive up costs for consumers […] As Bloomberg’s Liam Denning characterized it, the energy package can best be summed up as “handouts to an industry growing ever more nervous about its competitiveness in an energy transition from which Texas, like many red states, has much to potentially gain.”
[…] If the Texas Senate were legitimately concerned about “reliability and resiliency,” its members would write bills meant to not only add more weatherized power, but also to protect current energy systems, add insulation to Texas homes and businesses, install more transmission lines, explore alternative power sources from other regional grids—and, yes, diversify the electricity mix so that if one primary source of power fails, others can carry the load. Gifts for gas and penalties for renewables will not protect Texans, but that’s where their elected officials have decided to go.
Texas has a whole host of climate and environmental problems coming in the near future, from flooding to disaster insurance coverage to blackouts to large-scale storms. Yet, in the time since the 2021 winter blackouts scarred countless Texans, the state government has opted to pursue minimal measures at best to protect the grid, and then lie to its constituents in declaring all problems to be solved.
[…] When the Legislature winds down its current session next month, it will try to tell Texans that it’s taken substantive, valuable action to make sure a 2021-level disaster doesn’t happen again. Texans shouldn’t fall for it.
KGsays
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain@155,
Looking him up, I find that Katz left the Guardian in 2013, and Newsnight in 2017. So it seems a bit of a stretch to blame him for current or recent transphobia at the BBC, let alone the Guardian!
There could not be a more apt demonstration of just how insensate our traditional news media has become than an article published Thursday by Jim Tankersley of The New York Times, regarding Republicans’ refusal to raise the debt ceiling, and its impact on President Joe Biden. But in order to properly understand and appreciate it, a reader must first internalize some conceptions still commonly accepted by corporate news outlets.
First, such outlets accept that the formerly routine and unremarkable action of lifting the nation’s debt ceiling is now intrinsically tied to—and must necessarily accommodate—Republican ideology and tactics, even when those tactics manifest themselves as pure extortion. Second, these outlets accept that any ideologically driven effort by the GOP, no matter how violative of established norms and the totality of our country’s economic history, and no matter how arbitrary, self-serving and anti-democratic, must by its very nature put Democrats “on the defensive:”
From Tankersley’s story:
WASHINGTON — This week’s vote by House Republicans to couple deep spending cuts with an agreement to raise the debt limit for one year has put President Biden on the defensive, forcing him to confront a series of potentially painful choices at a perilous economic moment.
[Tankersley’s framing of the issue is bullshit.]
In the next paragraph, Tankersley allows the minor point that Biden has already made his position on the issue quite clear. Namely, “that he would not negotiate spending cuts or other efforts to reduce the federal debt as part of discussions over raising the nation’s debt limit.”
Seems like a fairly straightforward position on the president’s part: the country will not bow to hostage-takers. Republicans’ conflation of their most rabid budgetary fantasies with the plain fact of the country’s duty to pay already incurred bills does not merit or deserve serious consideration. [Certainly it does not merit a bended knee before Kevin McCarthy and congresspersons like Marjorie Taylor Greene.] End of story—or so it should be.
But this is The New York Times! So the sub-headline to Tankersley’s story instead places Biden in peril and the GOP in power: “After Republicans passed a bill that pairs spending cuts and fossil fuel support with raising the nation’s borrowing cap, the president must decide when and how to negotiate.”
Not whether to negotiate, but when and how. Why? According to Tankersley there are important considerations at stake:
[B]usiness groups, fiscal hawks and some congressional Democrats are calling on Mr. Biden to begin negotiating in earnest toward a deal that would avoid a default on the debt, which could come as soon as June or July.
“Business groups, fiscal hawks, and some congressional Democrats” are urging Biden to “begin negotiating in earnest” in response to this baldfaced, cynical Republican extortion tactic. This tactic, once treated as legitimate, will doubtlessly be wielded again and again, year after year.
But how exactly does one “negotiate in earnest” with a cabal of MAGA fanatics completely uninterested in governing, the majority of whom already voted to overturn a fair and lawful election? What sort of “earnest” effort might be made with Reps. Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, just to pick a few?
And if there’s no answer to those questions forthcoming, then let’s ponder who these “business groups” might be. Why, it’s our friends, the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, two of the most powerful lobbying groups for the Republican Party!
Quelle surprise! The most anti-regulatory, anti-government paladins of free enterprise in this country want Biden to “engage” with Republicans who just submitted a bill decimating Medicaid and gutting nearly the entirety of the president’s legislative accomplishments thus far.
[…] OK, how about those “congressional Democrats?” The ones who are “calling on” the President to negotiate with these extortionists? Who are they? Again, none are named by Tankersley.
But I digress. I noted at the outset that to appreciate articles like this, one has to internalize certain fixed principles about “fair play” and “good faith” commonly accepted by the traditional media. Helpfully, Tankersley incorporates several of them in a single paragraph:
The president faces a cascading set of decisions as the nation, which has already bumped up against its $31.4 trillion debt limit, barrels toward default. He will need to find what, if any, common ground on spending cuts he has with Republicans, who do not share his preference for reducing the nation’s debt path largely by raising taxes on corporations and the rich. He will need to determine if he is prepared to sign any debt limit increase that is attached to conditions demanded by House conservatives.
The “nation” is not “barreling” toward default. The nation’s already-incurred debts aren’t “bumping up” to anything they haven’t “bumped up” to in the past century. They’re deliberately being held hostage by a group of fanatical, MAGA-deluded Republican members of Congress who have collectively decided that imposing their unwanted ideology upon the country is worth the price of also inflicting economic calamity on all Americans. So rather than do what Congresses have previously done 78 times, they’ve decided to dangle the terror of an unforced and unnecessary default over all of our heads […]
Ultimately, he may need to decide how aggressively to intervene in the delicate politics of House leadership.
Someone please enlighten me here. Why should President Biden care about “the delicate politics of House leadership,” when the entire economic future of the country is being held hostage by the Republican Party? Should he be afraid of negotiating with the wrong terrorists?
But we are told President Biden is forced to endure a “cascading set of decisions” in an effort to find “common ground” with Republicans who don’t “share his preference[s].” It all sounds so genteel, doesn’t it? Nothing about the decision by Republicans to subvert the entire purpose of Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which declares that the “validity of the public debt” of the United States “shall not be questioned.”
Tankersley refuses to acknowledge that this is not normal.
All of this raises the question: Is this how the media will frame things if Kevin McCarthy and his pals somehow succeed in their economic terrorism? When the economy tanks from collapsed foreign investment and consumer confidence, the stock market crashes, peoples’ retirement funds are shredded, and companies start to dry up and shed workers, leaving millions without health care to fend for themselves, will reporters at The Times and beyond still be quoting unnamed business leaders who cluck their tongues while prattling on about “earnest” negotiations? Will they regard the default on our nation’s debts as some type of fait accompli, and mutter “Gosh, Mr. President, you should have negotiated with those terrorists?”
Or will they blame the people actually responsible for the calamity?
Reporters working for the New York Times will fuck this up. No doubt. Will more reasonable, thoughtful and logical media sources be able to counter the false narrative?
When Kyle Freels got off work Tuesday, he and his wife, Rene, drove from their home in Missouri across the Mississippi River to look at neighborhoods in Illinois. They also picked up three months’ worth of estrogen for their daughter, Chelsea, who is transgender.
The Freels are preparing to potentially leave St. Louis, where they moved 17 years ago just before Chelsea was born, due to the state’s repeated efforts to restrict the rights of trans people.
“I never thought we’d have to be refugees in the United States, but now we’re being forced out,” Kyle Freels said.
So far this year, Missouri lawmakers have introduced 48 bills targeting LGBTQ rights — the second highest number in the nation behind Texas — with nearly half of those restricting trans rights, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In February, just as the state’s legislative session was starting and Missouri Republicans were filing bills to bar gender-affirming care for minors, Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced that he had started an investigation into the Transgender Center at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital, the state’s only multidisciplinary clinic for trans adolescents. The probe followed claims by Jamie Reed, a former case worker at the center, who alleged the facility was harming children by not conducting thorough mental health assessments before providing patients puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy, or HRT.
Reed’s allegations — outlined in an affidavit and an op-ed, both published on Feb. 9 — have become a flashpoint in the debate over transition-related care for minors, both in Missouri and nationwide. The week after Reed’s op-ed was published, state Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican, introduced a trio of bills to restrict such care and cited Reed’s allegations. Earlier this month, the Republican-led House passed a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors.
…
Though Bailey’s investigation into the Transgender Center is ongoing, he issued a rule on April 13 to significantly restrict transition-related care for all trans people in the state by requiring them to meet a list of criteria before treatment, including attending 15 hourly therapy sessions over at least 18 months and having any mental health issues “treated and resolved.” The rule was scheduled to take effect Thursday, but a judge issued a temporary stay Wednesday night, after civil rights groups and local attorneys filed a petition seeking a temporary restraining order against it. The rule is now slated to take effect Monday, pending the outcome of a hearing.
More than a dozen parents with trans children in the state described the resulting climate as hostile, with one parent calling it a “a dystopian nightmare” and another saying they’ve been “living with harassment every day.” When the Freels talk about it, they call it a “battle” — one that they said will eventually push them out of the state, even though they want to stay and support families with younger kids.
…
Over the last two months, NBC News has requested interviews with nearly 40 people currently or formerly associated with the Transgender Center — including parents of children treated at the center, current and former patients and former employees — as well as local mental health providers and providers at other gender clinics. NBC News has also reached out to local and national groups that both support and oppose transition-related care for minors.
The more than two dozen people who agreed to interviews said Reed’s allegations don’t reflect their experiences at the center.
Sixteen parents, two current patients and two former patients of the center said the care they received was thorough and slow. The shortest amount of time that a parent said their child waited between their first appointment at the center and when their child started a puberty blocker was about six months. Five parents said their children waited more than a year between their first appointments at the center and their children beginning medical transition.
On 4th April 2023, the Missouri House of Representatives approved the plan of creating the offence of “interference with the transportation of livestock,” a class E felony for a person’s first offence and a class C felony for subsequent offences. This is aimed at stopping animal rights activists from blocking the transport of animals to slaughter — which is what the animal rights group Animal Save has been doing during the vigils that made them well known for. This bill needs one more vote in the House before going to the Missouri Senate for consideration.
Specifically, the proposed House Bill 576, sponsored by Rep. Brenda Shields, will make it an offence to interfere with animals being transported by motor vehicle, provoke or disturb animals in a motor vehicle, or place a substance on or near an animal that creates an unreasonable delay, harms the animals’ suitability for sale by those exploiting them or affects human or animal health. Rep. Emily Weber, D-Kansas City, said the state didn’t need to add more felonies to the books, and Rep. Marlon Anderson, D-St. Louis, said he thought the language defining a violation for impeding transport was too vague, adding “If I get into an altercation or an argument with a truck driver, I’m technically impeding the flow of traffic, so I could be charged with a class C felony.”
This is just another type of Ag-Gag law aimed at stopping the work of animal protection investigators in exposing the reality of the animal agriculture industry, although normally such laws deal with issues of trespassing into farms or whistleblowing. Although many US states are now losing such laws as higher courts are finding them unconstitutional, it seems that if this bill is passed, extending AG-Gag laws to vehicles outside premises may lead to a new fresh wave of this sort of legislation.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@KG #159:
Yeah, recent staff are to blame for recent scandals. I think the gist was it was an entanglement that ought to be shocking, yet isn’t, after considering the environment, how normalized it’s been.
A Ukrainian journalist, who formerly worked for the BBC, has been killed fighting on the frontline.
Oleksandr Bondarenko volunteered for Ukraine’s territorial defence after Russia invaded the country in February 2022.
He later became part of the military. Details of how he was killed in action are not yet known, BBC News reports….
A leaked internal review commissioned by Amnesty International is said to have concluded there were significant shortcomings in a controversial report prepared by the rights group that accused Ukraine of illegally endangering citizens by placing armed forces in civilian areas.
The report, issued last August, prompted widespread anger in Ukraine, leading to an apology from Amnesty and a promise of a review by external experts of what went wrong.
Among those who condemned the report was Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who accused Amnesty of “shift[ing] the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim”.
Leaked to the New York Times, that unpublished review has concluded that the report was “written in language that was ambiguous, imprecise and in some respects legally questionable”, according to the newspaper.
…The leaked report also disclosed that there had been significant unease within Amnesty before publication, not least over the issue of whether the government of Ukraine had been sufficiently engaged with.
“These reservations should have led to greater reflection and pause” before the organisation issued its statement, the review added.
Oksana Pokalchuk, the former head of Amnesty’s Ukraine office, who resigned over the report, said she believed the review should be made public as well as a promised internal review of relations inside the organisation on how decisions were made around the report.
“I want justice to be done and to be seen done,” she told the Guardian. “One of the things that was very important to me at the time was that we should be in communication with the Ukrainian government, formally or informally, to get information from them. This wasn’t done, and it caused a lot of damage.
“What I have also not seen so far in the reporting of this review is any discussion of the larger context of the war and how this report played in favour of Russian propaganda. We need to talk about who is the aggressor and who is the victim of this war.”…
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@KG #159:
Your’s is a reasonable reading of it though.
“At least half of all decisions in this industry come down to who someone’s boyfriend is, or who their Dad is, or who said what to who at a party twenty years ago. […] This is what it looks like when the TERFS take over.”
The North Carolina Supreme Court has overturned its own past ruling that said partisan gerrymandering is illegal, clearing the way for Republicans there to redraw the state’s congressional lines in a way that heavily favors the GOP.
The ruling clears the way for North Carolina legislators to aggressively gerrymander the congressional map, which is currently represented by seven Democrats and seven Republicans. Now Republicans in Raleigh could re-create the map they initially passed last cycle which a Democratic-controlled state Supreme Court struck down, netting as many as four seats.
The court issued a 5-2 decision, with the court’s Republican justices voting to overturn the past ruling and the two Democratic justices dissenting. The court flipped from 4-3 Democratic control to 5-2 Republican control during elections last November.
The state court’s ruling issued Friday could also result in the U.S. Supreme Court dropping a closely watched case about the power of state legislatures over federal elections. The justices heard arguments on the issue in December, but signaled last month that they were considering changing course as a result of the effort to get the North Carolina court to reverse its earlier ruling.
In a separate ruling, the court also overturned another one of its past decisions on a voter ID law, on a similar 5-2 split strictly along party lines. That ruling issued Friday will clear the way for a long-litigated photo ID law to go into effect in the state.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who now runs a Democratic redistricting group, denounced the ruling as a nakedly political exercise.
“This shameful, delegitimizing decision to allow the unjust, blatant manipulation of North Carolina’s voting districts was not a function of legal principle, it was a function of political personnel and partisan opportunism,” Holder said in a statement. “Neither the map nor the law have changed since last year’s landmark rulings — only the makeup of the majority of the North Carolina Supreme Court has changed.”
The previous Democratic majority on the state court issued a series of recent decisions in the last year that ruled that partisan gerrymandering was illegal in North Carolina, while also blocking implementation of the state’s photo ID law. The new majority’s decision to rehear arguments on these cases so quickly was an unusual one, and many court observers believed the decision to do so meant that it was a matter of when, not if, the new court would allow for partisan gerrymandering.
In a lengthy decision issued by the court Friday, the conservative justices concluded that they could not adjudicate claims of partisan gerrymandering, saying that is the role of the state legislature.
“There is no judicially manageable standard by which to adjudicate partisan gerrymandering claims. Courts are not intended to meddle in policy matters,” Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote in his 144-page opinion for the court’s majority.
Much of the majority’s rationale echoes that of a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found federal courts could not act against partisan gerrymandering, but left the question in individual states to their courts.
“For a brief window in time, the power of deciding who is elected to office was given to the people, as required by the state constitution,” Justice Anita Earls wrote in her 72-page dissent, joined by Justice Michael Morgan. The two, who joined the court’s ruling last year striking down the map for being too partisan, are the last remaining Democratic jurists on the court.
“Today, the majority strips the people of this right; it tells North Carolinians that the state constitution and the courts cannot protect their basic human right to self-governance and self-determination,” Earls added, declaring that her Republican colleagues’ “efforts to downplay the practice do not erase its consequences and the public will not be gaslighted.”
Friday’s decision on partisan gerrymandering will likely cement Republican power in the state. The state legislature has the power to remake the state’s evenly split congressional delegation — unusually, the state’s chief executive, currently Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, is explicitly left out of the process — and Republican lawmakers won’t need to negotiate with Democrats because the GOP has supermajorites in both chambers.
The new maps will likely gravely endanger Democratic Reps. Kathy Manning in Greensboro, Wiley Nickel in the Raleigh suburbs and Jeff Jackson in Charlotte by placing them into Republican-leaning seats. Freshman Democratic Rep. Don Davis could also see his rural northeastern district become more competitive as well….
Spain’s national weather service said temperatures would “reach values typical of summer” across most of the country, with a high of 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) forecast Thursday for the southern Guadalquivir Valley.
…
The State Meteorological Agency, which is known by the Spanish acronym AEMET, said temperatures were “exceptionally high” for April because of a mass of very warm and dry air coming from North Africa.
With a long weekend coming up, some people packed beaches along the coast. But residents who could not get away from Spain’s inland capital, Madrid, were less lucky. Loli Gutiérrez, 70, said she was worried about what conditions would be like when summer actually comes.
“This is already unbearable. We are only in April. If this happening in April, how is it going to be June?” she said.
Last year was Spain’s hottest since record-keeping started in 1961, and also the country’s sixth driest despite the presence of weather phenomenon La Niña, which slightly dampened global average temperatures.
The Spanish government has requested emergency funds from the European Union to support farmers and ranchers [sigh] amid extreme drought conditions in the country’s agricultural heartlands, including the Guadalquivir Valley.
The world’s biggest exporter of olive oil, Spain is also an important producer of fruits and vegetables for the European market. The drought has already driven up prices of Spanish olive oil to record levels.
Currently, 27% of Spanish territory is classified as in a drought “emergency” or “alert,” according to the Ecological Transition Ministry, and water reserves are at 50% of capacity nationally.
[…] Republican “pro-life” Montana state Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, who sponsored an anti-trans bill in the Montana legislature, gave a speech that essentially said she’d rather her own daughter be dead than be trans.
In her disgusting rant, Crowe makes herself out to be the victim by equating her daughter’s mental health struggles to manipulation.
Just earlier this week we had to listen to the infamously awful Marjorie Taylor Greene telling Randi Weingarten that she’s not a real mother because her kids weren’t “biological.” Well, I’m pretty damn sure Crowe’s poor daughter would have loved the opportunity to be with an adopted loving mother instead of the one she was stuck with. [Tweet and video at the link: ” I prefer my transgender daughter commit suicide rather than allow her to transition.”]
How do you argue with people this depraved?
California Rep. Ted Lieu weighed in by saying it’s not the government’s role to make personal decisions for families. Thank God, because who wants someone like this making your personal decisions?
This is the part that really struck me:
Someone once asked me, ‘Wouldn’t I just do anything to help save her?’ And I really had to think and the answer was, ‘No.'”
When I argue over gun safety after yet another school shooting that leaves dead children behind, I sometimes ask, “What if it was your child?” I see now that I might be wasting my time with this approach.
For some people, their hatred is more important than anything, even their child’s life.
Wonkette: “Sham Investigation Of Brett Kavanaugh That Everyone Assumed Was Sham Was In Fact Sham”
Would everyone be surprised to learn that the Senate’s 2018 investigation into whether Screamin’ SCOTUS Justice Boof Colander – sorry, Brett Kavanaugh – ever tried to stick his penis into women’s faces and other places where it was not invited was something of a sham?
You wouldn’t? Congrats, you are a sentient human being in America.
The Guardian has come into possession of evidence of how the Senate disproved one particular claim that arose during Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. Or more accurately, the paper has evidence that the Senate did not debunk the claim so much as they just wished it into the cornfield.
You’ll recall that one of the accusations leveled at Kavanaugh in the fall of 2018 came from a Yale classmate named Deborah Ramirez, who claimed that during a college party, the future Supreme Court justice pulled out his dick and tried to shove it into her face, presumably because why not, people have relationships after meeting in all sorts of weird ways.
But the then-Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee’s report about Kavanaugh’s alleged peccadilloes decided with no evidence whatsoever that the future justice was the victim of a case of mistaken identity, and that someone else must have been the person who tried to [assault] Ramirez. Then they confirmed him and he helped end legal abortion in America, the end.
It turns out that the conclusion that Ramirez was mistaken came from a letter sent to the committee in the name of Joseph C. Smith Jr., who had attended Yale at the same time as Ramirez and Kavanaugh. In the letter, Smith accused a different Yale student, a man by the name of Jack Maxey, of being the culprit, because Maxey had a “reputation” of exposing himself at parties and surely there could not be two boorish male undergrads at Yale who might have drunkenly taken out their wieners at a party in the 1980s.
There was a slight flaw to this accusation, though, which is that Jack Maxey was not actually a student at Yale at the time the Ramirez incident occurred:
In an interview with the Guardian, Maxey confirmed that he was still a senior in high school at the time of the alleged incident, and said he had never been contacted by any of the Republican staffers who were conducting the investigation.
“I was not at Yale,” he said. “I was a senior in high school at the time. I was not in New Haven.” He added: “These people can say what they want, and there are no consequences, ever.”
Ah. So the investigators on the commission had this accusation and never actually questioned the accused. They just figured that some rando lawyer in Denver said he probably did it, and that was good enough for them! Case closed!
Also there was this:
While Maxey seemed in his interview with the Guardian to have been annoyed that Smith — whom he said he didn’t know or recall interacting with — named him in an accusatory email, he also separately defended Kavanaugh, who he said had behaved like a “choir boy” while attending Yale.
Yes, the irony here is that Maxey is a conservative nutter. He was a Steve Bannon disciple who got a copy of the hard drive of Hunter Biden’s laptop from Rudy Giuliani and helped send it around to Republican members of Congress. He had as vested an interest as any other wingnut in Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Court.
There is also no evidence that Joseph Smith had any sort of relationship with Kavanaugh. They were both students at Yale at the same time and they both worked on George W. Bush’s recount court cases in Florida after the 2000 election. And being members of the Federalist Society, maybe they had crossed paths at some point at a convention or a bloodletting or whatever the Federalist Society gets up to when its minions gather.
But the bottom line here seems to be that a conservative lawyer in Denver, either on his own or at someone’s behest, sent an allegation to the lead counsel at the Senate Judiciary Committee, an allegation that he had no knowledge of beyond maybe having heard it as a piece of gossip somewhere. And that allegation made it into the Judiciary Committee’s conclusions about the Kavanaugh case despite the fact that no one appears to have spoken to Jack Maxey or even investigated the story at all.
Anyway, just one more story to keep in mind the next time conservatives complain that Democrats are delegitimizing the Supreme Court.
“Nothing to see here, just Erdogan’s interior minister calling his country’s coming elections (which his party and his president risk losing) a coup attempt by the West.
‘May 14, 2023 is the West’s political coup attempt’.”
Micki Larson-Olson, who served months in jail for her actions on Jan. 6, told NBC News that politicians who certified the results of the 2020 election deserve to be be killed for treason.
[…] Trump embraced a Jan. 6 defendant at a diner during a campaign stop Thursday night, calling the woman, who served prison time for her actions during the Capitol attack and wants former Vice President Mike Pence executed for treason, “terrific.”
The appearance came the same day Pence testified before a federal grand jury as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and keep himself in power.
Micki Larson-Olson, a QAnon supporter who said she considers Trump the “real president,” was convicted last year of unlawful entry on Capitol grounds. On Thursday night, she met Trump for the first time at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester.
On Jan. 6, Larson-Olson climbed the scaffolding set up for Joe Biden’s inauguration and held on when police tried to remove her; she later bragged on social media and in an interview that it took six officers to remove her. Larson-Olson told NBC News that she “refused” to leave the platform and has “absolutely no regrets” about her actions that day.
“My only regret is that I wasn’t stronger, that I couldn’t hold on longer,” Larson-Olson told NBC News in an hourlong interview Friday. She said she told officers they were going to have to shoot her to get her off the platform. “You can shoot me dead, for all I care, I’m not walking down these damn stairs,” Larson-Olson said she told officers.
Larson-Olson said she believes that the members of Congress who voted to certify Biden’s presidential election should be executed. [Yes there is a photo of the embrace.]
“The punishment for treason is death, per the Constitution,” Larson-Olson said. “I believe every single person, every single person that stole a voice from our collective voice of ‘We the people, of the people, for the people, by the people,’ deserves death, and no less than that.”
Larson-Olson added that she “would like a front seat of Mike Pence being executed” and that he should be the “No. 1” person on her list of those who committed treason. [JFC. Dangerous.]
[…]Trump has said he may pardon those charged in the Capitol attack and just a month after he opened a campaign rally with a song performed by the “J6 choir” made up of Jan. 6 defendants who are incarcerated awaiting trial.
Larson-Olson said she drove nearly 2,000 miles from Abilene, Texas, to see Trump in New Hampshire on Thursday night.
Larson-Olson was introduced to Trump as a “Jan. 6er,” and he signed the backpack that she said she was carrying with her that day and waived her past security so he could embrace her. “Listen, you just hang in there,” Trump said, calling her a “terrific woman” and kissing her on the cheek. Trump said it was “so bad” what has been done to Jan. 6 “patriots.”
“If I were to imagine what it would be like to hug Jesus Christ — not that I’m saying President Trump is Jesus Christ — but, just, you know, if I was to imagine what it would be like to hug Jesus Christ, that’s what it felt like for me,” Larson-Olson said. “It was so personal and intimate.” [OMFG]
Larson-Olson said that she got out of prison last month after serving more than 160 days and that she was often placed in more restrictive confinement because of her refusal to comply with Covid protocols. […]
“They could’ve shoved me in there for the rest of my life,” Larson-Olson said. She said the judge sentenced her because she had no regrets for what happened on Jan. 6.
[…] Charging documents in the case say that, in an interview at her Airbnb in Washington on Jan. 19, 2021, Larson-Olson “told agents that it took six police officers to get her off of the scaffolding” and that she was “holding onto the scaffolding while the officers were trying to get her down.” Larson-Olson also said “she did not comply with their directions to stand so the officers dragged her on the ground away from the scaffolding and then left her there.”
“I have NEVER felt BRAVER, STRONGER IN MY WHOLE LIFE,” Larson-Olson wrote on Facebook on the night of Jan. 6, saying she resisted police and planned to return to the Capitol. “I GOT CARRIED DOWN MANY FIGHTS OF STAIRS BY THE COPS AFTER getting tear GASSED. It’s all good. I will be back tomorrow.”
Larson-Olson was found guilty and Superior Court Judge Michael O’Keefe sentenced her to 180 days of incarceration in September 2022.
Interesting. One Russian newspaper [Kommersant] today publishes a long interview with the US ambassador to Russia, in which she criticises the direction Russia’s taking…“going back into a past of repression.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) railed against climate change mitigation programs in Congress Wednesday, not merely because she doesn’t believe in man-made climate change. She quipped that people during the ice age didn’t have to pay taxes to combat it.
“People are not affecting climate change,” Greene said. “You’re not going to tell me that back in the ice age, how much taxes did people pay, and how many changes did governments make to melt the ice? The climate is going to continue to change.”
She continued, “And there is no reason to just open up our borders and allow everyone in and continue to funnel over $50 billion or however many billions of dollars or trillions of dollars to foreign countries all over the world simply because they don’t like the climate change.” …
I could try to parse that, but why? She is a demented fuckwit.
Dr. Hisham Mehanna — a professor at the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham — said that there has been a “rapid increase” in oropharyngeal cancer, a type of throat cancer, in the past two decades, calling it an “epidemic” in both the U.S. and U.K.
“For oropharyngeal cancer, the main risk factor is the number of lifetime sexual partners, especially oral sex,” Mehanna wrote for The Conversation. “Those with six or more lifetime oral-sex partners are 8.5 times more likely to develop oropharyngeal cancer than those who do not practice oral sex.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that 70% of oropharyngeal cancers in the United States are caused by HPV, or human papillomavirus…
The count of Russians killed in Ukraine, as compiled by the Ukrainian military, is likely to top 200,000 within the next two weeks. Estimates from U.S. and U.K. intelligence have been much smaller, with totals at perhaps one-quarter of that level. However, back in March, a story in The Telegraph put a different value on the cost of Putin’s war: 1 million men. That total includes not just Russians who have died on the battlefield, but the hundreds of thousands of men who have fled Russia rather than be drafted into the war.
Even with so many gone, there are multiple reports that Russia is preparing to institute another round of mobilization, and that it is willing to lose 1 million, 2 million, even 3 million men if that’s what it takes to capture a large part of Ukraine. And it may get there.
The scale of the Russian battlefield casualties are wholly out of line with modern Western military expectations. The West places a premium on short, decisive war-fighting, taking great care to minimise losses. Russian military strategy, in contrast, is still largely governed by Soviet-era doctrines of human wave-style assaults with massed infantry and artillery overwhelming the opposing force’s defences.
The one thing Russia can reliably bring to the front lines is bodies. But their ability to translate lives expended on the battlefield into square kilometers controlled is hampered by three things: incompetence, corruption, and a growing inability to supplement those bodies with necessary equipment.
On Thursday, the man in charge of logistics for the Russian army, Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, was fired. Mizintsev, known as the “Butcher of Mariupol” for his role in commanding the forces that destroyed that city early in the invasion, replaced former minister Gen. Dmitry Bulgakov last year. Mizintsev has now been replaced by Col. Gen. Alexei Kuzmenkov.
Why was Mizintsev fired after being hailed for clearing Mariupol and finally bringing the siege of the Azovstal steel works to an ugly conclusion? Speculation is that Mizintsev was sent to the showers after Col. Gen. Mikhail Teplinsky completed an inspection of the front lines, reporting that weapons and ammunition were not getting to the right people. In particular, the colonel general determined that Wagner Group mercenaries weren’t getting their fair share of artillery and small arms ammunition—the same complaint that Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin has been making for months.
This is not a coincidence. Col. Gen. Teplinsky, in spite of the title, isn’t actually a part of the regular Russian military. He’s Wagner, wielding literally undefined authority (an “unspecified role”) in seeing that things are operating correctly at the front.
So Wagner Group officer Teplinsky may have given the nudge that got Russian Army officer Mizintsev fired. But wait. It gets better. Because the new guy, Col. Gen. Kuzmenkov, is also not an army officer. Nor from Wagner.
Kuzmenkov is from Vladimir Putin’s personal army, the Rosgvardia (“national guard”). He might have ascended to the role because Mizintsev proved inadequate. But it might just as well be Putin making sure one of his own is in this crucial position.
This looks like a three-way squabble in which Putin shoved Kuzmenkov into the logistics position to show that neither Wagner nor the Army was going to tell him what to do. If someone is in control of where the bullets go, Putin wants that man to be his man. Now Prigozhin’s private army gets only as much as the guy from Putin’s private army says it gets.
This shuffle is only one of the ways in which the squabble over military power in Russia is being expressed. Remember, in addition to the Russian regular army, Wagner Group, and the Rosgvardia, Russia also has the Kadyrovite forces from Chechnya, commanded by Chechnyan warlord Ramzan Kadyrov. The possibility that these factions—and some of the other private armies now under construction—stop fighting Ukraine and go to war among themselves is extremely remote, but it’s not zero. “Today, there are already three and a half [Russian] armies [in Ukraine],” said Oleksii Danilov, Secretary of the Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. “And it’s only a matter of time before they start to clash between themselves.”
For decades, Putin has been systematically purging the Russian military of its most competent officers, fearing that the most likely source of a rival would be someone who could command the traditional respect and power of a Russian general. Putin believes, in the immortal words of Tina Turner, “We don’t need another hero.” After all, Putin is already there. No one else is getting a triumph through Moscow while he is still breathing.
What Putin needs are people who will carry out his orders in obscurity, then quietly depart the scene—at the front lines where possible, through the nearest available window when necessary—before gathering anything that looks like a personal following.
Remember Mizintsev? The “Butcher of Mariupol” Mizintsev? On paper, being placed in charge of logistics was a promotion. But notice that his reward for completing what was at that point seen as the greatest success of the Russian invasion was not being given a bigger field command; it was being put in charge of what may be the most thankless task in the Russian military—a task where no one wins praise or gets their picture in the state media. Mizintsev won a battle. His reward was being put behind a desk. Now he’s not even commanding that desk.
For Putin, the direct result of winnowing out the wheat and keeping the chaff is that he now finds the military populated by people who have gone through a Darwinian process to select for poor leadership. That leaves a bunch of uncharismatic losers whose one skill in life is being able to carry their box of belongings from one desk to the next while never doing anything that brings them attention.
Whether things are any better in Rosgvardia isn’t really clear. These are the guys who are reportedly watching Putin’s back. Does he want those people to be highly competent … or is that his greatest fear? [Tweet at the link: You know what this sudden surge of “private military companies” in Russia smells like? Like a war of all against all.]
The Federal Reserve’s bank-supervision chief called for an extensive reevaluation of requirements for US financial firms as regulators said the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank exposed lapses in oversight.
Also, those banks were poorly managed by doofuses.
The House rejected on Thursday a resolution [offered by Representative Matt Gaetz] that would require the White House to remove hundreds of U.S. troops deployed in Somalia as part of counterterrorism efforts.
Glad that Gaetz and the 102 House members who backed him up failed.
WTF is Matt Gaetz doing trying to decide U.S. troop deployments in Somalia? Russia’s Wagner troops are in Somalia, as well as other terrorists.
[…] Legal filings can sometimes be dry and technical, but this lawsuit was a qualitatively different kind of document. As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, the filing detailed “the gruesome reality of life in a post-Roe America, specifically in Texas.” The Times’ report added that one of the plaintiffs, Amanda Zurawski, “was told she was not yet sick enough to receive an abortion, then twice became septic, and was left with so much scar tissue that one of her fallopian tubes is permanently closed.”
“You don’t think you’re somebody who’s going to need an abortion, let alone an abortion to save my life,” Zurawski said. “If anybody reads my story, I don’t care where they are on the political spectrum, very few people would agree there is anything pro-life about this.”
This week, Zurawski testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on abortion policy, and as HuffPost noted, she at one point had a specific audience in mind: her own senators.
Amanda Zurawski tore into GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas at a Senate hearing on Wednesday over the state’s abortion ban, saying she “nearly died on their watch” after being denied care in a pregnancy crisis.
“I wanted to address my senators, Cruz and Cornyn, neither of whom, regrettably, are in the room right now. [What? Why aren’t those two doofuses in the Senate to listen to their constituent?] But I would like for them to know that what happened to me … it’s a direct result of the policies that they support,” Zurawski said in gripping testimony. “I nearly died on their watch and furthermore, as a result of what happened to me, I may have been robbed of the opportunity to have children in the future.” […]
Cornyn and Cruz are both members of the Judiciary Committee, but neither Texas Republican was in the room when their constituent testified about her harrowing experience.
[…] As for the pending lawsuit that Zurawski is a part of, revisiting our earlier coverage, it’s true that under Texas’ GOP-imposed law, physicians are able to terminate pregnancies after six weeks if there’s “substantial” harm to pregnant women. But since no one seems to know what exactly that means, doctors — fearing enormous financial penalties and possible prison sentences — have refused to treat many patients in need of reproductive care.
In fact, as a recent Times report added, some Texas physicians have been afraid to even mention the possibility of abortion, “or to forward medical records to another provider.” […]
TANKS, YES. ENGINES, NO.
From well before the beginning of Putin’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, it’s been clear that the Russian military was not just incompetent by design, but corrupt from head to toe. Military budgets were inflated—not because Russian generals were pursuing new weapons systems, but because at every step along the chain of command, officers and enlisted were selling off every system for which they could find a willing buyer. Tanks are more expensive when their price includes an oceanside dacha.
According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, a Russian colonel decided to enrich himself by selling the engines out of seven of Russia’s best T-90 tanks for $250,000 (in actual dollars, not rubles) and leaving Russia with seven lumps that can’t make it to the front lines.
This was reportedly done in conjunction with a “major criminal gang.” As we’ve written about several times, the connections between the Russian military and Russian criminal organizations run deep. In this case, the military culprit is listed as the head of Russia’s armored vehicle servicing department for a regional military command, Col. Alexander Denisov. Denisov supposedly rerouted engines that were meant for use in T-90 tanks (likely replacements for engines that had failed, though that’s unclear) to his criminal partners, pocketing the profit.
The paper mentions three other colonels who were prosecuted for corruption in 2019, but the big things to note here are: These are relatively low ranking officers, and these are very few prosecutions compared to the amount of corruption everyone knows is happening. So, it may be a signal that Russia is willing to go after some cases of corruption, but it’s unlikely to worry the senior-level guys selling off billions of dollars in gear at wholesale prices.
In Denisov’s case, the engines stolen were reported to be V-92C2 models. More likely, they were the more modern V-92S2F, which is used in both the T-90 and in upgraded T-72s. But even in this improved design, these are massive engines that weigh in at over a ton and a half. Their likely use for anyone who doesn’t happen to have an engine-free T-90 handy is in some kind of fixed facility—like running a pump—rather than going into a vehicle.
RUSSIA SHIFTING SOURCES OF SUPPLY
A new report from Silverado Policy Accelerator looks at how Russia is adjusting to life under sanctions, particularly when it comes to laying its hands on the parts it needs to keep building modern weaponry. The report notes that while sanctions from the U.S. and other Western nations have “isolated Russia from the global economy and degraded Russia’s military capabilities,” that doesn’t mean Russia is completely cut off from things like complex electronics and computer chips.
Mostly, it is now seeking the parts it needs through looking at “dual use technologies” that don’t necessarily count as trade in weapons, and through partners such as China. Overall, while Russia is still certainly able to get almost anything it wants if it tries hard enough, there are several reasons why sanctions are working to prevent Russia from repairing and improving its military. Not only have sanctions “immobilized Russian Central Bank assets” and “choked off exports of technologies and other items that support Russia’s defense industrial base,” getting them through the limited countries available can mean seeking alternatives to familiar parts.
It can also mean paying much steeper prices for a simple reason: Anyone dealing with Russia knows that it has them over a barrel. Even parts from a second- or third-tier manufacturer become much pricier when that manufacturer knows you can’t go to the big name for what you need.
However, there’s some good news for Putin in the report as well. Russia seems to have anticipated that the West would respond to their attack with economic isolation. So they laid in supplies to ride out the expected sanctions.
“Russian imports of key goods (e.g. chips) increased substantially in 2021 before the invasion of Ukraine. As a result, it likely meant that they entered the ‘sanctions war’ with strong inventory levels that allowed them to withstand the initial shock of the export controls.”
This shows just how sure Russia was that they would invade at a time when they were still claiming they had no such plans, and when Republicans were feigning shock over warnings by Biden.
Right now, Russia import levels are almost as high as they were before the war, with most of that material coming through Armenia, Belarus, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. If most of those names sound like unlikely places to source high-tech gear, there’s something else actually going on here: transshipment. According to the report, “Transshipment of Western goods, particularly from former Soviet states, is a huge issue.”
The report uses cell phones going through Armenia as an example, showing a sharp rise in Armenian cell phone imports from the U.S. after sanctions were levied on Russia, and a sharp rise in exports to Russia at the same time. However, you can bet one thing about those importers and exporters: They don’t work for free.
Just how big a profit these guys are makeing isn’t clear. We can only hope it’s huge. Watching Kyrgyzstan or Belarus fatten up by skimming profits off exports to Russia to get around the sanctions may not be ideal. But the more they charge for this “service,” the less Russia is able to turn oil sales (which are still happening at a steep discount) into equipment in the field.
RUSSIA UPPING AIR STRIKES OVER MISSILES
On Wednesday night, a nationwide air raid alert and explosions from Kyiv to Odesa seemed to signal that Russia was launching its first large missile barrage since March. But at the end of the day, the Ukrainian military totalled eight ground-launched missiles (likely the S-300) and 23 air-launched cruise missiles including the Kh-101/102 and Kh-55 that were likely launched from bombers flying over Russia.
Most of these were shot down. Hwever, the greatest damage appears to be in Uman, far in the southwest of Ukraine and well away from anything like a front line. As with so many Russian attacks, it appears to have targeted a civilian apartment building. [Tweet and video at the link]
Russia may have hit Uman simply in search of areas not well-protected by air defense systems, as missiles lobbed at Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and other large cities are increasingly shot down and new air defense systems are rolling in.
The importance of Russia’s war of missiles seems to be declining. But that doesn’t make things any better for those on the receiving end of a strike, The death toll in Uman is now at 20, and three of those were children. [Video of young woman from Uman.]
RUSSIA OPTING OUT OF ITS OWN ‘OLYMPICS’
The actual Olympics may be inexplicably allowing Russian athletes to compete, but the U.K. Ministry of Defense says that Russia is not competing in this year’s International Army Games, an event Russia created so that it could show its supposed prowess by beating out competitors like the Belarus juggling team.
Why is Russia a no-show at its own event? Well …
“There is a realistic possibility that due to losses in Ukraine, the Russian MOD is concerned a shortage of tanks, tank crews, and other skilled personnel will risk the Russian team’s usual domination of the medals table.”
[Image of Intelligence Update concerning the International Army Games.]
@180
Just read through that interview. That was a lot of words to say not very much.
Like “identity fundamentalism”? You can’t drop a term like that and then just move on, with no definition or clarification. Well, not unless you’re just full of it.
And holy FUCK am I tired of the argument that we have to be extra-super-nice to the assholes because otherwise they’re justified in being even bigger assholes.
Young adults with multiple mental illnesses may share a common neurological “signature,” new research suggests.
The study, published April 24 in the journal Nature Medicine, builds on a concept known as the “general psychopathology factor,” or p factor, which studies suggest is a consistent pattern of psychiatric characteristics seen in patients with multiple mental disorders. However, the p factor doesn’t explain whether these behavioral patterns have a neurological basis, meaning they can be linked to structural or functional features of the brain.
In the new study, researchers created a neurobiological counterpart to the p factor that they call a neuropsychopathological (NP) factor. Using data from a large group of adolescents followed into young adulthood, the researchers identified specific patterns of brain connectivity tied to symptoms of psychiatric disorders.
“We [conducted] an approach from the bottom up, not from the behavior level,” said Tianye Jia, a research professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and an author of the study…
Every night this week it has filled Carlson’s slot with Brian Kilmeade, an eager substitute who, in his regular role on the Fox and Friends morning show, serves as an excitable, unthreatening everyman.
Every night viewers have given an unforgiving verdict on Kilmeade’s efforts: by turning off in their droves…
The network threw him in unprepared. He has not yet mastered that look of perpetual bewilderment and constipation.
The groundbreaking study captured the first ever brain recordings of freely moving octopuses and was performed by implanting electrodes in the animals’ brains and connecting them to data loggers under their skin. The recordings have given scientists the very first inklings into the workings of cephalopod minds. The researchers published their findings March 27 in the journal Cell.
“Some of these activity patterns have some similarity to activity patterns observed in the mammalian hippocampus, also a memory center,” first-author Tamar Gutnick, a visiting scientist at the University of Naples, told Live Science. “But we also observed unique patterns, 2Hz activity, that were never reported in other animals.” …
Russian pilots tried to “dogfight” US jets over Syria, according to a spokesman for US Central Command, part of a recent pattern of more aggressive behavior.
The attempts have happened in several of the most recent instances of aggressive behavior from Russian pilots, Col. Joe Buccino said.
The Russian pilots do not appear to be trying to shoot down American jets, a US official told CNN, but they may be trying to “provoke” the US and “draw us into an international incident.” …
StevoRsays
Researchers at The Ohio State University have developed a framework for quantifying how well countries around the world are doing at providing adequate food, energy and water to their citizens without exceeding nature’s capacity to meet those needs. They found that only 6% of 178 countries provide for all their citizens in an ecologically sustainable way in both carbon sequestration and water consumption.
The study found that while 67% of nations operate safely and sustainably in regard to water use, only 9% do so in regard to carbon sequestration, or reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
The study showed the United States was among the majority of countries that was able to safely and justly provide water to its citizens. While it provides for its citizens in regard to carbon use, it is not doing so in an ecologically sustainable manner.
The study was published recently in the journal One Earth.
(interviewer -Jeffrey Brown -ed) : Your reaction to this bill?”
Judy Blume :
Cuckoo. Impossible. Disgusting. Fascist. I don’t know. All of those words and many, many more.
And I hear there are groups around here, and they will say — this is what I think, this is what I have read — that we want to protect our children. We don’t want them to read anything that isn’t nice. We don’t want them — you know, everything should have a happy ending. We don’t want — basically, we don’t want them to think. We don’t want them to ask questions. You know, we just want their lives to be perfect.
Well, that’s not possible, because lives are not perfect, and kids have a lot going on. And you can’t control that. You cannot control that.
Silenced by her Republican colleagues, Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr looked up from the House floor to supporters in the gallery shouting “Let her speak!” and thrust her microphone into the air — amplifying the sentiment the Democratic transgender lawmaker was forbidden from expressing.
It was a brief moment of defiance and chaos. While seven people were arrested for trespassing, the boisterous demonstration was free of violence or damage. Yet later that day, a group of Republican lawmakers described it in darker tones, saying Zephyr’s actions were responsible for “encouraging an insurrection.”
READ MORE: Rep. Zooey Zephyr’s town feels divide from rest of Montana after barring
It’s the third time in the last five weeks — and one of at least four times this year — that Republicans have attempted to compare disruptive but nonviolent protests at state capitols to insurrections.
The tactic follows a pattern set over the past two years when the term has been misused to describe public demonstrations and even the 2020 election that put Democrat Joe Biden in the White House. It’s a move experts say dismisses legitimate speech and downplays the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Shortly after, the U.S. House voted to impeach him for “incitement of insurrection.”
Ever since, many Republicans have attempted to turn the phrase on Democrats.
Colorado’s governor signed four gun control bills Friday, following the lead of other states struggling to confront a nationwide surge in violent crime and mass shootings, despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that expanded Second Amendment rights.
Before the ink was even dry on Gov. Jared Polis‘ signature, gun rights groups sued to reverse two of the measures: raising the buying age for any gun from 18 to 21, and establishing a three-day waiting period between the purchase and receipt of a gun. The courts are already weighing lawsuits over such restrictions in other states.
The new laws, which Democrats pushed through despite late-night filibusters from Republicans, are aimed at quelling rising suicides and youth violence, preventing mass shootings and opening avenues for gun violence victims to sue the long-protected firearm industry. They were enacted just five months after a mass shooting at an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs.
“Coloradoans deserve to be safe in our communities, in our schools, in our grocery stores, in our nightclubs,” Polis said as he signed the measures in his office. The governor was flanked by activists wearing red shirts reading, “Moms Demand Action,” students from a Denver high school recently affected by a shooting, and parents of a woman killed in the Aurora theater shooting in 2012.
Supportive lawmakers and citizens alike had tears in their eyes and roared their applause as Polis signed each bill.
Russia on Saturday promised it would respond harshly to what it said was Poland’s illegal seizure of its embassy school in Warsaw, an act it called a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.
Polish state-run news channel TVP Info had earlier reported that police had showed up outside the Russian embassy school on Kieleckiej street in Warsaw on Saturday morning.
When asked about the incident, a Polish foreign ministry spokesman told Reuters the building housing the embassy school belonged to the Polish state…
An overwhelming majority of American voters favor a wide variety of gun control measures and over half worry that they could be victims of gun violence, according to a Fox News poll out this week.
87% of voters surveyed said they support requiring criminal background checks for all gun buyers.
77% support requiring a 30-day waiting period for all gun purchases.
Vast majorities also support raising the legal age to buy guns to 21 (81%) and requiring mental health checks for all gun purchasers (80%).
80% of voters say police should be allowed take guns away from people considered a danger to themselves or others.
61% of voters support banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons.
Just over half of voters surveyed (51%) said that they worry that they or their loved ones could be victims of gun violence.
The poll was conducted between April 21-24 2023, with 1,004 registered voters nationwide. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.
StevoRsays
The (Australian -ed) federal Greens will introduce a bill to federal parliament next month that would freeze rent prices across the country for two years and give the government power to stop the Reserve Bank from raising interest rates. The Greens’ proposal aims to give renters and home owners fighting spiralling costs some reprieve, and would see the federal government work with the states and territories to freeze rent increases nationwide.
The jurisdictions that agreed to implement rental freezes for two years, and cap increases at 2 per cent every two years after that, would be able to secure double the amount of Commonwealth housing funding.
Greens housing and homelessness spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said the party would seek to introduce the bill when parliament returns for the upcoming budget early next month.
It started as a small group of atheists tracking and removing religious signs from public streets in Los Angeles. Now, this network spans more than a handful of states, with volunteers documenting and taking down illegally placed religious material on utility poles and overpasses across the country.
Known as the Atheist Street Pirates, the group formed in 2021 as a subset of the LA-based Atheists United, a nonprofit that’s been in the city for 40 years and that seeks to “empower people to express secular values and promote separation of government and religion.”
The street pirates’ goal is to clear city streets of religious propaganda…
Shortly before dawn, an attack on the Russian oil refinery and fuel storage field at Sevastopol in Crimea resulted in an enormous fire that sent a column of thick, black smoke above the nearby city. Russian sources claim that the fire is the result of a Ukrainian drone attack. Ukrainian government sources have not confirmed that Ukraine is responsible, but have stated that the fuel at this facility was intended for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. They also had one more message to pass along: “The explosions in Sevastopol are God’s punishment for Uman!”
The attack—assuming it was an attack—appears to have struck a large collection of storage tanks at a Chornomornaftogaz facility carrying not just crude oil, but refined products like diesel fuel. By early Saturday morning, the fire appears to have completely consumed ten large tanks containing around 300,000 barrels. Even at the discount Russia is forced to give when selling oil on the international market, that’s over $19 million worth of product if this was all crude oil. Far more if much of it was refined products.
The fire has since spread to at least seven more tanks in the same storage field, likely raising the total amount consumed to around half a million barrels. Another set of tanks is nearby, but the fire has not ignited this second cluster. Yet.
According to Russian sources, the fire was triggered by a wave of Chinese-made Mugin-5 drones, which cost $9,500 each and are capable of flying over 800 km. Those sources say that Ukraine launched three groups of these drones from an area near Odesa, with some being brought down by electronic warfare and one being shot down by air defense systems near a village deep inside Russia. However, there is no way to confirm the accuracy of any of the Russian reports and this information is definitely suspect (especially since the location of the drone reported shot down looks to be beyond even the longest cruising range of the Mugin-5).
If this was a Ukrainian drone attack, it followed closely on the heels of a Russian strike on an apartment building in the southwest Ukrainian city of Uman which resulted in at least 26 deaths, including the deaths of four children.
One thing is sure, fuel storage facilities burn … enthusiastically. [Tweet and video at the link]
In 2019, Iran successfully attacked oil facilities in Saudi Arabia using drones, triggering long lasting fires and significant damage. Oil products have not gotten less flammable since then.
Fuel depots are a legitimate target of war. An attack on a fuel depot in Belgorod by a pair of Ukrainian helicopters in April 2022 was one of the first significant attacks that Ukraine made across the Russian border. Systematically attacking such facilities helped complicate Russian logistics in advance of both the Kharkiv counteroffensive and the liberation of Kherson.
Over the fall, Ukraine conducted a program of hitting fuel depots in Russian occupied areas of Ukraine and in nearby areas of Russia. In November, Ukraine reportedly used drones to hit a fuel depot in the Orel oblast of Russia that was over 200 km from the Ukrainian border.
On social media this morning there are frequently expressed concerns about the environmental damage caused by the reported Ukrainian attack. While the towering column of black smoke does look apocalyptic, that’s what happens when 300,000 barrels of petroleum products gets burned. This oil was always going to be burned. Russia’s plan was just to burn it a little at a time, powering their warships around the Black Sea. Ukraine changed that plan. [Image of Fuel tank farm as seen on Google maps, high resolution. Google recently updated the satellite images in Crimea.]
For now, just enjoy the scene, which is available from dozens of different vantage points around the city. Perhaps pull out a Deep Purple album while you watch. Seems appropriate. [Tweet and video at the link]
The Ukrainian military sent out an additional warning to residents of Russian-occupied Crimea this morning, warning them to stay clear of potential military targets. Seems like good advice.
When attorneys arrived for oral arguments in South Carolina’s high-profile abortion case last fall, state Supreme Court Justice Kaye Hearn took her seat up front, a ruffly white shirt beneath her black robe, the only woman on the dais. With piercing blue eyes, she scanned the courtroom.
A sea of white men jammed one side of the room. Before them, at a wooden table, sat three male attorneys there to argue in favor of the state’s law banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy.
On the other side of the room, a group composed mostly of women crowded benches behind a female attorney who had challenged the law.
Even in these polarized times, the starkness of the divide stunned Hearn.
South Carolina’s high court was among the first to hear an abortion law challenge after the U.S. Supreme Court released its Dobbs v. Jackson decision last June, overturning the country’s landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade and kicking the combustible issue to the states. Hearn knew the nation was watching. But she didn’t anticipate that the arguments about to begin in that divided courtroom would contribute to an even starker gender divide on the court where she sat.
Three months later, on Jan. 5, the justices struck down the deep red state’s abortion law. By a 3-2 vote, the majority ruled that the law violated the state’s constitutional right to privacy. Hearn wrote the lead opinion, a capstone of sorts given she had reached the mandatory retirement age of 72.
While abortion rights supporters rejoiced, the ruling outraged the General Assembly’s new supermajority of Republicans, many of whom derided her as an activist jurist. They also saw an opening.
In South Carolina, unlike all but one other state, the legislature alone selects judges. And in just a few weeks, they would vote on Hearn’s replacement.
The three candidates, who’d been put forward by a legislative commission, were all widely respected judges on the state Court of Appeals: one man, two women. Both women had longer tenures on the state’s second-highest court than the man. One had beat him before: She’d won over legislators in the 2014 race for her appeals court seat. He arrived three years later.
[…] the overwhelmingly male lot of Republicans rallied behind the male candidate, Gary Hill, ultimately creating the only all-male state Supreme Court in the nation.
[…] people who know the female candidates described them as grappling with intense pressure to withdraw quickly. […] Hearn said she had spoken to both, and they were “very hurt by the process.”
[…] Following Dobbs, South Carolina’s race underscores the newly starring role of states’ top courts in determining abortion access — and the resulting impact on who gets chosen to serve on them. […]
Consequences of an all-male high court are especially pronounced in this state, which consistently ranks at the bottom of lists measuring women’s well-being.
[…] All three judges who vied for the seat are highly regarded in legal circles across the state. Among them, Judge Aphrodite Konduros brought the most experience.
After almost 15 years on the Court of Appeals, she had written more than 400 opinions, signed on to another 800, and served far longer than the other two candidates. The granddaughter of immigrants, she also had been a family court judge and served as counsel for two state agencies.
[…] But the women also worked in a state long known for its “good old boy” culture and the generational legal legacies that elevate certain men in the halls of its courthouses — and in its Statehouse. These men enjoy long-standing relationships with their fellow male attorneys in the legislature, which, in turn, holds near-total power over electing judges.
[…] early on, it appeared at least one of the women had a decent shot, especially in a contest to replace the only female justice. Hearn and others figured Konduros was the likely front-runner. […]
Then, on Jan. 5, came the abortion ruling.
At the time, a new far-right group freshly empowered by gains in November’s election had grabbed hold of the party’s right flank on abortion. Called the Freedom Caucus, its 18 members were determined to get a justice who would uphold a future abortion ban. […]
Konduros did as well, although Leber said she came across as a bit more “aggressive” and “abrasive.” […]
For many women, that observation may echo expectations that they soften their edges so men don’t find their assertiveness off-putting. […]
Some Republicans also said that Hill struck them as the most reliably strict constructionist — meaning he will interpret the literal meaning of language when it was written — something of key importance given they had blasted the abortion ruling as judicial activism.
But when ProPublica asked several of them to name a specific appeals court case in which Hill ruled in a way that made him appear more of a strict constructionist than either female judge, none of them did.
Intense Pressure
On Jan. 17, mere hours after the judges were allowed to begin seeking vote pledges from lawmakers, the two female candidates bowed out. The move shocked some observers, who accused Republicans of backroom deals and partisanship that pushed the women to quickly withdraw.
[…] Senn soon publicly voiced allegations that she’d heard her colleagues in the Republican House caucus had conducted a secret poll before they were allowed to pledge commitments — then used the result to force the women out.
[…] the women’s withdrawal came unusually early: “I can’t recall any other instance of a judge in any race or any candidates — certainly not both, or certainly not two of three candidates — getting out of the race on the first day.”
[…] A few days later, Senn blasted her Republican colleagues for pushing out two qualified women. “We know it isn’t really about the smartest judge or the best candidates,” she told the Senate. “It is about who you know will demand forced birth.”
In early February, 140 of the state’s 170 legislators voted for Hill, the only candidate left. […] None of the five women in the 46-member Senate cast a vote in his favor.
[…] As other states set records for electing female justices, Toal and Hearn remain the only two women to reach South Carolina’s highest court. Many other Deep South states aren’t faring much better. Mississippi’s Supreme Court has one female justice and eight males. Louisiana has one woman and six men.
[…] Jessica Schoenherr, who teaches about America’s judicial system at the University of South Carolina, examines challenges to diversifying the bench. She called South Carolina unique in going from at least one woman on the court to none. “They went backward, and across the world, that almost never happens,” she said.
Agree with it or not, Hearn’s ruling that overturned the six-week ban was informed by her personal knowledge of the way a woman’s body works and when she realizes she’s pregnant. “I do think women have an understanding that this business of six weeks” is “just impossible,” she said. “It’s not workable.”
[…] In the months since the South Carolina court’s explosive ruling, Republicans have repeatedly tried to pass a new abortion ban.
Just this week, the Senate’s president tried yet again, pushing for a vote on a bill the House passed that would prohibit the vast majority of abortions after conception. But he couldn’t overcome a substantial obstacle: the Senate’s five women. The three Republicans and two Democrats banded together to control debate until the chamber voted to scrap the bill for the session, leaving the House and Senate at an impasse.
If the two chambers ever do agree on a new abortion law, one thing is clear: It will almost certainly reach the State Supreme Court. And this time, the women gathered in its stately courtroom would face a bench filled with men.
South Carolina, like most of the other red states and especially in the South, has some of the stingiest supports for families in these United States. They’ve long since decided to join the race to the bottom for who can provide the least to educate, feed, and house their families and children. Their minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour, unemployment benefits are nearly non-existent, they didn’t expand Medicaid eligibility, state support for education is pathetic, etc., etc.
———————–
Along with laws preventing pregnant women from leaving their state, these small men will eventually need laws preventing any women from leaving. It will be impossible to stop young girls from discovering that there are places where they are granted full rights and control over their own lives.
—————–
Was just reading a story on HuffPost about how doctors who specialize in treating difficult pregnancies are leaving Idaho. We have actually reached the point of dystopian hell in some states. Why would I want to stay in a state and attempt to start a family where maternal medicine is illegal?
At this point, it’s not difficult to find Russian officials and pundits declaring that Ukraine is not a real country, Ukrainian culture is not real, and that all Ukrainians need to die. But in case anyone thought Russia’s plans for genocide ended at the Ukrainian border, here’s Vladimir Putin’s right hand man extending the calls for extermination to Poland. [tweet and video at the link. “[…] should be ruthlessly exterminated like stinky rats.”]
Speaking of Poland, there are reports this morning that Poland has found remains of a missile that hit their territory in December and which is thought to be a stray Russian cruise missile of the same type used in Uman. That missile likely took a wrong turn over Belarus and landed inside Poland. Polish fighter jets reportedly tracked the incoming missile at the time, but evidence couldn’t be found until this week.
This is unlikely to affect Poland’s, and NATO’s, involvement in the invasion … but that’s not a sure thing.
RUSSIAN ASSAULTS LEVELED OFF IN APRIL
Almost every morning, the Ukrainian general staff issues a situation update, either as text or video, in which some statistics are given about the intensity of Russian attacks over the previous 24 hours. Those statistics generally (though not always) include the number of missiles and drones launched at Ukrainian cities, the number of locations shelled by Russian forces, and the number of Russian assaults against Ukrainian military positions.
For the last couple of months, I’ve been tracking that last number in hopes of finding some way to take the “temperature” of the war. As the month of April ends, this is likely the last time I’ll update this chart—at least for awhile. [chart at the link]
The high levels seen in early March reflect the levels that were also seen in February and represent typical values through most of the winter as Russia was seeking to conduct an offensive in the areas around Kupyansk, Kremmina, Donetsk, and Vuhledar in addition to the continuing fight at Bakhmut. The decline in attacks during the second half of March can be thought of as marking the end of Russia’s general offensive as well as a shifting of troops to concentrate on Bakhmut (and to a lesser extent Avdiivka). On an average day in April, sixteen of the listed Russian assaults took place at Bakhmut alone.
At this point, it’s unclear that this number is measuring anything except that Russia is no longer attempting a wide scale advance, but continues to conduct a level of small, probabing “reconnaissance-in-force” attacks to feel out Ukrainian positions outside of Bakhmut.
Over the next week, my intention is to move to another section of the data provided each day: the details of locations assaulted by Russia and shelled by Russia each day. Using that data, I’m going to walk the front line again, in hopes of getting a clearer view of the situation in advance of the expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Unless, of course, Ukraine moves first. Monday is the first day of May.
———————
Bakhmut, Ukrainian warriors still fighting for this city and they will fight for every inch of Ukraine 🇺🇦 God bless them all. [video at the link]
How about one last view from Sevastopol? [video at the link]
A Texas man went next door with a rifle and began shooting his neighbors, killing an 8-year-old and four others inside the house, after the family asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard because they were trying to sleep, authorities said Saturday.
San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told reporters at the scene that authorities were still searching for 39-year-old Francisco Oropeza following the overnight shooting in the town of Cleveland, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Houston. He said Oropeza used an AR-style rifle in the shooting.
“Everyone that was shot was shot from the neck up, almost execution-style,” Capers said during an earlier news conference at the scene.
Capers said there were 10 people in the house and that no one else was injured. He said two of the victims, all believed to be from Honduras, were found laying over two children inside.
“The Honduran ladies that were laying over these children were doing it in such an effort as to protect the child,” according to Capers, who said a total of three blood-covered children were found in the home but were determined to be uninjured after being taken to a hospital.
Capers said two other people were examined at the scene and released.
The confrontation followed family members walking up to the fence and asking the suspect to stop shooting rounds, Capers said. The suspect responded by telling them that it was his property, according to Capers, and that one person in the house got a video of the suspect walking up to the front door with the rifle.
Three of the victims were women and one was a man. Their names were not released. Capers said the victims were between the ages of 8 and about 40 years old.
Authorities have previously been to the suspect’s home, according to Capers. “Deputies have come over and spoke with him about him shooting his gun in the yard,” he said.
Capers said some of those in the house had just moved from Houston earlier in the week, but he did not know whether they were planning to stay there.
The U.S. is on a record pace for mass killings this year, with at least 18 shootings since Jan. 1 that left four or more people dead. […].
[…] That Trump and members of his staff were not just lying about the outcome of the 2020 election, but that they knew they were lying is a key part of potential charges. The existence of not just one, but two reports, compiled by investigators that Trump and his team hired, shows that Trump knew the truth. That Trump hid the results of both reports and continued making false claims, shows evidence of intent to deceive.
That makes it more likely that Smith will find that Trump and others engaged in seditious conspiracy, or other similar wrongdoing, in connection with the 2020 election.
It also plays into potential charges related to Trump’s fundraising. Trump brought in over a quarter of a billion dollars in fundraising outreach to his supporters claiming that there had been election fraud and implying that their contributions would be used to address that issue. Almost all of that money went directly to Trump. Smith could charge Trump both because of the falsity of his outreach, and because of the deception in how the money was to be spent. [I like this approach. Take that money away from Trump.]
The fact that Trump didn’t just lie to state officials, but did so intentionally and in contradiction to both the published results and the evidence uncovered by his own investigators, is also likely to interest prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, where there is an ongoing investigation into Trump’s efforts to exert undue influence on state and local officials.
Trump’s lie was deliberate, and he will continue lying about his election failure […]
Just a week ago Trump said that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” because Trump won about 83% of US counties while Biden won only 17%. Trump said, “Nothing like this has ever happened before. Usually it’s very equal, or – but the winner always had the most counties.”
Which, of course, is totally false. Obama and Clinton both won their election while winning way fewer counties than their opponents. Duh. Republicans win lots of tiny counties, and Democrats win counties that have lots of people in ‘em.
Trump and his fellow Republicans don’t care about the facts about voting. All they care about is power. They believe they should get to command everyone else what to do, and they will tell every sort of lie to get their way. It’s very much a fascist attitude.
————————
Jack Smith has so many crimes to choose from. He needs to select those that are slam dunks. Any charges that have a possibility of a hung-jury or acquittal need to be shelved. Just get the ball rolling before TFG starts complaining about election interference by DOJ (which he has already started!)
Wonkette: “Florida Censor Lady Should Know Better Than To Come At Betty White”
A very active would-be school censor in Florida managed to get more books pulled from the shelves of elementary school libraries this week in Escambia County, including a sweet fictionalized biography of the late actress and icon Betty White […]
The book, That’s Betty! The Story of Betty White, by Gregory Bonsignore, illustrated by Jennifer M. Potter, frames Betty White’s life story in a whimsical little tale about a little boy who wants to write his “important woman in history” report on White. Naturally enough, Betty White herself shows up, in disguise, to help him with his research. It’s as wholesome as you can get, and even includes some love for libraries and research.
Under Florida law, the mere filing of the complaint means the book must be pulled from all school libraries in the district while the complaint is reviewed.
Now in case you’re wondering what could possibly be controversial about White, other than all the PG-rated bawdiness of “The Golden Girls,” it turns out that, according to the complaint, the book is just seething with indoctrination of children in the Gay Agenda, thereby violating Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. How rampant is the constant gayness of this book? There are two (2) references by the narrator to his dads, plural. The dads remain fully clothed while discussing the kid’s homework, we should add, and don’t even say anything about how all children reading the book must renounce Christ and burn a flag.
It’s really quite a charming little book; here’s a nice video of a librarian in a Free State reading it. [video at the link]
Oh, darn, we forgot to tell you to only watch the video in a locked room with no children present if you live in Florida.
Here, have a couple of screenshots of the complaint, which alleges the book “is content and age inappropriate according same-sex relationships,” and thereby violates the Don’t Say Gay statute. The specific objection is that the book includes “Indoctrination of same-sex , which is not age appropriate according to state law.” [screenshots at the link]
Note that the complainant is Vicki Baggett, a Florida high school English teacher and volunteer book censor who apparently can’t write simple declarative sentences in English. We wrote about her a while back.
Spoiler warning: As Judd Legum wrote in his Popular Information newsletter, she is in fact openly racist and homophobic in the classroom, according to former and current students, pontificating to students about how the Bible opposes interracial marriage and insisting that no one is ever really gay, it’s just a fad. Baggett is among Escambia County’s most prolific challengers of school library materials, and succeeded in getting the Gay Penguin book banned, among others.
Elsewhere in the complaint, Baggett responded to the form’s request for “strengths” of the challenged material by writing
None. The historical background of Betty White becomes secondary to the agenda set forth by the writer and publisher and librarian/administration/school system who allowed this into the hands of minors. Not appropriate for minors in a public school setting.
And what is the “purpose” of the book?
Violation of parental rights, introduction of alternate lifestyles and characters.
We suspect the author, Gregory Bonsignore, might beg to differ, with [the] defense that he wanted to share with young readers the joy of Betty White’s career. Then again, Bonsignore was also one of the writers for “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,” which is all about pastel lesbian horses [/sarcsm], and good god don’t anyone tell Vicki Biggott about that.
Baggett also helpfully provided images of the offending indoctrination pages, if you think you can view them without suddenly turning gay, or straight if you’re already gay: [image at the link]
Somehow, Baggett appears to have let “Darian the Vegetarian Librarian” slide, although he’s clearly a sketchy character too. Here’s more scary gayness, with more “my dads” talk, and even a terrifying image of the dads together in bed! Or at the kid’s bedside, saying goodnight. You just know they’re grooming the lad, because his hair is neatly combed. [image at the link]
So that’s yet another example of the filth that is being pushed on Florida schoolchildren, or at least that is in the minds of the bigoted creeps who want to keep children “safe” from adorable little books about Betty White. Crom help this country.
This stupidity can’t last forever, though. Do what Betty White would do: Put on your very best double entendres and stand up for freedom to read.
An Arizona House Democrat and ordained minister recorded on video hiding Bibles at a lounge at the state Capitol apologized to her peers for her actions.
“I hold Scripture very dear to my heart,” Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton, D-Tucson, said Wednesday, following the moment of prayer that begins every House floor session. “It is what guides me. It is what shapes and informs the decisions I make. I have the utmost respect for people of all faiths, and for people for who choose not to have a faith. And because of that respect, I recognize my actions could have been seen something as less than playful — and offensive.”
Stahl Hamilton described her actions as a type of protest regarding the separation of church and state.
“The intent was never to be destructive, to never desecrate or to offend,” she said.
The missing Bibles were a “mystery” that went on for weeks until House Speaker Ben Toma, R-Glendale, took the advice of Capitol security personnel and ordered a camera placed in the House members’ lounge, said Speaker Pro Tempore Travis Grantham, R-Gilbert.
Some of the Bibles were discovered under seat cushions in the lawmakers’ lounge, and one was found in the refrigerator, he said. The lounge is a private area for House members off the main floor…
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 180:
JEEZ-us! Why are all the outspoken atheists turning into fucking fascists! Don’t they fucking realize the right HATES nonbelievers! They aren’t going to be nice to you when they gain power! They are going to kill you, stupid!
News & Observer on a third election-related ruling coming out of the North Carolina Supreme Court today:
Thousands of formerly incarcerated North Carolina residents serving felony sentences will no longer be able to vote.
A trial court ruling had made them eligible to vote in the midterm elections last November, but on Friday the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned that order.
The State Board of Elections said later Friday it has updated voter registration applications to comply. Now, once again, people serving a felony sentence cannot register or vote until their sentence ends, including any period of probation, parole or post-release supervision.
Elections officials will use lists of people serving felony sentences to cancel registrations of people who are now ineligible, the board said.
Arguments in the case, known as Community Success Initiative v. Moore, centered on whether the state law that delineates how people’s voting rights are restored is constitutional and whether it had discriminatory intent.
The high court reversed the trial ruling Friday 5 to 2, split along partisan lines, with Republican justices in favor of reversal and Democrats against.
For the majority, Justice Trey Allen wrote that it is “not unconstitutional to insist that felons pay their debt to society as a condition of participating in the electoral process.”
“The General Assembly did not engage in racial discrimination or otherwise violate the North Carolina Constitution by requiring individuals with felony convictions to complete their sentences — including probation, parole, or post-release supervision — before they regain the right to vote,” Allen wrote.
Republicans flipped control of the court in the November elections, flipping two Democratic-held seats and giving their party back a majority on the state’s high court. Allen was one of the newly elected justices.
Writing in the dissent, Justice Anita Earls said Friday’s ruling “will one day be repudiated on two grounds. First, because it seeks to justify the denial of a basic human right to citizens and thereby perpetuates a vestige of slavery, and second, because the majority violates a basic tenant of appellate review by ignoring the facts as found by the trial court and substituting its own.” Justice Michael Morgan joined in the dissent.
[…]
“Stripping away the right to vote from over 56,000 people who had finally gotten their voices back clearly demonstrates just how dedicated our officials are to silencing the people whose rights they are supposed to protect,” Dennis Gaddy, director of the Community Success Initiative, said in a written statement. “It shows their commitment to knowingly and willingly upholding racist laws and practices designed specifically to disenfranchise Black voters.”
Rob Grigjanissays
Akira @205:
Why are all the outspoken atheists turning into fucking fascists!
A Russian baker has been fined for “discrediting” Moscow’s military after making anti-war cakes.
Anastasia Chernysheva began sharing photos of cakes decorated in the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag to her Instagram account two months into Russia’s invasion.
One phallic-shaped cake was emblazoned with the phrase “F–k war”…
Some of her cakes have been auctioned off for charities, including donations to Yevgeny Roizman, an opposition politician…
The only war we want to see. [Infighting among Russians]
The saga continues. Prigozhin threatened Shoigu to retreat from Bakhmut if they were not given ammunition. Which will lead to a catastrophic problem for Russia.
🍿😴
Ukrainian military uses their wits to regain the lost positions captured by the wild Marbled polecat. [video at the link]
Link. These updates are at the top of the web page.
Wonkette: “QAnon Momfluencer Convicted Of Falsely Claiming Craft Enthusiasts Tried To Kidnap Her Kids”
A California woman with QAnon-leanings has been convicted of filing a false police report nearly two years after she falsely accused a Latinx couple minding their own business in a Michael’s store of trying to sex traffick her children.
Katie Sorenson was a mother and an an aspiring influencer — a momfluencer, if you will — in Petaluma, California. She shilled MRA essential oils, talked about her kids and whatever the hell “clean beauty” is on Instagram. […] There is a lot of competition in that industry, naturally, but she was finally able to break through one day in December of 2020 when she recorded a video from her car about how her kids were nearly stolen from her by very scary child traffickers while she was shopping with them at a Michael’s craft store.
Sorenson had reported the incident to police, but it hadn’t gone anywhere on account of the fact that the couple she said was trying to kidnap her kids didn’t actually try to kidnap her kids, and she was frustrated. She got into her SUV and filmed a video talking about the incident, warning other parents about human traffickers trolling the Mod Podge aisle. You know, just to create “awareness.” There’s nothing Instagram momfluencers love like “awareness.” Pretty soon she was going viral and even ended up on the local news with […] surveillance video of the couple she claimed was trying to kidnap her children and, we can assume, sell them to a Satanic child trafficking/eating cult.
That, of course, was not what was happening. Sadie and Eddie Martinez were a normal couple with normal jobs — a UPS guy and a balloon arch maker — who had no interest in Sorenson’s damn children. They didn’t even find out about any of this until their daughter saw them on the local news and told them about it. Since then, Sadie has been active in trying to get Sorenson held accountable for her actions.
[…] We still really don’t know what Sorenson’s actual motivations were with this — whether she was just a weird racist who saw a Latinx couple and thought that they were going to try to steal her kids, or if she just wanted to gain attention for her Instagram, or if she really just wanted to raise “awareness” of the existence of child sex trafficking during a child sex trafficking moral panic. Either way, she’s an asshole.
She hasn’t been sentenced yet, but she has been remanded into custody and her bail is set at $100,000. The crime she’s charged with is a misdemeanor, which means she faces up to six months in prison.
Several dozens of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia on 29 April held a rally near the Russian embassy in Riga calling on Russia “not to protect” them.
The rally was organised by the Russian Voice for Latvia union. The impetus for the meeting was the statement of the State Duma of the Russian Federation “on the inadmissibility of the repressive policy of the leadership of the Baltic states towards the Russian-speaking population”…
Meanwhile, surveys have shown that for the first time in the history of observations, Latvian Russian-speakers consider the country’s foreign policy orientation to the West more desirable than to the East.
But this month, even though I am a registered voter, I was told I could not cast a ballot at my normal polling place. I presented my clearly labeled Jackson County voter identification card. I was told I needed a photo ID. So I showed a current credit card that has my picture on it. I was told no.
The poll worker requested my driver’s license. I said that is for driving, and I paid for it. The worker requested my passport. I said that is for leaving the country, and I paid for it.
Voting is supposed to be free, and voters should simply have to be registered. I am. If picture ID is required by law, it must be provided for free — otherwise, it costs a person to vote. The Missouri Department of Revenue charges a fee for a nondriver ID card.
I didn’t vote because I refused to pay for it. The workers at my polling place were very nice, but they were put into a bad and unconstitutional position by Missouri’s politicians.
On April 17, 2023, the Nebraska Cornhuskers unveiled the latest version of their beloved mascot, Herbie Husker.
Herbie’s left hand no longer forms the “OK” symbol. Instead, an index finger is raised to indicate that the team is No. 1.
The change was made, University of Nebraska officials explained, because the universal symbol of approbation – curling the index finger to touch the thumb, forming an “O” – had become associated with white supremacy and hate speech.
How did something as benign and commonplace as the “OK” hand gesture come to assume such sinister undertones? And what does the University of Nebraska’s willingness to change its mascot say about the ways in which ambiguous signs and symbols can take on a life of their own?
In 2015, Milo Yiannopoulos, Richard Spencer and other figures of the “alt-right,” a white nationalist movement, started using the hand gesture in posed photos of themselves. But it took off in February 2017, when a prank message was posted on 4-chan, the anonymous messaging site that has been a breeding ground for racism and conspiracy theories.
“Operation O-KKK” encouraged the flooding of social media sites like Twitter with posts proclaiming the familiar gesture to be a symbol of the alt-right. But what began as an effort to “troll the libs” quickly took on a life of its own.[“KKK” doesn’t sound like just trolling.]
In May 2019, an attendee at a Chicago Cubs baseball game made the gesture on camera behind a Black reporter, prompting the team to ban him from Wrigley Field.
Shortly thereafter, school officials recalled yearbooks in Petaluma, California, and Chicago after discovering pictures of students making the gesture. The Anti-Defamation League went on to add the gesture to its database of hate symbols.
[snlipped lots of other examples] these types of incidents are not new and not unusual.
[…] Tragically, there have also been episodes in which sign language was misinterpreted as gang symbols, leading to acts of violence against those simply trying to communicate.[…]
From the illustrations, I noticed that those people in Nebraska also slimmed down their corn farmer.
As the press office of the National Guard of Ukraine specified in the interview with Ukrainska Pravda, the National Guard soldiers destroyed a Russian unmanned aerial vehicle on 25 April. The drone fell on the field full of landmines.
The National Guard soldiers checked whether the area where the device fell was under fire control of Russian forces, demined the passage and retrieved the drone on 27 April.
Then, the device was handed over to specialists for technical and informational analysis…
Regarding this model of UAV, the Russians claimed that it is evasive and invisible to anti-radar weapons.
Hundreds of thousands of Fox News viewers are reacting to Tucker Carlson’s firing by abandoning the network in his old time slot — at least temporarily.
Fox drew 1.33 million viewers for substitute host Brian Kilmeade in the 8 p.m. Eastern hour on Wednesday night, putting the network second to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in a competition Carlson used to dominate, the Nielsen company said.
That’s down 56% from the 3.05 million viewers Carlson reached last Wednesday, Nielsen said. [Good news so far.]
Carlson offered his own alternative to Kilmeade on Wednesday, posting a two-minute monologue on Twitter at 8 p.m. By Thursday afternoon, that video had been viewed 62.7 million times, according to Twitter.
Kilmeade had 1.7 million viewers on Tuesday and 2.59 million on Monday, when he told people who hadn’t already heard the news that Carlson would no longer be there.
[…] The ratings slump echoes what happened at Fox following the 2020 election, when many viewers angered by the network’s crucial election night declaration that Joe Biden had won Arizona followed then-President Donald Trump’s advice to seek alternatives. That caused tremendous angst behind the scenes at Fox, which was illustrated in documents released as part of the Dominion case.
Asked for comment, Fox responded with a statement noting that Fox has been cable news’ most-watched network for 21 years with its team “trusted more by viewers than any other news source.”
In the wake of Carlson’s firing, viewing at the conservative network Newsmax has shot up for Eric Bolling, who hosts a show in the same 8 p.m. Eastern slot. […].
He opened his remarks referring to the freedom of the press and renewing his intentions to bring home Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan who are currently in Russian custody and Austin Tice in Syria. He also acknowledged Brittany Griner, who was there as a guest of CBS.
Some of the highlights of his comedy stylings.
“I believe in the First Amendment, and not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it,” joked President Joe Biden tonight at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
“I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready, but Mickey Mouse beat the Hell out of me and got there first,” POTUS laughed with Disney brass in the audience at the Washington Hilton. If you missed it, the House of Mouse finally sued the aspiring GOP presidential candidate this week for his attacks on the company and its Disney World resort in Orlando.
“I get that age is a completely reasonable issue,” the 80-year old President quipped in relatively short performance. “It’s on everyone’s mind, by everyone I mean the New York Times,” he added. “I like Rupert Murdoch,” Biden went on to say of the 93-year old Fox News owner. “How can I dislike a guy who makes me look look Harry Styles?” he stated in a comparison to the pop star few would have previously considered.
“You say I’m over the hill,” the self-mcking Biden said. “Don Lemon would say that’s a man in his prime,” the President went on to joke in a reference to the now ex-CNN host’s possibly career ending insult of Nikki Haley earlier this year when she announced her 2024 White House bid. The Lemon joke easily got the biggest laugh of the night from the seasoned crowd, which is full of CNN execs and hosts.
Speaking of his own White House bid, Biden added: “The job isn’t finished, I mean it is finished for Tucker Carlson.”
Getting laughs and some groans for taking a jab at long-time critic Carlson, Biden leaned in deeper to the Murdoch-owned conservative outlet. “Fox News owned by Dominion Voting Systems,” POTUS said, bringing up the $787.5 million settlement the channel made earlier this month to avoid what looked to be a painful public defamation trial. Stating that FNC reporters were in the house because they “couldn’t say no to a free meal,” Biden added “I called Fox honest, fair and truthful, and I could be sued for defamation.”
[video at the link] Dark Brandon made an appearance as he closed his remarks.
A punch to the gut today from NOAA as the Mauna Loa laboratory on the big island of Hawaii showed that humanity passed a milestone of over 425.01 of CO2 measured in the atmosphere for the first time in recorded history. […]
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
No, Fauci didn’t say face masks were a ‘failure’
CLAIM: Dr. Anthony Fauci “admitted” in a recent interview that face masks were a “failure.”
THE FACTS: Social media posts are misrepresenting what Fauci said about masks and COVID-19 and omitting part of his response. […] “I made it eminently and explicitly clear that when masks are used consistently and properly, at the individual level they are highly effective,” […] [Details at the link]
Reports of Bud Light’s demise greatly exaggerated, experts say
CLAIM: The maker of Bud Light is going bankrupt as it faces ongoing backlash over a marketing campaign featuring a transgender social media personality.
THE FACTS: A spokesperson for Anheuser-Busch InBev, the company behind Bud Light, said there’s “no truth” to the claim the beer maker is on the verge of financial ruin. Industry experts note the company remains financially sound, with billions of dollars in assets and a rising stock market price. Sales of Bud Light have ebbed in recent weeks, but not to the drastic level claimed by online critics. Social media posts are suggesting Bud Light’s recent social media effort with transgender personality Dylan Mulvaney has resulted in plummeting sales. Mulvaney, who is known for documenting her gender transition on social media, promoted Bud Light in a post earlier this month, and the partnership was met with scorn and calls for boycotts by some prominent conservatives. […] “I can confirm,” Kaitlin Craig, a spokesperson for the company, wrote in an email, “there is no truth to the bankruptcy claim.” [Details at the link]
Kansas law doesn’t authorize genital exams for student athletes
CLAIM: A new law in Kansas authorizes genital inspections of children in order to play sports.
THE FACTS: The law, which bars transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports from kindergarten through college, doesn’t mention anything about genital inspections. It remains unclear how the law will be enforced in different age groups. Social media posts are claiming the measure gives school officials the authority to look at children’s genitals in order for them to play sports. “Kansas Republicans want to inspect the genitals of your children,” says the narrator of a video shared widely on Instagram this week. “They want to do it so bad that they overrode a veto from the governor. Every single child in the state of Kansas would have to endure a genital exam to be allowed to play sports.” The clip references news stories about teachers accused of student sex abuse to suggest teachers can’t be trusted to conduct these kinds of exams. But the new law, which passed when the Legislature overrode the governor’s third veto in three years of a bill to ban transgender athletes, doesn’t include any language about genital inspections. […] In Kansas, according to the state association, just three transgender girls competed in grades 7-12 this year, two of them seniors. [Details at the link]
BlackRock doesn’t own stake in Dominion Voting Systems
CLAIM: BlackRock has a substantial stake in both Dominion Voting Systems and Fox Corporation, so Dominion’s lawsuit against Fox was really BlackRock suing itself.
THE FACTS: While BlackRock does own non-voting shares in Fox Corporation, it doesn’t have any in Dominion Voting Systems, both the investment firm and the voting machine company confirmed. Posts are misrepresenting shares that BlackRock owns in an unrelated energy company also named Dominion. […] BlackRock has no ownership stake in Dominion Voting Systems, which is privately held […]
Last night was the White House Correspondents Dinner, which is a thing we do again now that we have a president who isn’t scared of jokes. The evening was hosted by “Daily Show” correspondent Roy Wood, Jr. and if you’re anything like me, you forgot about it entirely and went out last night instead of staying at home and watching C-SPAN. Whoops!
But hey! You still can, thanks to the magic of YouTube. [video at the link]
Or you can cheat and just watch all of the highlights.
President Joe Biden got some good ones in (not that we think he actually wrote them himself, but his delivery was good!).
“I want everybody to have fun tonight,” he said, “but please be safe. If you find yourself disoriented or confused, either you’re drunk or Marjorie Taylor Greene.” [video snippet at the link]
He also made a cute little Dark Brandon reference, complete with Aviators. [video snippet at the link]
Wood got a little dark himself — pointing out that not only are drag queens not invading schools to groom anyone’s children, but that perhaps the bigger problem is that those kids are a lot more likely to get shot up when they go there. FAIR POINT. [video snippet at the link]
While criticizing “anti-CRT” nonsense as an attempt to erase Black people from school history classes, Wood took a dig at Clarence Thomas.
“Anti-CRT policies are an attack on Black history and an attempt to erase the contributions of Black people from the history books. […] A lot of Black people wouldn’t mind some of that erasure, as long as that Black person is Clarence Thomas.” he said. “Do you understand how rich you have to be to buy a Supreme Court [justice] — a black one, on top of that! There’s only two in stock. And Harlan Crowe owns half the inventory. We can all see Clarence Thomas, but he belongs to billionaire Harlan Crowe. And that’s what an NFT is.” [video snippet at the link]
[…] “Tonight, we are all unified under one thing, and that’s scandal,” said Wood. “Scandals have been devouring careers this year. The untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job … but to Tucker’s staff, I want you to know that I know what you’re feeling. I work at ‘The Daily Show,’ so I too have been blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a fake-news-program. Tucker got caught up. Got caught up like that dude from ‘Vanderpump Rules.'”
[…] At one point, when Scandoval was trending every day, I actually considered doing a quick explainer video for you guys with my sister — but really all you need to know is that it’s basically like a Dory Previn/Andre Previn/Mia Farrow thing or a Debbie Reynolds/Eddie Fisher/Elizabeth Taylor thing or just a regular skeevy guy (Tom Sandoval) cheating on a woman (Ariana Madix) with her good friend (Rachel ‘Raquel’ Leviss) thing. Lisa Vanderpump (we like her) and Ariana Madix (we also like her) were actually in the audience as guests of the Daily Mail, which makes this even more enjoyable.
A particularly good point made by Wood was that “All the essential, fair and nuanced reporting, it’s all stuck behind a pay wall,” while “say what you will about a conspiracy theory, but at least it’s affordable.” Which, uh, seems like a thing to definitely worry about going into a major presidential election. Especially when Twitter, one of the last places to easily get free and formerly likely-to-be-accurate news, is now being run by a conspiracy-minded, Trump-loving manbaby. […]\
Kreminology—the study of Russian political intrigue—has long been a challenging art in the West. Trying to divine the machinations of closed, paranoid, totalitarian regimes can often be difficult, and few weave webs as intricate as the Russians. Not to mention, inscrutable—we still don’t know why so many oligarchs have found their way out of top-story windows.
As of late, many have been trying to make sense of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the owner of the Wagner Group mercenaries that have featured heavily in the battle for Bakhmut. A fierce critic of Russia’s Ministry of Defense, many wonder how he’s lasted this long without finding his own top-story window. […] this weekend when he threatened to withdraw from Bakhmut—the only place Russia has advanced over the entire winter.
First, the backstory.
On Friday, Mark Sumner tracked the story of one Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, the Butcher of Mariupol, and architect of Russia’s one big legitimate military victory. As a reward, rather than grant him a larger command, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin exiled him to a desk job. And not any desk job, but the one in charge of Russian military logistics—a job anyone would be destined to fail. There was too much danger that Mizintsev could parlay his victory at Mariupol into greater status in Russian society. Putin has zero interest in potential challengers to the throne.
It’s a reason Russia lacked an overall supreme commander at the start of the Russian invasion, with each corner of Ukraine under the command of a separate general. That led to massive infighting as these officers sparred over strategy, ammunition, and supplies. Even now, with a single general supposedly in charge of the entire war effort (the front has collapsed into just eastern and southern ukraine), it’s not clear how much authority he has from both the Ministry of Defense or Putin himself. There are also indications that more “elite” units—the VDV airborne forces (or whatever is left of them) and the Naval Infantry (marines)—seem to have some degree of autonomy.
But that’s not all! The breakaway Russian puppet “republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk both had their own militias. And while they’ve been formally folded into the Russian army after the supposed annexation of those regions into Russia, they appear to continue operating as they always did—as the personal militias of local warlords.
Speaking of local warlords, there is Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov and his Kadyrovite militia, which played a large role in the first few stages of the war. We haven’t seen them preening on TikTok in a while; maybe they’ve been rotated out, or maybe their casualties were so harsh as to render them combat ineffective.
Putin has his own personal army, the Rosgvardia (national guard). In addition to assuaging Putin’s paranoia, their other job is crowd and population control. They were thrown into Ukraine early in the war as Putin expected Ukraine’s army to surrender, thus necessitating Rosgvardia to handle any budding urban insurgency or protest movement. Their role, like the Kadyrovites, seems to have lessened as of late. Regardless, they exist to keep Russia’s security forces divided and fighting among themselves for resources and influence.
And of course, there’s the Wagner mercenaries which have been front-and-center in the battle for Bakhmut for eight months, and the architects of Russia’s brilliant (I’m being sarcastic) new strategy of cannon fodder human-wave attacks: They send a first wave of 8-10 on a suicide mission carrying a load of extra ammunition. When they’re gunned down, they send another 8-10 men, whose job is to get to where that ammo is and dig in. Look, they captured 10 meters! Then they repeat the same process, again, and again, and again. Usually they get artillery support to try and soften Ukrainian positions, but often they don’t. Just wave after wave.
If you think I’m exaggerating, Prigozhin announced yesterday that Wagner had advanced 100-150 meters in Bakhmut, and lost 94 men doing so. At the high end of that estimate, 150 meters is 492 feet, or 5.2 feet per dead mercenary. If you laid all those dead Wagnerites end on end, it would be longer than the territory they advanced. As a strategy, it might be enough to meet Putin’s new deadline of May 8 to capture the whole city so they can brag about it at their May 9 Victory Day parades. But that’s not a sustainable strategy to win a war.
So Russia, through Wagner, has captured 80-90% of Bakhmut, but at horrific cost. And it’s all pointless because having exhausted themselves over Ukraine’s 58th largest city, taking eight months to move a handful of kilometers, there doesn’t seem to be much left in the tank for further advances.
In Mark’s Friday piece, he noted that Mizintsev, the Russian general rewarded for Mariupol by being placed in charge of logistics, was replaced by a Rosgvardia officer. And as a pretext, they used a report by a Wagner officer that claimed that front-line units were not getting the necessary supplies. In other words, Wagner teamed up with Putin’s personal army to further sideline a Ministry of Defense official.
Of course, it absolutely is possible that Wagner is getting starved of ammunition and supplies. I noted a month ago that it seemed that Russia’s army, holding the flanks north and south of Bakhmut, were purposefully leaving supply lines open so Ukrainian defenders could continue inflicting casualties on advancing Wagnerites. This is the beauty of Putin’s “divide them so they can’t team up against me” strategy—it’s a great strategy for regime preservation, but terrible strategy to accomplish a major undertaking like conquering a well-defended, well-supplied neighbor.
And as the pressure for success mounts, the tension between these rival factions builds. “Today, there are already three and a half [Russian] armies [in Ukraine],” said Oleksii Danilov, Secretary of the Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. “And it’s only a matter of time before they start to clash between themselves.”
After months of whining about “shell hunger,” Wagner owner Prigozhin has shifted tactics. If he doesn’t start getting ammunition immediately, he is threatening, he’ll pull Wagner entirely out of Bakhmut. [tweet and video at the link]
Sergei Shoigu is Russia’s Minister of Defense, who somehow hasn’t yet been lined up against a wall and executed for Russia’s rank failures.
The deadline was April 28, though he says in the video he didn’t send the letter, so it would be April 29. That was yesterday. In a separate video, Prigozhin declared that “Russia is on the brink of catastrophe,” and reiterated the threat that “If the shortage [of ammunition] does not stop … part of the units we will be forced to withdraw from this territory, and then everything else will collapse,”
The deadline has passed. There is no news of any “organized” Wagner retreat from Bakhmut. Maybe he got some extra ammo or assurances from the new Rozgvardia general in charge of logistics? Maybe Putin told him to STFU. Maybe it was all a bluff, or political theater as Prigozhin has alternately claimed he will run for office in Russia or even be a future president of (a Russian-occupied) Ukraine. […]
But wouldn’t it be something if he wasn’t bluffing? If he retreated from Bakhmut in a fit of pique, thus invalidating Putin’s desperately needed victory and erasing eight months of Russian sacrifice?
Some people claim that a Wagner retreat would leave defense minister Shoigu with the blame, Prigozhin’s knife lodged deep in his back. But doesn’t that seem backward? As much as Prigozhin might blame Shoigu for a lack of ammunition, there’s a difference between failing to advance, and taking his ball and going home. Prigozhin may very well need to preserve what’s left of his forces to protect him from an untimely appointment with a top-level window.
But this is why Kreminology has always been an art, not a science. Because logic isn’t always a motivating factor, and we only publicly see what people want us to publicly see. Who the hell knows what’s going on behind the scenes.
Some interesting commentary concerning Tucker Carlson, (excerpts from a longer New Yorker article written by Benjamin Wallace-Wells):
[…] Ever since Trump lost first the political initiative, in the twists of a covid crisis that he could never get ahead of, and then the Presidency, to Joe Biden, Carlson’s programs have been where the right’s future was incubated. They could be racist (stoking fears about the “great replacement”), bizarre (proposing that men tan their testicles as a solution for apparently declining levels of testosterone), and fixated on liberal power in a way that could be hard for an unindoctrinated viewer to follow.
[…] Both the movement against the teaching of critical race theory and the right-wing interest in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary blossomed on Carlson’s show. […] After Senator Ted Cruz called the January 6th insurrection a “violent terrorist attack,” Carlson forced him to walk back that comment. Carlson grilled Governor Greg Abbott, of Texas, about why he hadn’t called up more National Guard soldiers to the border, and Abbott did so. The host also suggested that, if people who live in places like Martha’s Vineyard were so keen on diversity, someone should send undocumented immigrants there. Not long afterward, Governor Ron DeSantis, of Florida, took him up on it.
What these initiatives shared was not just a political orientation but an apocalyptic sensibility—Carlson once called abortion “human sacrifice” […] Conservative politicians across the country adopted them in arguing against public-health authorities, rights for trans people, teaching about race and gender in schools, and “woke capitalism.” […]
The big question for the G.O.P. during the Biden era is whether all this adds up to a viable platform for a major political party. How many people are there, really, who see the world the way Carlson does? His audience—about three million viewers—was formidable by the standards of cable news. But mainstream advertisers largely avoided the show; commercial breaks involved a heavy dose of MyPillow.com. When Rupert Murdoch, Fox’s corporate chairman, decided to fire Carlson, he did so without any public explanation.
Murdoch is Murdoch, and his reasons were widely speculated upon: maybe it was a consequence of Fox’s settlement in the Dominion defamation suit; or of the discovery of private messages in which Carlson used what the Times reported as “highly offensive and crude” terms; or of a couple of lawsuits from a former producer for Carlson, who has accused him, his executive producer, and the network of creating a misogynistic and antisemitic work environment (which Fox denies). Maybe the thought of paying a person twenty million dollars a year to rage against élites had run its course. Or maybe Murdoch, who is ninety-two, and reportedly recently broke off an engagement to a conservative radio host who referred to Carlson as a “messenger from God,” was just sick of hearing about the guy.
[…] if culture-war maximalism is Carlson’s political legacy, its future isn’t looking too bright at the moment. It did not produce a red wave in last year’s midterm elections. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and ensuing attempts by extreme conservatives to ban abortion are serving to further isolate Republicans on social issues. […] The conservative movement will be less interesting without Carlson in its most prominent media seat, but in the end he didn’t shift the movement very far. Conservatism for now comes in just two slightly different variations. There is Trumpism with Trump, and there is Trumpism without him.
[…] Why did a 65-year-old man kill a 20-year-old woman who had accidentally pulled into his Upstate New York driveway? Why did an 84-year-old man fire two bullets into a 16-year boy who had mistakenly knocked on his Kansas City door? Why did a 43-year-old man in South Florida allegedly shoot at a 19-year-old Instacart delivery driver and his 18-year-old girlfriend who had arrived at the wrong address?
Experts blame a cocktail of factors: the easy availability of guns, misconceptions around stand-your-ground laws, the marketing of firearms for self-defense — and a growing sense among Americans, particularly Republicans, that safety in their backyard is deteriorating.
Since 2020, the share of Republicans who said that crime is rising in their community has jumped from 38 percent to 73 percent, according to the latest Gallup numbers from last fall. Among Democrats, that same concern climbed only 5 percentage points to 42 percent, marking the widest partisan perception gap since the polling firm first asked the question a half-century ago. [chart at the link]
Reality is more complicated. A Washington Post crime analysis of 80 major police departments’ records found that reported violence across the country in 2022 was lower than the five-year average. [chart at the link]
And over the longer term, the National Criminal Victimization Survey showed the number of people reporting sexual assault, robbery and other physical attacks is overall much lower now than in the 1990s and has not increased in recent years
.
Homicides and thefts, however, rose during the pandemic according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data — though not to the levels of the 1990s. [chart at the link]
A Post analysis, meanwhile, found that states with stand-your-ground laws had a 55 percent higher homicide-by-firearm rate in the past two years than the states that didn’t have these laws, which remove the duty to retreat from an attacker before responding with potentially deadly force.
[…] “I blame all this crap on TV,” Flint said. “The fact that you think you can chase somebody off your property like that in this day and age — when you don’t even know who they are — is absurd.” […]
Anyone know why hundreds of NATO generals and officers keep flocking to a secret bunkers in Ukraine? And why the vatniks are so obsessed with tales of destroyed NATO bunkers 400 feet underground?
400 ft = 122 m 😱
Time to start a list of destroyed 400 ft underground NATO bunkers. [Image of WOLSNED tweet at the link: “Kinzhal hypersonic missile destroys dee underground bunker in Ukraine, apparently taking out 100s of top Ukraine and NATO officials. There is no defense against this weapon, the bunker was 400ft deep.]
Russian propaganda loves their stories of NATO generals bunkered hundreds of feet deep inside Ukraine. Why would NATO generals need to go into Ukraine, when they have these things called “radios” and “telephones” to communicate? Who knows. But at least those NATO generals are adjusting. Last month’s deadly strike against a NATO bunker, it was only 300 ft deep. NATO will keep digging deeper and deeper bunkers until they’re finally safe from imaginary Russian super weapons!
————————-
Few countries have the weapons stockpiles and manufacturing capacity to keep up with wartime consumption. […] South Korea, given its perpetual standoff with the lunatics running North Korea [does have that manufacturing capacity]. While sympathetic with Ukraine’s plight, South Korea has refused to provide lethal aid, as it is prohibited under their law. They did “lend” 500,000 155mm artillery shells to the United States, in a wink-wink transaction allowing the U.S. to then send 500,000 shells from its own stockpiles to Ukraine.
However, Russia’s continued brutality is nudging South Korea in the right direction.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Friday it was necessary to ensure Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not succeed and that Seoul was considering its options when it came to lethal aid to Kyiv […]
Yoon told Reuters in an interview last week before leaving for the United States that Seoul might extend its support for Ukraine beyond humanitarian and economic aid if it comes under a large-scale civilian attack, signaling a shift in his stance against arming Ukraine for the first time.
Alright, enough “considering.” Given its significant military resources, South Korea could make an immediate and material effect on the outcome of the war.
Definitions outlined in the bill also state a female is a person who produces “ova” […] meaning cis women who are infertile and are unable to produce eggs could barred
* The 2-page SB 180 is underwhelmingly lazy.
* “whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova” Telelogical sleight of hand. Doesn’t? Well used to, or should have, in a counterfactual universe.
People keep saying “how would that even be enforceable” and that’s not what the bill is for. […] the goal is just to make trans women too afraid to go outside
[…]
it makes sense if you realize it’s just terrorism. The unenforceable part makes it worse […] If the way to not fall afoul of the law is something that can’t be proven, there’s no way to avoid it. […] So what if the accusation is random, incorrect, or otherwise false?
You can buy a disused railcar starting from about $200,000, restore it, and have Amtrak tow you on any of the major American rail routes. “It’s kind of a hidden business,” says Hoffman, who operates Northern Sky Rail Charters from Milwaukee, Wisc. “You won’t believe how many times people say to me, ‘I didn’t know you could do this.’ ”
Amtrak is the only locomotive service you can use, and typically it will attach a car or two to a regular commercial service. “The basic fee is about a little over $4 a mile,” says Tony Marchiando, AAPRCO’s president. Storage is additional; Amtrak charges $2,000 to $3,000 a month…
KGsays
“whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova” Telelogical sleight of hand. Doesn’t? Well used to, or should have, in a counterfactual universe. – CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain@226
Even under the most generous interpretation (to the scumbags producing this hate-filled garbage), this will (not “could”), if passed, make it illegal for some people AFAB, always self-identified as girls/women, and with female external genitalia, to enter a women’s toilet. Conditions such as complete androgen insensitivity and 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency, can cause individuals with an XY karyotype and testes (and not ovaries) to develop in this way. By no possible interpretation, therefore, is their “biological reproductive system… developed to produce ova”.
KGsays
Italy is suffering the worst drought in 70 years. – birgerjohansson@221
Well, ensuring that refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean drown will sort that out!
Rep. Ruben Gallego retweeted a photo of Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley posing with a gun, calling her a “poser” while pointing out mistakes she was making in holding what appeared to be a XM250 light machine gun.
He tweeted: “Poser alert: Why is your finger on the trigger ! 1. Bolt is clear back and there is no Magazine. 2. The linked ammo on the stand you are “shooting” from doesn’t feed into the magazine fed weapon you have. 3. Your stockwell is gonna hurt you when that weapon kickback” …
As Florida’s Republican-led legislature effectively becomes an extension of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ unannounced presidential campaign, GOP state lawmakers last week gave final approval to a measure that will allow DeSantis to bypass Florida’s “resign-to-run” law, which would’ve required the governor to step down in order to seek national office. (Donald Trump was not pleased with the developments.)
President Joe Biden [said] “The truth buried by lies, and lies living on as truth. Lies told for profit and power. Lies of conspiracy and malice repeated over and over again, designed to generate a cycle of anger, hate, and even violence. A cycle that emboldens history to be buried, books to be banned….”
[…] Politico reported last week:
Presidential campaigns often are waged on whether or not the country is ready to “turn the page.” President Joe Biden wants his reelection bid to hinge on whether or not there is a page to turn. The president’s team has made the issue of book banning a surprisingly central element of his campaign’s opening salvos.
I’m not privy to Team Biden’s internal polling, but as the incumbent moves forward with his newly announced re-election campaign, it’s a safe bet the Democrat and his campaign operation have seen some overwhelming public opposition to book banning.
In the first ad of Biden’s 2024 run, for example, voters were told that “MAGA extremists” are lining up to take “bedrock freedoms away.” The spot, summarizing Biden’s broader message, added, “Cutting Social Security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. Dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books, and telling people who they can love — all while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.”
The second ad stressed similar points: “But they’re under attack by an extreme movement that seeks to overturn elections, ban books, and eliminate a woman’s right to choose.” […]
Last week, the president delivered remarks at the 2023 National and State Teachers of the Year Celebration, telling attendees, “Let’s stand with teachers and parents against politicians who try to score political points by banning books. As a student of history, I never thought I’d be a president who was fighting against elected officials banning books. Empty shelves don’t help kids learn very much.”
A week earlier, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at the National Action Network National Convention and took aim at “extremists across our country” who “ban books to attempt to erase America’s full history.” Soon after, she delivered remarks at Howard University on reproductive rights, taking the time to add, “Don’t think it’s not a national agenda when they start banning books. Banning books to stand in the way of teaching America’s full history so the truth can be spoken […]
⚡️Military: Ukraine launches counterattacks in Bakhmut, Russian forces ‘abandon some positions’.
Ukrainian troops have launched counterattacks in parts of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast, leading Russian troops to abandon some positions, Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces, reported on May 1.
Russia suffered a diplomatic 1-2 gut punch today. First of all, South Africa is hosting the BRICS summit August 22-24. The loose confederation of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (as well as several other aligned nations) has been billed as a “global south” counterweight to the West, though it really is a paper tiger. China dominates the rest economically, and India and China are literally in the midst of low-level hostilities. Anyway, Putin was slated to attend the summit, and the South African government briefly floated the possibility of withdrawing from the International Criminal Court treaty which requires them to arrest Putin if he shows up.
Now, in a humiliating turn for Putin, South Africa has asked Putin to attend the summit via Zoom.
Meanwhile, at the United Nations: [Tweet showing that Russia’s attempt to block an introductory paragraph in a resolution referring to the war in Ukraine was voted down by 122 votes, INCLUDING INDIA AND CHINA. The resolution was regarding cooperation between the UN and the Council of Europe. JÖRUNDUR VALTÝSSON (Iceland), introducing the draft resolution, included an introductory statement regarding promptly restoring and maintaining peace and security based on respect of sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of any State.]
The resolution itself was a boring affirmation of multilateral organizations working together. I’ll keep looking, but as of now I don’t have confirmation of the language in that introductory statement. If it’s as vague as the tweet above indicates, that would explain why Russia’s BRICS “allies” would abandon it. Apparently, only Russia, Syria, Belarus, Nicaragua, and Congo think it’s offensive to affirm the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of any state.
Regardless the exact language, once again, Russia is deemed a diplomatic pariah.
Update on Russia’s Pavlograd attack I mention below, which Russia reported was either 1) a railroad station, or 2) a stash of Ukrainian air defenses missiles. It is now confirmed it was the third option I mentioned—a chemical plant storing expired jet fuel once used in nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. [Tweet and images at the link]
This is both terrifying—1,800 tons of fuel are stored in the facility, a literally explosive amount—but also a relief, as Russia once again uses its arsenal to target non-military infrastructure. They got their big boom, maybe in retaliation of the big one in Sevastopol a couple of days ago. But unlike that one, this one won’t affect Ukraine’s war effort.
Meanwhile, a quick follow up to the Russian cruise missile attack last night, in which Russia launched 18 Kh-101 missiles, and had 15 shot down. Each one of those costs $13 million. So Russia pissed $195M down the drain.
A week ago I wrote about potential Ukrainian counterattack options as we wait for the mud to dry. I wrote about obvious targets in Starobilsk in Ukraine’s northeast, and cutting Putin’s precious “land bridge” connecting the Russian mainland with the Crimean peninsula in the south, with potential advances toward Melitopol or Mariupol.
But I concluded with a pipe-dream idea: taking advantage of potentially thin Russian defenses around Donetsk city smack in the middle of the Donbas, at the heart of territory occupied by Russia since 2014.
Along with a strike at the similarly thinly defended Starobilsk approach, this fantasy attack would look like this, engulfing the bulk of Russian forces in one sweeping pincer maneuver. [map at the link]
While I still don’t expect anything of this sort, the notion got added support from @Tatarigami_UA, a Ukrainian officer who recently served around Vuhledar. In a thread analyzing Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s latest proclamations (which I wrote about in yesterday’s update), he dropped the following speculation:
While it’s unclear if our command will decide to counter-attack in the [Bakhmut] area, it’s quite possible that what russia was able to achieve in the course of 9 months will be reversed within a week and result in a breakthrough and encirclement of Horlivka and the rears of Donetsk.
While this is mere speculation on my part, considering the poor state of their troops in Bakhmut, launching a counter-offensive in this direction could cause a serious blow to russian morale. This is just one of many potential directions for such an attack.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Someone asked him the same question many asked me after I wrote about focusing the counterattack around Donetsk city: “Interesting observations. However, I do have a question: Why do you believe Ukraine can counter attack in Horlivka? Isn’t the pre-2022 Donbas border supposedly heavily fortified? If they can go past said fortifications, why not go for Donetsk city instead?”
His answer: “Not Horlivka itself, but cutting off important supply routes that lead to Donetsk through Horlivka area, hence most of their troops around Donetsk. It’s always better to force your enemy to retreat or surrender than to perform large assaults on cities like Donetsk” [Correct]
Let me show you what he’s talking about. It’s not quite what I had proposed, but close, and better: [map at the link]
Tatarigami_UA argues that “Wagner troops lack both training and experience in preparing complex and organized defenses. Organizing defenses, establishing firing positions, and managing logistics in a well-structured manner is difficult, and Wagner is not designed or equipped for it.” The assumption is that a well-coordinated counterattack straight at Wagner would collapse that front, allowing Ukraine to rush its troops into a breach straight into Russia’s undefended rear.
All indications are that the bulk of Russia’s forces are defending the land bridge, which would allow Ukraine to romp all that way to Amvrosiivka, cutting off Donetsk city’s main logistical lifeline: the T0507 highway and the one rail line from Russia feeding the city of 1 million.
Russia would then be in a bind. Without knowing just now much of Ukraine’s reserves were committed, it would be loath to move forces from the land bridge area or up north, lest they open up a second avenue for Ukraine. And quite frankly, the mobilized mobiks sitting in defensive trenches would be quite useless attempting to dislodge any competent, well-equipped Ukrainian advance. If these could attack, they would’ve done it this winter instead of sitting still as Wagner did most of the moving and dying. The few Russian army units that engaged—VDV airborne troops around Kreminna in the northeast and naval infantry (Marines) around Vuhledar—got their asses kicked. They are no longer effective fighting forces.
The benefits of liberating Donetsk city would be incalculable. As I previously wrote, “In addition to the incalculable propaganda value of liberating a city of 1 million under Russian control since 2014, it would effectively split the Russian army into northern and southern halves. It would deprive Russia of a key source of cannon fodder. A key logistics distribution center, it would cut the only rail line from Russia to Mariupol and the rest of the occupied land bridge (at least until the Kerch Bridge rail line is operational again, which still isn’t the case).”
And remember, there are no defensive lines back there. If Ukraine is romping in the backfield, it can move in any direction it wants (so long as it can establish and defend its supply lines). That pincer maneuver toward the north would still be in cards. And if you’re wondering, “couldn’t Ukraine be outflanked by Russian forces attacking from Russia,” just remember that NATO estimates that over 97% of Russia’s forces are already inside Ukraine. There’s nothing else to send.
To be very clear, this officer is just speculating. He doesn’t have inside knowledge. If Russian intelligence is tracking his account and taking it seriously, maybe it means they pull defenders from other active fronts, making Ukraine’s job easier assuming they strike in one of the more obvious directions. But I don’t believe his speculation is intended in that fashion.
In context, he’s saying Wagner is running out of steam, and they only know one thing: how to push forward. If forced to go on the defensive, he argues they would fold, opening up a gap for a potential Ukrainian spearhead to exploit.
There is already a ton of arguing over what “success” looks like for Ukraine’s upcoming counteroffensive. You know what would be inarguable? Liberating the capital city of Donetsk.
A Russian train reported to have been carrying “oil products and timber” was derailed on the Bryansk-Unecha line, about 60 km inside Russia from the Ukrainian border. The train was derailed by an explosive device, derailing 7 cars of the 60-car train and setting the locomotive on fire. The resulting damage forced the cancellation of two Moscow-bound passenger trains along the line (the passengers were transported by bus instead). There was no report of any casualties.
In another act of sabotage, power lines 60 km south of St. Petersburg in northwest Russia (and Russia’s 2nd largest city), were blown up by “an explosive device.” A second explosive device was disarmed by Russian authorities (no word on whether it had malfunctioned or was discovered before it was to be detonated).
Wonkette: “Junior Posting Memes About Putting Drag Queens In Woodchippers. Sorry, No Jokes In This Headline.”
Donald Trump Jr. posted a meme on his dad’s knockoff Twitter site Truth Social this weekend. Trigger warning, it’s a picture of a woodchipper with a sign that says “Family Friendly Drag Show,” and at the entrance to the woodchipper it says, “This way to the children.” The idea that drag queens are dangerous to children is of course a right-wing Christian lie, because baseless accusations about hurting kids is one of right-wing Christians’ favorite lies when they target minority groups and other marginalized people. It’s often projection, as we’ve discussed before and as we will discuss again in this post.
Here is a screengrab of the meme. He captioned it “Solid start,” and lots of people on his dad’s knockoff Twitter site Truth Social have liked and “ReTruthed” it. Tons of supportive comments. [Tweet and image at the link]
These garbage fascists are escalating. JoeMyGod shares a report from GLAAD detailing the exponential rise in violent attacks and hate protests against drag shows since last year, 166 since the beginning of 2022. It’s come along with a rise in viciously anti-LGBTQ+ political candidates campaigning on lies about drag performers, and America’s most prominent right-wing extremist and terrorist organizations are getting in on the action.
It’s a comprehensive report, and they’re updating it as America’s fascists continue to show their asses.
Speaking of that, this past Saturday, literally the same day as Junior’s post, Nazis showed up at an adults-only drag brunch in Columbus, Ohio, to terrorize and frighten people, carrying a banner that said, “There will be blood.” You know, because it’s all about protecting kids.
Here is a video of that: [video at the link]
This feels like a good time to do the thing we’ve been doing a lot lately when we write about right-wing, mostly white, mostly Christian, 100 percent fascist motherfuckers targeting drag performers and trans people and gay folks and literally everybody who doesn’t conform to their vision for a new Nazi America.
We mentioned that so much of it is projection, because if you actually look at the statistics and read the news, it becomes quickly apparent that kids are far more likely to be in danger around Christian leaders than they are around drag performers. Every week, there are just tons of headlines about conservative Christian leaders — Protestant and Catholic, pastors, priests, youth group leaders, teachers, elders, deacons, and so forth — accused or convicted of hurting kids. Considering how frequently it happens, one starts to get the feeling that these people don’t actually give a shit about protecting kids even a little bit.
Here are some American headlines from the last week. As always, we appreciate the work JoeMyGod does in keeping track of and aggregating all these stories from around the country.
Former missionary found guilty of sexual abuse(of a child, in Iowa)
Department of Homeland Security arrests former STM teacher, investigating for more victims(former Catholic high school teacher, Louisiana, whole lotta fucked up shit in that article)
Maricopa pastor, 68, charged with lewd and lascivious acts with girl
Lincoln County Man Gets 19 Years for Spying on Catholic Church Bathroom(there is so much more with that guy, a Catholic teacher of eighth graders, but get this, HE WAS ARRESTED UPON HIS RETURN FROM THE ANTI-ABORTION “MARCH FOR LIFE” HATE RALLY IN DC. He was chaperoning the youths on that trip!)
Former Michigan priest pleads guilty in criminal sexual conduct case(criminal sexual conduct with a minor)
[Embedded links for all of the above are available at the main link.]
That’s just the last week. Honestly it’s usually more than five headlines. […]
Tell us more about the drag queens, though, you goddamned fucking Nazis.
Even under the most generous interpretation (to the scumbags producing this hate-filled garbage), this will (not “could”), if passed, make it illegal
I wasn’t being generous. Telelogy is one of the TERF tropes, for cohorts they want to handwave in instead of disregard/exclude. But yes, your clarification is important.
Reginald Selkirksays
@234: The loose confederation of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (as well as several other aligned nations) has been billed as a “global south” counterweight to the West…
That seems pretty dumb, since three of those 5 are well above the equator.
Reginald @230, That’s a good takedown of Nikki Haley!
In other news, here is a followup to comments 234 and 235. More Ukraine updates:
Last night, Russia aimed a new round of missiles and rockets at Ukraine.
What was expected to be a massive barrage seemed to fizzle. As I write this, Ukraine reported 18 Kh-101/555 cruise missiles were launched, and 15 of them were shot down. By all indications a great number of them were directed toward Kyiv. Given the extremely high intercept rate, there’s a good chance that Ukraine’s shiny new Patriot batteries got their battle christening.
At one point, OSINT sources tracking radio chatter counted 20 TU-95/TU-160s strategic bombers in the air. I don’t know if it was subterfuge (Russia has launched “phantom” missiles before to try and fool and overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses) or if the OSINT trackers messed up, but Ukraine claims that just 11 aircraft launched missiles. Given that only 18 cruise missiles were launched, that means that each aircraft, on average, carried fewer than two missiles. For context, each aircraft could carry eight cruise missiles.
Unfortunately, earlier Sunday, Russia did score a direct hit on a military target in Pavlohrad, hitting the rail station in a bid to hamper Ukrainian logistics ahead of its counteroffensive, and apparently hitting a munitions dump. (Russia claims air defense missiles.) [Tweet and video at the link]
Other sources suggested Russia targeted, weirdly enough, jet fuel once used to fuel Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, now stored at a chemical plant. Here’s a 2013 article about the program.
Posted by readers of the article from which text was quoted in comment 234:
what if Wagner forces are already unwinding in Bakhmut and that, in threatening to “withdraw,” Prigozhin is merely attempting to mask that impending failure as a voluntary withdraw “caused” by the failure of the MOD to supply his troops.
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A Ukrainian offensive in the direction of Donetsk and/or Luhansk looks good on a map but not oblasts are equal. As I recall, these two are heavily populated by Russians and were not at all pleased when their guy Yanukovych was violently ousted as Ukrainian president nine years ago. More recent direct Russian rule may or may not have changed many hearts and minds so I worry whether the Ukrainian army will even be perceived as liberators in these oblasts, much less receive the same tearful greetings we’ve seen further west.
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russian speakers ≠ russians. zelensky is a russian-speaking ukrainian. donestsk and luhansk were militarily occupied by russians, the whole “separatist republic” thing was a farce.
given how badly donetsk and luhansk have fared under russian occupation, with most of their male population forced into becoming cannon fodder earlier in the war, the reception to ukrainian armies may be pretty different than it might have been a decade ago.
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I seem to recall that a Polish or other Eastern European country had a factory creating blow-up plastic decoys of HIMARS, self-mobile artillery, fuel trucks, tanks, and other decoys of an armored brigade. Several massings of decoys could spring up overnight to confuse, misdirect, and scare the Russian military into a fatal (hopefully) mistake.
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Just after you posted, it was confirmed as a stockpile of old booster rockets that were set to be disassembled and NOT an ammo depot. Russia, I expect, will continue to claim that it will cripple UAF.
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I was thinking of this as another example of the blindness in Russian intelligence? They hit a static target that they knew has been there since at least 2013, but was not of major strategic importance.
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Ever since you raised the idea of liberating Donetsk city, I’ve been wondering (and worrying) about how much resistance or cooperation the Ukrainian forces will find there. IIRC many Russians were resettled there since 2014. How many of them stayed instead of evacuating to Russian last year? What about Russian sympathizers amongst the Ukrainians? Has Russian brutality put the remaining populace squarely on Ukraine’s side? I would guess Ukraine would have intelligence on this, but is there any information for the rest of us?
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I don’t see a bunch of displaced Russians in Ukraine feeling some sense of nationalistic fervor to stick their neck out for a place they’ve been in for no longer than 9 years.
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I like to contemplate the impact of a successful offensive on internal russian politics. Consider the current state of russian morale and internal feuding. Consider how much worse it gets if Ukraine enjoys another big win after russia’s non existent ‘offensive.’ It won’t be the end — the russian tolerance for misery and putin’s ability to cling to power are probably greater than any of us can calculate – but it will still be interesting to see what new cracks form in the aftermath.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a decision that sent shock waves through conservative circles, Tucker Carlson and Kari Lake announced that they are joining forces to create an alternate universe.
Although plans for their universe are in the primordial stage, the two right-wing icons said that it would exist outside the normal bounds of time and space.
They also indicated that, in addition to flouting established laws of physics, their universe would have its own periodic table of elements, with atomic weights “T.B.D.”
Carlson said that he expects to broadcast a nightly show in his new universe, but cautioned that he and Lake “haven’t decided whether this new realm will have ‘days’ and ‘nights’ as we currently understand them.”
For her part, Lake said that she will be able to juggle her duties as Queen of the Universe and Governor of Arizona, which she expects to be named “any day now.”
for $16 an hour. […] provided 150,000 emails, contracts and other internal documents […] Wilkerson last year publicly accused Trump Media and Technology Group of violating securities laws […] The company fired him shortly after […] federal investigators were examining whether $8 million in investments had violated money-laundering rules.
[…]
If the SEC takes action […] Wilkerson could […] make millions of dollars through the agency’s whistleblower reward program […] But such payouts are far from guaranteed
[…]
Trump’s Twitter account was reinstated in November […] So far, however, Trump has remained true to Truth Social, despite it being only the 2,479th most popular website in the United States […] viewed less often than the animal-news blog The Dodo, an AARP games webpage and […] photos of celebrities’ feet.
[…]
[Wilkerson had pitched the Truth Social / SPAC venture to Trump, three weeks after the insurrection, offering him 90% of the company without asking for any investment.]
[…]
CEO Nunes sued Wilkerson, the Guardian and a Florida journalist […] saying Wilkerson’s goal had been “defaming Nunes” and that the report made Nunes “appear odious, ridiculous and contemptible.” [teehee]
The rest of the article was spinning so HARD to make this guy look good.
Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday called the victims of a mass shooting in Texas over the weekend ‘illegal immigrants,’ drawing searing backlash for ‘dehumanizing’ them.
[…] Abbott, a Republican, said the reward was for a fugitive “who is in the country illegally and killed five illegal immigrants.”
The post drew immediate backlash on social media from critics and a “community note” that adds context from readers who said the original tweet is misleading. The note said that at least one of the victims was a legal resident of the U.S., and added their names.
[…] The youngest victim was Daniel Enrique Laso, who officials originally said was 8, but NBC News confirmed was 9. The other four were identified by police as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; and Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18.
“It’s below the dignity of the governor to impugn the victims of a mass shooting about their legal status,” said Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “All of the victims are Latino and so is the suspected gunman. This is a tragedy that involves another serial killing and a weapon for war that was used in the killing. That’s the issue, not the legal status of the victims.”
[…] Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, said in an email to NBC News that “the only thing that should matter to the Governor” is that this was “another mass shooting that killed innocent people” living in Texas. […]
Two teenagers have been charged with firearms and related offenses following the slaying of three people and the wounding of a fourth person at a northeast Philadelphia home, authorities said.
A federal judge in New York on Monday denied former President Donald Trump’s bid for a mistrial in writer E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit alleging that Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.
Towards the end of the first “Zoolander” movie, Will Ferrell’s Mugatu character becomes overwhelmed by the madness around him. “Doesn’t anybody notice this?” the exasperated character says. “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”
I had a similar reaction reading this Axios report on Republican advertising in the debt-ceiling fight.
House Republicans are putting their money where their mouths are with a new ad attacking Democrats for voting against Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) debt ceiling bill, Axios has learned. … The American Action Network, an issue advocacy nonprofit closely aligned with House Republicans, is launching a six-figure ad buy hitting House Democrats for voting against the bill.
The 30-second commercial, which has racked up quite a few views since being uploaded to YouTube four days ago, features a narrator telling viewers that Democrats “refused” to go along with the House Republicans’ plan to “responsibly raise the debt ceiling.” The ad concludes that Democrats are “putting the economy in crisis.”
Despite the chasm between the message and reality, the Axios report added that this spot “will run in the districts of 11 vulnerable House Democrats, including the five whose voters backed former President Trump in 2020.”
At this point, it’s worth pausing to acknowledge the two parallel flaws with the GOP’s co-called Limit, Save, Grow Act. The first is the tactical problem.
Even if McCarthy’s bill were a legislative triumph for the ages, the way in which Republicans are trying to pursue their goals would still be indefensible. The House speaker and his GOP team could’ve put together a responsible piece of legislation, in pursuit of serious objectives, with sound arithmetic and noble priorities, and it’d still be outrageous that he and his party are threatening to impose a deliberate economic catastrophe on Americans unless their demands are met.
But as it turns out, the radically dangerous tactics aren’t the only problem — because the bill itself is a mess.
Following up on our earlier coverage, the GOP’s hostage note is better described as a right-wing fantasy than a serious piece of federal policymaking. In order to prevent Republicans from deliberately crashing the economy, Democrats are apparently supposed to accept a plan that would push hundreds of thousands of American out of work, take health care coverage from hundreds of thousands of Americans, derail the U.S. manufacturing boom, and gut all kinds of critically necessary public investments on everything from veterans care to education, border security to food security, law enforcement to medical research, Head Start to rail inspections, agriculture to air traffic control, infrastructure to national parks.
It also takes a crowbar to efforts to combat climate change for reasons that have nothing to do with deficit reduction.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz told Politico, “The leadership just picked up the House Freedom Caucus plan and helped us convert it into the legislative text.” (The far-right Floridian apparently meant that as a compliment.)
Even some of the House GOP members who voted for it were reluctant to defend the bill on the merits, saying that they voted for it simply to advance the process, not because they saw it as a great piece of legislation. At least one House Republican suggested he would’ve opposed the measure if he thought it stood a chance of actually becoming law.
[…] the latest Republican ad effectively asks the public, “Can you believe Democrats rejected this radically regressive and overtly partisan bill filled with unpopular ideas?” To which the obvious answer, “Yes, of course they rejected it.”
Common sense suggests the 217 GOP members who voted for this monstrosity would be worried about the kind of attack ads they’re likely to see in next year’s elections. But the American Action Network apparently wants to turn the tables, insisting that voting against the bill is a bigger political liability that voting for it.
Why? Because they say so.
It’s an extension of a line of thought that says going on offense always works, even if it means abandoning reality, propriety, and anything resembling common sense. As the Democrats’ House Majority PAC runs debt ceiling ads of its own, we’ll soon see whether the truth prevails.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent a letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Monday, warning that debt ceiling armageddon may be only a month away.
“After reviewing recent federal tax receipts, our best estimate is that we will be unable to continue to satisfy all of the government’s obligations by early June, and potentially as early as June 1, if Congress does not raise or suspend the debt limit before that time,” she wrote.
That date, known as the x-date, was previously thought to be a few more months off, but tax receipts have been “weaker than expected” according to analysis from Moody’s Analytics.
“We have learned from past debt limit impasses that waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise short term borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States,” Yellen added. “If Congress fails to increase the debt limit, it would cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position, and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests.”
Democrats want to raise or suspend the debt ceiling cleanly; Republicans are demanding political concessions in exchange for their votes. House Republicans passed a bill last week lifting the limit until March 2024 at the latest, but it was stuffed with poison pills for Democrats, including unraveling major pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act.
Republicans have turned what is a procedural vote under Republican presidents into an incredibly high stakes game of chicken under Democratic ones — and a party in the thrall of its furthest right elements is only more likely to shoot the hostage.
[…] January 30, Megyn Kelly being asshole because she’s mad that Dr. Jill Biden gets to be called “Dr.” even though she cannot even perform brain surgery.
February 14, Megyn Kelly being a vicious racist again, bellyaching about the Black national anthem.
March 7, Megyn Kelly being a pain in the ass because Savannah Guthrie (who still works at the network where Megyn Kelly is no longer welcome to work) went home with COVID.
Today we got a super quick three-fer.
Here is Megyn Kelly deigning to comment on Chrissy Teigen’s cool-ass dress at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is just so fucking sad because all it does is draw attention to the fact that Megyn Kelly really doesn’t appear to be in a position anymore to be invited to either cool events OR nerd events like the Nerd Prom, even as a joke invite.
In fact, what is an “absolute humiliation,” for Megyn Kelly, is that Megyn Kelly is tweeting the words “absolute humiliation” at anyone else. [Tweet and video at the link.]
To give you an idea just how pathetic, want to know who ELSE has opinions on Chrissy Teigen’s dress at Nerd Prom? [Tweet from George Santos]
OK, well maybe Kelly and Santos can have a slumber party and do a make-believe Joan and Melissa Rivers show about it with their stuffed animals or something.
Also this weekend, Kelly was in Miami and found time to pose in this hat, which says “Make Women Female Again.” [Tweet and image at the link]
Gonna skip the part where she’s tweeting about the “Megyn Kelly Show” like it’s a big TV show or something, because LOL.
What’s that hat that all the transphobes on Twitter immediately started having paroxysms of transphobic jubilation about? Turns out it came from the website of anti-trans hate freak Posie Parker, real name Kellie-Jay Keen, who Wonkette wrote about back in March when her Australia anti-trans hate rally ended up full of Nazis doing Hitler salutes for some surprising reason.
So there’s Megyn Kelly being a literal actual piece of shit again. (Surprise, she’s also yelling at Dylan Mulvaney, because she is a very serious person.)
The third one?
Oh, her Twitter has just been a constant fountain of gushing praise for Tucker Carlson, who was America’s most prominent white supremacist until he got fired last week.
Big surprise from somebody who is perhaps most notable for that time 10 years ago when she got mad and reassured white kids that Santa and Jesus were white.
Anyway, this has been a nice visit with Megyn Kelly. We will check in with her in a month or so, maybe!
You know, IF she is a racist and/or transphobic and/or pointless asshole.
A coalition of environmental groups is suing the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), claiming the agency didn’t fully analyze the environmental damage that SpaceX’s huge Starship vehicle could cause to sensitive lands.
The FAA cleared SpaceX to conduct 20 launches of Starship each year for the next five years, notes the lawsuit, which was filed today (May 1) in federal district court in Washington, D.C. ..(snip)..”SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site is surrounded by state parks, National Wildlife Refuge lands and important habitat for imperiled wildlife, including piping plovers, northern aplomado falcons, Gulf Coast jaguarundi, ocelots and critically endangered sea turtles,” the Center for Biological Diversity wrote in a statement today(opens in new tab).
“Rocket launches and explosions cause significant harm through increased vehicle traffic and the intense heat, noise, and light pollution from construction and launch activities,” the Arizona-based nonprofit added. “Rocket explosions spread debris across surrounding habitat and have caused brush fires.”
The FAA is investigating the launch mishap with SpaceX.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Russia’s military has suffered 100,000 casualties in the past five months in fighting against Ukraine, mostly in the Bakhmut region, the White House has estimated. National security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters the figure, based on US intelligence estimates, included more than 20,000 dead.
Kirby did not detail how the US calculated Russia’s losses, but said about half of those who died were fighting under the Wagner mercenary group, rather than with the Russian military. They were being sent into battle without proper training or leadership, he added.
All parties in the Black Sea grain initiative will meet for talks on Wednesday, according to a senior Ukrainian source. Additionally top UN trade official Rebeca Grynspan is expected to travel to Moscow this week….
Also from there:
Ukraine’s military vowed on Tuesday not to give up the eastern city of Bakhmut as it prepares to launch a counteroffensive against Russian forces.
Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of Ukrainian ground forces, underlined the importance Kyiv attaches to holding Bakhmut as preparations continue for a counterattack which it hopes will change the dynamic of the war in Ukraine.
The battle for Bakhmut has symbolic importance for both sides, with Ukraine still holding on to some parts of the city after months of fierce fighting against regular Russian troops and fighters from the Wagner mercenary force, Reuters reported.
“Together with the commanders, we have made a number of necessary decisions aimed at ensuring the effective defence and inflicting maximum losses on the enemy,” Syrskyi said in remarks released after a visit to troops fighting in Bakhmut.
“We will continue, despite all the forecasts and advice, to hold Bakhmut, destroying Wagner and other most combat-capable units of the Russian army,” he told soldiers in video footage of his visit. “We give our reserves an opportunity to prepare and we are preparing for further actions ourselves.”
Every article I read about Georgia makes me want to go there.
He said many Russians had a stereotypical, post-colonial view of Georgians, drawn from Soviet portrayals of the nation as “a sultry land of dances, exotic toasts and lazy people”.
I’ll google eventually, but for now I’m having fun speculating on the meaning of “exotic toasts.”
Hollywood writers are closing their laptops and heading to the picket line.
Thousands of unionized scribes who say they are not paid fairly in the streaming era went on strike early Tuesday, bringing television production to a halt. It comes after high-stakes negotiations between a top guild and a trade association representing Hollywood’s marquee studios failed to avert the first walkout in more than 15 years.
The board of directors for the Writers Guild of America, which includes West Coast and East Coast branches, voted unanimously to call for a walkout and said writers face an “existential crisis.”
“The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union work force, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the union said in a statement.
…
The strike brings production on broadcast programs, streaming shows and potentially some films to a virtual standstill, upending the entertainment industry. (Comcast, the corporation that owns NBCUniversal, is one of the entertainment companies represented by the trade group.)
In some cases, the impact will be clear immediately. Late-night talk shows are expected to go dark this week, for example, and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” could nix this weekend’s episode. In other cases, the producers of scripted drama and comedy series may be forced to cut their seasons short or delay filming altogether.
The work stoppage comes amid intense economic and technological upheaval in Hollywood, which is grappling with the increasing dominance of streaming services, the decline of traditional broadcast viewership and even the rise of artificial intelligence, which has stoked anxiety about the future of creative professions.
…
WGA members are seeking pay increases and structural changes to a business model that they say has made it increasingly difficult to make a living. In recent years, amid the explosion of streaming platforms such as Netflix and Disney+, median writer-producer pay has declined 4%, or 23% when adjusted for inflation, according to WGA statistics.
“The companies have used the transition to streaming to cut writer pay and separate writing from production, worsening working conditions for series writers at all levels,” the WGA said in a bulletin March 14 titled “Writers Are Not Keeping Up.”
The guild added that more writers are “working at minimum regardless of experience.” In contrast, salaries for top entertainment executives have ballooned in recent years.
…
The writers in the union are particularly frustrated that streaming-era shows run for fewer episodes than their broadcast counterparts, making it tough to maintain a consistent income. In addition, residual fees — money paid when a show is put into syndication or aired overseas — have all but disappeared as more content is hosted exclusively on streaming platforms….
French trade unions on Tuesday announced a new nationwide day of protests on June 6 against President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to increase the retirement age by two years to 64.
The policy change, which Macron signed into law last month despite months of protests and strikes, has crystallised discontent against a president perceived by many in France as being aloof and indifferent to their daily hardships.
With lawmakers poised to discuss on June 8 a draft bill tabled by deputies from the opposition Liot party to cancel that new legislation, the unions said in a joint statement that the day of industrial action on June 6 was meant to “allow all workers to make themselves heard by the MPs.”
As the government kept a close eye on whether the unions will maintain a rare united front, the unions said they would work on joint proposals to improve workers’ conditions.
Police clashed on Monday with hundreds of black-clad anarchists in Paris and other cities during union-led protests against Macron’s increase in the retirement age, as workers staged Labour Day rallies across Europe.
Opinion polls show a substantial majority of French people oppose the higher retirement age.
Descriptive article with photos and quotes from protesters. They suggest elsewhere that yesterday’s demonstrations were 7 to 10 times larger than usual May Days.
An example of online harassment.
David Wood is streaming a podcast with a discussion with an ex-muslim (Apostate prophet)
At the six-minute mark there is a viewer comment that is taunting David Wood about the recent death of his son.
“Dawah wars: The apocalypse explodes”
(I am trying to make the link work- it gets weird when it is a live stream that is forwarded)
Rachel Maddow looks at the rash of recent neo-Nazi activity in Ohio focused on opposing transgender rights, and notes that state Republicans are undeterred by the realization that they share a common cause with neo-Nazis and are furthering their efforts to target trans Americans.
Rachel Maddow looks at new laws being passed by Democratic-led states, particularly states that are adjacent to Republican-run states, to protect abortion rights, contraception, and gender affirmation….
This is starting to resemble the days of the Fugitive Slave Act.
StevoRsays
@255 ^ Despite the title a lot more than just Dinosaurs there. (1 hour & 50 mins or so long.)
Far-right Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) has asked the FBI to investigate DxE for “promot[ing] organized criminal activity,” in connection w/ livestock disappearances in her district (I’ve seen no reported evidence that these are connected to DxE)
This is potentially a big development, but isn’t that surprising since the FBI has investigated DxE for years & testified against them in state court. So far it hasn’t pressed federal charges against them, but formal complaints from Congress may ratchet up FBI involvement
Tenney is accusing “vegan extremists” of involvement in the theft of 12 chickens in Chautauqua County NY. But farm animals can disappear for many reasons
and in any case one would think the FBI has many better things to do right now than investigate 12 missing chickens [See dozens of posts above in this thread!]
In 2017, the FBI chased two piglets (allegedly each worth $42.20) rescued from Smithfield Foods across state lines, raided the animal sanctuary where they were living and sliced one of the animal’s ears to perform a DNA test
An FBI writeup after the 2017 DxE piglet rescue said Smithfield was concerned about its “reputation & relationships with clients.” The level of entitlement that the factory farm industry feels to summon national security to investigate harms to its reputation is profound.
There’s an implicit understanding here: We will help you hide the barbarism [sic] on which virtually the entire US meat supply depends. Animal activists are easy targets because most people don’t want to think about the reality of the industry & resent being reminded of it.
of course the animal movement has been here before, becoming the FBI’s top domestic terrorism target despite never killing anyone. DxE is different from these earlier waves of activism & more staunchly, philosophically nonviolent.
But it may not matter because animal activists are targeted for their danger to the ideology and economy of animal exploitation, not for any threat to human life
IMO feds are obsessed with chasing activists who rescue a couple factory-farmed animals *because* the industry is so obviously & violently unjustifiable. It takes a disproportionate nat sec crackdown to stop people from revolting against the industry’s atrocities
I also think national security interest in these cases represents a kind of societal-psychological backlash against people who tell unwelcome truths about animal industries that the public does not want to face
I don’t know how this all escalated to Tenney’s district, but this case (which is not DxE) is taking place there. and groups like the Animal Ag Alliance have been training farmers to be hyper-vigilant and blame their problems on animal activists
DxE may be perceived as even more threatening than earlier waves of activism because they’re savvy and having been winning in court. They have a legal theory about the legality of animal rescue that has actually been working
I’ll be following this closely but for will re-share a @curaffairs essay on the moral & epistemic role of activism that does not compromise w/ an intolerable status quo, that’s still probably the most heartfelt thing I’ve written…
“Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult.”
The closure comes just eight months after Idaho’s abortion ban went into effect. Except in cases of police-reported rape and incest, physicians can only perform the procedure to — quote — “prevent the death of a pregnant woman.” ..(snip) .. Dr. Amelia Huntsberger :
We needed to move quickly to stabilize her and save a life. When I got to the operating room and I removed the ectopic pregnancy, which at that point was problematic legally, I knew that I needed to do what my oath requires me to do, to prioritize the safety of my patient.
And I also knew that I was putting myself, theoretically, potentially, at risk of felony charges, which would have a minimum of two years in jail, loss of my medical license for six months.
Sarah Varney:
Dr. Huntsberger and her family have decided to leave Idaho.
Dr. Amelia Huntsberger :
This isn’t a safe place to practice medicine anymore.
For nearly 50 years, chemical engineer and inventor Mária Telkes applied her prodigious intellect to harnessing the power of the sun, including designing and building the world’s first successfully solar-heated modern residence. Along the way, she was undercut and thwarted by her male boss and colleagues at MIT, but persevered despite these obstacles, holding more than 20 patents upon her death.
This is only the first segment, but the show was great. I knew almost none of this history.
At least six Russian regions have scrapped 9 May Victory Day parades that mark the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany amid fear over Ukrainian strikes, with the governor of a region 400 miles from the border the latest to cancel. [LOL]
The governor of Saratov on Tuesday became the latest official who announced that the parade would not go ahead because of “safety concerns” as the string of cancellations act as a glaring admission of the country’s military vulnerability more than 14 months into the war.
Earlier, heads of Belgorod, Kursk, Voronezh, Oryol, and Pskov region, as well as the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, similarly cancelled their annual military parades.
“There won’t be a parade in order to not provoke the enemy with large numbers of equipment and service members in central Belgorod,” the regions’ head Vyacheslav Gladkov said last month.
In response to a new law that requires porn sites to verify users’ ages, Pornhub has completely disabled its websites for people located in Utah.
As of today, anyone accessing Pornhub from a Utah-based IP address doesn’t see the Pornhub homepage, but instead is met with a video of Cherie DeVille, adult performer and member of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee, explaining that they won’t be able to visit the site…
King (already Chuckie de turd.. the tourist attraction for ye olde Englande.
Opposite side of tehworld fromme. Luterally couldnt be furtherbaway yet “my King.”
I didn’t see him passing by could not give a stuff if he would die.
Just by bitrth he’s monarch mine.
Well shit ain’t that the rule divine..
I did not choose him not one bit even if of royalty he ain’t least shit.
I guess this could be even worse.
Of pedo Prince Andrew could be writing in this verse..
With apologies toThe Digital Cuittlefish & looking forward to seeing what he says on this. Please.
StevoRsays
Aaaarrgh! F N typos. Sorry folks.
Opposite side of the world from me. Literally couldn’t be further away yet suposedly “my King.”
(Of Brext Brits & resentful Scots & Irish Oz & Canada & Aotearoa/ NZ & other places that haven’t been quick enough to sod off outta the ole brutal theiving empire yet.)
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is feeling extremely persecuted these days, and the Wall Street Journal is there for him, amplifying his every complaint. It’s also there to gloss over suggestions that the raft of reports of ethical lapses by the conservatives on the court over the past few decades is nothing more than attacks by nefarious liberals.
“[T]his type of concerted attack on the court and on individual justices,” Alito complained, is “new during my lifetime. . . . We are being hammered daily, and I think quite unfairly in a lot of instances. And nobody, practically nobody, is defending us.” Those poor, poor conservative justices, with their well-paid jobs for life, enhanced by some very wealthy and generous friends.
That part of the interview with the WSJ is galling enough, but when Alito complains that the early leak of his decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization put his life at risk, it’s infuriating. “Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination … It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.”
He then admitted the fear wasn’t real. “I don’t feel physically unsafe, because we now have a lot of protection.” He is “driven around in basically a tank, and I’m not really supposed to go anyplace by myself without the tank and my members of the police force.”
As opposed to the fear every person in this country who is at risk from an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy feels for their own lives. That fear? It’s real.
You can find their stories in just about any issue of People Magazine, as Laura Clawson has pointed out. There’s this one from last October: “Texas Woman Nearly Loses Her Life After Doctors Can’t Legally Perform an Abortion: ‘Their Hands Were Tied.’” That woman is Amanda Zurawski, who recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about her experience. “I cannot adequately put into words the trauma and despair that comes with waiting to either lose your own life, your child’s, or both,” she told the Senate panel.
For days, I was locked in this bizarre and avoidable hell. Would Willow’s heart stop, or would I deteriorate to the brink of death? The answer arrived three long days later. In a matter of minutes, I went from being physically healthy to developing a raging fever and dangerously low blood pressure. My husband rushed me to the hospital where we soon learned I had developed sepsis–a condition in which bacteria in the blood develops into infection, with the ability to kill in under an hour. Several hours later, after stabilizing just enough to deliver our stillborn daughter, my vitals crashed again. In the middle of the night, I was rapidly transferred to the ICU, where I would stay for three days as medical professionals battled to save my life.
Zurawski pointed out that the forced birth zealots who created the abortion ban that nearly took her life spent a lot of time “talking about the mental trauma and the negative harmful effects on a person’s psychological well-being after they have an abortion.” But people like her who experience “the trauma and the PTSD and the depression,” a “paralyzing” experience, are utterly disregarded.
That trauma is being repeated in red states across the country, where the threat of criminal sanctions is keeping hospitals and doctors from providing the care pregnant people in dangerous situations need; The care that they are obligated to provide under the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA.
In a first-of-its-kind investigation, the Department of Health and Human Service has determined that two hospitals—Freeman Health System in Joplin, Missouri, and University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas violated that law when they refused to provide an emergency abortion to Mylissa Farmer. At 17 weeks, the Missouri woman’s water broke. There was no way the fetus would survive, and if it stayed in her body, her health and her life were at risk.
Farmer’s experience, and her speaking out about it, led to the HHS investigation. Because the hospitals receive federal money through Medicaid and Medicare, the agency could investigate. It hasn’t levied fines against the two hospitals, but issued a notice that they had violated law and warned them to correct the problems that led to Farmer being turned away.
Farmer was able to travel, and eventually obtained an abortion in Illinois. But the experience still scarred her. “It was dehumanizing. It was terrifying. It was horrible not to get the care to save your life,” she told the AP. “I felt like I was responsible to do something, to say something, to not have this happen again to another woman.”
You can bet Alito hasn’t given these women a second thought. He’s too busy bemoaning the fact that the public has found out just how corrupt he and his colleagues are, and are talking about it.
StevoRsays
On crowning day remember
How the Raj in India did dismember
How they took the Koh-i-noor * away
They stole it from a child and worse..
They stole that Rajah’s Mom away
And while he’d view that diamond hence..
He’s never see his mom again .. no not once.
She died still grieving. So did he.
But, yay,** the royal ceremony!!
Wisconsin’s conservative-controlled Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a hospital could not be forced to give a deworming drug to a patient with COVID-19.
The panel ruled 6-1 in favor of Aurora Health Care, with three liberals and three conservatives in support and only conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley dissenting.
The decision upholds a lower court’s ruling against Allen Gahl, who sued Aurora in October 2021 when doctors refused to treat his uncle, John Zingsheim, with ivermectin. Gahl was authorized to make medical decisions for Zingsheim and had researched the drug online after Zingsheim was put on a ventilator to treat COVID-19 complications…
None of the information in the complaint Gahl subsequently filed against the hospital came directly from medical professionals, according to court documents…
StevoRsays
What our Aussie Indigenous MPs think of the Voice – plus nearly 15 mins long video on it here :
Less than a week after an Ada County judge ruled that far-right activist Ammon Bundy had essentially forfeited a lawsuit against him for repeatedly not appearing in court, Bundy has petitioned to transfer the St. Luke’s Health System case to federal jurisdiction.
In a filing with U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, Bundy alleged that the case “involves Federal Civil Rights violations against Petitioners” and accused St. Luke’s of purposefully overwhelming the defendants with filings…
Erik Stidham, St. Luke’s attorney, said the hospital has “no problem” with either state or federal court, but said there is “no legal basis for federal jurisdiction in this case.”…
[…] First, dismissing legitimate questions about ethics scandals as annoying isn’t a real defense.
Second, his complaints aren’t altogether new. Circling back to our coverage from last fall, Alito has taken a variety of steps to try to defend the high court’s credibility.
But he remains an awful messenger for the message. We are, after all, talking about a justice who delivered a series of overtly political speeches, before defending the Supreme Court’s integrity at a pro-Trump organization, exactly two weeks before the midterm elections, while early voting was underway. Alito soon after publicly endorsed the work of a conservative advocacy group.
And now the far-right justice, while making evidence-free allegations against an unnamed colleague on the court, is gobsmacked about observers questioning his fairness and impartiality? Seriously?
CNN announced that it will give a live, unfiltered, primetime platform to Donald Trump next week in the form of a “town hall” with New Hampshire voters.
The bullshit “town hall” format is supposed to give the patina of public service and civic virtue to what is nothing more than the usual cable news network “get” of a high-profile interview – except it’s worse, as I’ll explain in a moment. Calling it a “town hall” is just a way of packaging and promoting CNN’s convening authority as if it were the League of Women Voters or some other nonpartisan, nonprofit, do-good org.
Let’s be clear that CNN is doing this for CNN.
“The [Trump] adviser said CNN executives made a compelling pitch to Trump,” ABC reported.
CNN reached out to Trump to do this, the same way Fox News or Newsmax would.
“A person familiar with the discussions said CNN approached the Trump campaign several months ago, and talks between the two sides continued on until Monday, when the plans were locked down,” according to Politico.
But unlike a sit-down interview – which can be recorded and edited, presented in context, coupled with fact-checking and expert commentary – the live “town hall” format (unless CNN unexpectedly mixes up the usual form) enables Trump and those like him free rein to spew misinformation, falsehoods, and half-truths unhindered by any mediating journalistic considerations.
This is not new. We’ve been over all this before. Frankly, it’s a tiresome argument to have – except that news outlets keep effing it up.
One final point: If your response is news outlets have no choice but to cover Trump … [lemme take a long, slow, deep breath because we’ve been over this 1000 times, yall]: How they cover him matters. The format, the news judgment (whether the format even allows for news judgment), the context … it ALL matters.
[…] Republicans have been insisting that the debt ceiling bill they forced through the House on Wednesday is a good faith effort and a starting point for negotiations with Senate Democrats and the Biden White House even though they’ve disingenuously tied the bill to the debt ceiling and stuffed it with obvious non-starters for Democrats.
Biden’s sassy post [post and chart available at the link. The chart shows that Republicans did vote to cut benefits for Veterans] comes as House Republicans continue to stick to the GOP playbook and claim their bill is good for the American people.
Since last week House Republicans have been publicly whining about the Department of Veterans’ Affairs — which put out a press release to warn the GOP’s debt ceiling bill could lead to job loss within the department and could force the VA to reduce telehealth services and access to medical care, and could lead to longer wait times for critical programs and cut housing vouchers for veterans.
House Republicans are trying to spin the narrative to argue that the VA has been politicized rather than acknowledging their prop bill could actually hurt the department. The bill was passed as part of a broader Republican effort to try and strong arm Democrats into negotiating while they hold the debt ceiling hostage until they get what they want.
[snipped example of Republicans telling lies and whining] Other Republicans have also been launching similarly bad faith attacks on the department as well. […] Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) proposed cutting funds for the VA’s communications department. […]
“It is Congress’s constitutional obligation to act, not hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage unless we allow them to make cuts to programs hard-working Americans rely upon. Threatening to default and crash the economy unless the president agrees with Speaker McCarthy’s entire agenda isn’t just unreasonable. It’s dangerous,” Jean-Pierre told reporters at the daily briefing.
She said that at next week’s meeting, Biden will make clear that he remains willing to have “a separate process” to talk about spending priorities.
More than 150 workers whose labor underpins the AI systems of Facebook, TikTok and ChatGPT gathered in Nairobi on Monday and pledged to establish the first African Content Moderators Union, in a move that could have significant consequences for the businesses of some of the world’s biggest tech companies.
The current and former workers, all employed by third party outsourcing companies, have provided content moderation services for AI tools used by Meta, Bytedance, and OpenAI—the respective owners of Facebook, TikTok and the breakout AI chatbot ChatGPT. Despite the mental toll of the work, which has left many content moderators suffering from PTSD, their jobs are some of the lowest-paid in the global tech industry, with some workers earning as little as $1.50 per hour.
As news of the successful vote to register the union was read out, the packed room of workers at the Mövenpick Hotel in Nairobi burst into cheers and applause, a video from the event seen by TIME shows. Confetti fell onto the stage, and jubilant music began to play as the crowd continued to cheer.
The establishment of the Content Moderators Union is the culmination of a process that began in 2019, when Daniel Motaung, a Facebook content moderator, was fired from his role at the outsourcing company Sama after he attempted to convene a workers’ union called the Alliance. Motaung, whose story was first revealed by TIME, is now suing both Facebook and Sama in a Nairobi court. Motaung traveled from his home in South Africa to attend the Labor Day meeting of more than 150 content moderators in Nairobi, and addressed the group.
“I never thought, when I started the Alliance in 2019, we would be here today—with moderators from every major social media giant forming the first African moderators union,” Motaung said in a statement. “There have never been more of us. Our cause is right, our way is just, and we shall prevail. I couldn’t be more proud of today’s decision to register the Content Moderators Union.”…
The oddest little thing seems to have happened to Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, at least for the moment. He seems to know what side he’s supposed to be on in regards to Ukraine and Russia.
WHAT?
But listen, for real, though. He was in Jerusalem, and that empty cavity dead-air tumbleweed-brained pretty boy actually stood up to a Russian reporter.
“We know that you don’t support the unlimited and uncontrolled supplies of weaponry and aid to Ukraine,” the reporter, who introduced himself as part of Russian state-sponsored media outlet RIA Novosti, asked McCarthy. “So, can you comment: Is it possible in the near future [that] the U.S. policy regarding sending weaponry to Ukraine will change?”
You see, the Russian reporter was able to set up the question that way because Kevin has been a cowardly skidmark about this in the past.
But Kevin was like oh no no no no no.
“I vote for aid to Ukraine, I support aid to Ukraine,” McCarthy replied.
And he said:
“I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine. I do not support your killing of the children, either.
“And I think for one standpoint you should pull out, and I don’t think it’s right. And we will continue to support because the rest of the world sees it just as it is.”
Oh! Look at that!
And everybody clapped for him, which Kevin likes […] Watch: [video at the link]
Credit where credit is due. McCarthy did not hesitate. He actually got his back up and immediately stopped that sniveling Russian reporter in his tracks.
Of course, who knows what will happen when Kevin gets home and has to face Marjorie Taylor Greene, since she is a foreign policy moron and a Putin cheerleader, and he has said in the past that he will “never leave that woman.” Literally just this morning, she posted one of her million-word screeds on Twitter that reads like a mass shooter manifesto, and it included re-vomited Russian propaganda about “their precious war against nuclear Russia in Ukraine” and other idiot words. [JFC]
Again, the Russian reporter was only able to ask this because Kevin McCarthy has repeated “blank check” rhetoric, which is basically what the reporter asked him about. Credit to McCarthy for shutting it down, but if we want to avoid these stinky situations in the future, KEVIN, you know what we should not do? Barf out GOP/Kremlin propaganda about Ukraine on the regs.
[…] Some people are wondering if maybe he feels little bit freer now that a certain Kremlin court fluffer has lost his giant Fox News microphone. At the Washington Post, Aaron Blake notes that McCarthy specifically didn’t take the “blank check” bait. And he adds:
McCarthy also said that “we will continue to support” Ukraine, which would seem to send a message to members like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and McCarthy’s newfound ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who have joined with Carlson to try to push the party in an isolationist direction. […]
But we shouldn’t dismiss the Carlson effect. It was just three months ago that conservative former British prime minister Boris Johnson suggested that Republicans were too scared of Carlson to stick up for Ukraine. “I’ve been amazed and horrified by how many people are frightened of a guy called Tucker Carlson,” Johnson said.
And Tucker’s gone now. Therefore Kevin doesn’t have to keep him happy anymore. He knows that if he finds any more J6 tapes lying around that he needs turned into lying propaganda that whitewashes the insurrection, he’s gonna have to give them to Newsmax or something.
[…] Serious talk, though. We don’t think any of us has really begun to grapple with all the ways our politics may change in the next couple years simply because that motherfucker doesn’t have his nightly 8 p.m. perch on Fox News. It’ll be interesting to watch.
Anyway.
Marjorie Taylor Greene really is going to be so mad, though, seriously. First she finds out there’s an entire Pornhub website that’s all about Hunter Biden’s wing-a-wang, and then Kevin McCarthy, her very best friend forever, goes off to Israel and openly says nice things about America’s allies and is unkind to our enemies. That is not the kind of behavior she likes to see. […]
Scientists in India are protesting a decision to remove discussion of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution from textbooks used by millions of students in ninth and 10th grades. More than 4000 researchers and others have so far signed an open letter asking officials to restore the material…
the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), an autonomous government organization that sets curricula and publishes textbooks for India’s 256 million primary and secondary students, had made the move as part of a “content rationalization” process. NCERT first removed discussion of Darwinian evolution from the textbooks at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to streamline online classes, the society says. (Last year, NCERT issued a document that said it wanted to avoid content that was “irrelevant” in the “present context.”) …
Darwinian evolution was irrelevant during a viral epidemic? In which universe?
An explosive device derailed a Russian freight train in a region bordering Ukraine for a second straight day Tuesday ahead of an expected counteroffensive by Kyiv.
Russian territory and Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014, have been hit in recent days by a series of attacks.
The last four days have seen two trains derailed by explosions, a suspected drone hitting an oil depot in Crimea that caused a huge blaze and power lines blown up near Saint Petersburg…
He said it went off at Snezhetskaya station, outside the regional hub of Bryansk, a city of around 370,000 people near the Ukraine and Belarus borders.
“A locomotive and several wagons of the train derailed,” he said, adding that there were no casualties.
On Monday, a similar explosion caused a train to derail and catch fire near Unecha, in the same region but closer to the Ukraine border…
Two brawling goats ended up at a Florida jail after deputies were called to break up their fight that spilled into nearby yards, according to the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office
The odd scene played out April 30 in Palatka, 60 miles south of Jacksonville, when police were alerted to a “fight in progress.”
Both goats were taken into custody, and even the sheriff’s office can’t resist making jokes about it…
Democratic Texas Rep. Colin Allred is expected to challenge Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in his 2024 reelection bid, according to new reports by both Politico and the Texas Tribune.
Allred, 40, is a former NFL player and civil rights attorney who was elected in 2018 to represent a portion of Dallas in Congress. According to sources speaking to the Tribune, the Democrat has been considering a run against Cruz for months.
Politico reports that Allred — who won his current seat in the U.S. House after unseating Republican Rep. Pete Sessions — is planning to announce his campaign as soon as this week…
A transgender journalist in a relationship with Montana’s sole elected trans legislator, Rep. Zooey Zephyr, thwarted a SWATting attempt at her Maryland residence Tuesday morning. She credits contacting local police months ago for the incident not ending in violence.
Erin Reed is a trans activist and independent journalist who is often attacked online. She’s been tracking anti-trans legislation across the country. Reed was most recently targeted by far-right extremists because she is in a relationship with Zephyr, who has gained national attention over the last two weeks for being censured by Republican lawmakers in the Montana legislature.
Tuesday morning, Zephyr tweeted that somebody had tried to send a SWAT team to her partner’s home to have armed law enforcement storm the residence…
t’s May. Since last fall, people have been pointing at this month as the month, the month in which Ukraine was likely to begin what could be the most important action of the war–a counteroffensive to break through what has become an almost immobile front and throw back Vladimir Putin’s invading army.
As the winter wore on, and Russia’s winter offensive fizzled in the snow and rain, expectations for what Ukraine would achieve when the sun came round and the mud dried up only grew. Many of the most enthusiastic predictions have come from supporters of Ukraine who seriously feel, especially after the victories at Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson, that the Ukrainian forces are capable of anything. For the most optimistic, the counteroffensive isn’t about making a serious dent in the front lines and liberating some portion of Donetsk or Luhansk, it’s about breaking the Russian army and seeing Wagner Group go scuttling away leaving Ukraine at the borders it held before 2014.
What Ukraine needs to do to secure continued support and show that Russia can be defeated is still open to debate. However, as The Atlantic points out, the one thing higher than the bar for success may be the stakes; because, “The future of the democratic world will be determined by whether the Ukrainian military can break a stalemate with Russia and drive the country backwards—perhaps even out of Crimea for good.
It’s not just Ukraine supporters who keep raising expectations for the coming weeks. Supporters of Russia want to set the bar for Ukrainian success at the maximum.
You can see this in speeches from people such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who wants to define anything less than Ukraine liberating all of its territory in a matter of weeks as a “failure.” That will give her, and others like her, a reason to demand reduced U.S. support should Volodymyr Zelenskyy not be addressing victorious troops in Sevastopol by June.
That Atlantic article provides the official definition of victory in this war as set out by the Ukrainian government and military. It’s a good explanation of why calls for a negotiated peace are bound to fail unless that peace comes along the pre-2014 borders:
Victory means, first, that Ukraine retains sovereign control of all of the territory that lies within its internationally recognized borders, including land taken by Russia since 2014: Donetsk, Luhansk, Melitopol, Mariupol, Crimea. “Every centimeter of our 603,550 square kilometers,” Kuleba says. Ukrainians believe that the de facto ceding of territory to Russia in 2014 gave Putin the idea that he could take more, and they don’t want to repeat the error. Instead of ending the conflict, a cease-fire that leaves large chunks of Ukraine under Russian control could give him an incentive to regroup, rearm, and try again. They also point out that territory under Putin’s control is a crime scene, a space where repression, terror, and human-rights violations take place every day. Ukrainians who remain in the occupied territories are at constant risk of losing their property, their identity, and their lives. No Ukrainian leader can give up the idea of saving them.
But ultimate victory in the war is not the same as victory in the coming weeks. It would be great if Russian forces were so crushed when Ukraine begins to move that their military command and control structure falls apart, the front becomes a scene of mass surrenders, and the Russian military—already revealed as a “paper bear”—disintegrates into squabbling factions.
That’s possible. But it’s very unlikely.
Here’s what we know: Ukraine has a reported twelve new brigades of soldiers and equipment that are ready to join the fight at the front line. Nine of those brigades have been reportedly trained in combined-armed tactics by NATO forces. Those same nine brigades are also likely to be the recipient of many of the Western vehicles and weapons systems that have been rolling into Ukraine since the first of the year. Eight of the new brigades have been called “Storm Brigades,” and there is some expectation that these eight, composed of about 40,000 troops and their gear, will be the tip of the spear when the counteroffensive comes. One of those eight is a brand new Azov brigade. Others have names like “Rage” and “Hurricane.”
Why are there nine new brigades trained in combined arms warfare, but only eight storm brigades? That, I don’t know. But we can be pretty sure that other forces will be brought in behind these eight brigades to help mop up and secure the areas after break through. That 40,000 to 50,000 troop force will keep moving, keep breaking through until Russia is able to blunt their attack.
We know a few details about how some, though far from all, of these brigades have been trained and equipped. For example, the 47th Assault Brigade is outfitted with a mix of up to 50 Bradley fighting vehicles donated by the United States and 28 highly upgraded M-55S tanks from Slovenia. The 37th Assault Brigade will have an unknown number of American Oshkosh M-ATV MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles as well as some or all of the 30 AMX-10rc wheeled vehicles that France has donated to Ukraine.
We also know that some of those who were trained on Western weapons came from existing Ukrainian units and have experience at the front. For example, about half of those trained on the British Challenger 2 tank came from the 80th Air Assault Brigade, members of which are still fighting it out near Bakhmut. It seems likely that these trained and experienced fighters will be rolled into the new units, rather than having the Western weapons folded back into their old brigades. But we can’t be sure.
All together, the new brigades are likely to total between 50,000 and 60,000 men. What kind of difference can that make on a front line where the number currently engaged likely exceeds half a million?
Quite a lot. Those Ukrainian brigades are not going to spread out along the whole line. They’re going to hit at some location where 50,000 gives Ukraine a large advantage and the best possibility for rapid movement. Western estimates put the number of Russian forces currently in the area of Bakhmut at somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000. In recent weeks, reports have indicated that Russian forces have been pulled from both the south and the north to bolster those numbers–in large part because the U.S. estimates that Russia has lost 20,000 troops since December in its efforts to capture the city.
While Ukrainian estimates of Russian deaths, which are now edging toward 200,000 are considered high by Western analysts, that’s not a bad number for the total casualties on the Russian side. That’s 50,000 more men than Russia sent to Ukraine in total in the opening months of the war. By the most conservative estimates, Russia is losing men in Ukraine at 25 times the rate it did in either of the wars in Chechnya, including the one it lost. As Lawfare notes, “Russia has suffered more combat fatalities in Ukraine in the first year of the war than in all of its wars since World War II combined.”
MInus the forces crowded in around Bakhmut, Russia has, on average, about 200 men defending each kilometer of the front. Only that’s not accurate either, because the remaining Russian forces aren’t spread evenly. They are concentrated in a few areas. In particular, they’re in the areas around Avdiivka and Marinka, both of them near Donetsk. Smaller forces are near Kreminna and Svatove in the north, and south of Orikhiv and Hulyaipole in the south. These forces are primarily defending, not cities, but highway and railroad nexuses.
Recent satellite imagery has indicated that many of the Russian forces which had been behind the lines are now at the front, with bases in Crimea largely abandoned. It’s worth noting that commentary from Russian sources indicates that the reason the equipment may have been moved was to get it out of the way of a potential Ukrainian advance—which says a lot about Russia’s confidence in their ability to meet the coming counteroffensive.
[…] Some locations, like the northern route between Svatove and Starobilsk, seem to be practically inviting Ukraine to step in and take control. Some seem to offer the potential for capturing a large area,
[…] the best outcome is likely to end with Russia regrouping around Crimea and some fragment of the area they now control. […] Their logistics continue to be crap […] Thanks to Ukraine’s dedicated program of using precision weaponry to take out accumulations of supplies or fuel near the front, Russia has been forced to stage major depots 100 km or more back from the lines. For a nation that can’t even manage to put things on pallets, that’s a big deal.
Russia’s leadership continues to be poor. […] The shortage is profound enough that Russia’s latest class of cadets has reportedly been shoved out of academies early so that they can be used as officers in Ukraine.
Russia is burning through its stock of equipment. With over 10,000 major weapons systems lost, including somewhere between 1,900 and 3,700 tanks, Russia is edging toward a point where it almost doesn’t matter how many men they can mobilize, because they can’t equip new recruits. The shipments of older, and older, and older gear to Russian forces in Ukraine is a direct result of Russia’s inability to manufacture, repair, or buy anything newer.
Here’s Shashank Joshi, defense editor at The Economist, putting Russia’s inability to apply force in context.
There is something wild about the fact that Russia has mobilized 300,000 men since September, conducted over 700 air and drone strikes since October, and hurled itself at Donbas since January, with as many as 20,000 killed in action … and actually managed a net loss of territory in April.
[…] Ukraine hasn’t just fought Russia to a standstill; it has seriously degraded Russia’s military and reduced Russia’s ability to project force. In that most jargony of terms, Russia has been attrited.
The worst outcome for a Ukrainian counteroffensive at this point might be one in which Ukrainian forces break through the lines, but their own staggeringly complex logistical chain, burdened with dozens of different types of equipment from almost as many different militaries, makes it difficult for them to exploit that breakthrough. Russia is able to reposition, the many defensive trenches slow Ukraine’s roll, and the territory liberated by Ukraine is limited—perhaps to only 1,000 square kilometers of Zaporizhzhia or Luhansk. That’s about the same size as the area liberated in the Kharkiv counteroffensive.
That’s the bad outcome. [still sounds good, a qualified good]
[…] Let’s hop back to The Atlantic article:
Ukrainians need a military success … one with enough symbolic power to force change in Russia.
Their interview with Zelenskyy suggests this doesn’t necessarily mean that Putin gets taken down by some other jackass within the Kremlin. What it means is reaching a point where Russia thinks staying in Ukraine is more costly than leaving.
Only one thing matters: Russia’s leaders must conclude that the war was a mistake, and Russia must acknowledge Ukraine as an independent country with the right to exist. … When that happens in Russia, the war will be over. Not suspended, not delayed for a month or a year—over.
Kos has written at length on the possible goals for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, and about how some targets might give Ukraine a big boost both in terms of territory recovered and the political damage done to Putin’s assertions about Russia’s control over Ukraine. That one or more of these targets could lead to the kind of success that leaves Russia scrambling to negotiate, not because it wants to hold onto much of Ukraine but because it needs peace to secure its own stability, is entirely possible. The bad outcome, one that moves the lines in Ukraine’s favor then leaves both sides gathering their strength for another move, is also possible.
But the idea of a complete success, one that really does have Zelenskyy sticking his toes in the sand off Sevastopol, shouldn’t be completely discounted. After all, if there’s anything the Russian military has demonstrated in Ukraine, it’s that they are capable of unexpectedly large, unexpectedly rapid defeat.
And Russia’s situation is only getting worse. If Russia isn’t forced completely out of Ukraine in this counteroffensive, there will be another.
The Biden administration will send active-duty troops to the southern border as it braces for what is expected to be a surge in migration after the lifting of Covid restrictions next week. At the request of the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department is expected to provide a temporary increase of 1,500 military personnel for 90 days to augment the 2,500 military personnel currently providing support at the border, DHS said in a statement.
A Missouri judge on Monday temporarily blocked a unique rule that would require adults and children to undergo more than a year of therapy and fulfill other requirements before they could receive gender-affirming treatments such as puberty blockers, hormones and surgery.
Following a record-setting surge in efforts to change curriculums and ban books at schools nationwide, the education culture war has now reached the stage. [A controversy in Ohio] is one of a number of recent instances in which school administrators have intervened to nix or alter school theatrical productions deemed objectionable — often because they feature LGBTQ characters or deal with issues of race and racism.
Well that will kill high school drama classes that want to put on plays of musicals.
There have been a lot of obituaries like this from Bakhmut in the past few days, showing that the losses there continue to be extreme and that Ukraine isn’t hesitating to send in foreign volunteers and its own most experienced troops. [Tweet and image showing Canadian fighters who died while fighting with the 92nd Mechanized Brigade.]
On Tuesday, the commander of Ukraine’s 93rd Brigade, which is on its second tour in Bakhmut and has been fighting in the city since January, noted that in spite of Russian and Wagner complaints, the artillery fire from Russian positions has been intense and the number of defensive positions available to Ukraine has shrunk as Russia reduced the city to rubble. “But it’s been four months and we’re still here,” said Col. Pavlo Palisa. He also indicated that supply routes into the city were open and under Ukrainian control. It’s unclear if that includes the T0504 highway to the south, which may at least allow Ukrainian forces to get as close to the city as Ivaniske before having to move to secondary routes.
One concerning report was a report of a failed Russian attack ”at Predtechyne,” which is about 10 km southwest of Ivaniske. This could suggest Russian forces have managed to push west again from Klishchiivka after losing ground in that area two months ago. On the other hand, it may just be a push “in the direction of” Predtechyne, which is how the Ukrainian military often describes assaults that aren’t near any particular town.
Heavy fighting in Bakhmut continues and Russia has staged numerous air strikes against targets in the city, but the pace of change seems to have again slowed over the past two days.
As awful as this video looks, the traffic moving both ways on the T0504 could be a good indicator that Ukraine has pushed Russian forces away from the highway enough that it is once again being used as a supply route into the city. If so, that’s a very good sign when it comes to Ukraine’s ability to hold on to that western edge.
I honestly can’t tell if the smoking and damaged tank in this video is from Ukraine or Russia. At least two of the burned-out APCs are Ukrainian, but then so are the ones actively sweeping down the road. What I don’t see in this video that I did see in the last videos of the road through Khromove, is any sign of active Russian shelling. [video at the link]
ZAPORIZHZHIA
There are unconfirmed reports that Ukrainian forces advanced at multiple points along the southern front on Monday. These advances, which reportedly involved movements south of Orkiv and Myme, have been refuted by Russian sources. However, it’s interesting that in this area on Tuesday morning, rather than reporting any Russian assaults on Ukrainian positions, the report from the Ukrainian general staff simply says that in this area, Russian forces “defended themselves.” That certainly makes it seem as if Ukraine at least made some offensive move in the region.
KUPYANSK
I’m bringing this area up because for the past several days, here is how it has been described in Ukrainian reports: “The enemy did not conduct offensive actions in the Kupyansk area.” A number of towns around the area reported some shelling, but that’s all.
Russian sources made a big deal out of movements north of Kupyansk back in December and January as Russian troops moved to occupy a series of towns that had not been garrisoned by Ukrainian forces. There were even Russian sources claiming that Russia was about to force Ukrainian troops to retreat across the Oskil River. That never happened.
Instead, the whole area just went more or less silent. The number of forces on either side in this area was never large, but it may be that Russian forces originally pressing around Kupyansk have been relocated to Bakhmut, Avdriivka, or another of the more active areas.
(So not pumpernickel with bananas and a tamari reduction.)
StevoRsays
Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe water vapor around a distant rocky planet. The water vapor could indicate the presence of an atmosphere around the extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, a discovery that could be important for our search for habitable worlds outside the solar system. However, the scientists behind the discovery caution that this water vapor could be coming from the world’s host star rather than the planet itself.
The exoplanet, designated GJ 486 b, orbits a red dwarf star located 26 light-years away in the Virgo constellation. Although it has three times the mass of Earth, it is less than a third the size of our planet. GJ 486 b takes less than 1.5 Earth days to orbit its star and is probably tidally locked to the red dwarf, meaning it perpetually shows the same face to its star.
In an international operation 288 people have been arrested across the US, Europe and South America after allegedly selling opioids on the now-shuttered Monopoly Market dark web drug trafficking marketplace, according to US and European law enforcement.
Codenamed “SpecTor,” this operation spanned the three continents in what the US Department of Justice deemed the largest-ever such international score, both in terms of people arrested and of seizures made. The latter included 117 firearms, 850 kilograms of drugs that include 64 kilograms of fentanyl or fentanyl-laced narcotics, and $53.4 million in cash and virtual currencies.
The arrests took place in America (153), the UK (55), Germany (52), the Netherlands (10), Austria (9), France (5), Switzerland (2), Poland (1) and Brazil (1), according to Europol.
German authorities originally seized the cybercrime marketplace’s infrastructure in December 2021, although law enforcement didn’t announce the takedown at the time. It’s a tactic police are getting very good at these days, memorably the double-Dutch attack that cripped Alphabay and Hansa…
Simply put, it’s a social-media platform that shares enough similarities with Twitter that some people are viewing it as an alternative. There are others, including Mastodon, but according to The New York Times, users say Bluesky Social is the app that comes closest to mimicking Twitter.
The app is built on something called the Authenticated Transport protocol, or AT, a social media framework created by the company and made up of a network of many different sites.
There were about 50,000 users on Bluesky Social as of late April, according to Bloomberg. It began as an app for iOS, but is now available for Android users, too…
A sprawling online company based in Georgia that has made tens of millions of dollars purporting to sell access to jobs at the United States Postal Service (USPS) has exposed its internal IT operations and database of nearly 900,000 customers. The leaked records indicate the network’s chief technology officer in Pakistan has been hacked for the past year, and that the entire operation was created by the principals of a Tennessee-based telemarketing firm that has promoted USPS employment websites since 2016…
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Three Russian navy ships were observed in the Baltic Sea in the area of the Nord Stream pipeline blasts prior to the sabotage that halted Russian gas flows to Europe in September last year, an investigation by four Nordic broadcasters has found according to Reuters.
The Russian navy ships were traced using satellite images and intercepted radio communication from the Russian fleet, the four broadcasters, Denmark’s DR, Norway’s NRK, Sweden’s SVT and Finland’s Yle, said.
Authorities in Denmark, Sweden and Germany have said the explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and newly built Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines that link Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea were deliberate. But they have yet to publish any findings of their respective investigations.
The Nordic broadcasters found that in June and September last year, the Russian ships sailed from navy bases in St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad to the area northeast of the Danish island of Bornholm where three of the four pipeline leaks happened.
One of the vessels, a tugboat named SB-123 capable of launching mini-submarines, was located in the area on 21 and 22 of September they found.
Separately, the Danish Armed Forces confirmed to Reuters that a patrol vessel had taken 26 photos of a Russian submarine rescue vessel named SS-750 near the Nord Stream blast site on 22 September last year, just days before the explosions happened.
The incident took place seven months into Russia’s war on Ukraine. The Kremlin on Tuesday denied Russian ships had any involvement in the sabotage and called for results of the investigations to be published.
Moscow has, without providing evidence, blamed the explosions on western sabotage. Both the United States and Ukraine have denied having anything to do with the attacks as has Russia.
The Russian ships traced had all switched off their AIS signal, an automatic tracking system used on ship, they said.
An interesting report here, as Russia has claimed Ukraine used a drone to try to kill Vladimir Putin overnight.
Footage has circulated on social media of a small smoke cloud rising over the Kremlin in Moscow in the early hours of Wednesday.
The Kremlin said it considered the attack to be a “planned terrorist action”, the Russian state news agency RIA reported.
It said two drones had been used in the alleged attack, but had been disabled by Russian defences.
Putin was not injured, and there was no material damage to the Kremlin buildings, the Kremlin said.
Mykhailo Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has responded strongly to Russia’s claim that “the Kremlin has assessed these actions as a planned terrorist act and an assassination attempt on the president” about the reported drone strike on the Kremlin.
In a tweet, Podolyak cautioned that the event was being used as a pretext for “a large-scale terrorist attack”. He wrote:
As for the drones over the Kremlin. It’s all predictable … Russia is clearly preparing a large-scale terrorist attack. That’s why it first detains a large allegedly subversive group in Crimea. And then it demonstrates “drones over the Kremlin”.
First of all, Ukraine wages an exclusively defensive war and does not attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation.
What for? This does not solve any military issue. But it gives the Russian Federation grounds to justify its attacks on civilians …
Secondly, we are watching with interest the growing number of mishaps and incidents that are taking place in different parts of the Russian Federation. The emergence of unidentified unmanned aerial vehicles at energy facilities or on Kremlin’s territory can only indicate the guerilla activities of local resistance forces.
As you know, drones can be bought at any military store …
The loss of power control over the country by Putin’s clan is obvious. But on the other hand, Russia has repeatedly talked about its total control over the air.
In a word, something is happening in Russian Federation, but definitely without Ukraine’s drones over the Kremlin.
For some context, when Podolyak refers to “The emergence of unidentified unmanned aerial vehicles at energy facilities or on Kremlin’s territory can only indicate the guerilla activities of local resistance forces”, in recent days explosives have derailed freight trains in Russia’s Bryansk oblast, an electricity pylon was toppled in Leningrad oblast, and an oil depot was set on fire in Krasnodar, near Crimea. A facility in Sevastopol has also been struck in recent days.
Podolyak states “Ukraine wages an exclusively defensive war and does not attack targets on the territory of the Russian Federation”. However, governors of the Russian regions that border Ukraine have frequently reported shelling that crosses the border into Belgorod and Kursk regions.
Sen. Roger Marshall’s career in the upper chamber has run into occasional setbacks. Last year, for example, while pushing an odd conspiracy theory, the Kansas Republican badgered Dr. Anthony Fauci to put financial disclosure information online that was already online. (Fauci was caught on a hot mic describing the GOP senator as a “moron.”)
Unfortunately, Marshall’s confusion persists. Yesterday, for example, the Kansan appeared on Fox Business to both celebrate the House Republicans’ debt ceiling hostage note and make a curious prediction about its prospects. [video at the link]
I found myself watching the clip a few times, because I couldn’t quite believe what I’d heard. In fact, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, whose partisan perspective is no secret, seemed amazed, too. For those who can’t watch clips online, here’s a transcript of the relevant portion:
MARSHALL: This is a good deal. If this would go on the Senate floor, I think it would pass.
BARTIROMO: You do?
MARSHALL: I do. I do think that it would pass — not with 50 Democrats, but I think there’d be 30 or 40 Democrats that would pass it.
If you listen closely towards the end of the video excerpt, Bartiromo responded, “Wow,” which, coincidentally, is what I said, too.
Just so we’re all clear, Marshall was referring to the House GOP’s so-called Limit, Save, Grow Act — a right-wing plan, concocted in secret with no Democratic input, that would push hundreds of thousands out of work and take health care coverage from hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Just as importantly, the legislation — a vehicle for the Republicans’ debt ceiling hostage strategy — would gut all kinds of critically necessary public investments, affecting everything from veterans care to education, border security to food security, law enforcement to medical research, Head Start to rail inspections, agriculture to air traffic control, infrastructure to national parks.
It also takes a crowbar to efforts to combat climate change for reasons that have nothing to do with deficit reduction.
Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz told Politico, “The leadership just picked up the House Freedom Caucus plan and helped us convert it into the legislative text.”
There are 51 members of the Senate Democratic conference. Roger Marshall, without a hint of humor, told a national television audience that he believes “30 or 40” of them would vote for this outlandish monstrosity — even after literally zero House Democrats supported the measure during last week’s floor vote in the lower chamber.
I mention all of this, in part because it’s kind of hilarious, and in part because Republicans might not fully appreciate just how much congressional Democrats — other than West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — hate this plan with the heat of a thousand suns.
Soon after Marshall’s on-air appearance, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer appeared on the chamber floor and explained that the House GOP’s bill “has no future in the Senate.”
The New York Democrat added that the Republicans’ debt ceiling hostage note “would tear at the fabric of American society” and impose “brutal attacks on working families.” Schumer went on to say the bill is filled with “atrocities.” […]
Embedded within the article at the main link are several links to additional information, including the details about taking “a crowbar to efforts to combat climate change,” etc.
SC @305, Podolyak’s response was really well written. Smart.
Also, “governors of the Russian regions that border Ukraine have frequently reported shelling that crosses the border into Belgorod and Kursk regions” is not the same as someone supposedly sending drones to directly attack the Kremlin. One little puff of smoke, eh? And no damage done? It does sound like the Russians building a pretext to target more civilians in Ukraine because “terrorists” flew a drone over the Kremlin.
For weeks, Elon Musk applied his top-notch middle-school bully tactics to NPR on his failing social media network, Twitter. First Musk tagged NPR as “state-affiliated media,” which is not, and never was true. This resulted in NPR having the same label as actual state-owned propaganda sites such as China’s Xinhua News Agency or Russia’s RT. When it was pointed out that Twitter’s own rules used NPR as an example of public media companies that were not state owned, he took the obvious step of ordering someone to rewrite the rules, removing the reference to NPR. Then, under a flood of complaints, Musk changed the tag on NPR to “Government Funded Media,” which is also a lie. Less than 1% of NPR’s funding comes from the federal government.
All of this appears to be just Musk causing trouble to justify what he wanted to do in the first place—remove all the warning labels that previously pointed out genuine propaganda that justified Russia’s wars and China’s human rights abuses. And following this debacle, NPR announced that it, along with all its programs, would no longer be using Twitter to spread news stories or update the public. So Musk not only managed to make the world safer for the worst propaganda outlets, he also diminished the ways in which people can access genuine news. For Musk, that’s got to be a very good day.
Only now Musk is feeling bad that he doesn’t have NPR around to pick on anymore. So he chased them down to send them a fresh threat. As NPR reported on Tuesday evening, Musk sent a series of emails to NPR reporter Bobby Allyn, threatening to give NPR’s Twitter handle, @NPR, to “another company.”
Following NPR’s departure, other news organizations, including PBS and the Canadian Broadcasting System, have also stopped using Twitter. The fact that journalists don’t like being mislabeled, or put on par with organizations designed to create and spread disinformation, seems to have frustrated Musk.
In an unsolicited email to Allyn, Musk asked, “So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?”
Twitter’s terms of service don’t require that an account post to be active. It only requires that someone log into the account every thirty days. That didn’t stop Musk from following up with a second email saying, “Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant. Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.”
Musk refused to say whether he was changing the terms of service—though it certainly would not be the first time. In addition to his flurry of changes to justify his attacks on public media outlets, Musk has previously altered the terms to make it permissible to attack trans individuals. Previously, Twitter’s terms of service included a sentence noting that their definition of unacceptable conduct, “includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” Musk ordered that sentence removed. In addition, Musk has ordered the reinstatement of accounts for individuals and organizations previously banned for racism, misogyny, and encouraging violence.
As Bloomberg reported in March, Musk’s “antics” have driven away advertisers by the score, leaving Twitter dependent on the kind of low-rent commercials that used to decorate the Tucker Carlson show.
From September to October of last year, the top 10 advertisers on Twitter spent $71 million on ads, according to estimates from Sensor Tower. In the past two months, that figure dropped to just $7.6 million, a decline of 89%, the research firm said. Twitter’s top ad customers historically have included marquee names like HBO, Amazon, IBM and Coca-Cola.
That would be “historically.” As in B.M.—Before Musk.
The new threats against NPR are likely to speed the departure of other news outlets, further diminishing the already shrinking value of Musk’s vanity purchase. Emily Bell, a professor at Columbia Journalism School, noted to NPR news that Musk’s email represents an “extraordinary threat” and predicted it could lead to an “even more of a rapid retreat by media organizations and other brands that don’t think it’s worth the risk.”
[…] the platform is experiencing an increase in technical issues, some of which are likely related to drastic changes Musk has ordered to support his disastrous “Twitter blue” paid checkmarks, or his closing down of Twitter’s previously free API, which caused many services that people depended on to fail overnight.
The API changes not only cut-off data for researchers, it left many sites cut off from their ability to post. That included even emergency warnings from the National Weather Service and service updates from local utilities. Musk was eventually forced to backtrack on charging government agencies, but not before some agencies and organizations simply bailed out. That includes New York’s Metro Transit Authority, who will no longer post train delays and bus route changes on Twitter because “reliability of the platform can no longer be guaranteed.”
What to make of the latest Tucker Carlson revelation, a Jan. 7, 2021 text showing him in full racist froth over the beating of a Antifa protestor in DC?
We are to believe, based on the NYT reporting, that this Carlson text “set off a panic at the highest levels of Fox.” Coming as it did on the eve of the scheduled trial of the Dominion defamation case against Fox, we can perhaps attribute some of the so-called panic to the timing. Perhaps.
But after years of Carlson going on the air every weeknight to espouse white nationalism, foment racial hatred, and demean people of color with racist tropes and stereotypes, we’re supposed to accept that the Fox board somehow came to its senses when confronted with a single 18-month-old text?
The key part of the text (emphasis mine):
A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight.
To be fair, the NYT story couches the text not as a smoking gun per se, but reports that it “contributed to a chain of events that ultimately led to Mr. Carlson’s firing.” That leaves a fair bit for interpretation of how much the text contributed and what other things also contributed to the firing.
There’s also this bit of new reporting from the WaPo which seems relevant:
After seeing the message, the board alerted Fox executives that it planned to retain a law firm to investigate Carlson’s behavior, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
We’re not in a position to know, with so many of the Carlson internal communications either still private or redacted in court documents, what combination of revelations or notifications to the board prompted it to act finally. But it’s simply way too credulous to pretend this text somehow represents a greater display of racism from Carlson than he displayed on air in front of million of viewers night after night for years, in plain view of the Fox board.
Saying the quiet part out loud, as reported by HuffPost:
Gasps could be heard after Florida state Rep. Jeff Holcomb’s statement
There was a jaw-dropping moment on the floor of the Florida House of Representatives this week after a Republican lawmaker’s comment about who really hates the LGBTQ+ community.
“ISIS, the Taliban and al Qaeda. Those are the folks who discriminate,” state Rep. Jeff Holcomb said Monday. “Our terrorist enemies hate homosexuals more than we do.”
The implication that Republicans hate the gay community ― but terrorists hate them even more ― led to gasps in the audience, while Democratic Rep. Kelly Skidmore’s jaw literally dropped […]
Posted by readers of the Talking Points Memo article:
Since Vlad wasn’t even in the 275,000 sq. m (google machine: kremlin size,) multi-story complex at the time, am I wrong to question the ingenious inference that this was an assassination attempt?
————————
Interesting … why give conceptual legitimacy to even the thought that such a thing could even get so far as being attempted … that opposition forces could actually conceivably get close enough to be a genuine threat. After investing so much time & energy in presenting an image of Putin as invincible – why entertain thoughts of vulnerability?
Seeking to rally public sympathy? … sympathy is not what an arrogant autocrat needs … unless he is desperate.
————————-
As to Russia’s claims that it was Ukraine sending two drones to the Kremlin, I’m waiting for more evidence because one thought that keeps going through my mind is that Putin and his allies set this scenario up to get the Russian people to rally around Putin and his allies.
————————– It sounds like Putin is ginning up an excuse to go after Zelenskiiy. He’s left him alone up til now. With Putin, it’s usually projection. [Didn’t Putin send some special troops to Kyiv to kill or capture Zelenskyy in February 2022, near the beginning of the invasion?]
—————————-
False flag, next comes nuke threat.
—————————-
Wasn’t there some murkily accounted for, high casualty terr’ist attack in Russia that served as part of the pretext for continuing the brutalization of Chechnya around the start of the millenium?
Stevo R @ 312
Thanks you!
.
God Awful Movies has released their latest review of a horrible film.
My cellphone cannot see the difference between I and l so I will write four slightly different links, one of them will lead you to Youtube. https://youtu.be/h5BR2IWZsUI
OK
GAM402 The Nibiru movie.
Dan and Jordan from The Knowledge Fight podcast joins the gang (they are heroes, they voluntarily watch wossname the guy who Stephen Colbert parodied with his “Tuck Buckford” persona). https://youtu.be/h5Br2IWZsUI
birgerjohanssonsays
@315
…Alex Jones, that was the one!
Even after being used to watch Alex Jones, Dan and Jordan found this latest film one of the absolutely worst they have ever seen.
Noah: “Welcome”
Dan & Jordan “Fuck you!”.
Noah: “We get a lot of that”
A massive trove of internal information from the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) and its donors was left unsecured on the group’s own website, according to a new report. More than 10,000 documents (including zip files that contain many more files) reviewed by Wired—including “highly sensitive internal information about the College’s donors and taxes, social security numbers of board members, staff resignation letters, budgetary and fundraising concerns, and the usernames and passwords of more than 100 online accounts”—were left unsecured on the rightwing organization’s website until the magazine reached out.
The American College of Pediatricians is a rightwing hate group (as deemed by the Southern Poverty Law Center) which peddles an anti-LGBTQ agenda via conservative media and amicus briefs against LGBTQ people. Most recently, the ACP has been a party of the abortion pill lawsuit currently confounding the federal judiciary…
[…] A civil arrest warrant was issued April 18 for Ammon Bundy, with his bail set at $10,000. For nearly a year, the anti-government militant has repeatedly failed to show up in court to face a defamation lawsuit filed against him by St. Luke’s Health System. Bundy’s complete disregard for every legal obligation is a perfect encapsulation of the deadbeat-dad ethos the Bundy welfare family has practiced for decades.
Bundy is now holed up on his Idaho property, hiding out from the contempt charge he is facing, and the Gem County sheriff has been too afraid—or perhaps too empathetic—to actually arrest him. A trip by St. Luke’s lawyers to the state Supreme Court seems to have helped reignite the sheriff’s courage, and on Day 9 of the Bundy squat-off, video was released showing county sheriff’s deputies arriving at the Bundy property to serve him with an arrest warrant.
The pathway to the home was blocked by a Three Percenter militia member and his truck. The video shows the deputies asking if Ammon Bundy is in the residence and who everybody is, but Bundy’s militia detail refuses to answer any questions. [video at the link]
[…] Gem County Sheriff Donnie Wunder has claimed to be too afraid to serve Bundy with legal notices in general.
Wunder wrote the court before the arrest warrant was issued, saying that over the past few weeks, Bundy has become “more and more aggressive with his behavior” and that he was concerned for “the safety of process servers and my deputies. I do not want to risk harm over a civil issue.” But, according to KTVB, “after St. Luke’s went to the Idaho Supreme Court, Sheriff Wunder had a change of heart” and said he would start doing his job.
Bundy has been doing all of the things you’d expect from most right-wing charlatans with ambitions of running for office, including:
Using the COVID-19 pandemic to protest mythical government abuse
Involved himself in a lot of anti-vaxx nonsense
Posting videos filmed on his land, hoping to hype up his extremist followers
Running a failed extremist political campaign and saying everything is rigged against him.
It’s important to remember that people like Ammon Bundy seem to have a real blind spot when it comes to how much their entire livelihood depends on the federal government and the “handouts” they rail against. Whether it’s the unauthorized free grazing on federal land for his dad’s cattle or the money the SBA gave his small business, Bundy sure does love free money.
Things have not been going well for Donald Trump’s newest lawyer as he attempts to muster a defense in writer E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump. Lawyer Joe Tacopina’s performance in the case continues to be widely panned, with former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner calling’s Monday’s performance “an object lesson in how NOT to conduct a cross-examination in federal court.”
None of that is particularly surprising. Joe Tacopina got the job for having the notable attributes of not yet being indicted, convicted, or disbarred. At this point, and with the sheer number of lawyers Trump needs to ward off even more dire legal threats elsewhere, Tacopina’s qualifications don’t need to be much higher than having a pulse and being willing to say things on television. It hasn’t gone well from the beginning.
This week saw an exceptionally weird episode of Tacopina Theater, with the law-guy filing an 18-page call for a mistrial based on the judge allegedly being biased against him. It was an obvious Hail Mary attempt to shake something up as Carroll’s credible testimony continues while Trump’s side has been able to offer no substantial rebuttals and seems in no danger of coming up with any between now and the case’s close.
There was no chance Judge Lewis A. Kaplan was going to grant the motion, and Epner’s take on Kaplan is that he’s not a judge who could be intimidated into accepting Tacopina’s lesser requests of giving him more latitude in questioning Carroll. On the contrary, Kaplan has shown little tolerance for Tacopina’s more spurious questions or inferences. That was the case when Tacopina attempted a gotcha line of questioning meant to suggest that Carroll harbored alarming resentments towards the nation’s menfolk, all based on a line in Carroll’s book that Tacopina either couldn’t recognize as obviously satirical, or that he was hoping the jury wouldn’t recognize as such.
That led to this brief courtroom exchange:
[Tacopina]. Okay. At one point I think in your book you propose we should dispose of all the men?
[Carroll]. Into Montana.
Q. Into Montana?
A. Yeah, and retrain them.
Q. So retrain. So all the men here in this courtroom, in this country, all get shuffled off to Montana and get retrained.
A. You understand that that was said as a satire.
Q. Ah, Okay.
THE COURT: It comes from Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” 700 years ago, right?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
THE COURT: Let’s move on.
MR. TACOPINA: Thank you, your Honor.
This one-sentence interjection is cited as a reason that Tacopina now wants a mistrial. The judge intervened to acknowledge the existence of satire, complete with an irritating reference to books and booklearning, and that made Tacopina look like a complete fool for being the only one in the room who didn’t understand that “round up all men in America and send them to Montana for retraining” was intended as a joke. A spoof. A wee little skit, for funsies.
The judge making Tacopina look like an absolute tool and was terribly cruel, suggests Tacopina, and the trial cannot possibly move forward after the judge made passing reference to satire being around and recognizable for at least the last “700 years.”
No, really. Tacopina filed a request for mistrial that attempted to make a whole big deal of this: “It was not for the Court to provide evidence from the Bench to corroborate Plaintiff’s position in a way that suggested to the Jury favoritism of any one party.”
Is it favoritism, though? Is it really? Tacopina attempted to expose E. Jean Carroll as a man-hating monster, Carroll somewhat incredulously questioned whether he meant to take an obviously satirical proposal seriously, Kaplan interjected to clarify that she meant “satire” in the sense of Jonathan Swift’s proposal to eat Irish babies being “satire,” she confirmed it, and Kaplan told Tacopina to get on with things rather than trying to stitch together an anti-man conspiracy theory based on a passing written joke. Question, answer, done.
If anything, Tacopina might have had more success if he asked Kaplan to correct the record so that the jury knew that Jonathan Swift’s canonical work of satire has actually been recognizable for 300 years, not the 700 years that Kaplan claimed. It would still be petty, but it’d at least have factual grounds to stand on.
There are plenty of ways Kaplan could have made Tacopina look the fool, if Kaplan wanted to do so. Judges have quite a bit of latitude when it comes to chastising lawyers who clog their courtrooms up with absurd and insulting arguments, but Kaplan didn’t even do that. He was downright polite about it.
Most of us wouldn’t make good judges, though, and it’s not just because we are aware of the existence of Jonathan Swift. It’s because most of us, when faced with a time-wasting, by-the-hour tool who pretends to not know what satire entails, couldn’t resist torturing the man over it. Many of us would have loved to see Kaplan do something much more like this:
Q. Okay. At one point I think in your book you propose we should dispose of all the men? […] So all the men here in this courtroom, in this country, all get shuffled off to Montana and get retrained.
A. You understand that that was said as a satire.
Q. Ah, Okay.
THE COURT: It comes from Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” 700 years ago, right?
A: Yes.
THE COURT: So when you proposed all men be sent to Montana, you did not mean it literally, no more than one of the most famous comedy authors of the last few centuries meant it when he proposed that a food shortage be lessened by snacking on children.
A: Correct.
THE COURT: By eating a heaping plate of babies.
A: Yes.
THE COURT: And in fact you would have to be a special kind of dim to not understand that a proposal to ship all the men in America to Montana so that American women could retrain them was almost certainly meant to be satire as well.
A: Right.
THE COURT: You’d have to be a complete illiterate, in fact. You’d have to have the reading comprehension of, let’s say, a ripened pumpkin.
A: I suppose.
THE COURT: Because this is quite literally a form of humor that has been set into the English language for at least 300 years, to the extent that it would be recognizable to any vaguely literate individual in this country by the time the Declaration of Independence was written. You could pick up a copy of this one essay, back in the late 1700s, and understand it to be a joke, even if you were thumbing through it while simultaneously applying leeches to Benjamin Franklin’s rear end in an attempt to diminish inflammation of the buttocks. You would still get that it was a joke.
A: Yes.
THE COURT: So if there was a person in this courtroom, in the year 2023, a person who claimed to have a law degree, necessitating a legal education, a person who was currently engaged in the practice of law who had the ability to search for and reference arcane legal errata in the process of arguing courtroom cases but who simultaneously was confused on whether exaggerated and transparently impossible proposals expressed with apparent sincerity were, in fact, satirical, you would probably think that that person was obviously lying to the court.
A: Well, they could also be astoundingly ignorant, I suppose.
THE COURT: Right. But you would normally not believe that a lawyer capable of practicing law on behalf of, say, a former president of the United States could be so ignorant. So devoid of basic comprehension skills. So ridiculously gullible.
A: …
THE COURT: Hmm. Yes, point taken.
So there you go, Joe Tacopina. I’d say you got off pretty easy in the original exchange, and the judge was, if anything, quite professional about it. Now you’ve got the rest of us dreaming of being in a position to give you the sort of smackdown your “do you actually have plans to ship all American men to Montana” witness-probing really deserved.
If you can’t see the main twitter post, here it is:
A child just rang my doorbell. Folks you do NOT ring doorbells in 2023. My 6 was loaded. Keep your kids away.
Chris
A meteorologist in Texas thought he sounded manly by telling a story on twitter about a very young child [6 years old] who rang his doorbell looking for her lost kitty. According to him, he was ready to shoot because the doorbell was …. what, startling? Well, he didn’t say. Usually, people who break in your house don’t use a doorbell, so I don’t know what the hell his problem was.
I can tell you as prior law enforcement, when we approached a house that had a domestic violence situation, we NEVER knocked on the door. The reason is that a slight knock sounds very loud and aggressive during a fight. We always used a doorbell. But paranoid people just want to shoot. We were also trained to stand at the side in case a gun nut took a random shot through the door. (And yes, I was in Texas, so this training was very necessary.)
When this psychopath was called out for trying to justify preparing to shoot the kid, he made it worse by saying “I’m not f***ing around.” He went on to talk about threatening to pull her hair, making her cry, and bragged about knowing cops/chief so it’s all good. […] [“I told the brat I would pull her nasty hair if she rings my bell again.”]
Not long ago, a Florida man, Andrew Lester, just shot a kid who dared to ring the wrong the doorbell. His grandson said his paranoia was fueled by racism promoted on Fox News.
I don’t know this Texas weatherman, but I can pretty much guarantee what he watches.
Ringing a doorbell should not be capital offense. He is the very reason we need to have red flag laws in this country.
In the meantime, I suggest using a different weather service. Preferably one owned by someone who is not terrified of little girls.
The Texas state Legislature — that august institution that the sainted Molly Ivins liked to call the “national laboratory of bad government” — has been up to its usual madness lately. Yesterday, the state Senate passed a bill that would allow Gov. Greg Abbott’s handpicked secretary of state to overturn elections in Harris County, the Democratic stronghold where Houston lives, but not in any other county in the state.
The bill targeting Harris County was a big priority for Texas Republicans, who insist that they were robbed of their rightful victories in Harris County when about 20 of the county’s 728 polling places ran out of paper for ballots. A Houston Chronicle analysis showed that was no evidence of systematic voter disenfranchisement, and more importantly, no evidence that the polling place glitches would have changed the outcome of the election.
But it made Republicans mighty mad, and they’re sure they wuz robbed, so they introduced SB 1993, which would authorize the secretary of state to order that elections get a do-over in “a county with a population of 2.7 million or more,” of which Texas has exactly one: Harris County, which in recent years has trended increasingly Democratic, which oughta be illegal. The population threshold is just a skosh over Dallas County’s 2.58 million, how about that? But Dallas delivers for the GOP, so it’s not a problem.
SB 1993 would allow the state secretary of state to order new elections if at least two percent of the polling places in Harris County run out of ballots, and if additional ballots weren’t delivered to those polling places within an hour. Fun fact: 20 polling places is 2.7 percent of the total in Harris County. And here’s the fun part! The secretary doesn’t need firm evidence of ballot shortages, but can order a do-over simply “if the secretary has good cause to believe” there were problems.
The costs of running the new elections would, of course, be borne by Harris County taxpayers.
One of the bill’s co authors, state Sen. Mayes Middleton (R), whose Galveston district is partly in Harris County, insisted that “There is no reason, there is no excuse why we can’t competently run our elections and have adequate ballot paper,” which is both A: true and B: not really much excuse to allow the overturning of an election based on a partisan election commissar’s hunch.
During debate on the bill Monday, Democratic state Sen. Royce West asked Middleton about that: “You want to vest in a political appointee the ability to make a decision as to whether or not an election should be overturned and reheld?”
Middleton dodged the question about the prospects for partisan fuckery, and insisted that “overturn” is just such an unfair word:
“I would disagree about overturning — you’re calling a new election so voters get to vote again. […] You get the opportunity to vote again. This is very different from the way you are describing it.”
Another Democrat, state Sen. Borris Miles of Houston […] suggested that singling out Harris County for special loving care from Greg Abbott’s appointed Secretary of State Jane Nelson might be a tad problematic, asking Middleton, “Does that seem kind of biased to you? We’re just going to pick on my county?”
Middleton was shocked, shocked, because after all Harris County was the only county out of 254 in which any problems happened in 2022, probably:
“You’ve got to supply enough ballot paper,” Middleton said. “There’s no reason that should happen again. It’s really a simple thing. You just deliver enough paper.”
Middleton did say Monday that he’d be open to adding an amendment to cover more counties, but somehow that never made it into the bill that was passed Tuesday.
For all the good it would do, Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee observed that SB 1993 and another election bill that would only affect Harris County are using “election integrity” as an excuse to tinker with the vote in a Democratic stronghold:
“They are not about making elections better,” Menefee said. “They are about targeting the largest county in the state, which is led by people of color. Laws that attack only one county are not only bad public policy, but also violate the Texas Constitution.”
County Commissioner Adrian Garcia called Middleton’s bill “election denial,” framing it as an attempt to overturn election results that Republicans don’t like.
“Call it for what it is. They’d rather be able to rig results than try to win fair and square,” Garcia said.
Well sure, guys, but Republicans have the overwhelming majority in both houses of the Lege, so Harris County will just have to get a lesson in what what democracy is all about.
Speaking with “CNN This Morning” anchors Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow Wednesday about his new novel “Swamp Story,” Floridian writer Dave Barry took the opportunity to “praise” Florida governor Ron DeSantis for “tackling the biggest threat to the American way of life: Disney.”
“Donald Duck is not wearing pants, that doesn’t bother you?” he said, interrogating the two co-anchors…
I presume everyone here understands that Dave Barry does satire.
Voters in one of Michigan’s most conservative counties have ousted a small-town clerk accused of improperly handling voting equipment after casting doubt on President Joe Biden’s election victory.
Stephanie Scott lost Tuesday’s recall election in Hillsdale County’s Adams Township to Suzy Roberts, who got 406 votes to Scott’s 214, according to unofficial results reported by the county clerk’s office…
During preparations for her township’s November 2021 election, Scott said she had voting accuracy concerns and had considered paper ballots and a hand count before settling on using the same voting system.
The state intervened after Scott allegedly refused to allow a contractor to perform preventive maintenance and failed to conduct accuracy tests, among other issues. She was stripped of her duties running township elections in October 2021.
When the Hillsdale County clerk’s office took custody of an election tabulator and a voter-assist terminal from township offices to prepare for a public accuracy test, they discovered the tabulator’s tablet had been removed. It was later seized by Michigan State Police after Scott allegedly refused to turn it over.
One of Scott’s supporters, Adams Township Supervisor Mark Nichols, also lost in Tuesday’s recall election…
Texas lawmakers advanced a bill this week that would allow the secretary of state, who is handpicked by the governor, to overturn the results of an election in the state’s largest county and order a new one.
The bill targets Harris County, the largest in the state and the third-largest in the U.S., which includes Houston and has a population of around 4.7 million. It would allow the secretary of state, currently Republican Jane Nelson, to order a new election in the county if 2 percent or more of the polling locations ran out of ballot paper for more than an hour.
Written to apply to counties with a population over 2.7 million — which only applies to Harris County in the state — the bill follows criticism by Republican lawmakers over polling issues in the county in the 2022 midterm elections. It passed the state Senate on Tuesday, and now must be considered in the House…
Authorities on Wednesday arrested a woman accused of hiding the man who allegedly fatally shot five people in rural Texas.
Divimara Lamar Nava, 53, was arrested early Wednesday after she was accused of hiding suspected gunman Francisco Oropeza, 38, in a home near Conroe, Texas, where he was found, according to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. Montgomery County Sheriff Rand Henderson described Nava as the wife of Oropeza and said she previously denied knowing where Oropeza was…
Domingo Castilla, a “friend” of Oropeza, was also arrested Tuesday in the neighborhood where the shooting took place, San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said. Castilla was arrested for marijuana possession, but Dillon said authorities expect to charge him with other crimes, including hindering Oropeza’s apprehension.
“Several other arrests” were made, Chief Deputy Tim Kean of the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office said at a Wednesday news conference, adding that he “can’t go into the details on that. Kean said fewer than five other people were arrested…
On Wednesday, two bright lights were seen moving over the Kremlin. This time, it didn’t seem to be incoming meteors, but a pair of drones. Considering that Moscow is within 500 km of the Ukrainian border, the distance drones would have to travel to reach Red Square is actually less than that covered by some drones that reportedly launched into eastern Ukraine from areas around Odesa. Even so, the idea that two drones could not only cross the border, not only reach the Moscow area, but actually overfly the Kremlin before being engaged by anti-aircraft fire, some of which seemed to come from—and this is real—people climbing on top of the Kremlin dome to shoot at them, seems absolutely extraordinary.
The Kremlin hurried out a butt-covering statement claiming that “two unmanned aerial vehicles” were brought down by “timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems,” but to put this in NAFO terms, “What air defense doing?” Apparently, not much. However, some reports claim the drones may not have traveled 500 km at all, and that they were launched from the Moscow suburbs by Russian partisans. It could’ve even been Ukrainian special forces smuggling the drones to those Moscow suburbs.
For Russia, it’s not clear which is worse: Either air defenses are so poor that Ukraine can easily send drones along what should be the most secure air corridor in the nation, or Russia’s internal security is so lax that people are launching attacks from right outside Vladimir Putin’s door.
On Wednesday morning, Red Square was closed to the public. That Kremlin statement indicated that taking out the drones had resulted in a “scattering of fragments on the territory of the Kremlin.” Maybe it was that, or maybe it was a growing sense of paranoia from those behind Kremlin walls. [Tweet and video at the link]
However, there is a third option for the drones-above-the-Kremlin event. Please note that this is pure speculation at this point, but … it may have been staged. Maybe Red Square is closed so no one sees that the recovered fragments are of Iranian drones stamped “property of Vladimir Putin.”
With the May 9 “Victory Day” parade rolling around for the second time since Putin sent the tanks over the border, there is still no victory to be celebrated. Russia controls thousands of square kilometers less than it did a year earlier. That last parade was already something of a damp squib, coming just a month after Russia had lost the Battle of Kyiv and been forced to withdraw much of its forces from northern Ukraine.
Putin is facing a Victory Day in which celebrations in regional capitals near Ukraine have been canceled out of fear of Ukrainian strikes. In Moscow, it’s already been announced that some traditional elements of the parade will be missing, likely because the necessary troops and tanks are busy elsewhere. Putin will probably still get to stand there and stare at a small group of T-14 Armata tank prototypes because, despite claims, none have so far turned up in Ukraine. Otherwise, this seems like a pretty sad little event. [Tweet and video at the link]
How would staging a drone fly-by of the Kremlin help Putin’s sorry celebration? Well, there are a couple of possibilities; one of them fairly benign, the other absolutely toxic.
Going back to that morning statement from the Kremlin, there is something in there that hints toward what Moscow might do. “We regard these actions as a planned terrorist act and an attempt on the President,” says the statement, “carried out on the eve of Victory Day, the May 9th Parade, at which the presence of foreign guests is also planned.”
On the one hand, that could be an excuse to simply cancel the parade. Shut it down, shake a finger toward Ukraine for spoiling this great tradition, and avoid showing how much less of a military presence Putin was able to bring to the streets of Moscow. After all, even jaded Muscovites might notice if you’re just cycling the same shoddy platoon around the block repeatedly.
The much darker option is that Putin could use this as an excuse to stage a missile attack directly on the presidential residence, presidential office building, or parliament in Kyiv. In general, political leaders are reticent about the idea of overtly calling for the assassination of other political leaders (though it certainly does happen), especially when they don’t feel all that secure about their own safety. Putin may not actually harm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy or his family, but he could certainly send a terrifying signal that Russia’s already unhinged actions were going even lower. Pictures of rescue workers searching through the broken ruins of Ukraine’s government buildings seems like just the sort of thing that Putin would like to brag about as his diminished military wobbled past his podium.
The only issue for Putin might be whether or not he could actually do it. In the most recent round of missile launches, Ukraine shot down all of the missiles that were aimed at Kyiv. For all we know, those missiles were already aimed at Zelenskyy’s bedroom.
For Putin to declare that the gloves were coming off, but not being able to land a punch, would be an appropriate signal of Moscow’s growing impotence. But Moscow openly declaring that assassination was in style, would be bad for a number of reasons.
In the last hour, as this was being written, the Russian government put out a second statement again calling the drone flyover “a planned terrorist attack” and “an attempt on the president.” Which certainly sounds like pre-justification of some type of retaliation. That was followed shortly by a statement from former Russian president and Putin’s right-hand-man Dmitry Medvedev who said, “After today’s terrorist attack, there are no options left except the physical elimination of Zelenskyy and his cabal.” [Yeah, that is, in my opinion, why Putin launched the false flag attack. The “attack” was puny that it could not have killed Putin … and everyone knows Putin resides more than an hour away from the Kremlin.]
So Russia is explicitly using this event to justify the attempted assassination of Zelenskyy.
Right now the Russian government is claiming that Ukraine was able to fly a pair of drones right to the heart of its capital city, penetrate what are supposed to be many overlapping rings of air defenses, and come so close to taking out the Kremlin that debris from the shoot down is on the bricks of Red Square. That should make everyone in Russia do a serious re-think about their national security—and maybe take a serious second look at the man who put them into this situation.
But there are very good odds this was all about as real as one of those Trump coins.
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Arexvy, the first respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine approved for use in the United States. Arexvy is approved for the prevention of lower respiratory tract disease caused by RSV in individuals 60 years of age and older…
The public was urged to stay away from the area around Northside Family Medicine and Urgent Care in the city’s Midtown area.
Gunfire erupted at an Atlanta medical facility on Wednesday, killing at least one woman and wounding four more as police searched for the assailant, authorities said.
Police were searching for 24-year-old Deion Patterson, who is believed to be the gunman whose picture was taken by security cameras, officials said.
Patterson fled in a vehicle he carjacked and later abandoned, Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum told reporters.
Multiple police agencies in Atlanta, Fulton County and neighboring Cobb County were on high alert for the armed suspect, officials said.
“He was able to flee the scene as the law enforcement agencies were descending on this area,” Schierbaum told reporters. “We believe he has left the area.” [photo of the suspect is available at the link]
Residents had been asked to stay away from the neighborhood of 1110 W. Peachtree St. after an “active shooter” was reported at about 12:30 p.m., officials said. A shelter-in-place order by Atlanta police was lifted just after 3 p.m.
The shooting happened at about 12:08 p.m. in a waiting room of the medical center, according to Schierbaum.
The victims, who are all women, were not immediately identified.
The fatally wounded victim was 39, while the wounded were ages 71, 56, 39 and 25, Schierbaum said. It wasn’t immediately clear if the victims were patients or hospital employees.
“It’s still too soon to know why these individuals were chosen,” Schierbaum said of the victims.
[…] The shooter’s mother was not harmed in the gunfire and his family has been cooperative with investigators, the chief said. […]
Brazil’s Federal Police searched former President Jair Bolsonaro’s home and seized his phone Wednesday in what they said was an investigation into alleged falsification of COVID-19 vaccine cards. Several other locations also were searched and a half dozen people faced arrest, police said…
Local media reported that the vaccine cards of Bolsonaro, his advisers and his family members were altered. The police statement said the investigation focused on cards altered in order to comply with U.S. vaccine requirements to enter the country…
Former Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, an Indian army officer’s son with decades of corporate experience, was confirmed Wednesday to lead the World Bank for a five-year term that starts next month.
The U.S.-nominated business veteran succeeds David Malpass, a Donald Trump pick who is ending his tenure early at the 189-nation global poverty-fighting institution after coming under pressure for declining to say whether he agreed with the scientific consensus on climate change…
Moscow wasn’t the only place that saw drone action overnight, and it wasn’t the only place where air defenses proved less than stellar. In an area immediately across the Kerch strait, another Russian fuel depot burst into flames last night as local reports indicated it had been struck by a Ukrainian drone. [map at the link]
This is the largest storage field for oil, gasoline, and diesel fuel in the area. It’s also, by far, the one closest to the damaged bridge from Russia into Crimea. While the rail lines across that bridge may currently be either out, or of very limited service, this storage field is connected to the rail leading to the bridge by a spur. This is reportedly the location where Russia both fuels vehicles heading into Crimea, and sources much of the fuel for the region. [Tweet and videos at the link]
Initial videos of the area show only a single storage tank in flames. That tank is one of 27 in just this part of the storage field. Whether this fire has since spread to other tanks, or damaged pipelines needed to move fuel in or out of the tanks, isn’t clear, but it seems as if Russia may have limited the damage here, unlike the massive fire at the field in Sevastopol.
But wait, there’s more. Also on Wednesday, a large explosion was reported in the area of Mospyne, about 10 km southeast of Donetsk. Those in the area reported a roaring noise followed by a large column of rising smoke, “as if a volcano had gone off.” The explosive cloud appears to have been tremendous. [Tweet and image at the link]
Multiple sources have identified the target as the local airport, but there seem to be two problems with this. One is that it’s hard to image what could be at an airfield that would result in such an explosion. The second is that unless it’s exceptionally well hidden, Mospyne doesn’t have an airport. Other sources have identified this as an ammunition depot, and that seems much more likely considering the results of the strike.
Over the last five days, Ukraine has hit two fuel storage fields in the Crimea area, which might seem to suggest that the Ukrainian military was looking south when it came to potential targets for the counteroffensive. These strikes might be a signal that Ukraine is going to make that punch toward Melitopol and then the Black Sea coast, as many have expected.
But then, Ukraine also hit what seems to be a large ammunition depot near Donetsk. So maybe they’re going for the knockout punch that kos described in April.
Or maybe they’re just doing what they can to weaken Russian forces, degrade Russia’s already sorry logistics, and keep their options open as Ukraine prepares to move.
————————–
[Posted by Dmitri:]
Even the worst of propagandists are a bit lost of words. Sladkov says the attack [on the Kremlin] was done by NATO and questions where all the billions for Russian state security went. It’s pure embarrassment.
The White House organized a belated celebration for Eid al-Fitar earlier this week and invited hundreds of prominent American Muslims. Then, it uninvited one of them: Mohammad Khairullah, the mayor of Prospect Park, N.J. He’s the longest serving Muslim mayor in this country, and he was given no explanation as to why.
Khairullah told NPR’s Leila Fadel on Morning Edition that he contacted the Council on American Islamic Relations shortly after he was disinvited to the event. The council informed him that he was on a “secret list,” which was leaked earlier this year.
“I was added to the list in 2019, which put things together in my mind because all my traveling difficulties started in 2019,” Khairullah said. “So it’s at this point, for some reason, I am on a secret list that the government is denying exists and it’s caused me and my family trouble.” …
A Texas proposal to allow unlicensed “chaplains” to take the place of public school counselors undermines religious liberty, according to Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and others.
The Texas Legislature is considering House Bill 3614 and Senate Bill 763, which would allow Texas schools to hire chaplains to perform the work of school counselors but without any required certification, training or experience…
Last week, the Trump team launched a campaign on Facebook that implies the country is worse off now than when he occupied the White House.
The ad — which reads, “Under Joe Biden, America is a nation in decline” — includes photos of a burning police car and a group of migrants.
But, according to Forbes contributor Matt Novak, those pictures were actually taken in 2020…
Oggie: Mathomsays
From Lynna @327:
Even so, the idea that two drones could not only cross the border, not only reach the Moscow area, but actually overfly the Kremlin before being engaged by anti-aircraft fire,
I no longer have the book (I read for enjoyment, and this book was very informative, well researched, and, to put it mildly, almost unreadably boring), nor can I remember the title (they say as you get older, you’re memory is the second thing to go . . . ), but it covered the dissolution of the USSR from the late 1970s (giving a lot of credit to Carter’s human rights initiatives and their effect on the legitimacy of the soviet government) right up through the attempted military coup and Boris Yeltsin’s rise to power. One of the most significant events that allowed Gorbachev to clear out the older communists and, especially, the older military leaders (who he saw as blocking reform) was Matthias Rust’s flight over East Germany, over Poland, and over a large chunk of the USSR, a flight over the most heavily protected air space in the world, to land in Red Square. The USSR and Russia have a (well-earned) reputation for having wonderful weapons (in this case, integrated anti-aircraft systems) that either don’t work because technicians to repair and maintain them are not available, or don’t work because the system itself, or important components of the system, are gone (sold off) or were never installed (the money went to someone’s dacha). So drones overflying Moscow, during a war? Not a huge surprise to me.
A New York judge has tossed out Donald Trump’s lawsuit against The New York Times, and ordered the former president to pay all attorneys fees, legal expenses, and associated costs.
Trump filed the lawsuit in 2021, alleging that the newspaper, three of its reporters and his niece Mary Trump engaged in an “insidious plot” to obtain his private records for a Pulitzer-winning story about his tax issues…
johnson catmansays
re Reginald Selkirk @337: I hope that the Orange Fool comes to regret the day he decided to run for president. Every loss of his in court is a win for all of the rest of us.
Jim Marchant, a Nevada Republican who led a movement of candidates who promoted Donald Trump’s lies of a stolen 2020 election, announced Tuesday that he will run for the U.S. Senate against Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosen in the swing state…
A Ghana national pleaded not guilty in federal court Wednesday to stealing about $2.4 million from the Wisconsin Republican Party in a wire fraud scheme.
Paul Williams Anti, 59, was charged in February with embezzlement, online court records show.
According to court documents, scammers manipulated state GOP employees’ email accounts in October 202 to divert funds meant for vendors into the scammers’ bank accounts. Williams Anti allegedly controlled two of those accounts.
A cybersecurity firm that the state GOP hired to investigate found that an employee’s email account had been altered so that any message with the words “invoice,” “wire transfer” or “bank” would automatically move to an email folder the scammers could access.
The scammers then increased the amount charged as well as the payee account information, then sent the messages to another GOP employee. That worker unknowingly sent the money to fraudulent accounts, according to court records…
When Herschel Walker emailed a representative for billionaire industrialist and longtime family friend Dennis Washington in March 2022, he seemed to be engaging in normal behavior for a political candidate: He was asking for money.
But unbeknownst to Washington and the billionaire’s staff, Walker’s request was far more out of the ordinary. It was something campaign finance experts are calling “unprecedented,” “stunning,” and “jaw-dropping.” Walker wasn’t just asking for donations to his campaign; he was soliciting hundreds of thousands of dollars for his own personal company—a company that he never disclosed on his financial statements.
Emails obtained by The Daily Beast—and verified as authentic by a person with knowledge of the exchanges—show that Walker asked Washington to wire $535,200 directly to that undisclosed company, HR Talent, LLC.
And the emails reveal that not only did Washington complete Walker’s wire requests, he was under the impression that these were, in fact, political contributions…
a bill […] headed to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk, hospitals would have to post online publicly and inform their patients directly what services they do not provide.
[…]
mergers, along with unclear information from Catholic hospitals about what services they won’t provide, has created a confusing health care landscape.
[…]
Rep. Titone said her aide didn’t find out “until the very last minute” that she couldn’t get her tubes tied at the hospital where she had chosen to have a baby. Instead, she had to schedule a separate procedure at a different hospital.
KGsays
Trump’s New Anti-Biden Ad Has One Problem: It Shows Photos From His Own Presidency – Reginald Selkirk@335, quoting Yahoo headline
Yes, but we all know Democratic Presidents have access to a time machine which allows them to retrospectively sabotage their Republican predecessors – remember how Obama caused the 2008 financial crash that occurred under George W. Bush.
We’ve already talked about Montana’s extraordinarily unconstitutional “ban TikTok” bill that raises a huge number of constitutional issues. Lots of individuals and organizations pointed this out to governor Greg Gianforte (who came to office as a former tech exec of an internet company, and was supposed to be someone who understand the internet).
Gianforte has now sent back to the legislature what’s known as an “amendatory veto” that basically is alternative draft language that he would approve if the legislature amends the original bill. In theory, the likely reasoning behind the alternative language was the recognition that the original bill, which called out TikTok by name (including spelling it wrong in the title) would be immediately deemed unconstitutional as a bill of attainder targeting a single company for punishment.
In theory… that’s an improvement. In reality, as pointed out by 1st Amendment lawyer Ari Cohn, Gianforte’s draft language would accidentally ban all social media in the state of Montana, because of bad drafting. As Ari points out, the new draft targets any “social media application” that allows for “the collection of personal information or data” and allows for “the personal information or data to be provided to a foreign adversary or a person or entity located within a country designated as a foreign adversary.”
Now, some might think that sounds reasonable, but the details here matter…
A memory card containing photo and video files with information (geolocation data) on the UAV’s launch site was seized from the destroyed UAV. The artillery struck the target at the specified coordinates.”
This was useful on nextdoor in supporting other genders being hidden by our culture explaining the reason so many are becoming visible now.
I also mentioned that I think it’s a consequence of living in large groups with authoritarian characteristics. Some of us finding it useful to pretend about the rest of us. Relatedly it feels like our species is transitioning from troop to swarm living badly.
I thought the stories about visitors from Europe in centuries past thinking about their experiences interesting.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Vladimir Putin must be brought to justice for his war in Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday during a visit to The Hague, where the international criminal court (ICC) is based. “We all want to see a different Vladimir here in the Hague, the one who deserves to be sanctioned for his criminal actions here, in the capital of international law,” Zelenskiy said in a speech. “I’m sure we will see that happen when we win,” he said, adding: “Whoever brings war must receive judgment.”
Ukrainian air defences said they downed 18 out of 24 kamikaze drones that Russia launched in a pre-dawn attack on Thursday. In a statement, Kyiv city administration said all missiles and drones targeting the Ukrainian capital for the third time in four days, have been destroyed. No casualties were reported.
The US embassy in Ukraine has warned US citizens in the country of that there is an “ongoing heightened threat of missile attacks, including in Kyiv and Kyiv oblast”. It said, “In light of the recent uptick in strikes across Ukraine and inflammatory rhetoric from Moscow, the Department of State cautions US citizens of an ongoing heightened threat of missile attacks, including in Kyiv and Kyiv oblast.”
Russian emergency services extinguished a fire at a large oil refinery in Russia two hours after it was hit in a drone attack, Tass news agency reported early on Thursday. TASS said the incident occurred at the Ilsky refinery near the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in the Krasnodar region, and that four drones were used. A day earlier, a fuel depot further to the west caught on fire near a bridge linking Russia’s mainland with the occupied Crimea peninsula.
…
Residents of the key southern Ukrainian city of Kherson were stocking up on food and water after another night of heavy Russian shelling and before an announced 56-hour curfew due to begin on Friday evening. A number said they planned to stay indoors before the curfew and planned closure of the city, adding that they had slept in their clothes or gone to shelters because of the intensity of the Russian attack.
Finland has received a diplomatic note from Russia complaining over vandalism at a Russian consulate on the demilitarised Aland island located in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden, the Finnish foreign ministry said on Thursday.
And I say that because I believe this bill is idolatrous. I believe it is exclusionary and I believe it is arrogant. And those three things in my reading of the Gospel are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus. You probably know Matthew 6:5 when Jesus says, “Don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners. When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret.””
Local elections 2023 live: voter ID required for first time as people in England head to the polls…With polls closing at 10pm, more than 8,000 council seats in England are up for grabs…
The prime minister of Belize, Johnny Briceño, has sharply criticised Rishi Sunak’s refusal to apologise for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, and said it was “quite likely” Belize would be the next member of the Commonwealth realm to become a republic.
Speaking to the Guardian in the country’s capital, Belmopan, Briceño argued the British government had a moral responsibility to apologise for the atrocities of slavery and added to the calls throughout the English-speaking Caribbean for financial reparations from the UK.
“I think he [Sunak] has a moral responsibility to be able to offer at the very least an apology,” Briceño said. “He should have a better appreciation of it because of his ancestry.
“When you read and hear about the plundering that took place in the land of his ancestors, I do believe that he should have offered an apology.”
Sunak, whose parents are of Punjabi Indian heritage, last week told parliament he would not apologise for Britain’s role in slavery and colonialism. In response to a question from the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the British prime minister said: “No. What I think our focus should now be on doing is, of course, understanding our history and all its parts, not running away from it, but right now making sure that we have a society which is inclusive and tolerant of people from all backgrounds.”
Briceño, who leads Belize’s centre-left People’s United party, took office in 2020, and in 2021 passed a parliamentary resolution committing the government to seek reparatory justice from the UK “on behalf of the former slaves and their descendants of Belize”.
Located in Central America, the former British colony is a member of the Caricom intergovernmental organisation of 20 Caribbean countries. The body has long advocated for reparative justice, and its reparations commission states European governments connected to slavery and colonialism should follow a 10-point plan, which includes a public apology, commitments to education programmes, and cancellation of national debts.
…
Asked if he believed that Belize could be the next state to leave the Commonwealth realm after Barbados’s exit in 2021, Briceño replied: “I think the chance is quite high. It’s quite likely.”…
At least four of the Proud Boys, including Enrique Tarrio, have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Still waiting on Pezzola. Big victory for the DoJ.
In the first part of an investigative miniseries into royal wealth, Maeve McClenaghan sets off on the trail to uncover how much public money is spent on the Windsors – and what they do in return…
Any attempt to understand the extent of royal wealth will need to account for the value of their land and their most valuable treasures. Maeve McClenaghan sets off to uncover what is held by the crown and what belongs to the family privately…
Maeve McClenaghan and the reporting team reach the end of their investigation and make the calculations that reveal the vast personal fortune of King Charles III…
A Christian boy goes up against his sinister atheist philosophy teacher (played by Kevin Sorbo!) in GOD’S NOT DEAD (2014), one of the biggest Evangelical blockbusters of all time. Luke and guest host Alex Shephard discuss the film’s tone-deaf depiction of academia and its particular streak of right-wing sadism. PLUS: What’s next for Tucker Carlson? And is there any life at all in the ol’ Ron DeSantis?…
TikTok is one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the world, and now has over a billion users worldwide. But its future in the United States remains in limbo. The Biden administration, citing national security concerns, has demanded that the Chinese-owned company be sold, or face a federal ban. Montana lawmakers have already passed legislation banning the platform on personal devices, sending the bill to the governor. A lot of questions remain about the feasibility of statewide and federal bans, and why, exactly, do U.S. policymakers view this platform, that started as a lip syncing app, as such a threat? Jacob Ward is the NBC News technology correspondent and is author of “In The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back.” He joins WITHpod to discuss what’s driven the app’s exponential growth, the company’s lack of transparency in the past, the case for and against it, what could be ahead on the regulatory front and more.
Bad closed captions can be entertaining, but they can be serious, too, because captions are a critical tool for lots of lots of people. There are the people learning a new language, the easily confused, and of course captions are essential for people who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing. In the US, that’s about 15% of the population.
And with so many low quality closed captions out there, those folks are often left trying to piece together meaning from some bizarre sentences, or … to just stop watching.
The issue of crappy captions isn’t a new thing. Activists have been fighting for accurate, widespread closed captioning for decades….
James Heinzen joins the podcast to talk about his book, The Art of the Bribe: Corruption Under Stalin 1943-1953 and how bribery, extortion and embezzlement in Russia have changed—or not—over the last 70 years.
Four members of the Proud Boys, including their former leader Enrique Tarrio, were convicted on Thursday of seditious conspiracy for plotting to keep President Donald J. Trump in power after his election defeat by leading a violent mob in attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The jurors in the case failed to reach a decision on the sedition charge for one of the defendants, Dominic Pezzola, although he was convicted of other serious felonies.
The verdicts, coming after seven days of deliberations in Federal District Court in Washington, were a major blow against one of the country’s most notorious far-right groups and another milestone in the Justice Department’s vast investigation of the Capitol attack.
On the conspiracy counts alone — in addition to guilty verdicts on other felony charges — the men could face a maximum of nearly 50 years in prison.
Oggie @336, fascinating. Thanks for the additional information. This is certainly true: “The USSR and Russia have a (well-earned) reputation for having wonderful weapons (in this case, integrated anti-aircraft systems) that either don’t work because technicians to repair and maintain them are not available, or don’t work because the system itself, or important components of the system, are gone (sold off) or were never installed (the money went to someone’s dacha). So drones overflying Moscow, during a war? Not a huge surprise to me.”
A retired general who was interviewed by an MSNBC host made the point that Putin would have had to be standing bare-headed on the dome of the Kremlin at 2:30 AM in order to be threatened by that drone.
Richard Engel pointed out that even the way the initial video, and then later the followup videos, appeared was weird.
Others have noted that the drone in the video was too small to have flown all the way from Ukraine to Moscow. Independent partisans in Russia?
If it was partisans behind the drone attack, they sent too small a drone with too little explosive. Putin might be spinning a partisan attack to make the most of it in terms of propaganda.
Ron DeSantis and his fellow Republicans in Florida are still on the wrong path:
It was late last week when Florida’s Republican-led state House passed a bill to lower the legal age to buy a rifle or long gun. Under the status quo, Floridians must be 21 to legally purchase such a weapon, but GOP legislators want to lower the limit to 18.
[…] Florida raised the age limit from 18 to 21 in response to the deadly mass shooting in Parkland that left 17 people dead, but that was five years ago. Now, Republicans are prepared to undo the reform.
Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters yesterday that he’s on board with the change:
“Look, I was in Iraq. I was there with 18-year-old Marines, 18-year-old soldiers that were put out in the streets of Fallujah and Ramadi and told they had to risk their lives for this country. Then they come back after doing that, and even though they were carrying a firearm the whole time, they’re told you cannot exercise your Second Amendment rights here as an adult and as a veteran?”
[…] DeSantis’ comments came one day after a mass shooting in Florida that killed four people, including three children.
[…] Those 18-year-old Marines serving with DeSantis were handed rifles, not because the teenagers wanted to exercise their Second Amendment rights, but because the military wanted to provide them with the tools needed to effectively shoot an enemy during combat on foreign soil.
[…] Florida isn’t Iraq. Marines of any age need powerful firearms on the battlefield to protect themselves and execute their missions. Why should the standards be different for civilians on domestic soil? Because civilians on domestic soil aren’t fighting wars.
The pending state legislation is nevertheless headed to Florida’s GOP-led Senate. It’s likely to pass..
They didn’t even wait for the ink to dry. The assault on protest began before the powers even came into force.
The Public Order Act was given royal assent and became law yesterday. Today, the Government will activate powers which prevent demonstrators from engaging in all kinds of activities. But before it had even come into force, letters were arriving from the Home Office to the anti-monarchy campaign group Republic, containing a not-so-subtle threat about what would happen if they tried to make their voice heard this week. They outlined the new powers and the consequences if someone contravened them. The message was perfectly clear.
“We’ve had two face to face meetings with police,” Graham Smith, CEO of Republic, told me over the phone. “We’ve had various conversations with the liaison office. We’ve been very clear what our plans are. They’ve been very clear they’re OK with those plans.” And then the Home Office letter arrived. “It is intimidatory,” Smith says, “and it would be for a lot of people.”
These threats were accompanied by an all-guns-blazing Government PR effort, which mostly focused on climate change protesters. “Today, we have brought in new criminal offences to put people who try to carry out… guerrilla tactics behind bars,” the Prime Minister wrote in The Sun. “I am determined not to let selfish protesters get away with causing disorder and misery.” Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, went a step further, suggesting that protesters were seeking “to attack our ways of life”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4, Home Office minister, Tom Tugendhat, said protesters were free to demonstrate, but “they don’t have a right to… disrupt others”. When he was asked to describe exactly what protesters could and could not do, he was unable to do so.
That is not an error. It is the purpose of the bill. It aims to make the trigger for criminal penalties so broad, and the meaning of key terms so nebulous, that it will be hard for a protester to know they are abiding by the law. This is its function. It is its purpose. It is a direct attack on freedom of speech.
…
The Government’s approach in the new Public Order Act is to define “serious disruption” so trivially as to include almost anything a protester might do. If] a single person or organisation is “hindered to more than a minor degree” from their “day-to-day activities”, it satisfies the definition. Of course, this is insane. It defies all sense of meaning. There is a vast chasm between the words “minor” and “serious”. But the Government is not attempting to be precise or even-handed. It is intending to hand the maximum possible powers to itself and the police….
Those 18-year-old Marines serving with DeSantis were handed rifles, not because the teenagers wanted to exercise their Second Amendment rights, but because the military wanted to provide them with the tools needed to effectively shoot an enemy during combat on foreign soil.
And they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. And some of them, suffering from psychological and emotional wounds from their experiences in Iraq and returning to an unjust, unequal, angry, and armed society, have engaged in domestic and organized violence.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 355
Based on the sentencing of other Jan 6. traitors, the only question left is how hard the hand slaps Enrique and this fellows are going to receive?
In other news, here is Josh Marshall’s take on the Clarence Thomas scandals:
[…] I want to take a moment to chart the trajectory of these revelations.
The first was the Crows taking the Thomases on these boffo luxury vacations on the Crows’ dime, ones that would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Thomases to do on their own. Extremely unseemly. But at least there’s the “dear friend” fig leaf. And one can argue that the lion’s share of the expense was committed for the Crows’ trip already. Only a limited expense was incurred for the Thomases tagging along. Again, not great at all but at least there are some vaguely plausible counterarguments.
Then we learned that Crow had purchased Thomas’ mom’s home, funded extensive renovations and allowed her to continue living in it. […] Thomas’ mom is living rent free in Harlan’s house.
This was a vastly more serious case. […] this was certainly not an arm’s-length transaction. And allowing Thomas’ mother to live in the renovated home apparently rent free (she’s still alive and living there) is an open and shut gift to the Thomas family. […] His claim that he is planning to build a Clarence Thomas museum at the property hardly changes anything.
Now we have Harlan straight up picking up the tab for Thomas’ kid’s tuition. Each new revelation ups the ante. He might as well be picking up the tab for the Thomas’ groceries. And who knows? Maybe he is. If you’ve ever sent your minor child to a private or parochial school or paid some or all of their college tuition, would you say having a rich friend pay on your behalf would be helpful? Thomas is a kept justice — or I guess “Sugar Justice” might be a better way to put it. He might as well have Thomas on a monthly stipend.
If anything the lead of the article slightly undersells the bad act. The boy, Mark Martin, is Thomas’s grandnephew and thus, by blood, a relative rather than a child. Defenders have seized on this distinction. There’s one set of disclosure requirements relating to a judge’s spouse and dependent children. And Martin was not the Thomases adopted child. But the Thomases were Martin’s legal guardian. As such, they were responsible for his upbringing and whatever costs went with it. There’s no substantive or legal distinction between this and the check you cut for your child’s tuition […]
I will simply note the trajectory, the escalation: each story has been substantially worse than the last. To the extent that one can wrestle the subjectivity of news publishing to the crisp precision of mathematics, I’d say each is an order of magnitude worse than the one that preceded it.
[…] I think we’re at the point where no one in the privacy of their thoughts can doubt that if Thomas were a judge serving on really any other bench he’d be out the door already. Indeed, if he were a Democratic appointee he’d probably already have been forced to resign.
The U.S. government announced on Wednesday that it had dismantled “Try2Check”, a credit card checking operation that allowed cybercriminals involved with the bulk purchase and sale of stolen credit card numbers to see which cards were valid and active.
Department of Justice prosecutors confirmed the indictment of Russian citizen Denis Gennadievich Kulkov, who is suspected of creating Try2Check in 2005. Kulkov is said to have made at least $18 million in bitcoin from the service, which not only victimized credit card holders and issuers, but also a prominent U.S. payment processing firm whose systems were exploited to conduct the card checks…
The state’s fixation on oil and gas development threatens the Colorado River watershed.
[…] Two years after the purchase [a 15-square-mile plot of undeveloped land purchased in 2011 by the Estonian-government-owned energy company Enefit], Estonian parliament members warned that the government risked losing $100 million on the deal because early lab tests in Germany had failed to affordably produce oil from Utah’s shale. Ingo Valgma, director of the mining department at the Tallinn University of Technology, told an Estonian journalist that the technology for producing oil in Utah was not a few years away but decades. Nonetheless, the Estonians stayed put and Utah’s elected officials sallied forth, optimistically insisting that oil shale riches were just around the corner.
As Russel and I bumped along the dirt roads of eastern Utah in search of Enefit’s land, it became painfully obvious that the Estonians had overlooked a major problem when they plunked down $42 million to acquire 30,000 acres of sagebrush in the basin: water, or the lack of it. Pulling a single barrel of oil out of shale requires between two and four barrels of water. The Uinta Basin lies within an arid, desert climate that averages about 8 inches of rain annually at the wettest of times. What little it does have comes from the critical watershed of the dying Colorado River, which more than 40 million people in the West rely on for agriculture and drinking water.
Enefit’s land sits just 40 miles from where the White River meets the Green, the largest and most important tributary of the Colorado River. To mine and process oil shale, Enefit hoped to suck as much as 11,000-acre-feet of water out of the Green River every year—about 10 million gallons a day […] (An acre-foot equals about 326,000 gallons or enough to cover about a football field with a foot of water.) Unfortunately, perhaps, for Enefit, “That water, more than likely, doesn’t exist,” says Brad Udall, a senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University’s Colorado Water Center.
[…] Record snowfall this winter may head off some of the worst of the cuts, but the runoff will only partially refill badly depleted Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoirs. The water crisis remains urgent, and the long-term prospects for the Colorado are grim.
The dire state of the Colorado River hasn’t stopped Utah officials from enthusiastically supporting policies to encourage Enefit’s oil shale production and all sorts of other thirsty, ill-conceived fossil fuel projects in the Uinta Basin in what some environmentalists have dubbed a “suicide pact.” These projects and priorities generally, and Enefit’s in particular, illustrate how a state, run largely by people who don’t believe in climate change, still presses ahead with carbon-belching fossil-fuel developments that, if successful, will only exacerbate the megadrought that has brought the Colorado River—and the West—to the brink of disaster.
[…] In 1861, LDS church president Brigham Young assembled a group of missionaries in Salt Lake City and ordered them to set off for the Uinta Basin to create new Mormon settlements in the region—lest the “Gentiles” get there first. A few months later, the scouting party reported back gloomily that the basin was “one vast contiguity of waste, and measurably valueless, excepting for nomadic purposes, hunting grounds for Indians, and to hold the world together.” Young suggested to President Abraham Lincoln that he use the wasteland for a Ute tribe reservation—and that’s what happened.
About 20 years later, however, a white settler named Mike Callahan built a new cabin just over the border in Colorado next to Parachute Creek. He used pretty, local rocks for his fireplace and chimney. Legend has it that the first time he lit a fire on the hearth, the cabin burned down. The pretty rocks turned out to be flammable oil shale. Ever since speculators have been trying to figure out how to monetize those massive shale deposits in Utah. Still, it wasn’t until the oil shocks of the 1970s that the federal government got involved.
[…] One need only look at Estonia, the world’s leader in oil shale mining, to see what would happen to a Colorado River watershed dominated by this industry. With 70 percent of the country’s energy supply from oil shale, Estonia accounts for the second-highest per capita CO2 emissions in all of Europe. The reason? Oil shale has about the same energy density as a potato. Getting useable oil from it requires heating a lot of rocks to extremely high temperatures, a process that emits between 25 to 75 percent more C02 emissions than conventional oil drilling. That’s why Enefit’s Utah development was met with stiff opposition from environmentalists, who see the project as a potentially catastrophic “carbon bomb.”
[…] For decades, Utah has treated the Green River as both water supply and sewer system for the basin’s fossil fuel industry. From the air, we could see the oil pumpjacks that operate just yards away from the riverbank in the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, home of a hatchery for endangered Colorado River fish. Oil wells have leaked into or near the river with some regularity, including one blowout in 2014 that sent an oily sheen so far down the river that visitors in Canyonlands National Park noticed it. The Biden administration has recently opened up more public land near the river to conventional oil and gas leasing, which is booming again thanks to the war in Ukraine.
[…] state officials have allocated millions of dollars to build infrastructure to increase fossil fuel production in the Green River watershed. Some of the funds have come from the Permanent Community Impact Fund Board (CIB), a pot of money created from royalties from oil and gas leases on public lands. The fund is supposed to help mitigate the impact of mineral extraction on local communities. The nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity reported in 2021 that over the previous two years, rural counties in the basin had asked the CIB for more than $60 million for such projects as upgrading water tanks, sewer lines, and fire hydrants—some needed because of the drought—but received none of it. Instead, since 2009, the CIB has spent millions on fossil-fuel infrastructure, like $34 million on a “road to nowhere” [I have driven that road] across the basin to service oil fields and a tar sand mine on state-owned land that has never—and probably never will—produce any commercially significant amounts of oil. [Do you get the feeling that one mistake after another has been made here?]
[…] In 2017, President Donald Trump tapped Utah native Brian Steed as the BLM’s acting director. Steed had previously worked as chief of staff for Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), a congressman once called “Glenn Beck on steroids.” Stewart doesn’t believe humans cause climate change, and the oil and gas industry has been his biggest source of campaign funds.
[…] “We have a high concentration of schemers and dreamers” in Utah, laments Steve Bloch, the legal director of the Southern Utah Wilderness Association. “They are reinforced by the dominant religion [Mormonism or LDS] and reinforced by the politics. That kind of mentality has a very firm grip over local and state politicians, our members of Congress. It makes transitioning away from fossil fuels very difficult.” [Correct. I’ve seen it.]
While Utah tries to amp up fossil fuel development in the state, Estonia, oddly enough, says it’s moving towards a more carbon-neutral future. In March this year, the Baltic nation elected a new government, which tapped a new CEO for Eesti Energia, Enefit American Oil’s parent company. One of his goals is to reduce carbon emissions and to focus on renewable energy. The company has also discovered a more accessible supply of oil than shale: plastic trash, from which it can produce three times more oil than it can get from mining shale.
Enefit is now exploring putting its Uinta Basin real estate to more sustainable uses, like solar power generation—a promising enterprise in a place with no water but lots of unobstructed sunshine. “We’ve looked at alternative development opportunities unrelated to oil shale, including renewable possibilities,” Enefit’s Ryan Clerico told me. [Funny, ironic, true.]
Seven former Pentagon chiefs sent a letter to the Senate Thursday urging lawmakers to end one GOP senator’s hold on 184 general and flag officer nominations and approve the promotions, warning the block is “harming military readiness and risks damaging U.S. national security.”
“The current hold that has been in place now for several weeks is preventing key leaders from assuming important, senior command and staff positions around the world,” the letter reads.
“Some are unable to take important command positions, such as leading the 5th Fleet in Bahrain and the 7th Fleet in the Pacific, which are critical to checking Iranian and Chinese aggression,” the former Pentagon chiefs said. “Leaving these and many other senior positions in doubt at a time of enormous geopolitical uncertainty sends the wrong message to our adversaries and could weaken our deterrence.”
[…] Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has also warned of “powerful effects” on the nation’s military readiness the longer the holdup continues.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) began holding up the nominees in February to protest a Defense Department policy that provides paid leave and reimburses service members who travel for an abortion. […]
When the Utah State Board of Education meets on Thursday, May 4, they will have a controversial topic to discuss – whether the term “climate change” is too politically charged to be taught to students.
The discussion would affect core standards for elective high school courses, specifically for a meteorology course. According to the board, they want to avoid language they feel may be politically charged. […]
On social media, an image of a section from the potential new standards has the words “climate change” crossed out. […]
[…] “It’s a disgrace that it’s allowed to happen,” he added. “It’s false accusations against a rich guy, or in my case, against a famous, rich and political person that’s leading the polls by 40 points.”
“I have to go back for a woman that made a false accusation about me, and I have a judge who is extremely hostile,” Trump continued. “And I’m going to go back, and I’m going to confront this. This woman is a disgrace, and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen in our country.”
Carroll came forward in 2019 with allegations that the former president raped her in a dressing room at a Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s.
She is suing Trump for sexual battery over the alleged assault and for defamation over an October 2022 post on Truth Social that once again denied the allegations and criticized Carroll’s appearance.
“I’m here because Donald Trump raped me, and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen,” Carroll testified during her first day on the stand last week. “He lied and shattered my reputation […]”
Trump and psychiatrist Edgar Nace were the only two listed witnesses that the Trump team could call in the case. […]
If your defense to allegations that you broke ethics laws is “my son isn’t really my son,” you’re a garbage person. […]
We’re speaking of course about Justice Clarence Thomas, the ethics fireball currently engulfing the Supreme Court. Today ProPublica is out with yet another story on Thomas’s habit of relying on the kindness of strangers, particularly strangers with a shit ton of money. Once again, Thomas is revealed to have accepted tens of thousands of dollars in benefits from rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow and forgotten to mention it on his mandatory financial disclosures. That would be on top of the half million dollars in vacations every year with Crow, plus the purchase of Thomas’s mother’s house and allowing her to live there rent-free for life. […]
But first, ProPublica gives some background on Thomas’s nuclear family, which included his wife Ginni, of course, as well as Thomas’s great-nephew Mark Martin:
[In 1996], the Thomases began to discuss taking custody of Martin. His father, Thomas’ nephew, had been imprisoned in connection with a drug case. Thomas has written that Martin’s situation held deep resonance for him because his own father was absent and his grandparents had taken him in “under very similar circumstances.”
Thomas had an adult son from a previous marriage, but he and wife, Ginni, didn’t have children of their own. They pitched Martin’s parents on taking the boy in.
“Thomas explained that the boy would have the best of everything — his own room, a private school education, lots of extracurricular activities,” journalists Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher reported in their biography of Thomas.
Thomas gained legal custody of Martin and became his legal guardian around January 1998, according to court records.
Martin, who had been living in Georgia with his mother and siblings, moved to Virginia, where he lived with the justice from the ages of 6 to 19, he said.
Okay …
Families are made lots of different ways, and Your Wonkette is not going to comment on how the Thomases built theirs. We will note however, that it’s pretty despicable to say that a child you took into your home and raised as your own for 13 years is not your son, and thus you didn’t have to report that your buddy Harlan was paying his private school tuition.
And yet, according to ProPublica, Crow paid Martin’s tuition in multiple years, and included the boy in the luxe vacations he took Clarence and Ginni on every year.
As is their regular habit, the Thomases have dispatched attorney Mark Paoletta to protect their sacred honor. Paoletta defended Thomas during his confirmation when Anita Hill accused him of being pervy and gross. Paoletta represented Ginni Thomas in her testimony before the House January 6 Select Committee, during which she repeatedly had to be reminded that, in fact, she did communicate with members of the Trump administration about her election fraud delusions. And along the way, Paoletta found time for a stint as general counsel in Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, where he greenlighted a delay in disbursing congressionally allocated funds to Ukraine until President Zelenskyy agreed to “do us a favor though.”
So, keep that in mind when you read this statement in which Paoletta extolls the Thomases’ “remarkably generous efforts to help a child in need” and decries journalists who show so little respect for “the privacy of this young man and his family.”
Harlan Crow’s tuition payments made directly to these schools on behalf of Justice Thomas’s great nephew did not constitute a reportable gift. Justice Thomas was not required to disclose the tuition payments made directly to Randolph Macon and the Georgia school on behalf of his great nephew because the definition of a “dependent child” under the Ethics in Government Act (5 U.S.C. 13101 (2)) does not include a “great nephew.” It is limited to a “son, daughter, stepson or stepdaughter.” Justice Thomas never asked Harlan Crow to pay for his great nephew’s tuition. And neither Harlan Crow, nor his company, had any business before the Supreme Court.
And, to be fair, he is probably technically correct. The law requires disclosure of gifts to “any individual who is a son, daughter, stepson, or stepdaughter and … is a dependent of such reporting individual within the meaning of section 152 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.” [Emphasis added.] And while Thomas was the boy’s legal guardian and may have claimed him as a dependent, Martin was not legally his son or stepson. That’s slicing it pretty fine, though, and clearly runs counter to the spirit of the law, if not the letter. It also characterizes the Thomases as Martin’s benefactors, which is … let’s say icky.
There’s also the unfortunate fact that Thomas did disclose a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education in 2002 from a different friend, which would rather suggest that he understood he had an obligation to disclose before he un-understood it.
Similarly, Crow may not have been a plaintiff or defendant at the Supreme Court, so it is perhaps technically correct to say he had no business there, but he has invested millions of dollars in conservative causes and judicial confirmations. To pretend he’s just Clarence’s old pal is grossly disingenuous.
But gross is kinda par for the course with these people. And since the GOP lacks the will to enforce even minimum ethics standards, we’re probably stuck with him. The best you can do is call it out and deprive them of the mantle of legitimacy as they systematically gut two generations worth of civil rights laws and undermine the ability of the executive branch to pass regulations when a Democrat occupies the White House.
Have we mentioned that Biden should pack the goddamn Court if and when he gets the chance? Because he absolutely, positively should.
Some Ukrainians ran for cover during the drone attack. I saw many others stay put on the street, watching and filming the Russian drones over Kyiv. Several videos filmed by Ukrainians look and sound like this, with celebrations as the drone is downed….
On Wednesday evening, multiple sources on social media began reporting the same thing: Russia was not only putting multiple bombers aloft and rolling out a fresh raft of cruise missiles, but also, the weaponry laid out on the tarmac at some unidentified Russian airfield included “two nuclear missiles” which were to be loaded onto Tu-22M “Backfire bombers.” Those bombs were reportedly on their way to Kyiv in retaliation for the two drones that exploded above the Kremlin on Tuesday night.
According to many of these same sources, this information came from a source deep in the Russian military who was “risking his life” to bring this warning of impending doom. One source insisted this was “not hype or a gimmick.” Another included details of supposed orders that had been sent to Russian air bases, calling for strikes on Ukrainian government offices in Kyiv overnight.
It’s Thursday. Kyiv has not been nuked. And the overnight frenzy might best be summed up by this tweet:
Anyone who unironically posted that Russia would use nuclear weapons on Ukraine last night because a 2lb drone blew up over the roof of the Kremlin Senate should delete their Twitter account right now.
As I wrote yesterday, the drones that were either shot down or detonated over the Kremlin may well have been a false flag operation. The spectacle of one of these drones popping over the Kremlin senate dome, with an apparent force slightly greater than a party balloon, while white-suited workers looked on from the top of the dome itself, certainly made the whole thing look extremely comical.
The immediate reaction of Russian officials, including the pretense that this attack was somehow an attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin, and that the only answer was the “elimination” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and all his government, only added to the impression that this whole event was a stunt designed to give Russia an excuse to do something, anything, to make Putin’s efforts look less awful in advance of the May 9 “Victory Day” parades.
That thought was hardly original, but the leap from “do something” to “unleash the nukes!” is a very big step. As one NAFO member posted in response:
Chill with the nukes. Russia is not going to use them even if Biden or Zelensky himself drives into Moscow on top of an Abrams, takes a piss on Lenin’s corpse, and kicks Putin in the nuts.
I tried to get that quote into the headline of this piece. Too bad it wouldn’t fit.
Of all the things that Russia could do to give themselves something to celebrate on May 9, opening the door to action that would lead to Putin being dead, all his oligarch buddies still in Russia being dead, and every one of their money-laundering family members outside of Russia being placed in prisons for life is definitely not at the top of the list. Russia likes to use the threat of nuclear weapons. It’s hard to imagine the circumstances that involve them actually employing such a weapon anywhere.
What could Russia do that would make them a pariah forever, remove any thought about NATO providing immediate and direct military assistance to Ukraine, and ensure that a generation of Russians would grow up in cities administered by U.N. forces? You get one guess.
What happened as these reports circulated on Wednesday night is the flipside of the OSINT community that has generally served the public extremely well in illuminating what’s happening in Ukraine. When it comes to the details of equipment movements, logistical chains, and putting a location to video and images, that community has been fantastic. There are thousands of people devoting tens of thousands of hours to see that information emerges on small changes in control along the front. They help put seven digits after the decimal on pinpointing coordinates for the latest shot of a damaged Russian tank. They grind through the numbers to determine what kind of weapons are available to each side, and how those weapons are performing in the field.
It’s no secret at all that our daily Ukraine Update is highly dependent on information derived from the open-source intelligence community. I literally could not do my job without them.
But like all people, and the moths in your backyard, those who make up OSINT can be distracted by a bright light. Put out a hot story—nukes on their way to Kyiv! Secret information given to you at the risk of an insider’s life!—and it’s not shocking that the story gets picked up and rapidly carried in all directions by sources who, on any other day, might be providing fantastic, well-researched details of other aspects of Russia’s invasion. OSINT people are people first, and if you wave a “NUKE!” story at them, they do what people are prone to do: Share that information.
Now that it’s Thursday and Kyiv is not a smoking crater, some of those sources are feeling pretty embarrassed by the overnight frenzy. Others are desperately trying to defend the story and the underlying sources, ignoring the fact that spreading the idea that Russia might nuke Ukraine over literally the most trivial of attacks, is promoting exactly the kind of fear that Putin wants everyone to have. Because the belief that Russia might, at the drop of a hat, drop a few megatons here or there, entirely benefits Russia.
Dmitry Rogozin, former Russian deputy prime minister and another of Putin’s mouthpieces, was back on the air Thursday talking about the idea that if Ukraine begins a counteroffensive, Russia will respond with tactical nukes.
But it’s not going to happen. All of this is clearly designed to diminish support for Ukraine.
Both parts of this—how quickly a single claim can spread across multiple sources and the way such claims can serve Russia’s interests—are worth keeping in mind as Ukraine edges toward its counteroffensive.
WHAT RUSSIA ACTUALLY DID OVERNIGHT
To give those OSINT sources some credit, there have been credible reports over the last few days of a large number of Russian bombers rolled out, or even put aloft, each evening. Those have been paired with reports of Russia delivering more missiles to ships in the Black Sea, and of forces reading launches from ground-based missile sites in Russia. It’s not just nervous folks on social media who have been expecting Russia to make another of the large-scale missile attacks that occurred erratically, but with some frequency, over the first year of the war. That’s also been the feeling of Ukrainian officials who have repeatedly warned that the threat of such an attack is high.
However, while there have been some tragic incidents in the last few weeks, like the strike on the town of Uman in southwestern Ukraine, it’s now been almost a month since the last large-scale attack when Russia launched an estimated 81 missiles along with eight drones at Ukrainian targets on March 9. [Tweet and images at the link]
No one knows what to do with this unusually long gap in Russian attacks on civilian centers. Is Russia low on missiles? Are they saving up weapons to deal with the counteroffensive? Was Russia simply disappointed that in that March 9 attack Ukraine’s improved air defenses knocked down most of the incoming, including high speed Kinzhal missiles, resulting in relatively small damage?
During the night, while everyone was sweating about nukes, Russia launched another 24 Iranian-made Shahed drones toward targets in Ukraine, they also launched six missiles into Kramatorsk and Zaporizhzhia. These were likely S300 missiles. The Ukrainian government indicated 18 of the drones were knocked down. No figures were given on the missiles, but an unspecified number of “deaths and injuries among the civilian population” were reported.
BAKHMUT
There’s been a suspicion for some time now that Russia wants to have control of Bakhmut in time for Putin to brag about it five days from now, when he celebrates Victory Day in Moscow. Whether or not that’s the case, in the last 24 hours Russia has engaged in assaults on remaining Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut that dismiss any idea that Russia might have given up on capturing the city in time for Putin’s big day. [Tweet and video at the link]
Almost fifty assaults were reported in the Bakhmut area. That includes not just Wagner Group forces attacking in the city from the north and southeast, but also near Bohdanivka and Markove. That last one is concerning because it’s well to the west of what was believed to be the line between Russian and Ukrainian forces, and this is the second time it has appeared in the daily lists.
But the biggest concern at Bakhmut right now is just what many feared as Ukraine was forced into a smaller area at the west of the city: artillery. With Russian forces able to position guns on three sides of the city, they are firing into the Ukrainian positions at what is described as a very high intensity on Thursday. It’s not clear that any of the paved routes—either the “road of death” through Khromove or the T0504 coming up from the south—are passable. Recent images show vehicles entering the city along one or more unpaved routes. [Tweet and video at the link]
The only good news may be that the number of artillery units destroyed over the last day has reached new heights. [List at the link]
… and find out. [A reference to the saying: “Fuck around and find out.”]
A representative of the Russian Federation in Ankara during the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Parliamentary Assembly disrespected the Ukrainian flag. People’s Deputy from the Servant of the People faction, Oleksandr Marikovsky immediately responded.
Well done Oleksandr 👏
[Video at the link. The Ukrainian flag was retrieved after a short chase and mild fisticuffs.]
There’s fresh evidence that the recent revelations from the Dominion case about Fox News weren’t at all flattering, and they did not go unnoticed. [Consequences for bad actions. Yay!]
It’s not exactly a secret that Dominion Voting System’s defamation case against Fox News was devastating for the controversial network. We are, after all, talking about litigation — recently resolved by way of a $787.5 million settlement — that produced evidence that suggested Fox promoted bogus election claims they knew to be false, on purpose, in order to placate its audience and make money.
What was far from clear, however, was whether the story would reach the public at large and affect the network’s standing. A Washington Post analysis this week pointed to data that suggests the case did have a meaningful impact.
In a new poll from the Economist and YouGov, Americans say, 51 percent to 21 percent, that Fox hosts said things about the 2020 election that they knew to be untrue. Remarkably, even Fox’s base of Republican-leaning Americans takes a dim view: Nearly as many Republicans said Fox hosts effectively lied (31 percent) as dispute that assertion (34 percent). The near-even split was similar among supporters of Donald Trump: 30-35.
The “knew to be untrue” dimension to this stands out. Every news organization and media professional has, at one time or another, gotten something wrong. That includes me. But in journalism, there’s an enormous difference between making a mistake and peddling deliberate falsehoods.
The survey data suggests that a narrow majority of Americans now believes that Fox is guilty of the latter. The Post’s article added:
The poll also shows Fox ranking last for “accurate” coverage of the 2020 election. Only 12 percent overall said Fox’s 2020 coverage was “almost always accurate,” which was less than the percentages for CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS. And less than half (49 percent) said Fox’s coverage was at least “mostly accurate.” This was again lower than all six broadcast outlets tested, which ranged between 56 percent and 58 percent.
In situations like these, it’s best not to rely too heavily on one poll, which makes it all the more important to emphasize that there’s other data pointing in the same direction.
As we discussed a couple of months ago, a national poll from Quinnipiac University also found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believed Fox News “should be held accountable after Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch acknowledged in a deposition that a number of the network’s hosts spread false information about the 2020 presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump.”
Variety, which covers the entertainment industry, published a related report, highlighting the results of a poll from an opinion research firm called the Maru Group. It found roughly one-in-five Fox News viewers said they now have less trust in the network, and roughly one-in-ten Fox News viewers said they’re watching the network less than they used to in the wake of the revelations.
It’s difficult to say with confidence whether these attitudes will persist or fade, but by all appearances, the recent revelations weren’t at all flattering, and they did not go unnoticed.
Update: Pezzola has been found not guilty of seditious conspiracy (he was found guilty on several other serious charges earlier). Ryan Reilly was saying earlier that he was a newer member and not in on the planning as much as the others. He said just now that this might actually help prosecutors on appeal since it shows the jury looked at the cases very carefully. They deadlocked on the assorted remaining lesser charges for the group.
Exploring the utter weirdness and cluelessness of Tucker Carlson … a job for Wonkette:
If you hang out in the replies of well-known conservatives on Twitter […] you’ll see there is a general sentiment among those people that the TuckerLeaks (gross) that Media Matters has been publishing are actually making him look cooler. (Media Matters is calling them FOXLEAKS. Wonkette is making it grosser, because that is how we do.) The one-third (or so) of Americans who are hardcore white MAGA racists, AKA Tucker’s fans, they may not be the best arbiter of what makes a person look “cooler,” but that’s what we’ve seen them saying.
Mostly we just think they’re adding to the general creeper-ness about Tucker. The text the New York Times published — where Tucker was fantasizing about white Trump guys killing an “antifa,” but lamenting the way they were doing it because he apparently thought it was beneath white people — that was disturbing. And we are sure there is a lot more like that coming, because quite frankly nothing we have seen so far is a good explanation for why Tucker was really fired. Also, Fox News just seems to hate him.
But the Media Matters ones are kinda fun, because they largely show how Tucker is just fuckin’ weird. White MAGA men are just fuckin’ weird. They wear their masculinity issues on their sleeves, and they think they look strong and cool, and the rest of America is like LOL what is wrong with that guy?
Today’s Media Matters TuckerLeak (gross) is Tucker, like a fascinated seven-year-old, asking the woman doing his makeup if women have “pillow fights” when they go to the bathroom. We know Tucker thinks bathrooms are for beating up gay guys, but what do the WOMENFOLKS do in there? It is a mystery question 53-year-old Tucker never has gotten an answer to! [video at the link]
TUCKER CARLSON: Can I ask you a question? You don’t have to answer, it’s personal.
MAKEUP ARTIST: Mm-hmm.
CARLSON: I’m not speaking of you, but more in general with ladies, when they go to the ladies room and “powder their noses,” is there actually nose-powdering going on?
MAKEUP ARTIST: Sometimes.
CARLSON: Oooh. I like the sound of that.
MAKEUP ARTIST: Most of the time, it’s lipstick.
CARLSON: Do pillow fights ever break out? You don’t have to, you don’t have to —
MAKEUP ARTIST: Not in the bathroom.
CARLSON: OK. Not in the bathroom. That’d be more a dorm activity.
OFF-CAMERA VOICE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
CARLSON: I’m sorry, [REDACTED]. You are such a good sport. Such a good person. Thank you. I know you do, but you do not deserve that. And I mean it with great affection.
But why though? Again, it’s not particularly offensive, he’s just a weirdo. Just a giggly, fuckin’ emotionally under-developed weirdo. Is he not able to ask his wife “Hey, what’s happening in the bathroom?” Why would he think there are pillows to fight with in the women’s bathroom? And also, we note that his conception of women living in a dorm appears to be entirely based on the ladder booby scene in Animal House.
Giggly Tucker, mustering up the courage to ask the makeup lady if there are pillow fights in the lady bathroom. Please also note the “Oooh. I like the sound of that” when she says that “sometimes” there is actual nose-powdering. He seems legitimately titillated.
Maybe this is what conservative white women are into, we’re not here to kink-shame. (Hand to God, we saw yesterday in a Twitter reply section MAGA women responding to a picture of Tucker on a horse with their equivalent of “I’ll be in my bunk.” Couldn’t find it if we tried.)
As for the other TuckerLeaks there was the one where he was talking shit about how Fox Nation sucks and its website doesn’t work for shit. Not pertinent to us, but maybe it might piss Fox off. […] In that one he also said some real disturbing shit about welcoming violent misogynist creep Andrew Tate “back into the brotherhood of journalists.”
There was one TuckerLeak from not long after Tucker’s ball-tanning thing where he’s on video telling Piers Morgan that in their interview, “if we’re going to talk about sex, I’d love to hit some of the fine points of technique.” Uh OK, sure, Tucker.
In this short TuckerLeak, he talks about his “post-menopausal fans” weighing in on his appearance, and mimics Bill O’Reilly saying “Fuck it, we’ll do it live!” What we’re more interested in here, though, is the fact that Tucker’s high-pitched laugh is a thing that happens off camera too. It is just the way he expresses joy. [video at the link]
And then this TuckerLeak, where he talks about when he had to meet with the Dominion lawyer, whining that they “triggered the shit out of” him. Bless his heart.
He does the laugh in this one too. [video at the link]
But seriously, what the fuck with that shit about girls having pillow fights in the bathroom?
Chris Jones, a research engineer at the University of Iowa and a prominent voice for water quality in this state, said two state senators pressured his superiors to have his popular blog removed from the university’s website.
“And so a couple guys from Legislature recently came to the university and said that, you know, it was interesting, I guess, would be a word to say, that the university comes to the Legislature wanting money for various programs, while they allow this blog to continue on the university domain,” Jones said in an interview with Iowa journalist Robert Leonard published on Friday. “And so they indicated that, you know, this needed to stop, the university indicated this needs to stop. And, you know, I always knew this day could come.”
Jones said the lawmakers are state Sen. Dan Zumbach, R-Ryan, and Sen. Tom Shipley, R-Nodaway. Zumbach is leading a legislative effort to remove funding for a network of water quality sensors that keep tabs on nitrate and phosphorus flowing into streams and rivers.
Two of those sensors are on Bloody Run Creek, a northeast Iowa trout stream. One is within sight of an 11,600-head cattle feedlot owned by Zumbach’s son-in-law. On Friday, a Polk County judge overturned the Department of Natural Resources’ acceptance of a manure management plan for the feedlot.
Jones has written extensively about the Bloody Run Creek saga.
…
Jones’ blog was defined by its sharp, incisive and often humorous essays on the poor condition of Iowa’s waterways and the state’s woefully inadequate efforts to repair the damage.
“So I wrote the final piece, and I had very gently implied in the final piece that the blog was being discontinued because of pressure from the Legislature, and I was told by the administration that, you know, I was not to say or imply that I was being pressured to stop writing the blog by the Legislature. And so you know, I’m not going to be insubordinate, I agreed to change it,” Jones told Leonard.
After that, Jones put in his notice to retire.
I have little doubt Jones will continue to use his authoritative voice to address Iowa’s dirty water. On May 19, his book, “The Swine Republic” will be released, including essays from his blog.
But there’s a broader threat Iowans should consider. And that’s whether we’re going to see the sort of reckless, intensified attacks on higher education we’re seeing in other red states, particularly Florida. The Sunshine State has become Gov. Kim Reynolds’ go-to example of a great educational system.
Lawmakers have considered several bills targeting universities, including efforts to rewrite curriculum, scrap diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and end tenure. And they may have allies on the Board of Regents….
NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Tucker Carlson sealed his fate at Fox News Channel by saving his best material for his texts, a newly leaked network memo reveals.
According to the memo, written by the Fox News chairman, Rupert Murdoch, Carlson violated his contract by filling his texts with “premium fascist content” that should have been used on his show.
“The cable-news business is more competitive than ever,” Murdoch wrote. “Every drop of hatred and venom that our personalities produce must be deployed on their programs.”
The memo indicated that Carlson’s reckless decision to waste his most vividly racist comments in his texts has resulted in a policy overhaul at Fox.
“Going forward, there will be zero tolerance for any expressions of vile, abhorrent sentiments that Fox is unable to monetize,” Murdoch wrote.
…Using checkoff money, NCBA has developed what it has called a “Digital Command Center” – a sophisticated online monitoring system that tracks media outlets and social media for more than 200 beef-related topics. Hosted in Denver in a space that “looks like a military operations center combined with the TV section at an electronics retailer”, according to a recent Cattlemen’s Beef Board mailer sent to ranchers, the command center alerts members of NCBA’s issues management and media relations team whenever stories or online chatter rise above a certain threshold. It’s staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with personnel redundancies built in to make sure someone’s always watching.
One goal is to enable the industry to respond to emerging public health or economic emergencies. But the center, which received $742,400 in checkoff money for fiscal year 2023, is also used to keep track of public conversations around beef’s sustainability in real-time – and to deploy “talking points, media statements, fact sheets, infographics, videos and various digital assets” as necessary to shift the terms of conversation.
NCBA calls it “proactive reputation management”: a strategy that entails monitoring the internet for messaging opportunities, then leaping in to burnish beef’s image whenever it’s advantageous….
A federal jury on Thursday found former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum not guilty of lying to FBI agents and failed to convict him of 18 other fraud counts.
Jurors couldn’t agree on allegations by federal prosecutors that Gillum and his “political godmother” Sharon Lettman-Hicks illegally steered political contributions to their personal accounts during his 2018 run for governor. Gillum came within 32,000 votes of defeating then-U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis…
The jury also deadlocked on all charges against Hicks, 54.
The federal government accused Gillum, 43, and Hicks of illegally steering political contributions to their personal accounts during his 2018 run for governor…
A jury concluded Thursday that British singer Ed Sheeran didn’t steal key components of Marvin Gaye’s classic 1970s tune Let’s Get It On when he created his hit song Thinking Out Loud…
Haiti has fired its ambassador to the United States, Bocchit Edmond, following investigations by the U.S. and Haitian governments into a kick-back corruption scheme inside its Washington embassy involving the illegal issuance of passports, a Haitian government official confirmed to the Miami Herald.
The decision to dismiss Edmond, who was abruptly called back to Port-au-Prince this week, was made Wednesday by Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Henry sent an assessment mission to the its embassy in Washington last month following allegations that embassy staffers were producing passports for Haitians living outside the United States and charging to expedite them as part of an unsanctioned scheme…
“Thinking about the National Review blogger who spent the whole day writing a post explaining why Harlan Crow paying for Clarence Thomas’s kid’s tuition is Super Cool and Legal, and now has to deal with Leonard Leo being like ‘GIVE GINNI THOMAS THIS SACK OF CASH, NO FINGERPRINTS’.”
This week, a federal investigation found that three Kentucky-based McDonald’s franchises illegally employed at least 305 children, including some as young as 10 years old. […] working “more than the legally permitted hours” and performing tasks “prohibited by law for young workers.” […] one of the 10-year-olds also operated a deep fryer, which is prohibited […] Neither of the 10-year-olds were even paid
[…]
Last month, the Labor Department found that a 15-year-old […] suffered hot oil burns after being illegally assigned to use a deep fryer.
[February: 7 McD’s in Pennsylvania, 154 minors.]
[December: 13 McD’s around Pittsburgh, 101 minors.]
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia’s Wagner group mercenary force, said in a sudden and dramatic announcement on Friday that his forces would leave the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that they have been trying to capture since last summer. Prigozhin said they would pull back on 10 May – ending their involvement in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war – because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies. He asked defence chiefs to insert regular army troops in their place.
Earlier Prigozhin released a video showing him standing in a field of Russian corpses, personally blaming top defence chiefs for the losses suffered by his fighters in Ukraine. Prigozhin’s expletives were bleeped out in the video published by his press service, in which he yelled “We have a 70% shortage of ammunition. Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where is the ******* ammunition?”. The reference to defence minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of general staff Valery Gerasimov appeared to reignite the simmering feud between Prigozhin and the Russian establishment forces.
Ukraine’s air force said it downed one of its own drones after it lost control over Kyiv on Thursday. Andriy Yermak, Ukraine presidential chief of staff, initially said an enemy drone that had been shot down. But the air force later clarified it was Ukrainian and had been destroyed to avoid “undesirable circumstances”. No casualties were reported.
The Russian state-owned news agency Tass is reporting that the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region of Russia has been attacked by a drone or drones for the second consecutive day.
…
Finnish power utility Fortum has formally notified the Kremlin that it strongly objects to what it said was Russia’s “unlawful” seizure of its subsidiary in the country. In his regular morning press conference, the Kremlin spokesperson, Peskov, responded by saying the seizure was in accordance with Russian legislation.
Bill Clinton has said that he knew in 2011 it was just “a matter of time” before Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine. “Vladimir Putin told me in 2011 – three years before he took Crimea – that he did not agree with the agreement I made with Boris Yeltsin,” the former US president recalled. “He said … ‘I don’t agree with it. And I do not support it. And I am not bound by it.’ And I knew from that day forward it was just a matter of time.”…
Also from there:
Residents of the key southern Ukrainian city of Kherson are stocking up on food and water after another night of heavy Russian shelling and before an announced 56-hour curfew due to begin on Friday evening.
A number said they planned to stay indoors before the curfew and planned closure of the city, adding that they had slept in their clothes or gone to shelters because of the intensity of the Russian attack.
Others said they had sent some family outside the city or moved to safer locations further from the river, as they said they were anticipating “something big” over the coming days as Ukrainian forces also stepped up their shelling of Russian positions.
The violence in Kherson has increased markedly this week, with 23 people killed by Russian strikes in the region on Wednesday, including a deadly bombardment of a supermarket that killed eight people.
Russia is bringing Wagner mercenary fighters from along the frontline to Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine according to Ukraine’s deputy defence minister.
Hanna Maliar told Ukrainian broadcasters that Moscow wanted to capture the city in time for the victory day holiday on 9 May.
It comes on the same day that the head of Wagner has threatened to pull its forces out of the battle-scarred Ukrainian city.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog, which of course is all about election results. From there:
Green party says ‘fantastic’ night has given them record number of councillors
The Greens are cock-a-hoop this morning, after a better than expected showing and many results still to be declared.
According to the party’s HQ, by 10am on Friday they had a record number of councillors and had made a net gain of 27, after winning 54 seats so far. They reckon they could gain as many as 100 seats when all the counting is done, with gains made in Worcester, Southend-on-Sea, Havant and South Kesteven, South Tyneside and Coventry.
This morning co-leader Adrian Ramsay told me he was exhausted, but “jubilant”. He said:
We’ve had a fantastic night that has surpassed our own expectations. Four years ago, we saw the first of several years where Greens achieved record results. So despite the fact that we were defending a record number of seats, we have still seen substantial gains. We’ve got a lot of excitement from our supporters to capitalise on.
Ramsay said the party was anticipating strong results in Mid Suffolk and Herefordshire later on today.
Those are the sorts of places – Bristol, Waveney Valley in Suffolk, Herefordshire – where we will be well placed to challenge for the seat at the general election because people can see we’re the main challengers on the ground.
The Greens in East Hertfordshire are also having a marvellous time this morning – unlike the Conservatives who have had a terrible night.
The Tories have lost control of East Herts council for the first time since 1995 and only the second time in its 49-year history.
In 2015 Conservatives won all 50 of the seats (last time round they managed a mere 39) – currently they have 16, with two seats in Hertford Castle too close to call and currently being recounted with results expected around lunchtime.
With two seats to declare at East Herts, no one can reach 26 for full control, but the Greens are the largest party with 17 seats, the Tories are on 16, Lib Dems 10 and Labour on five.
The Green co-leader Adrian Ramsay visited East Herts last month and rather optimistically suggested the party could take 10 seats; in fact they might get almost double that number if the final two seats go the Greens’ way….
Spirits are high amongst the Greens in Mid Suffolk, which could become the first majority-controlled Green council in the UK if the party wins at least five more seats. The council is currently controlled by the Conservatives.
The Greens have gained four seats so far, ousting the incumbent Tory council leader in the process. The Greens currently hold 12 seats in the council. They need to win 16 to take control.
Suzie Morley, the leader of Mid Suffolk council, was unseated this morning by Green candidate Nicholas Robert Hardingam, who won 615 votes to Morley’s 419.
…
Morley…called the outlook for the party “challenging” and said “national government hasn’t done us any favours”….
Labour says it has won East Staffordshire, where four years ago the Tories picked up 25 seats, and Labour just 10. A Labour spokesperson said:
This is a hugely significant result that confirms we are on course for a majority Labour government. We have been going backwards in Staffordshire in recent general elections. With this gain and our win in Stoke, we are making real progress in the places we need to win the next election.
…Our society is sick, and everything about this murder is a symptom of our collective rot. We treat poverty as a crime and poor people as demons; we treat soldiers as weapons that can be stowed. Meanwhile, there are literally more of us willing to hold down an unarmed man who is being suffocated to death than there are willing to risk their physical safety to stop a murder. All of that awfulness is then repackaged and repurposed by a media that makes heroes of people who kill Black people; then that repackaged rot is handed off to a criminal justice system that doesn’t even bother to hold white men accountable until people start protesting in the streets….
Churchill Downs suspended trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. indefinitely and Lord Miles, who is trained by Joseph, was scratched from the Kentucky Derby on Thursday, days after the sudden death of two of his horses at the track.
The suspension prohibits Joseph, or any trainer directly or indirectly employed by him, from entering horses in races or applying for stalls at all Churchill Downs Inc.-owned tracks.
The decision comes after the deaths of Parents Pride on Saturday and Chasing Artie on Tuesday. Both collapsed on the track and died after races…
KGsays
SC@393,
Leading psephologists such as John Curtice seem to think Labour may not be doing quite well enough to expect an overall majority at the general election. In terms of winning seats, they have to do about as well as Bliar in 1997, which itself was exceptional. They currently hold 196 seats, need 326 for an overall majority (slightly less to be sure of outvoting all other parties combined, as the Speaker and 3 Deputy Speakers don’t vote, and Sinn Fein members (currently 7) don’t take their seats). If I’ve got my sums right, that means 320 would be enough to always win votes if all their MPs turned up and supported the way the leadrship wanted. But making things harder for them, the redrawing of constituency boundaries, although done by a non-partisan body, is expected to favour the Tories by several seats because of demographic changes; and incumbent MPs generally have some advantage. The current turmoil within the SNP would give Labour maybe as many as 20 extra seats in Scotland if a general election was held now, but a general election is not going to be held now, and could happen as late as 28th January 2025. A lot will depend on whether the police investigation into the party’s finances produce criminal charges, and if so, when and against whom.
A Ukrainian leader assaulted a Russian delegate who ripped Ukraine’s national flag out of his hands during a summit in Ankara on Thursday, according to reports.
Ukrainian leader Oleksandr Marikovski was seen unfurling the national flag of his country as Russian delegate Olga Timofeeva was being interviewed.
On seeing this, the Russian team member Valery Stavitsky was seen approaching Mr Marikovski and ripping the flag out of his hands.
The two delegates had gathered at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation.
As the Russian delegate walked away, the Ukrainian MP charged at him and landed a couple of blows as other people present at the venue tried to intervene…
The French senate’s website was offline on Friday after pro-Russian hackers claimed to have taken it down, in the latest cyber-attack since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
“Access to the site has been disrupted since this morning,” the upper house of parliament said on Twitter shortly before midday according to Agence France-Presse, saying a team was busy fixing the problem.
A group calling itself NoName on Telegram claimed responsibility, saying it had acted because “France is working with Ukraine on a new ‘aid’ package which may include weapons”.
The same group said it had taken the website of France’s lower-house National Assembly offline for several hours in March.
It also claimed it was behind the disruption of Canadian government websites last month as Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmyhal visited the country.
Nonfarm payrolls increased 253,000 for April, beating Wall Street estimates for growth of 180,000.
The unemployment rate was 3.4% against an estimate for 3.6% and tied for the lowest level since 1969.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.5% for the month and increased 4.4% from a year ago, both higher than expected. ..
Evgeniy Prigozhin declares in a video that he will be ordering the withdrawal of Wagner mercenaries from Bakhmut due to an acute shortage of ammunition allegedly ordered by the Russian General Staff. He says Wagner will stay in the city until 9 May to avoid shame on this day. He appears to require a military order from Gerasimov for the withdrawal, however, to carry out the withdrawal.
I’m amused by this video. The angle and distance of the camera makes him look like a cartoon character. The whole genre of standing in a group while one person shouts out demands is so weird. It’s ostensibly addressed to the Russian military brass, whom he proceeds to insult repeatedly (along with the entire military), and then it ends “Thank you, that’s it.” More comically evil content from Russia.
Some South Africans are calling for Britain to return the world’s largest diamond, known as the Star of Africa, which is set in the royal scepter that King Charles III will hold at his coronation on Saturday.
The diamond, which weighs 530 carats, was discovered in South Africa in 1905 and presented to the British monarchy by the colonial government in the country, which was then under British rule.
Now amid a global conversation about returning artwork and artifacts that were pillaged during colonial times, some South Africans are calling for the diamond to be brought back….
Covid-19 no longer represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organization has said.
The move marks a major step towards the end of the pandemic that has killed more than 6.9 million people, disrupted the global economy and ravaged communities….
Developing story.
Oggie: Mathomsays
Nonfarm payrolls increased 253,000 for April, beating Wall Street estimates for growth of 180,000.
The unemployment rate was 3.4% against an estimate for 3.6% and tied for the lowest level since 1969.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.5% for the month and increased 4.4% from a year ago, both higher than expected. ..
That can’t be. All my GOP politicians who have me on their mailing lists claim that the economy is already in the worst recession since the Obama Recession of ’08! Besides, if the economy was that good, there would be new construction all over the place and lots and lots and lots of trucks on the road.
Paris Marx is joined by Matt Binder to discuss Elon Musk’s first six months at Twitter and how his obsession with blue checks has decimated the company’s finances.
Matt Binder is a reporter at Mashable and the host of Scam Economy and Doomed….
rorschachsays
SC @402,
“Covid-19 no longer represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organization has said.”
This messaging is a disaster. That is the Dr Tedros who in early 2020 accidentally spilled the truth about Covid’s airborne transmission mode in a press conference, and was forced to row back by his collegue Dr Ryan minutes later, because if it was airborne, effective mitigation measures such as air filters and UVC lights could have been implemented, and those cost money.
The number of deaths hasnt changed, the number of chronically ill and disabled hasnt changed, 3000 deaths from Covid in the US every week, but world economies now need people to go back to restaurants, concerts and markets, so the dead and disabled, and number of infected, have been disappeared from public view. To be fair, the WHO held out the longest, long after the CDC folded to political pressure, and Dr Walensky sold us all out to the stock market. But they too have folded now, and for the vulnerable, the very old and very young, but in principle for all of us, a new time begins, where your death or permanent disability is your problem. We are on our own.
Good news, as summarized by Steve Benen from an NBC News source:
In Texas, Democratic Rep. Colin Allred has a reputation as a successful fundraiser, and it was bolstered this week: In the first 36 hours after launching a U.S. Senate campaign against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, Allred raised more than $2 million.
Colin Allred is a really high-quality candidate. I’ll be rooting for him to vanquish Ted Cruz.
Unrelated campaign news from North Carolina, as summarized by Steve Benen:
[…] in North Carolina, where Mark Robinson’s gubernatorial candidacy is advancing, the right-wing lieutenant governor’s ugly record continues to generate headlines. CNN reported yesterday on Robinson repeatedly mocking the survivors of the 2018 Parkland mass shooting — he called the teenagers, among other things, “spoiled little bastards” — while Media Matters uncovered comments in which Robinson claimed Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby were victims of a left-wing “plot.”
The jury in the civil trial in which author E. Jean Carroll is accusing Donald Trump of rape was finally shown video of Trump’s taped deposition Thursday where he mixes up a photo of Carroll with one of his ex-wives, Marla Maples.
During that same deposition which was recorded at Mar-a-Lago in October, Trump goes to incredibly strange places, telling Carroll’s lawyer that, just like her client, she’s not his “type,” either.
According to reports from inside the courtroom, the deposition features an agitated Donald Trump growing snarky and exasperated as Roberta Kaplan questioned him seven months ago. Trump has chosen not to attend the civil trial, but the jury saw the footage Thursday. Carroll is suing Trump for battery and defamation, alleging he raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s.
Trump has denied the accusations since Carroll first came forward and his main defense has been claiming that Carroll is not his “type.” But during the deposition, Trump poked holes in his own defense. When Kaplan showed Trump a picture of himself talking to Carroll at a party in the past, Trump confused Carroll with Maples.
“It’s Marla,” he said, according to reports. “That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife.”
Later, Kaplan reportedly asked Trump questions about other women who have accused him of sexual assault. That’s when the former president grew heated, telling Kaplan “you wouldn’t be a choice of mine, either, to be honest.”
“I wouldn’t in any circumstances have any interest in you,” he said, bringing in the rejected dude at a bar defense.
Funny, pathetic and damaging to women all at the same time. Hair Furor is such a fool.
I’m Excited. Are You Excited?
A whopping FIVE New York Times reporters have dumped their notebooks on the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The revelations fall into three buckets:
✅ a cooperating inside source
✅ video tampering suspicions
✅ Saudi LIV connection
Am I enjoying this too much? Probably a little.
Let’s take them in order:
Try To Keep The Witnesses Straight
Last night’s NYT story on the Mar-a-Lago investigation leads with: A person who has worked for Trump at his oceanside resort is cooperating with prosecutors.
This is a different witness than Walt Nauta, the former military valet for Trump who went with him to Mar-a-Lago post-presidency, whose cooperation has reportedly been, shall we say, spotty, the NYT reports:
But prosecutors appear to be trying to fill in some gaps in their knowledge about the movement of the boxes, created in part by their handling of another potentially key witness, Mr. Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta. Prosecutors believe Mr. Nauta has failed to provide them with a full and accurate account of his role in any movement of boxes containing the classified documents.
With me so far?
Tell Me More About The MAL Video Tampering Suspicions
The NYT story echoes some of CNN’s reporting from the day before about investigators’ suspicions that the surveillance video at MAL was tampered with (emphasis mine):
Prosecutors have also issued several subpoenas to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, seeking additional surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, his residence and private club in Florida, people with knowledge of the matter said. While the footage could shed light on the movement of the boxes, prosecutors have questioned a number of witnesses about gaps in the footage, one of the people said.
But hoping to understand why some of the footage from the storage camera appears to be missing or unavailable — and whether that was a technological issue or something else — the prosecutors subpoenaed the software company that handles all of the surveillance footage for the Trump Organization, including at Mar-a-Lago.
Like the CNN story Wednesday, the NYT connects prosecutors suspicions about the video to grand jury testimony yesterday by a father-son duo who works for Trump:
And they recently subpoenaed Matthew Calamari Sr., the longtime head of security at the Trump Organization who became its chief operating officer. His son, Matthew Calamari Jr., who is the company’s corporate director of security, was subpoenaed some time ago, according to a person familiar with the activity.
Both would have insight into the security camera operation, according to people familiar with the matter. Both Calamaris appeared before the grand jury gathering evidence in the case on Thursday. CNN first reported that prosecutors planned to question them.
Still with me?
I’m 100% Here For The Saudi Golf Connection
The emergence of the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour as a would-be competitor to the PGA has been fascinating to my sports-and-politics sotted brain, so I was delighted(!) to see a potential connection to the MAL probe:
One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts.
It is unclear what bearing Mr. Trump’s relationship with LIV Golf has on the broader investigation, but it suggests that the prosecutors are examining certain elements of Mr. Trump’s family business.
It’s a lot, I know.
What To Make Of All This?
A couple of thoughts to keep in your head as you process the new MAL news this week:
– Don’t rule out that part of the reason for stories like the NYT and CNN ones this week could be defense attorneys communicating to each other about the status of the investigation via press reports. This probably sounds more sinister to you than I intend it to be because it doesn’t make the reports false or the lawyers guilty of obstruction of justice. It may just color the way the info is presented and framed.
– For what it’s worth, I am a little surprised to see the reports this week suggesting a flurry of activity recently in the MAL probe. I had been under the impression that the core of the investigatory work was complete and a charging decision might not be too far off. Maybe or maybe not.
Quoting Barb McQuade when she was interviewed by Nicolle Wallace:
“In very simple terms, if you are a public servant you can’t take free stuff, it is as simple as that. If you want free stuff don’t be a public servant. But guess what? When you are not a public servant, people don’t want give you free stuff” – @BarbMcQuade w/ @NicolleDWallace
Quoting Barb McQuade when she was interviewed by Nicolle Wallace:
“In very simple terms, if you are a public servant you can’t take free stuff, it is as simple as that. If you want free stuff don’t be a public servant. But guess what? When you are not a public servant, people don’t want give you free stuff” – @BarbMcQuade w/ @NicolleDWallace
Translation of the Prigozhin video where he’s threatening to leave Bakhmut on May 9, and makes a mockery of the Russian law against disrespecting the armed forces. He’s announcing to all of Russia that the Special Military Operation failed, and it failed because of the incompetence of the Russian military. [Tweet and video at the link, see SC’s comment 400, which is an accurate assessment.]
[…] By now, anyone following the war in Ukraine knows about Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder and CEO of the brutal Wagner Group mercenaries currently bashing their heads against Ukrainian defenses in Bakhmut.
But no matter how long you’ve read about him, how closely you’ve followed this war, and how many Wagner atrocities you might have witnessed, nothing can prepare you for the madness he displayed yesterday.
Prigozhin began his career trajectory into the ranks of Russia’s billionaire oligarchs as “Putin’s chef,” providing catering and restaurant services to the Kremlin. Somewhere along the way, he raised his own private army, Wagner Group Private Military Contractor, which to this day rapes and loots its way across Africa, ingratiating themselves with and protecting repressive, murderous regimes in exchange for rights to diamond and gold mines. In Syria, it’s oil and gas fields. It’s been good business.
But in Ukraine, it hasn’t been as fun because Prigozhin’s army has spent almost nine months getting ground down around Bakhmut. U.S. intelligence believes Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties over the past four months, 20,000 of them killed in action, half of those around Bakhmut. If those figures are accurate, that would mean that Wagner—a fraction of the size of the Russian army—has suffered at least half of all of Russia’s dead and wounded. It is an outsized impact, but it highlights just how ineffective the rest of the Russian military has been in advancing anywhere.
That’s not to say Wagner has been more effective. What Wagner has that the rest of Russian forces in Ukraine do not is a willingness to throw away the lives of its mercenaries. The bulk of those in Ukraine were recruited out of prisons, promised freedom if they survived six months, then thrown head-first into Ukrainian defenses without training or serious weapons. In April, Wagner reportedly increased those contract lengths to 18 months, greatly reducing the chances that any of these guys will ever walk out of Ukraine. There is a strategy, but it is a gruesome one. This is what it looked like back in February:
At first, the first group, usually of 8 people, is put forward to the finish line. The whole group is maximally loaded with [ammunition], each has a “Bumblebee” flamethrower. Their task is to get to the point and get a foothold. They are almost suicidal. Their [ammo] in case of failure is intended for the following groups.
The group gets as close as possible to the Ukrainians and digs in as quickly as possible. A white cloth or other sign is left on the tree so that the next group can navigate in the event of the death of their predecessors and find where shelters have already been dug and where there are weapons.
During the fire contact, the “Wagners” detect Ukrainian fire positions and transfer them to their artillery. As a rule, 120-mm and 82-mm mortars work in them. Up to 10 mortars simultaneously begin to suppress the discovered Ukrainian position. Artillery training can last several hours in a row.
During this time, 500 meters from the first group, the second group concentrates. It has lighter equipment. And under the cover of artillery, this group begins an assault on the Ukrainian position. If the second group fails to take a position, it is followed by the third and even the fourth. That is, four waves of eight people for one Ukrainian position.”
Now, Wagner has maintained this approach: Send wave after wave, each advancing a few meters and picking up the ammunition left behind by the dead men who came before them. Problem is, somewhere along the way, they lost much of that artillery support.
Whether the lack of artillery is indicative of broader Russian shortages or whether Russia’s Ministry of Defense is purposefully starving them to destroy a rival army, the lack of ammunition support has driven Prigozhin absolutely mad as his casualties mount. The human waves are still happening in Bakhmut, just without any ammunition to support them.
He now rails daily against Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, blaming them—repeatedly, by name—for his inability to fully capture Bakhmut. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has let the feud play out. He remains safe as long as the most powerful men in Russia are fighting each other.
These daily tirades have taken a particularly bizarre turn this week.
On Sunday, Prigozhin declared that “Russia is on the brink of catastrophe,” and threatened to pull his forces out of Bakhmut altogether if he didn’t receive ammunition that very day. It was an empty threat; he’s continued to complain about lack of ammunition in the days since, yet his forces are still pushing forward. But Sunday also marked the beginning of the strangest daily updates by anyone this war:
– On Sunday, he announced that Wagner had advanced 100-150 meters in Bakhmut, and suffered 94 dead.
– On Monday, he claimed his forces had gained 120 meters at the cost of 86 dead.
– On Wednesday, it was 160 meters advanced with 103 dead.
– On Thursday, he claimed 230 meters advanced and 116 of his “best fighters” killed.
Add that up, and Prigozhin admitted to 399 dead (and unmentioned wounded) to advance at most 660 meters—a total of 1.65 meters (5.4 feet) per dead Wagnerite. They could literally accomplish that by just falling forward.
Not only was this (admitted) loss of life horrific on its own, but it shattered a tenet of faith among Russian war bloggers that it was Ukraine being bled dry by Russia’s Bakhmut assault.
The whole notion was idiotic. It is a basic military reality that absent massive advantages in military technology and doctrine (which Russia does not have), attackers suffer greater casualties than entrenched defenders. It’s common sense: Defenders can keep their heads down while attackers have to rush across open terrain, exposed to mines, grenades, gunfire, rockets, mortars, and artillery fire.
Ukraine has a clear rationale for Bakhmut’s bloody defense: bleeding Russia dry and trapping them in the area to take the pressure off other parts of the front while buying time for Ukraine’s new “storm” brigades to train combined arms warfare with their shiny new Western armor. The only way Russia’s even bloodier attack of the strategically unimportant city made sense (only Ukraine’s 58th largest) was to claim the opposite: It was Ukraine who was trapped there, bleeding itself dry.
Prigozhin’s weird daily flex laid waste to those ridiculous claims. It is Russians who are doing the bulk of the dying in Bakhmut. But nothing, nothing, nothing could prepare anyone for the biggest Thursday night surprise—one that had everyone watching from both sides of the war, wondering if Prigozhin had absolutely lost it.
I don’t particularly recommend you watch his video, but it’s here with the absolute strongest trigger warning possible. Prigozhin stands in the dark in front of a field of several dozen dead Wagner soldiers. He shines a flashlight at several, in case anyone has any doubts about what they’re looking at. I won’t sit there and count, but there are maybe 40-50 dead Wagnerites, lined up in several rows.
And he yells like a mad man. He yells Shoigu’s name, Gerasimov’s name, a stream of expletives in front of his macabre backdrop. He looks like this: [image at the link]
The translation:
Here are the guys from PMC Wagner who died today. Still fresh blood. Get them all on video. Now listen to me, [B-word, plural], damn, these are someone’s fathers, and someone’s sons. And those scum who do not give us ammunition will be in hell, there they will eat their remains, motherf*ckers! We’re out of ammo, 70%! Shoigu! Gerasimov! Where the f*ck is the ammo? Look at them, [B-word, plural]! You sit, motherf*ckers, in expensive clubs! Your children enjoy life making videos on YouTube! You think that you are the masters of this life and that you have the right to dispose of the lives of these guys! You give us five times less ammo! They came here as volunteers and they are dying for you to feast in your mahogany cabinets!
Did Prigozhin train his forces on effective small-unit infantry assault tactics? Of course not. He is just as complicit in their deaths as every other Russian commander in this war. But he’s not looking in the mirror. He’s taking direct aim at his rivals at the Ministry of Defense.
Russia does not censor Telegram, and this video is being watched by millions of Russians not used to seeing images of their own dead. It is impossible to tell how the video will be received, or how Putin himself will take it. Wagner fans are responding with calls to storm Moscow: [Examples at the link]
Prigozhin did promise to leave Bakhmut if the ammunition situation didn’t improve. It clearly didn’t, and he’s still in Bakhmut. Then this tirade. What does it all mean? Stay tuned, because this story isn’t over.
————————–
There is one more weird Prigozhin story, and maybe someone can help make it make sense.
Last Friday, Mark Sumner wrote about the sacking of the general in charge of Russia’s logistics.
On Thursday, the man in charge of logistics for the Russian army, Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, was fired. Mizintsev, known as the “Butcher of Mariupol” for his role in commanding the forces that destroyed that city early in the invasion, replaced former minister Gen. Dmitry Bulgakov last year. Mizintsev has now been replaced by Col. Gen. Alexei Kuzmenkov.
Why was Mizintsev fired after being hailed for clearing Mariupol and finally bringing the siege of the Azovstal steel works to an ugly conclusion? Speculation is that Mizintsev was sent to the showers after Col. Gen. Mikhail Teplinsky completed an inspection of the front lines, reporting that weapons and ammunition were not getting to the right people. In particular, the colonel general determined that Wagner Group mercenaries weren’t getting their fair share of artillery and small arms ammunition—the same complaint that Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin has been making for months.
This is not a coincidence. Col. Gen. Teplinsky, in spite of the title, isn’t actually a part of the regular Russian military. He’s Wagner, wielding literally undefined authority (an “unspecified role”) in seeing that things are operating correctly at the front.
To recap, Mizintsev was fired based on a report written by a Wagner officer, accusing him of refusing to supply Wagner forces in Bakhmut. Got it?
So what the hell is this?
Sacked Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mizintsev also known as “The Butcher of Mariupol” took the post of deputy commander of PMC Wagner. [Video and tweet at the link]
Again, Wagner hired the guy they got fired for not getting them desperately needed ammunition, on the same day that Prigozhin goes on his crazy rant in front of a sea of dead Wagnerites he says died from a lack of ammunition … and then they appoint him as their number two commander.
Seriously, what the hell?
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @412:
hmmm. I have no idea why comment 410 was posted again as comment 411.
Maybe because it is worth repeating? Every sane person should be shouting this constantly. Thomas is a crooked liar and should resign. If the same were true of one of the more liberal justices, you know that the republicans would be screaming for their dismissal.
The Senate Budget Committee held its first congressional hearing on the debt limit/spending cuts extortion bill the House Republicans passed last week. Dubbing it Default on America, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said he called the hearing because House Speaker Kevin McCarthy broke his promise of transparency and regular order in passing a bill “cobbled together by House extremists in back rooms, in the dark of night.”
Democrats were marginally successful in getting their message out: Republicans are holding the nation’s economy hostage with two disastrous choices, both promising economic chaos. Republicans reinforced that message by hijacking the hearing to talk about the dangers of the deficit—no Republican Senator was swayed by being lumped in with the House extremists.
“Attempting to extract partisan policy confessions with threats to intentionally drive the American economy off a cliff is the very definition of extremism,” Whitehouse said, kicking off the hearing. He pointed out that 275 pages out of the bill’s 315 pages were giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, was the Democrats’ chief witness. He reiterated that either of the options Republicans were offering would send the country into recession and steep unemployment. It would be economic chaos either way, which seems fine with most Republicans in the Senate.
Most Republicans are fine with it. One, Sen. Mitt Romney, the “moderate,” acknowledged it “would be awful” to default on the debt, but it would all be the Democrats’ fault because they didn’t fix it when they had the chance. [Tweet and video at the link]
No, really. That’s what he said. “Don’t forget that that could have been solved a long time ago by our Democrat friends simply in their reconciliation bill doing what Leader McConnell asked them to do, which is just raise the debt ceiling yourselves—didn’t need a single Republican vote, not a single vote!” Romney railed. Politics got in the way, he said. Not Republicans who refuse to do the bare minimum requirement of their job: keeping the nation economically afloat. Why can’t Democrats save us from ourselves! Romney lamented. [LOL]
Other Republicans barely acknowledged the ticking time bomb of a default, just three weeks away. Like Romney, they followed the lead of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, washing their hands of any responsibility for fixing this. They went with beating up on President Joe Biden instead.
The top Republican on the committee, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, blasted Democrats for “showboating.” Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy went with calling Biden “immature” [LOL] for insisting that it’s dangerous to take the the full faith and credit of the nation hostage. Kansas’s regrettable choice for a senator, Republican Roger Marshall, used his time to rail about Democrats’ focus on climate change.
What every single Republican who spoke Thursday demonstrated was that they’re as much in the pocket of the Freedom Caucus maniacs as McCarthy. They’re rooting for economic chaos, making the calculation that a ruined economy will be good for their 2024 election prospects.
[…] Republicans are willing to blow the whole economy to pieces to put the likes of Donald Trump back in the White House. Biden and congressional Democrats need to make that the sharp focus: How far Republicans will go to win.
johnson catman @413: “If the same were true of one of the more liberal justices, you know that the republicans would be screaming for their dismissal.” True! So true.
At age 89 Dianne Feinstein has become the poster woman for dementia. [A diagnosis of dementia is speculation. We have nothing official on that.] As Feinstein clings to what is familiar, her absence and stubbornness is damaging the federal judiciary, and the Democratic Party.
From the New Republic:
Feinstein’s Absence Helped Republicans Overturn a Biden Rule on Truck Pollution. The Democrats control the Senate. This shouldn’t be happening.
[Posted by Feinstein’s staff:]
The Senate continues to swiftly confirm highly qualified individuals to the federal judiciary, including seven more judicial nominees who were confirmed this week. There has been no slowdown. […]
While the Senate Judiciary Committee has advanced eight strong nominees during my absence, I’m disappointed that Republicans are blocking a few in committee. I’m confident that when I return, we will be able to move the remaining qualified nominees to the Senate floor for a vote.
[Excerpts from many examples, (available at the link), of scathing replies:]
That’s bullshit. Because of your prolonged absence, the Senate is unable to issue a subpoena to Clarence Thomas. And @SenatorDurbin and @SenSchumer are too cowardly to force your resignation. Resign NOW
———————
Attn Staffers of DF, please let her know this argument falls short. SHE MUST RESIGN
——————
Please retire. While judicial confirmations continue despite you, many are not getting hearings because of your absence. And beyond the judicial nominations, California, the largest state and 5th largest economy in the world, needs two functioning senators.
———————-
I see the staff for Sen Feinstein are back tweeting on her behalf. Heads up, we’re waiting for the Senator is returning ASAP or retiring ASAP tweet. Otherwise, not interested in what a staffer thinks.
————————
Respectfully, stop gaslighting. The only justices who are getting confirmed are those that Republicans approve.
I should add that my own mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after her death. When we moved her out of the home she had lived in for decades to a small apartment in a managed care facility, it was very much against her will.
Might it be useful for the Ds to tell the Rs they just want to vote on paying the budget bills by itself? In the event the Rs do hurt the economy it would make responding simpler. They think paying debts and bills is something you can attach a political price too.
The number of deaths hasnt changed, the number of chronically ill and disabled hasnt changed, 3000 deaths from Covid in the US every week
? The CDC has US deaths around 3,000/week the first week of February and declining steadily – along with hospitalizations – since, to around 1,100 the past few weeks (the lowest since mid-March 2020).
Now, the White House itself is adding fuel to the fire through its DAME Tax proposal, whose aim is, and we quote: “making cryptominers pay for costs they impose on others.”
How, you ask? By phasing in an additional 30% tax penalty for cryptocurrency mining firms on any energy they consume in that process. ..
A federal judge struck down portions of a controversial Kansas election law on Thursday, ruling them unconstitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge Kathryn Vratil struck down provisions in statute KSA 25-1122 banning out-of-state entities from mailing advance ballot applications and prohibiting the applications from containing any pre-filled information.
Both provisions had previously been temporarily blocked, and Vratil last year permanently enjoined the state from enforcing the out-of-state mail provisions…
Ukraine has intercepted a Russian hypersonic missile for the first time, it has been reported.
Local media reports suggested air-defence units operating the highly-advanced, US-provided Patriot missile system could have been responsible for the unprecedented feat.
Images purportedly showing the fragments of a downed Kh-47M2 Kinzhal missile, which Russia claims can fly at 10 times the speed of sound, were published by the Ukrainian Defence Express outlet.
The wreckage of the missile, known in Russia as the “dagger”, fell on an empty football stadium in Kyiv after a loud explosion was reported in the early hours of Thursday morning…
Former North Carolina U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn pleaded guilty Friday to a misdemeanor after his loaded gun was found last year in his carry-on luggage at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
Mecklenburg County District Court Judge Cecilia Oseguera ordered a $250 fine but allowed Cawthorn to keep the 9 mm handgun that Transportation Security Administration agents seized at a checkpoint in April 2022, news outlets reported…
Maryland Rep. David Trone announced Thursday he will run for the U.S. Senate seat that will be opening with the retirement of Sen. Ben Cardin.
Trone, a Democrat, has focused on issues including opioid addiction, mental health, medical research and criminal justice reform while in office. The congressman said he would continue advocating for those issues in the Senate…
Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News, has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Media Matters for America over its publication of leaked videos showing Tucker Carlson, a former host at the network, making crude and offensive comments off the air.
“We write on behalf of Fox Corporation to clarify any misunderstandings Media Matters may have had regarding previously unaired footage that Media Matters has published in a series of articles headlined “FOXLEAKS,” attorneys for the network wrote in a letter dated Friday.
“That unaired footage is Fox’s confidential intellectual property; Fox did not consent to its distribution or publication; and Fox does not consent to its further distribution or publication.”
The network’s lawyers said the videos were given to the liberal media watchdog group “without Fox’s authorization” and demanded it “cease and desist from distribution, publication, and misuse of Fox’s misappropriated proprietary footage, which you are now on notice was unlawfully obtained.”
In a statement to The Hill on Friday, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters said “reporting on newsworthy leaked material is a cornerstone of journalism. For Fox to argue otherwise is absurd and further dispels any pretense that they’re a news operation.”
“Perhaps if I tell them that the footage came from a combination of WikiLeaks and Hunter Biden’s laptop, it will alleviate their concerns,” Carusone added. [LOL]
Over the past several days, Media Matters has published a series of videos of Carlson, who was ousted from his show on Fox, making sexist and crude comments about women and complaining about the network on the set of his wildly popular show.
In one video, he referred to a woman as “yummy” and in another, he is seen asking a female makeup artist if women have “pillow fights” in the restroom.
The leaks come amid a number of other media reports suggesting Carlson’s private text messages, which came to light as part of the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems the network recently settled for $787 million, played a factor in his ouster, including messages in which he disparaged female executives at the company. […]
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) announced this week he will seek a second term as a governor by posting a wannabe Clint Eastwood themed video, where all he does is shoot people.
In the 13-second video posted on Twitter, Reeves’ face is superimposed on Eastwood’s in clips from the classic Dollars trilogy movies. He’s seen cosplaying the white anti-hero, the Man with No Name, shooting at Mexican bandits with a Colt revolver and puffing on a cigarillo. [video at the link]
The violent and cringe video came the same day Reese kicked off his campaign officially with an event in Gulfport, followed by a Wednesday campaign rally and lunch in Richland.
During the Wednesday event, Reeves spoke to a crowd of more than 200 people, saying he’s not just facing a Democratic opponent but the “national liberal machine” that’s supposedly out to get Mississippi.
“My friends, this is a different governor’s campaign than we have ever seen before in our state because we are not up against a local-yokel Mississippi Democrat, we are up against a national liberal machine,” Reeves said at his second campaign kickoff event. “They are extreme. They are radical and vicious. They believe welfare is success. They believe that taxes are good and businesses are bad. They think boys can be girls, that babies have no life, and that our state and our nation are racist.”
The sinister campaign theme of fighting off an evil other has been embraced by other Republicans this election cycle, most notably by Donald Trump, as the party continues to embrace culture war red meat and far-right conspiracy theories as campaign platforms. […]
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In the latest scandal to rock the United States Supreme Court, reports have emerged that Harlan Crow, the Republican megadonor, offered to pay to send Ginni Thomas to law school for a second time.
According to a source who witnessed the offer, made on board Crow’s yacht, the real-estate mogul told Justice Clarence Thomas that “since Ginni is involved in making so many Supreme Court decisions, she really should go to law school.”
After Justice Thomas informed him that she had, in fact, already gone to law school, “Crow appeared absolutely shocked,” the source said.
“Ginni went to law school?” he reportedly said. “Well, now I’ve heard everything.”
Composing himself, the billionaire added, “The offer still stands. It couldn’t hurt for her to go again. I’m offering her a full ride.”
A spokesman for Crow would not confirm or deny reports that he had also offered to send Justice Samuel Alito to law school.
Kentucky Rep. Danny Bentley made comments about Jewish women and the Holocaust during a debate Wednesday over anti-abortion legislation, quickly drawing condemnation from several members of the Jewish community who raised serious concerns with what he said.
Bentley, a Republican and pharmacist from Russell, later apologized for his comments Wednesday night, saying he “meant absolutely no harm.”
As state representatives debated an omnibus anti-abortion bill Wednesday afternoon, Bentley spoke about the medication abortions the legislation would restrict and invoked Jews and the Holocaust as he made claims about the origins of one such medication, which members of the Jewish community quickly denounced as both false and antisemitic.
Bentley falsely said RU-486, or Mifepristone, one of two pills taken to induce abortion, was developed during World War II and was called Zyklon B, the gas that killed millions of Jews in the Holocaust.
He added that “the person who developed (it) was a Jew.”
Referring to an earlier floor amendment that attempted to allow Jewish women to be exempt from the abortion restrictions in the bill — with the Democrat who filed it, Rep. Mary Lou Marzian of Louisville, saying the faith does not believe life begins at conception — Bentley then opined on his perception of the sexual habits of Jewish women, “since we brought up the Hebrew family today.”
“Did you know that a Jewish woman has less cancer of the cervix than any other race in this country or this world?” Bentley asked. “And why is that? Because the Jewish women only have one sex partner… They don’t have multiple sex partners. To say that the Jewish people approve of this drug now is wrong.” …
“You can kill anyone making a scene in a public space if you’re personally uncomfortable” is a hell of a stance from the same people who’ve been throwing tantrums in Target over its masking policies for the last three years.
Eight of the so-called fake electors who sought to give Georgia’s electoral votes in the 2020 election to former President Donald Trump instead of President Joe Biden have agreed to immunity deals with the prosecution, a new court filing shows… The filing did not disclose the terms of the immunity deals…
The revelation came in a document filed Friday by the electors’ lawyer, Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow, in response to a request from the prosecution that Debrow be disqualified as the lawyer for the eight electors with immunity deals in addition to two others who do not have immunity deals…
Organizers of an effort to remove a rural Arizona county supervisor for skepticism over the results of last year’s election announced that they have fallen short of the legal requirement to proceed with a recall effort that would have given voters the option of removing him from office.
The campaign to recall Tom Crosby in rural Cochise County said Wednesday night that it fell short of collecting the 4,865 signatures required to place the recall on the ballot for voters later this year.
Crosby is one of two Republican supervisors on the three-member board who refused to certify the 2022 election in the county…
Whilst Indigenous Australian journalist,author & TV host Stan Grant has this to say here :
For the characters in Joyce’s great novel — and for people like me — absurdity may be the only logical, sane response to the spectacle of the coronation of King Charles III.
Taking the coronation seriously only risks becoming complicit in this antediluvian ritual.A 74-year-old man will finally inherit the crown of a faded empire. His own family is not united, let alone his country.
Charles will still reign over 15 nations, among them St Lucia, Tuvalu, Grenada, Canada and, of course, steadfast Australia.
The “republican” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be among those pledging his allegiance.
To seal it all, the new King will be anointed with holy oil. This man is apparently a gift from God. ..(snip)…
Yes, mockery may be the best medicine.
Dare not think about this too much. Because then this illusion shatters. We would have to think of the coronation regalia and the crown of stolen jewels.
The stolen land. The genocide. The brutality.
I would think about the declaration of martial law on my people, the Wiradjuri — 200 years ago next year — in the name of the Crown.
.. (snip)…
In the 21st century the old white empires gather dust. History’s tombs are opened and the ghosts of those trampled under empire are haunting us.
Just blood diamonds from ancient Africa in an old new king’s bloody crown.
rorschachsays
SC @417,
it is becoming ever more difficult to judge what is happening with this pandemic, as the attempts to make this thing disappear from public view at all cost have largely succeeded. No more regular genome sequencing, no testing, in particular in hospitals before admission, and now, eg in Canada, attempts to even prevent doctors from writing “Covid19” on death certificates.
Over here in Europe, we can still guesstimate from wastewater viral loads(which are at an alltime high) and the occasional university incidence surveillance program what is going on, but it’s getting harder. Therefore I expect deaths in the US and elsewhere to still be at the level from the end of the northern hemisphere winter. The official numbers we are given are essentially all useless now.
Reginald Selkirksays
@433: Prosecutors would not have offered immunity without something in return. So I am eager to see whom they are throwing under the bus.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has signed onto a letter stating he and more than 40 members of the Senate GOP conference will not back “any bill that raises the debt ceiling without substantive spending and budget reforms,” according to sources…
That’s a misleading headline for this first section of the update. I’ll post details concerning Wagner forces and Bakhmut later.
On Friday, Foreign Policy ran an article by Anatol Lieven at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, arguing that Ukraine should abandon calls for the return of Crimea. In seeking to reclaim its 2014 borders, writes Lievan, Ukraine is creating a “Frankenstein monster” that prevents any reasonable grounds for peace. He states that, “The Ukrainian government is now trapped by its own uncompromising—and increasingly indefensible—policy.”
Lieven argues that the hard line the Ukrainian government has taken in demanding the return of Crimea and Donetsk is an obstacle to peace, that forcing out Russians who have flooded into the region since 2014 would be akin to ethnic cleansing, and that “control of the strategically vital military base of Sevastopol might be the point on which Moscow would be willing to escalate toward nuclear war.”
Since this article is put forward as an “argument,” I’d like to give them one, starting with the most obvious point: This, all of this, is ridiculous.
In July of 2022, Mother Jones reported that two of the most prominent members had resigned from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in direct reaction to that institute’s positions on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“This is a completely unjustified, unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state. There was no justification for this,” former Quincy member Joe Cirincione said in an interview with Mother Jones. “And yet Quincy keeps justifying it.”
In October of last year, the Quincy Institute was deeply involved in that profoundly embarrassing letter from members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus pushing President Biden to shift tactics and force Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table. Just one day later, the letter was withdrawn with a statement from Rep. Pramila Jayapal reading in part, “The letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately was released by staff without vetting.”
According to Vox, an early draft of that letter was “reviewed by the Quincy Institute, which helped build support for it and has advocated for more avenues of diplomacy outside this letter.”
With that as a foundation, it shouldn’t be surprising to find Quincy once again finding an imaginary reason why Ukraine is the one threatening the possibility of peace. If they are not outright tankies, they are at least tankie-adjacent.
When it comes to the specific issue of Crimea, they’re also simply wrong.
The biggest reason that calling on Ukraine to step back from liberating Crimea is a profoundly silly idea is simply that Ukraine may be forced to do exactly that.
At the end of the day, there’s a real possibility that Russia’s flag will still be over Sevastopol when the guns go silent. But that understanding, if it comes, will come because Ukraine also understands and accepts this conclusion, and will depend on factors (military, economic, political) that we have no way of knowing ahead of time. it’s up to Ukraine to ultimately determine whether it is somewhere they are willing to go, and in the case of Crimea, there is a particular reason for them to argue that it is not a concession they will ever make.
Russia, and particularly Vladimir Putin, really, really wants Crimea. Grabbing Crimea is probably the top feather in Putin’s cap. He loves his shiny (though now pockmarked) bridge. He loves having territory that wasn’t under Russian control when he stepped in.
Take away Crimea, and what does he have? With Donetsk and Luhansk, Putin has to pretend he did it for the locals. Crimea is for—clamp hand over heart—Mother Russia.
So, yes, he wants it. Giving up Crimea would probably hurt Putin more than anything short of one of his fellow oligarchs deciding it was time for new management. And that’s exactly why Ukraine should insist, and keep insisting, that they will not stop short of expelling Russia from Crimea. Because if some day, thanks to Ukrainian battlefield victories, Putin finally decides that he stands more at risk in continuing the invasion than in conceding defeat and going home, negotiation about control of Crimea cannot start from the position of “Russia really wants it, and we’re willing to give it to them.”
Lieven further argues that its naval base in Sevastopol is of such importance to Russia that liberating it “might be the point on which Moscow would be willing to escalate toward nuclear war.” Like every nuclear threat that has preceded this one, it’s ridiculous.
If there’s anything the climate crisis has done to relieve international tensions, it’s that many of Russia’s northern ports, previously unusable for weeks to months each winter, are now much more open. Shipping along the northern sea route has exploded over the last decade. Russia is making significant investments in North Sea ports and is openly bragging about these “year round” ports.
Sevastopol is of much less value to Russia now than it was in the past. And that’s ignoring the fact that Russia has a perfectly good naval base for anything it wants to put on the Black Sea at Novorossiysk, barely 100 km from Crimea. The primary oil terminals are also on mainland Russia, on the other side of the Kerch Straits.
Sevastopol is a nostalgia play. It was vital to Soviet Union interests at one time. It’s much less important to Russia today.
Russia is not going to launch a nuclear war over Sevastopol. Also … Putin does a perfectly adequate job of rattling the nuclear saber at the smallest excuse. Watching other people do it for him in the name of “peace” is more than a little irritating.
I forgot to watch the coronation of the King Charles and Queen Camilla this morning. Oh well.
I went back and looked at a few photos online and have come to the conclusion that the horses looked good, the little children looked clean and sleepy, and there were some nice flowers. Much of the rest looked absolutely ridiculous.
Anger and resentment welled inside the local leader as he surveyed the mourners at his friend’s funeral reception last year.
Bill Gates, 51, a lifelong Republican elected to the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, stood with his wife and a friend and ticked off the names of those gathered around them who had betrayed him, their party and their country.
Gates stewed that they had done nothing as he and other leaders in Arizona’s most populous county faced relentless criticism, violent threats and online harassment for upholding the results of the 2020 presidential election. […] They stood by as his family lived in fear and briefly fled their home.
Because of their actions and inactions, Gates said, his integrity had been questioned. He was labeled a traitor who should be shot or hung. One person wrote on social media that his daughters should be raped. He worried his own parents, avid Fox News viewers, might believe the lies about him.
At the reception, Gates began wildly waving his arms as he ranted. He was out of control and on the verge of disrupting the solemn gathering. His friend walked away. His wife, Pam, grabbed his arm tightly and shook him.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked. “You’ve got to stop this. Stop it!”
The intensity of the past two years had delivered Bill Gates to the brink. His usual cheerfulness and folksy humor were gone, and he had grown sullen and lonely as he detached from those closest to him. He wasn’t sleeping and had lost his appetite. He was always preparing for the next fight, and his ever-simmering anger would increasingly explode into view during public meetings, interviews with journalists and social gatherings.
A therapist would soon tell him he was experiencing classic signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition typically associated with wartime veterans and violent assaults.
Gates is among many election officials whose lives were upended as they became high-profile targets under the false notion that widespread fraud had tainted the 2020 election. It is an idea that continues to be promoted by former president Donald Trump and his allies.
Efforts to forcefully combat these false narratives — including when Gates testified before the House Oversight Committee in October 2021 — are nearly always accompanied with threats and harassment.
[….] Conferences for election officials now double as group therapy sessions, opportunities to talk with their peers about the strain the work has had on their mental health and their families.
“This has been a family journey,” Gates said, his voice cracking. “We’re all working through this together. But we had to understand that we couldn’t do this on our own. We had to reach out for help.”
Before election denialism took hold, he had been an optimist — and in his mind, a model conservative.
[…] By the spring of 2022, however, he had begun to question his own worth. He felt himself slipping away. His family did, too.
His wife said she no longer recognized the man she’d met on their college mock trial team back in Iowa three decades ago. His three teenage daughters stopped coming to him with their problems. Somewhere in the fog of his fight for democracy, they thought he had stopped listening to them. He was consumed by feelings of abandonment by friends and never-ending political fights with fellow Republicans.
His wife confronted him in the kitchen the morning after his friend’s funeral in early May 2022. “You have to go to therapy,” Pam Gates, 51, recalled telling him. […] She knew being in politics required sacrifices, but this was too much.
[…] He called the county’s benefits department and soon after, described the state of his health in an online assessment. “I’m an elected official who has experienced a significant amount of death threats since the 2020 election and also have had many other elected officials from my own party who have attacked me and questioned my integrity,” he typed. […] “I have become very sad and very angry during these interviews, sometimes even crying.”
[…] The threats started even before the presidential election […] fliers had also been distributed to his neighbors. He and his family suddenly felt unsafe in their own home.
One daughter asked how people with such vicious tactics knew where they lived. Another, who is Ugandan and Black, was devastated that the flier equated her father’s support of the mask mandate to slavery. His third daughter was unable to sleep that night and many more nights to come.
“That’s when everything changed,” Gates recalled. […]
Much more at the link, including how relentless and cruel Trump was.
WAGNER REPORTEDLY UNLEASHES BANNED INCENDIARY WEAPONS IN BAKHMUT
The line between what is and what is not allowed when it comes to incendiary weapons and international law is almost completely arbitrary. Whether it’s “closely regulated” white phosphorus, or the use-it-by-the-ton thermite, both burn at over 2,200° C, enough to set fire to even a slightly flammable structure and make even the smallest contact with flesh into a serious, long-term injury.
Throughout this conflict, Russia has bombarded cities across Ukraine with munitions that were clearly intended to spark fires, but most of them were barely on the acceptable side of that poorly-drawn line. But on Friday, multiple reports from Bakhmut indicated that Wagner Group forces, in the midst of Prigozhin’s complaints about an ammunition shortage, have broken out MLRS to bombard the city with incendiary bombs that may be way over the line, creating localized infernos. [Tweet and video at the link]
The images are horrendous.
With Ukrainian forces hanging on in a small section in the western quarter of the city, it becomes more possible for Russian artillery to concentrate its fire at Ukrainian positions. In the case of Wagner, it becomes possible to concentrate on the atrocities.
PRIGOZHIN AND KADYROV GO GONZO E GONZO
Anyone wondering when we might witness the beginning of a war between Russia’s privately owned armies should circle today on their calendar.
First up In the ongoing saga of Wagner Group getting slaughtered wholesale in Bakhmut, owner Yevgeny Prigozhin stepped away from his backdrop of dead mercenaries and stumbled over to the couch to explain how the general he complained about for months is actually great, because he picked through old ammunition dumps to find a thing or two for Prigo’s boys. The maneuvering that turned Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev from the object of Prigozhin’s daily scorn into a “great man” remains incomprehensible. [Tweet and video at the link]
Meanwhile, a half-forgotten face emerged from the mists of time as Ramzan Kadyrov returned to sneed over Prigozhin’s whining, and to claim that his men would fill the gap if Wagner mercenaries were so set on living rather than getting killed by the tens of thousands. [Tweet and video of blustering, ridiculous man at the link]
The first suspicion was that Kadyrov was asked to get out of a hammock somewhere and film this, so it could be used to goad Prigozhin back to work. Of course, Kadyrov would probably be happy to bring his boys to a suitably scenic location, far from any danger, declare that they’re in Bakhmut, shoot up the neighborhood for a few minutes, and put the whole event on TikTok. Then he could go back to the hotel for a well-deserved rest. [Yep. That seems like an apt description, and it makes reference to some of Kadyrov’s previous social media postings, which were easily debunked and also farcically theatrical.]
Except this time, Prigozhin didn’t ignore his blowhard rival. On Saturday, Prigozhin was back with a new statement in which he made a formal request that Kadyrov’s forces replace the Wagner positions in the city. [Formal request from Prigozhin to be relieved in Bakhmut and replaced by Kadyrov is available as an image at the link, in Russian language.]
Prigozhin also went back in front of the cameras to send a message through his press service. Because of course Prigozhin has a press service. “I thank Ramzan Akhmatovich for agreeing,” said Prigozhin, “and for having, most likely, the opportunity to obtain everything necessary and all the necessary resources, to stand in Bakhmut in our positions. “
Prigozhin went on to claim that he had contacted Kadyrov’s representatives, “in order to start transferring positions immediately” so that a handover from Wagner to Kadyrov’s Akhmat special forces could take place at midnight on May 10.
Finally, because this whole series of events has been so deeply, deeply strange, Prigozhin finished by saying what critics of Russia’s attack on Bakhmut have been saying from the beginning—the human wave attacks have cost tens of thousands of Wagner forces and that the handover would occur, “exactly at the moment when, according to our calculations, we will completely exhaust our combat potential.” [JFC]
That selection of the May 10 date might suggest that Prigozhin intends to use the remaining days before Russia’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations to clear the last of Bakhmut of Ukrainian forces, and give Vladimir Putin something to brag about. With Wagner dousing the city in what certainly appears to be heavily restricted white phosphorus munitions on Friday night, it certainly doesn’t appear they are backing away. Only Prigozhin finished his statement by declaring that he was sure the Chechens would have few problems clearing Ukrainian forces that controlled “a little more than two square kilometers” of Bakhmut. Which makes it seem he expects to leave this little problem unresolved for Kadyrov.
Will any of this hot air actually translate into movements on the ground? That’s hard to say. According to the Ukrainian general staff, Russia launched around fifty attacks on Ukrainian positions on Friday, with the majority of those attacks happening in and around Bakhmut. That doesn’t seem like the actions of a force that is either exhausted or preparing to hand off control.
There remains the possibility that all of this is just theater designed to distract from the fact that Russia continues to engage in the same tactics on the ground that it has employed for nine grinding months. But probably not. None of these guys is that good an actor.
A short note found among all the details about who wore what to the coronation ceremony:
Jill Biden, the American first lady, arrived in a sky blue suit with matching gloves and a bow in her hair (a sort of notional hat), all by Ralph Lauren, a designer who has built his own empire on Americana as well as a fantasy of olde England, and thus a choice that seemed particularly apropos […] Even more pointedly, Dr. Biden arrived with her granddaughter, Finnegan Biden, who was wearing a daffodil yellow caped Markarian dress, so that when the two women walked in together, they looked like … the Ukrainian flag!
That’s an impressively tactical approach to first — and social media — impressions.
It also made sense, since the Bidens were seated next to Olena Zelenska, the first lady of Ukraine, who herself was wearing a simple light blue dress and coat.
The level of fighting at Avdiivka, just northwest of Donetsk, has been second only to Bakhmut over the last several months. However, unlike Bakhmut where it seems that Russia has made a slow but inexorable advance, Avdiivka has held out right on the border of occupied territory since the invasion began. [map at the link]
In the last week, Ukrainian forces have reportedly expanded their area of control, bringing them next to the H20 highway and actually overrunning a portion of Russia’s defensive lines. That means Ukraine now reportedly controls areas it hasn’t held since they were lost in 2014. [Tweet and video at the link]
This progress makes the idea that Ukraine might throw some or all of their counteroffensive in this direction seem a bit more possible. However, Russia has spent a lot of time in the last months worrying about that possibility, and some Ukrainian Telegraph sources claim Russia has rushed reinforcements into a previously undermanned Donetsk city. [Tweet and video at the link. The video shows newly constructed or expanded trench lines and other fortifications.]
Even if Ukraine doesn’t direct their forces through Avdiivka, this would work exceedingly well as a feint—any troops sent to garrison Donetsk means the other potential avenues of counterattack have been thinned out. Russia may be finding itself in an unwinnable game of Whac-A-Mole.
HIMARS MAY BE LESS EFFECTIVE DUE TO ELECTRONIC WARFARE
The problem with any precision weapon that depends—completely or in part—on GPS to determine its location, is that GPS signals can be impaired. The U.S. can do it directly by altering signals from satellites, however ground based jammers can also broadcast false signals that make positions appear to shift significantly. According to CNN, that’s just what Russia has been doing: Jamming GPS signals so that precision guided weapons, and in particular rockets fired by HIMARS, have been less effective.
In theory, HIMARS rockets fired from 80 kilometers away can still land within 3 meters of their target. So once a gathering of equipment, an ammunition depot, a fuel supply, or other high value target has been identified, Ukraine can deliver devastating 100 kg explosive missiles directly to target within seconds. But if Russia is interfering with GPS readings, those incoming rockets may land far outside their effective range. This can be done either by altering the coordinates that the rocket itself uses to help determine position, or by interfering with surveillance drones so that they feed back incorrect locations.
This vulnerability of GPS has long been recognized and systems such as those in HIMARS have electronics which can recognize when the GPS positions diverge between launch position and target position. But obtaining accurate coordinates, or dealing with GPS coordinates that are being distorted across a portion of the battlefield, is making HIMARS less efficient than it was when it first appeared in Ukraine.
Now Ukraine and the U.S. appeared to be engaged in a kind of invisible battle with Russia, one in which Russia steps up the level and sophistication of their jamming, as Ukrainian operators and U.S. software engineers work out ways to get around the new obstacles.
Russia also pays a price for the level of jamming it is using, in that any of its own systems that depend on GPS (or the Russian GLONASS satellites) are also rendered ineffective. That’s not just MLRS, but drones and missiles. In fact, the systems that are making it harder for HIMARS to hit the bullseye are just part of the general effort to make all precision weapons less valuable. In doing so, Russia increases the value of brute-force: massive artillery and human wave attacks.
However, something seems to be working on the Ukraine side of this struggle. In the last week, Ukraine has averaged over a dozen Russian artillery or MLRS systems taken out each day, Wagner ammunition depots near Bakmut have been destroyed, and Ukrainian drones have penetrated far behind the lines to hit Russian fuel storage facilities.
RUSSIA REPORTEDLY EVACUATING “BORDER TOWNS” IN ZAPORIZHZHIA
Multiple sources on Telegram and Twitter are reporting that Russia has begun evacuating civilians from towns along the northern edge of their area of occupation in Zaporizhzhia. This is apparently being done in anticipation of the upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive, with some sources indicating Russia fears that locals would help Ukrainian forces to identify Russian positions. [map at the link]
Included in the evacuations are larger towns such as Vasylivka and Polohy as well as a number of smaller towns and villages along the same stretch of the front line. However, this one in particular comes as a surprise. [Tweet at the link] Tokmak is located better than 20 km from the current front lines and Russia has been working for months to surround this strategic location with a network of defensive lines. Kos has talked about why a move on Tokmak might be one of the most decisive directions for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. So has community member RO37 in his post on why Tokmak could be key to breaking through Russian occupied territory in the south.
Tokmak’s importance, as is so often the case, lies in logistics, logistics, and logistics.
Tokmak represents both the best way to sever Russian lines of communication in the area, and to guard further Ukrainian advances from a potential attack in their rear. Right now, it seems like Russia is bracing for a blow in exactly this location.
Meanwhile, pro-Russian milbloggers are pointing to Tokmak as a sign that Russia is prepared and that any attempt by Ukraine to advance in the area will be a “debacle.” They’re preparing to celebrate “burning Bradleys and Leopards” as Russia turns the Ukrainian counteroffensive away.
Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be taking bets.
[Tweet and video showing showing Ukrainians being returned home after being held as prisoners of war in russia.]
In what was likely the final day of the E. Jean Carroll rape case against Donald Trump, jurors in a Manhattan federal court Thursday were treated to a videotaped deposition of Trump mounting his defense. Carroll, who is suing Trump for battery and defamation, has accused the former New Yorker of raping her at a luxury department store in the mid-90s—an accusation he denies.
Although the jury never heard from Trump in person, it’s difficult to imagine he could have harmed himself more substantially on the stand than in the recorded deposition from last October. Although some of the information from the deposition was already public, jurors saw the video for the first time.
Politico reporter Erica Orden described Trump’s demeanor in the deposition as “agitated” and pugnacious, sometimes folding his arms over his chest in his signature show of pouty disgust. But maybe even more to the point, Trump essentially admitted to believing that, as a “star,” he can get away with forcibly molesting women. He also effectively confessed to Carroll being his type even as he testified that she wasn’t.
Amid it all, Trump also managed to make a supreme ass of himself while being cross-examined by Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.
One of the most satisfying portions of the deposition came when Kaplan asked Trump about the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape that emerged late in the 2016 contest […]
“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the [P-word]. You can do anything,” Trump said in the leaked audio published by The Washington Post on Oct. 7, 2016, just one month before Election Day. He was never held accountable.
When Kaplan played the tape for him, Trump responded, “Well, historically that’s true with stars.”
Seizing on the statement, Kaplan asked whether he stood by it.
“Well, I guess if you look over the last million years, that’s been largely true — not always true, but largely true, unfortunately or fortunately,” Trump responded.
“And you consider yourself to be a star?” Kaplan pressed.
“I think so, yeah,” Trump said.
Okay. Taken to its logical conclusion, Trump thinks he can “do anything”—grab ’em, kiss ’em, force himself on ’em. After all, he’s a ‘star.’”
Next came the exchange in which Trump accidentally admitted that Carroll is indeed his exact type—as in, marriage material—despite his protestations to the contrary.
After Trump called Carroll’s accusation a “ridiculous, disgusting story” because she wasn’t his “type,” Kaplan pressed him on his lengthy history of denying similar assaults because the accusers weren’t his “type.” Trump angrily shot back, “You wouldn’t be a choice of mine, either, to be honest,” adding, “I wouldn’t in any circumstances have any interest in you.”
That must’ve been a relief to Kaplan. She isn’t just a lesbian, but as gay famous as lawyers come after winning the 2013 United States v. Windsor case striking down the Defense of Marriage Act. Two years later, that landmark Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for the high court to overturn same-sex marriage bans nationwide. Trump, sharp as a tack, either didn’t know, didn’t care, or forgot.
But now it was time for Kaplan to set her trap, asking, “I take it the three women you’ve married are all your type?”
“Yeah,” Trump replied.
Earlier in the deposition, Trump had confused a photo of Carroll for one of his wives. Shown a picture of himself interacting with Carroll at a party, Trump replied, “It’s Marla … That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife.”
To sum up: Trump’s a “star” who can therefore “do anything” to women who are his “type,” which Carroll most certainly was because she was apparently a doppelganger of his ex-wife, actress Marla Maples.
Case closed, both literally (both sides rested) and figuratively speaking.
But knowingly or unknowingly, Trump maintained his delusions right to the end, calling Carroll a “nut job” and reasserting that he didn’t know her (except for that one picture where he confused her for his wife).
The judge hearing the case, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, left open the possibility that Trump’s lawyers could make a motion by Sunday evening for their client to testify in his own defense. He certainly seemed to suggest he wanted to, speaking to reporters Thursday at an Irish golf course: [Tweet and video at the link]
[…] In Trump’s telling, he’s the victim of a rape case for which he didn’t testify in person, his lawyers didn’t call a single witness, and they mounted no defense. [Their “defense,” such as it was including trying to demean E. Jean Carroll.]
SANDPOINT, Idaho — At a brewery in this northern Idaho city, hundreds of people recently held a wake of sorts to mourn the closure of Sandpoint’s only labor and delivery ward, collateral damage from the state’s Republican-led effort to criminalize nearly all abortions.
Jen Quintano, the event’s organizer and a Sandpoint resident who runs a tree service, called to the crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder as children ran underfoot, “Raise your hand if you were born at Bonner General! Raise your hand if you gave birth at Bonner General!” Nearly everyone raised their hand.
Later this month, the hospital, founded in 1949 near the shores of Lake Pend Oreille, will stop providing services for expectant mothers, forcing patients across northern Idaho to travel at least an additional hour for care. In June, a second Idaho hospital, Valor Health, in the rural city of Emmett, will also halt labor and delivery services.
Those decisions came within months of Idaho’s abortion ban, one of the nation’s strictest, going into effect in August 2022. Physicians can now perform the medical procedure only to stop the death of a pregnant woman or in the case of rape or incest reported to the police.
In March, Bonner General Health officials said the law was a driving force in the closure, noting Idaho’s legal and political climate.
“Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving,” the hospital wrote in a statement. “Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult. In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care.”
OB-GYNs Face Dangerous Dilemmas
Amelia Huntsberger, an OB-GYN, has delivered babies and treated miscarriages at Bonner General for more than a decade. Soon after abortion became illegal here, she saw a patient with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy — where a fertilized egg grows outside the uterus — and faced a dangerous dilemma. The state law did not allow physicians to terminate ectopic pregnancies, which are never viable.
“I went to the emergency room and evaluated the patient,” Huntsberger said. “Her vital signs were stable at the time of my evaluation, but I knew based on her imaging we needed to move quickly to stabilize her.”
Huntsberger said her duty as a doctor was clear — to prioritize the safety of her patient — but added that she “also knew that I was putting myself potentially at risk of felony charges, which would have a minimum of two years in jail, [and] loss of my medical license for six months.”
[…] The Idaho Supreme Court has since ruled that the law does not apply to ectopic or molar pregnancies, a rare complication caused by an unusual growth of cells. But physicians say that limited change does not account for many common pregnancy complications that can escalate rapidly.
That has led to deep frustration and turmoil in hospital emergency rooms.
“When is it OK for me to act?” Huntsberger said. “Do I wait until she bleeds out? Do I wait until we do CPR? When is it that I can intervene? How close to death does she need to be before I take care of her?”
State Rep. Mark Sauter, a Republican from this lakeside community 60 miles northeast of Spokane, Washington, said he hadn’t thought much about the state abortion ban.
“It really wasn’t high on my radar other than I’m a pro-life guy, and I ran that way,” he said during an interview at his home overlooking the lake and forested mountains. “I didn’t see it as having a real big community impact.”
Then in December, Sauter had dinner with Huntsberger, whose husband is an emergency physician at Bonner General. “They started explaining all the details of what’s going on and how it was uncomfortable for them,” Sauter said.
Those conversations proved revelatory. “You get exposed to something, all of a sudden you go, ‘Wow, there’s a different way to look at this,’” he said. “‘What are we going to do about all this?’” [Why didn’t this Republican doofus do his research earlier? Isn’t that part of his job?]
With Sandpoint’s maternity ward closing, Sauter supported a bill that would have allowed doctors to terminate pregnancies to protect a woman’s health, not just prevent her death. But that effort was shot down by other Republicans during a committee hearing in late March.
“The list was endless when we began considering the conditions that could fall under that language,” said Rep. Julianne Young, a Republican from Blackfoot. “We want to make sure that health of the mother doesn’t become so broad that everything becomes an exception to take the life of a potential child.”
The effects of the ban are being felt statewide. In Boise, the state capital, Lauren Miller, an OB-GYN, resigned earlier this month from her position at one of the state’s largest hospitals, St. Luke’s Health System, further shrinking the state’s already minuscule corps of maternal fetal medicine specialists.
As a doctor who cares for complex and high-risk cases, Miller said, she’s had to send patients out of state to end dangerous pregnancies, including a woman with a serious kidney disease.
“I could very easily have taken care of that patient along with my partners,” she said, noting that the Boise-based medical center has kidney specialists and an intensive care unit. “Instead, she had to leave her family and fly several more hours away to receive care in an expeditious time frame. It’s just not what we signed up to do.” […]
The Start of an Exodus
Directors of women’s health care services at Idaho hospitals are bracing for what’s next: 75 of 117 Idaho OB-GYNs recently surveyed by the Idaho Coalition for Safe Reproductive Health Care said they were considering leaving the state. Of those, nearly 100% — 73 of 75 — cited Idaho’s restrictive abortion laws.
An exodus could affect broader medical coverage for women who rely on OB-GYNs for routine and urgent gynecological care unrelated to pregnancy, like menstrual disorders, endometriosis, and pelvic pain.
[…] In Seattle, about 270 miles west of Sandpoint, Sarah Villareal, an OB-GYN, is now practicing medicine without fear of prosecution after moving from Texas, where performing an abortion is a felony punishable by up to life in prison. In Texas, private citizens can file civil lawsuits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion, earning a minimum of $10,000 for cases prosecuted successfully.
The difference between Texas and Washington is stark, said Villareal, noting an atmosphere of fear and distrust at many Texas hospitals. She recalled caring for a patient in a Gulf Coast emergency room who was having a miscarriage, though the fetus still had a heartbeat. The patient, already in physical and emotional crisis, had to navigate a legal issue, too.
“She was trying to figure out if me as the provider was going to report her if she did decide that she wanted to do a procedure to save her life over the life of her fetus,” Villareal recalled. “And the worst part was I could assure her that I’m going to try to do everything that I can for her, but I could not assure her that someone else in the emergency room or someone else in the operating room was not going to report her.”
[…] Even medical students are beginning to change their plans.
Kathryn Tiger and Allie Ward, first-year medical students in Moscow, Idaho, are both planning to become surgeons, though both say they intend not to practice in Idaho.
“I wouldn’t feel safe here as a provider, and I wouldn’t feel safe here as a patient,” said Tiger, 25.
[…] Back in Sandpoint, Huntsberger and her family are saying their goodbyes to Idaho, saddened by the idea that some patients left behind may be in medical peril.
[…] But, she added, “This isn’t a safe place to practice medicine anymore.”
Other comments posted about the lack of diversity evident at the coronation:
Nearly half the population of London is non-white. Will any of the media comment on the fact that the crowd who chose to attend the coronation seems to be overhwhelmingly white?
—————–
It is slightly jarring that this coronation keeps banging on about all faiths and people and then it pans back to the crowd and it’s just a carpet of old white inherited wealth wearing flashy coats.
Commentary:
[…] The organizers of the celebration reportedly pushed for touches of diversity in an attempt to modernize the crisis-ridden British royal family and, per the coronation order of service, “reflect the diversity of the United Kingdom and its peoples, in striking contrast to seventy years ago.” But the huge crowds outside Buckingham Palace looked positively non-diverse, despite the fact that more than 40 percent of greater London’s population identifies as non-white.
Perhaps they were discouraged by the rain or bigger things like, you know, the monarchy’s legacy of sustaining and profiting by colonialism and slavery. As the Associated Press reported in the run up to Saturday, the country’s diverse communities were, if anything, “ambivalent” about the pending coronation. “Personally it’s a little bit hard to connect to the whole occasion,” said a musician descendant of migrants from Jamaica, an ex-colony now trying to leave the Commonwealth. “I think that the coronation could possibly allow people like me to try and connect to (the monarchy). But it can be a bit tough.”
Republican lawmaker Liz Harris who was previously expelled will not be sent back to the Arizona House of Representatives, Maricopa County officials announced Friday.
The county’s Board of Supervisors instead selected Republican Julie Willoughby to replace her, despite Republican precinct committee members in her legislative district giving Harris the most votes…
lumipunasays
I just saw an amusing Finnish news headline saying literally “Britain crowns its first monarch in 70 years”, as if the British monarchy was being re-established after a long break.
no attempt to establish a fully-fledged Finnish monarchy has been successful. When it finally became established as a modern independent nation-state, it was–despite a very brief flirtation with monarchy–in the form of a republic.
Tracking down accurate information about Philadelphia’s elections on Twitter used to be easy. The account for the city commissioners who run elections, @phillyvotes, was the only one carrying a blue check mark, a sign of authenticity.
But ever since the social media platform overhauled its verification service last month, the check mark has disappeared. That’s made it harder to distinguish @phillyvotes from a list of random accounts not run by the elections office but with very similar names.
The election commission applied weeks ago for a gray check mark—Twitter’s new symbol to help users identify official government accounts—but has yet to hear back from the Twitter, commission spokesman Nick Custodio said. It’s unclear whether @phillyvotes is an eligible government account under Twitter’s new rules.
[…] Pennsylvania has a primary election May 16 and the commission uses its account to share important information with voters in real time. […]
[…] Experts have warned that foreign adversaries or others may try to influence the election, either through online disinformation campaigns or by hacking into election infrastructure.
[…] Election and security experts say the inconsistency of Twitter’s new verification system is a misinformation disaster waiting to happen.
“The lack of clear, at-a-glance verification on Twitter is a ticking time bomb for disinformation,” said Rachel Tobac, CEO of the cybersecurity company SocialProof Security. “That will confuse users – especially on important days like election days.”
[…] Fake accounts posing as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the city’s Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation falsely claimed the city was closing one of its main thoroughfares to private traffic. The fake accounts used the same photos, biographical text and home page links as the real ones. Their posts amassed hundreds of thousands of views before being taken down.
[…] while the main Philadelphia city government account quickly received its gray check mark last month, the local election commission has not heard back.
Election offices in four of the country’s five most populous counties — Cook County in Illinois, Harris County in Texas, Maricopa County in Arizona and San Diego County — remain unverified […] Maricopa, which includes Phoenix, has been targeted repeatedly by election conspiracy theorists […]
An email sent to Twitter’s press office and a company safety officer requesting comment was answered only with an auto-reply of a poop emoji.
[…] Custodio, at the Philadelphia elections commission, said his office would not buy verification either, even if it gets denied a gray check. “The blue or gold check mark just verifies you as a paid subscriber and does not verify identity,” he said.
[…] “Because Twitter is dropping the ball on verification, the burden will fall on voters to double check that the information they are consuming and sharing is legitimate,” said Jill Greene, voting and elections manager for Common Cause Pennsylvania.
[…] “The first rule of a good online community user interface is to ’help the helpers.’ This is the opposite of that,” Caulfield said. “It takes a community of people who want to help boost good information, and robs them of the tools to make fast, accurate decisions.”
Contrary to popular belief, firearm deaths in the United States are statistically more likely in small towns, not major cities, according to new research. Across the country, gun suicides are more common than gun homicides, and gun suicides are largely responsible for an increase in gun deaths over the past few decades, the study also finds.
The analysis of two decades of U.S. mortality data was conducted by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the University of California, Davis, and appears in the journal JAMA Surgery(link is external and opens in a new window)…
@445 Lynna
White phosphorous is horrific, and it’s not just Russia that does it. Basically everyone does it using the bullshit cover story that they have white phosphorous grenades for “smoke cover”. WP smoke grenades should also be banned via international treaty.
StevoRsays
Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto has confirmed he will support a second motion to expel controversial MP Moira Deeming from the parliamentary Liberal Party. Ms Deeming was suspended from the party room in late March after attending an anti-trans rights rally organised by people Mr Pesutto said had ties to neo-Nazis. The nine-month suspension was a softening of the initial motion to kick her out of the parliamentary party.The events of that closed meeting are again in focus more than a month later, with internal tensions spilling into the media and public.
The head of the UN’s nuclear power watchdog has warned that the situation around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear station has become “potentially dangerous”, as Moscow-installed officials began evacuating people from nearby areas. Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), called for measures to ensure the safe operation of Europe’s largest nuclear plant as evacuations were under way in the nearby town of Enerhodar.
“The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” Mr Grossi said on the agency’s website.
“I’m extremely concerned about the very real nuclear safety and security risks facing the plant. We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment.”
Mr Grossi said that while the operating staff of the plant remain at the site, the conditions for the personnel and their families are “increasingly tense”.
This newly detected outburst from the center of NGC 7392 is the closest-yet example of a tidal disruption event (TDE), where a star is pulled apart by the massive gravitational pull of a black hole. The findings were published April 28 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.(opens in new tab)
The hungry black hole was spotted roughly 137 million light-years from Earth — or about 35 million times as far as Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the sun. As distant as that sounds, astronomers have only observed around 100 of these events so far, and this one is four times closer than the previous title-holder of “closest TDE to Earth.” Scientists discovered the TDE in infrared, a different wavelength than most conventional TDE detections, which usually come in X-rays, ultraviolet, and optical light.
Rallygoers for a political party in Pakistan beat to death a participant for allegedly making a blasphemous speech, police said Sunday.
Local police officer Iqbal Khan said Maulana Nigar Alam, 40, was killed Saturday night by demonstrators in Sawaldher village of Mardan district northeast of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The rallygoers, gathered to express support for the country’s judiciary, accused Alam of blasphemy when he made a concluding prayer at the end of the event.
“Some words of his prayer were deemed blasphemous by a number of protestors, leading to torture and death at the hands of the angry mob,” said Khan.
Witnesses said the police deputy on duty at the rally attempted to save the man by locking him up in a nearby shop, but the mob broke through the door and attacked him…
Ted Nugent recently announced a farewell tour, but one of the dates has already been nixed. His July 18th gig at Avondale Brewing Co. in Birmingham, Alabama, was just canceled after the venue got flooded with backlash over the veteran rocker’s extreme political views.
According to AL.com, the Avondale Brewing Co. Facebook and Instagram posts announcing the show were met with more than 1,000 comments, most of which lambasted the venue’s decision to book the controversial musician…
The more sophisticated monarchists in the UK are defending the coronation, and by extension the monarchy, not despite but because of its absurdity! Apparently, we need something that cannot be rationally defended in order to unite us. Along with the arrests of republicans “on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”.
Three churches in West Texas have made financial contributions to a pastor running for a hotly contested seat on the Abilene City Council, a clear violation of federal rules prohibiting nonprofits and churches from endorsing candidates, financial disclosure records show.
Fountaingate Merkel Church, Remnant Church and Hope Chapel Foursquare Church donated to the campaign of Scott Beard, senior pastor at Fountaingate Fellowship church, who is running for a seat on the seven-member City Council in Saturday’s election.
The donations represent a new level of brazenness as some churches across Texas and the United States become more active in political campaigns, a prominent expert said. Rules posted on the IRS’ website say campaign contributions from churches and other nonprofits “clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity.”
“This is absolutely something every church should know — and probably does know — that they’re not allowed to do,” said Sam Brunson, a law professor specializing in religion and tax exemption at Loyola University Chicago.
ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported last year that church leaders in Texas and across the country endorsed candidates from the pulpit at least 20 times in apparent violation of the Johnson Amendment, a law passed by Congress in 1954. Three experts on nonprofit law, including Brunson, reviewed the sermons and said they crossed a line.
The IRS can strip violators of their tax-exempt status, but there’s only one publicly known example of it doing so, nearly 30 years ago. Brunson said this lack of enforcement has emboldened bad actors, and he called on Congress to explicitly tell the IRS it can also fine violators.
Beard told ProPublica and the Tribune in a phone interview on Thursday that the churches did not know they weren’t allowed to donate to him and that he has sent the checks back. […]
Dewey Hall, the pastor of Fountaingate Merkel Church, which is nearly 18 miles west of Abilene and not affiliated with Beard’s church, said Beard told him on Wednesday that his church’s $200 donation was illegal, but he thought Beard would “be a good councilman, and we need to have Christians in politics nowadays.”
[…] The IRS declined to confirm whether it had received any complaints or was investigating.
Though the donations made by the churches are small, local races are typically lower-dollar affairs than legislative elections or statewide offices. […]
The Texas Ethics Commission is charged with investigating such violations and can assess a civil penalty of up to $5,000 or triple the amount at issue, whichever is greater, said J.R. Johnson, the commission’s executive director. Agency commissioners also have the authority to refer violations to local district attorneys for criminal prosecution, he said.
[…] (The IRS automatically considers churches to be tax-exempt even if they don’t apply for that status directly.) [WTF? They should have to apply.]
The Abilene City Council race has been marked by allegations of Johnson Amendment violations for months. At least five churches have displayed campaign signs for three conservative Christian candidates who have all vowed to protect children by removing what they deemed to be obscene books from the public library and banning family-friendly drag shows from the city.
[…] Goodwin said some churches asked him for his campaign sign, and he’s not concerned they’ll face IRS enforcement.
“What I think we’re seeing is a fiction of the law,” Goodwin said. If the issue were to ever reach the U.S. Supreme Court, he said, “churches would have a voice and wouldn’t have to worry about anything like this.”
Beard said the Texas Ethics Commission has so far notified him of three complaints about his campaign this election.
One complaint stemmed from Beard telling his congregation at the end of a service to pick up his campaign signs in the church foyer.
[…] Beard stands by his belief that the nation was founded as a Christian nation and if it doesn’t turn back to God, it will fall like the Roman Empire and other great civilizations have throughout history.
The oddest thing to emerge in the whole Thomas-Crow affair—the sugar daddy relationship between Texas billionaire Harlan Crow and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—has to be that painting. You know the one: [Painting with captions added to identify the people]
Who are those guys, and why is the painting so weirdly realistic and yet idealized at the same time? Let’s start with the easy part: the identification, starting bottom left.
That “some law clerk who doesn’t matter” is indeed a former clerk of Thomas, and he actually matters. He’s Peter B. “Bo” Rutledge, now serving as Dean and Herman E. Talmadge Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law. He doesn’t just hang around with his former boss at the venue for this painting—Camp Topridge, the 105-acre compound in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, owned by Crow. He stays in touch regularly by briefs, amicus briefs, and petitions filed at the Supreme Court. Dozens of them over the years. Of course he’s a “contributor” to the conservative Federalist Society, meaning he has “spoken or otherwise participated in Federalist Society events, publications, or multimedia presentations.” He is, in short, a cog in the conservative legal effort to undermine everything we care about.
Speaking of the Federalist Society, that’s who the next guy is—the actual founder (and former director) of the Federalist Society. Leonard Leo isn’t just the guy who funneled lots of money to SCOTUS spouse Ginni Thomas through Kellyanne Conway, and who “stacked the GOP court,” he is the architect of the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court and the guy responsible for reshaping select federal district and appeals courts since the George W. Bush administration. Basically, Republican presidents don’t nominate judges unless the Federalist Society approves them. Every terrible Supreme Court decision in the last quarter century can be laid at his feet.
Leo’s reach also extends deep into the U.S. Senate, as he needs those people to close the deal on his judges. That includes famed “moderate” Susan Collins, who got a nice financial boost from him during her last reelection campaign, perhaps as a “thank you” for her making Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh a reality. After a humongous dark money deal Leo secured last year—to the tune of $1.6 billion—Leo can buy and sell the entire Republican Party. Having a handful of pet Supreme Court justices at his disposal caps the deal. He doesn’t even hide it.
That next guy, the one sitting beneath that disturbing sculpture, is Mark Paoletta. He is indeed Ginni Thomas’s lawyer, though why he’d be hanging out in this group is a mystery since—as Ginni has vociferously argued—she has absolutely nothing to do with her husband’s work. They never even talk about it at home! That’s “an ironclad rule in our house,” she told the Jan. 6 committee, where she was represented by Paoletta. But it’s all okay because he’s an official “friend of Justice Thomas” according to this tweet he made explaining how it’s okay for a billionaire to pay the private school tuition for his Supreme Court Justice friend’s adopted kid. Enough about him.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is next up, holding court with his acolytes, and pontificating with a cigar. Why he has a cigar prop we do not know. Maybe it makes him more of a regular guy? You know, the kind of guy who totally feels comfortable hanging out with the RV and WalMart crowd.
Those yachting trips all over the world he accepted as a gift from Crow? Pshaw. “I don’t have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States,” Thomas said in a 2020 documentary, “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.”
“I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” Thomas continued, adding, “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that — I prefer being around that.”
Wow, Crow could have saved himself a whole lot of money if he’d just given Clarence and Ginni an RV and gas money. Thomas already had a guy in Omaha to hook him up with tires, so it would have been a great deal. (Really. Tires. Clarence Thomas took tires from a guy in Omaha. Who is he?)
We don’t have a full accounting of all the money Crow has sunk into vacations, gifts, real estate deals, tuition assistance, and god knows what else for Thomas, but this timeline of the very long string of Thomas’ ethics problems is a good place to start. And at the heart of it is the guy who commissioned this painting, Thomas’ friend and patron, Harlan Crow. He’s a billionaire real estate magnate who seems to own most of Thomas’ home town (seriously), and he’s a Republican megadonor, and key funder of Tea Party (remember them?) astroturf—he gave Ginni $500,000 to create one of those groups, Liberty Central.
Collecting Supreme Court justices and their spouses isn’t his only hobby. He also collects historical memorabilia, particularly Hitler and Nazi artifacts and memorabilia. Lots of it, from two paintings by Hitler and a signed copy of Mein Kampf, to extremely banal things like linen napkins with embroidered swastikas. There’s something seriously disturbed in a person who wants to replicate the dinner services of the Third Reich. He also has a garden full of statues of despots—Lenin, Stalin, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito, among others. That’s completely normal, right?
The photo-realtistic painting itself is odd enough that it’s gotten attention on its own. It’s the work of Sharif Tarabay, a Montreal illustrator. Slate was so intrigued by it, they asked an art historian, Heather Diack, associate professor of contemporary art and the history of photography at the University of Miami, what she sees in it. The whole interview is interesting, but this part kind of leaps out:
Some of us here were discussing the painting, and it reminded us of Jon McNaughton’s works. He’s painted countless portraits of Trump, including a version of Mount Rushmore that includes Trump’s face. What do you make of his paintings?
It’s hard not to see it as a caricature, even though I realize that this artist is actually quite sincere about his message. It reminded me a lot of socialist realist propaganda paintings under Josef Stalin. It’s painted in a way that is hyperrealist, but also idealist, insofar as the realism they’re trying to portray is really about their ideology. So McNaughton’s ideology, I think, is very clear, him being quite a right-wing conservative. It’s really glaring. If you look back at paintings that were done under Stalin’s regime, they really imitate that style. […]
I think there’s a conservative penchant towards realist painting. There’s been an aversion to abstract art, and they want to make artwork that they believe is more easily readable. Yet, even though it’s painted in a realist style, that’s not to say the scene pictures or the values conveyed by it are real or the truth. Even though I think that is partly what the artists want to be there.
At least nine people have died, including the gunman, and several others were injured in a shooting on Saturday at a mall outside of Dallas, according to local police.
The Allen Fire Department transported nine people to area hospitals, Allen Fire Department Chief Jonathan Boyd said. Seven people died on scene at the Allen Premium Outlets and two others were pronounced dead at the hospital, Boyd said Saturday evening. Three other victims were in critical condition.
Further details about the victims have not been released, but some witnesses told The Associated Press they saw children among them.
[…] An officer was responding to an unrelated call at Allen Premium Outlets when he heard the gunshots and “neutralized” the shooter, Harvey added. Authorities said they believe the gunman acted alone.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said in a statement that he has been in contact with state and local officials to offer “the full support of the State of Texas” and “ensure all needed assistance and resources are swiftly deployed.”
“Our hearts are with the people of Allen, Texas tonight during this unspeakable tragedy,” Abbott added. [But Abbott and his fellow Republicans still won’t pass any gun control laws … in fact, they have made it easier to buy and to openly carry guns in Texas.]
[snipped various statements about “prayers” and “tragedy” from people like Republican Senator Ted Cruz.]
[…] A White House official said President Biden had been briefed on the shooting and was closely monitoring the situation and in touch with local officials to offer support.
The weapon used in the Dallas mass shooting was an AR-15 style rifle. Many people are warning against watching some of the videos that have been posted online.
From The Washington Post:
[…] The assailant used an AR-15-style weapon and was wearing tactical gear, President Biden said Sunday.
Six victims were found dead at the scene, and nine people who had been injured were taken to hospitals by the local fire department, Allen Fire Chief Jon Boyd said Saturday. Two of them died at the hospital. As of late Saturday, three victims remained critically injured. More people could have been injured and transported in personal vehicles, Boyd said.
Children were also among those injured. The victims being treated at Medical City Healthcare trauma facilities ranged from 5 to 61 years old, said Kathleen Beathard, a spokeswoman for the hospital system.
Chelsea Hall, a store manager at Columbia Sportswear Company in the outlet mall, said she heard two rounds of rapid gunfire and quickly locked the front doors, then ushered those in the store to a back room. Hall said she monitored the front of the store with surveillance cameras linked to her computer for about an hour before police led them out — right past some of the dead.
“I’m still in shock, to be honest,” she said.
[…] The mass killing at the mall, which was crowded with shoppers on a Saturday afternoon, was the 22nd instance in the United States this year in which four or more people died by gunfire, according to a database of mass killings maintained by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. At this time last year, there were eight. […]
Rep. Keith Self — the Republican lawmaker who represents the district that includes the Allen area — drew criticism on social media after appearing to dismiss renewed calls for gun control in the wake of the outlet mall shooting.
The people demanding gun control, rather than strictly offering thoughts and prayers, “don’t believe in an almighty God … who is absolutely in control of our lives,” Self said on CNN.
“People want to make this political, but prayers are important,” he said.
The comments were widely criticized by progressive political commentators and prominent advocates for gun control measures.
Texas has been rocked by seven mass shootings since a gunman killed 21 people at an elementary school in the city of Uvalde in May 2022 […]
In the 12 months since the Uvalde massacre, mass shootings have occurred in the Texas cities of Centerville, Houston, McGregor, Fort Worth, Dallas, Cleveland and now Allen, where a gunman opened fire Saturday at an outlet shopping mall, according to the database.
In each shooting, at least four people were killed, the data shows. The death toll in Allen is the highest since the Uvalde killings, with eight nine people killed.
Ted Cruz opposes gun control measures, including a ban on assault weapons. Cornyn was the lead sponsor on a bill last year that made modest changes to federal gun control regulations. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law in June; Cruz voted against the legislation.
Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Progozhin roiled Russian internal power dynamics this past week with his threats to withdraw his mercenaries from the meat grinder in Bakhmut, only to cave today. In the process, he dragged pretty much everyone except for Vladimir Putin (the reddest of red lines in Russian society).
You can catch up on our previous Prigozhin coverage here [Embedded links represented in the list below are available at the main link]:
Ukraine Update: Prigozhin declares he is pulling Wagner from Bakhmut, to be replaced by Kadyrov
Ukraine Update: The bizarre case of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s descent into madness
Ukraine Update: Bakhmut could be Russia’s glass jaw
Ukraine Update: Wagner mercenary chief Prigozhin: ‘Russia is on the brink of catastrophe’
In short, Prigozhin claims that because of his rivalry with the Russian Ministry of Defense, his troops received only a fraction of the artillery shells necessary to carry out Russian-style offensive operations. […]
Frustrated at the lack of ammunition, he spent all week detailing the horrific losses suffered by his men before announcing Friday and Saturday that he was done, and would be withdrawing all Wagner forces on May 10.
There was even a bit of kabuki theater, as Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov offered to send his forces into Bakhmut to replace the retreating Wagnerites. Prigozhin jumped at the offer, sending a formal letter to the Kremlin requesting permission to be replaced by Kadyrov, and Kadyrov responded with his own letter requesting to go into Bakhmut. He even offered up one of his regiments, worth around 3,000 men, to go in. At Wagner rates of losses, those would last about two weeks.
Except Kadyrov’s forces haven’t been seen in Ukraine’s front lines since last spring, after they took heavy casualties in the battle of Mariupol. There were never many of them to begin with. Ukrainian intelligence estimated in May 2022 that 2,500 Kadyrovites had been sent to Ukraine, a tiny fraction of the overall Russian presence given that 300,000 were conscripted last year alone.
Nor were they particularly impactful. They were popular on social media, where they chronicled significant exploits like taking down a defenseless traffic light. There have been rampant rumors that they’ve been used as “barrier troops,” sitting behind the front lines to shoot and kill and Russian deserters. But I’ve seen zero evidence of that actually being true. It’s the kind of fairy tales used to keep people in line. “You retreat, the scary Chechen kills you,” might keep some poor Russian mobilized mobik in a trench long past the point where panic should’ve led to retreat.
In reality, Kadyrov depends on his private army to keep himself in power. And given Chechnya’s history of resistance to the Russian empire, Putin needs Kadyrov to keep the restless region quiet. Neither he, nor Putin, can afford to see his forces further degraded.
It seemed incredible that Kadyrov would offer up his people to the Bakhmut slaughter, and it was. Prigozhin called Kadyrov’s bluff. Today, he announced that Wagner would be staying in Bakhmut after all thanks to new ammunition promises. [tweets at the link]
As Tendar notes, the rivalry will go on. Prigozhin has said things that cannot be undone. The fact that he hasn’t been thrown out of a top-story window just yet shows how few options Russia has, as their own forces are incapable of moving anywhere on the map. No matter what else Prigozhin says, he’s right about one thing—his people have been the only ones moving forward on the map since last fall. In fact, Russia has lost territory overall over the past month, despite Wagner’s advances in Bakhmut and its surroundings.
Part of that feud, ultimately, is about blame. Who will take it given the lack of progress. This interview with Prigozhin is incredibly illuminating, so let me take it chunk by chunk. The interview is in one of Prigozhin’s Russian information outlets, in Russian, translated via Google.
After first bragging about Wagner successes in the Battle of Popasna, and in stopping the Ukrainian fall counteroffensive in Kharkiv, he begins talking about Bakhmut.
4. On October 8, 2022, together with Army General Sergei Surovikin, it was decided to start Operation Bakhmut Meat Grinder – an assault on the village of Bakhmut in order to provoke Vladimir Zelensky to throw as many forces as possible to hold Bamkhut. In Bakhmut, we ground the Armed Forces of Ukraine, hence the name – “Bakhmut Meat Grinder”.
5. The purpose of Operation Bakhmut Meat Grinder was to enable Russian army units to occupy favorable defense lines, mobilize, re-equip, train personnel and increase their combat potential.
6. The term of the operation, together with Army General S. Surovikin, a period of 6 months was adopted (conditionally until April 8, 2023).
It’s interesting how Prigozhin parrots back Ukrainian justifications. Ukraine has focused on Bakhmut in order to equip and train its nine new brigades sporting Western gear. Those troops will presumably be the spearhead of a new Ukrainian counteroffensive in the coming weeks.
Here is Prigozhin saying that it was Russia using Bakhmut as a place to pin down Ukrainian defenders while Russian forces trained and equipped in the rear for some future counteroffensive.
Thing is, seven months have passed since this supposed strategy was implemented, and Russia advanced nowhere.
7. The village of Bakhmut is of no strategic importance for further progress to the west.
8. Of strategic importance for the advancement of the Russian army is the capture of settlements of Kramatorsk, Slavyansk, Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka – the “Donbass Ring”, to the west of which flat territories are opened, in which it is difficult for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to hold defense in case of an offensive by superior forces of the Russian army.
This is quite startling. We’ve been saying Bakhmut had no strategic value, and here is Prigozhin finally admitting it from the Russian side. Once again, projection, as Bakhmut definitely has value for Russia’s broader war aims.
He’s not wrong that Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are the strategic prizes in the Donbas, but Russia can’t get there without Bakhmut. Look at the map: [map at the link]
The twin fortress cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk are literally up the road from Bakhmut, just 55 kilometers away. Russia’s original plan was to do a pincer maneuver—up from Bakhmut and down from Izyum, to cut those cities off from the rear. But Russia lost Izyum in the Kharkiv liberation last fall, rendering the entire tactic irrelevant. So with the possibility of a pincer gone, why keep going through Bakhmut, Ukraine’s 58th largest city, and of no admitted strategic importance?
Who knows. Inertia? A desire to notch a victory, any victory, after a string of stinging losses in Kharkiv and Kherson (which had been annexed into the Russian federation)? Perhaps Prigozhin thought he’d show up Russia’s Ministry of Defense and his arch nemesis, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, by advancing on Bakhmut while Russian forces were bogged down everywhere else.
Ultimately, there was no reason. And here is Prigozhin admitting it—Bakhmut is strategically irrelevant, but he justifies it by using the same “meat grinder” rationale that Ukraine has used. Except that it’s clear that the argument works better for Ukraine, as it is incredibly costly for someone, in a near-peer war (that is, without major technological or doctrinal advantages), to attack against entrenched defenses.
9. Against the background of the advance of PMC Wagner, which occupied 1,500 square kilometers and 71 settlements, the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation failed: defeats at the fronts, lack of management, mobilization scandals, supply problems, discipline and so on.
Progozhin doesn’t hold back on Russia’s MoD failures. And he’s absolutely right about them—major defeats on two fronts, supply issues, and poor morale. Don’t know what the mobilization scandals are he refers to, but that sounds fun too.
10. To compensate for its failures, due to envy, in case of attempts at intrigue, the Ministry of Defense decided to start countering PMC “Wagner”:
– recruitment of volunteers among prisoners was prohibited;
– arms supplies have been stopped;
– the supply of ammunition has been reduced to 30% of applications (since May 2023 – up to 10%).
11. The Ministry of Defense also created other problems:
– the issuance of honored orders and medals to the dead stopped;
– PMC Wagner was denied the possibility of airplane flights to transfer personnel from Africa to the SVO zone;
– persons interacting with PMC “Wagner” from the Ministry of Defense were prohibited from communicating with PMC “Wagner” units;
– special communication is disabled;
– aircraft were denied for the rapid transfer of ammunition.
I’ve already speculated that Russia’s MoD has been purposefully sabotaging Wagner. Prigozhin doesn’t mention it, but it’s curious that Russian army forces, holding the flanks north and south of Bakhmut, have so far refused to close the deal and cut off supply lines into Bakhmut. Though interestingly, he mentions a Russian commitment to reinforce the flanks so Wagner forces in Bakhmut don’t get cut off. They must’ve been thinner on the flanks than anyone thought.
Prigozhin main focus is on the lack of ammunition, down to 10% of what he thinks his forces need, but he also complains about the ban on additional prison recruitment (something the Russian army is doing for itself now), and that weird complaint about lack of medals. Russian law prohibits private armies, so not sure why Prigozhin would expect his mercenaries to receive state medals.
12. Despite the opposition of the Ministry of Defense, PMC Wagner continued to successfully conduct hostilities.
13. In order to ensure a complete “shut blockade”, which consists not in an artificial shortage of shells, but in the complete cessation of supplies, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev was dismissed.
If you recall, Mizintsev is the “Butcher of Mariupol,” who was rewarded for his bloody victory at the Mariupol by being exiled behind a desk in charge of Russian logistics—an impossible task. Putin couldn’t have a general get popular by actually winning something, so he placed him in a job sure to fail.
The rationale for his firing was a report by a Wagner officer detailing logistical difficulties for front-line units. Then, after being the catalyst for his firing, Prigozhin hired Mizintsev as his army’s second-in-command, and proclaimed him a martyr in the standoff with the Russian MoD.
14. PMC Wagner has the opportunity to purchase shells in other ways, not from the reserves of the Russian army. However, Wagner PMC together with foreign partners was refused to facilitate its own supply and production of ammunition.
Wagner makes bank from diamond and gold mines it controls in Africa, and gas and oil fields it protects in Syria. Is that enough to finance an entire war effort in Ukraine? I am somehow skeptical. Wagner isn’t buying its weapons (which includes combat aircraft). He operates Russian military equipment with Putin’s approval. He doesn’t need to reach into his own pocket for any of it.
16. In the seven months of the Bakhmut Meat Grinder, Wagner PMC lost its combat potential. The reason for this was the restrictions on the recruitment of personnel established in February 2023, the lack of the necessary amount of weapons, the lack of the necessary amount of ammunition (artificially created “shutting famine”). [“shooting famine”?]
The lack of ammunition seems real, and maybe Wagner will get more of it. But has Russia lifted its ban on Wagner prison recruitment? Because that is as much a problem for Wagner as is the lack of ammunition. Where else is it going to get its fodder?
17. It should be noted that Operation Bakhmut Meat Grinder was designed mainly not to take the village of Bakhmut, but to grind units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and organize respite of the Russian army to restore combat capability.
18. The Bakhmut Meat Grinder fully fulfilled its task.
LOL at the idea that they didn’t want to capture Bakhmut. And his next paragraph invalidates this one:
19. On March 7, 2023, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that the taking control of Bakhmut would open the way to a further offensive deep into the defense of the Ukrainian army. He called Bakhmut an important defense hub of Ukrainian troops in Donbass. In the direction of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, the operational space has already been opened, and the remainder of 2.42 square kilometers does not matter for operational space.
Shoigu noted that Bakhmut was important, in part to open up the route to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk—the real strategic prize in the Donbas. So how is he going to also say that they didn’t want to take the town.
Prigozhin is right, however, that “the operational space has already been opened” to allow Russian troops to head northwest to the twin fortress cities. Look at the map again: [map at the link]
Russia has control of Bakhmut’s access to the highway that leads to Sloviansk. Not that Russian forces can do anything about it.
Back to the interview, there is extensive talk about the math behind his demand for dramatically more artillery than received, none of it particularly interesting beyond the fact that Russia has never developed a war fighting doctrine beyond “level everything in front of us.” It’s quite pathetic, and with ammunition shortages plaguing the entire Russian army, it essentially signals the end of Russia’s offensive capabilities this entire war. They are now, and into the foreseeable future, strictly on defense.
Then he shares this weird math:
the arithmetic is very simple:
– If 18 thousand shells are given per day, the losses are 10%; [over 25 days]
– If they give 6,000 shells per day, losses – 24%;
– If they give 2,000 shells per day, the losses are 35% or higher.
No one counts 10% of the ammunition of the norm. In this case, the unit is doomed to death. Now we get 10%.
Prigozhin says elsewhere they started with 30,000 Wagnerites in Bakhmut. At 10% over 25 days, that’s 3,000 per month, or 100 per day. That’s … not good. He states in several places that he’s only gotten 30% of the shells needed starting in October, and specifically puts that number at “1.5-2 thousand per day.” That would mean, per his math, 35% casualties, or 10,500 per month, or 350 per day. Dear god.
He doesn’t say how many Wagnerites he has left, and claims lower losses than those bizarre calculations: “Thanks to the highest level of training, management and interaction, [loses are] lower than the calculated ones. But PMC “Wagner” still suffered significant losses…”
More math:
– When it comes, the standard ratio of forces according to the standards should be 3:1. That is, there are three advancing fighters for each defender.
– With an enemy group of 35,000 people and the number of weapons [X], PMC “Wagner” should be 105 thousand people, and the number of weapons [X] x 3 […]
– In fact, the combat potential of PMC “Wagner” is 1.2-2 times less than the combat potential of the enemy (that is, 3.6-6 times less than required for offensive actions).
The 3-1 attacker to defender ratio is standard military conventional wisdom. Here, the math pegs Wagner’s total forces at anywhere between 17,000-29,000, less than the 30,000 he claims elsewhere. And he claims they are facing off against 35,000 Ukrainians. And yet somehow, he also claims this:
37. These qualities allowed us to grind about 50,000 soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine killed and prevent the enemy’s counteroffensive until today along the entire front line. [Prigozhin sounds like your standard issue Bullshitter, with too much money.]
This is so ridiculous it’s a wonder he isn’t thrown out a top-story window just for insulting everyone’s intelligence.
There is no way that an admittedly inferior force has killed that many Ukrainians. There are endless videos of Wagner mercenaries killed out in the open as they try and advance. Not so much on the Ukrainian side. That doesn’t mean Ukraine hasn’t suffered horrific losses in Bakhmut. They have, and likely in the thousands. But their well-protected defensive positions will always have the advantage over Wagnerites advancing across open fields and streets.
And the idea that Bakhmut’s defense has “prevent[ed] the enemy’s counteroffensive until today along the entire front line,” is even dumber. There was early talk about Ukraine launching a winter counteroffensive when the ground froze, but that never materialized as Ukraine decided to wait on the thousands of new pieces of Western armor that are still arriving in Ukraine right now. In fact, the first 80 of the 100 refurbished Leopard 1s promised by Denmark aren’t even arriving until June 1!
Why counterattack with inferior equipment when they could spend the winter learning to use their new tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and trench-clearing engineering equipment, and training in effective combined-arms warfare?
And right now, the ground is still a muddy mess. Things will change when the ground dries, and it has nothing to do with the Bakhmut meat grinder.
Bakhmut is important to Russia because of Russia’s failed winter offensive.
Compare Bakhmut to Adviika, where regular Russian forces are being similarly ground down, but to much lesser fanfare. Or Vuhledar, where Russian naval infantry (marines) were utterly decimated, losing over 100 pieces of armor in failed frontal attack after failed frontal attack. Or Kreminna, where Russian attempts by VDV airborne troops to push back Ukrainian forces lodged in the forests around the city quickly stalled.
Wagner’s corner of the front is the only one in which Russian forces are advancing, regardless the cost. Coupled with Prigozhin’s ample skills at self-promotion and attention gathering, it turned Bakhmut into the place where wounded Russian pride would be salved.
And just like the bloody summer 2022 defenses of Ukrainian trench lines all around the Donbas gave Ukraine space to train, equip, plan, and execute effective fall 2022 counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts, so too the Ukrainian defense of Bakhmut has given Ukraine the space to prepare for the next counteroffensive.
Prigozhin both attempts to blame the Russian Ministry of Defense for his failures in Bakhmut, while claiming credit and victory for his advances in Bakhmut. It’s quite the feat of rhetorical rationalization.
And now, despite his efforts to bow out and let someone else take the final blame, he’s stuck there, with Kadyrov and his henchmen laughing all the way over in Chechnya. Putin has no better options for Bakhmut, and so Wagner will keep doing the dying.
The tragedy of this war is the greater because it is senseless – this is a stupid, reasonless war, started by one man to distract his people from his own incompetence, and Ukraine suffers so that Putin can ‘remain in power’. What a small man – small in so many more ways than one.
When Keith Self say god “is absolutely in control of our lives” after people die needlessly from gun violence, what he is actually saying is that he believes god wanted those people to die needlessly from gun violence, otherwise god would have prevented it. I can guarantee you that he wouldn’t say that if a member of his own family died needlessly from gun violence.
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just like jesus wanted.
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It’s about how brazenly corrupt, incompetent, and apathetic (at best) Republicans are about murder.
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Re Texas lawmakers: if they enable crimes to happen by making the commission of those crimes possible, practical, or easy, how are they not (at least partially) morally culpable for them?
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Its very simple; if you advocate for laws that allow every person to
have every type of gun in every possible situation, then you bear moral
responsibility for the natural and probable consequences of those laws.
More than 20 conservation organizations […] urged [DeSantis] to veto
[…]
Environmental Protection Agency prohibits […] because it poses an unacceptable risk to road construction workers, public health and the environment. […] phosphate mining waste
[…]
the Trump-era EPA approved […] Following a lawsuit and petition by […] conservation, public health and union groups, in 2021 the agency withdrew that
[…]
Putting radioactive phosphogypsum in roads would let the fertilizer industry off the hook for safely disposing of the millions of tons of dangerous waste it creates each year while generating another cash stream for industry giants
In the wake of yet another mass shooting — this time at a mall in Allen, Texas, where a gunman killed at least eight people — a Fox News guest recommended that Americans who fear they may be a victim of the next shooting should “be polite and professional, but plan to kill everyone you meet.”
Alex Coker, a television host and former police officer…
More than 40 leading scientists have resigned en masse from the editorial board of [Neuroimage] in protest at […] publishing giant Elsevier. […] huge profit margins […] which outstrip those made by Apple, Google and Amazon.
[…]
one of the resigning team […] urged fellow scientists to turn their backs on the Elsevier journal and submit papers to a nonprofit open-access journal which the team is setting up instead. [Another, the former editor-in-chief, said] “By taking the entire set of editors across […] we are taking the reputation with us.”
[…]
Meanwhile, university libraries are angry about the cost of the online textbooks […] often many times more expensive than their paper equivalent.
The shelling destroyed the antique […] mounted on a pedestal […] From the kremlin’s perspective, this was an important, strategically significant target.
[…] Marjorie Greene, is just the worst kind of racist degenerate who somehow has managed to be the de facto leader of House Republicans in the new Congress.
This morning Greene went on twitter noted that the shooter “appears Hispanic” and had what she decided “looks like a gang tattoo on his hand.” And then added “Title 42 ends on Thursday and CBP says 700,000+ migrants are going to rush the border.”
The shooter has been identified as Mauricio Garcia, a 38 year old security guard from Dallas. I haven’t seen any reporting on Garcia’s immigration or citizenship status. But it seems likely he’s an American citizen. If he was working as a security guard that makes it highly unlikely he was undocumented. Regardless, for Greene the shooting is about Title 42 and keeping undocumented migrants out of the country.
In the real world, law enforcement officials told NBC News and other news outlets that “Garcia had several social media accounts and appeared to be drawn to neo-Nazi and white supremacist content. He was also wearing, when he was killed, a patch on his chest with a right-wing acronym.”
In other words, basically your garden variety mass shooter and far-right terrorist.
It’s part of a new pattern we’ve seen multiple times just this month. Out of control mass shootings are about the unknowable mystery of human evil, an American mental health crisis or the need for even more guns. (Greene repeated the last argument.) Unless the shooter is Hispanic, in which case everything changes.
birgerjohanssonsays
David Attenborough will be 97 years old tomorrow.
❤
Suspected Allen, Texas mall shooter Mauricio Garcia interacted with neo-Nazi and white supremacist content online, according to two senior law enforcement officials.
According to one of the officials, 33-year-old Garcia posted such content himself. The other official said the suspect consumed such rhetoric online, had several social media accounts, and said that authorities found him with a patch with a right-wing acronym on his chest.
It’s not known at this time what the right-wing acronym is. […]
Investigators found a patch on the dead man’s chest that said “RWDS,” an acronym for Right Wing Death Squad.
The 33-year-old gunman who opened fire on an outlet mall in a Dallas suburb Saturday, killing at least eight people, had an apparent fascination with white supremacist or neo-Nazi beliefs that are now being examined by investigators as a possible motive for the attack, people familiar with the investigation said Sunday.
Mauricio Garcia, a local resident, had multiple weapons on him and five additional guns in his car nearby, said people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe.
Authorities have not released a motive, but a patch on his chest said “RWDS,” an acronym that stands for Right Wing Death Squad, according to people familiar with the investigation. The phrase is popular among right wing extremists, neo-Nazis and white supremacists, they said, and while there is still a great deal of evidence to analyze and authorities have not reached any conclusions yet, investigators are approaching the shooting as a possible hate crime.
Witnesses said the gunman’s tactical vest was also packed with ammunition clips, indicating just how much carnage he hoped to inflict at one of the most common places for Americans to gather on the weekends — a shopping mall. Panicked video from the scene showed adults running as fast as they could to get away from the crack of rifle fire, their shopping bags flapping around them as they sprinted across the parking lot. One young boy in a red t-shirt ran away while screaming “run,” a look of terror on his face.
[…] A witness described finding a young boy alive under the corpse of his mother, who died protecting him. […]
Fincantieri plans to lay the keel of that ship, USS Constellation, this August. It will be the US Navy’s first frigate since the retirement of its last Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate in 2015.
When it arrives later this decade, USS Constellation will mark the return of a small but versatile class of ships to the US Navy…
A 31-year-old senior software engineer has died after falling from the 14th floor of Google’s New York City office building, the New York Post first reported…
The name of the engineer hasn’t been released pending family notification, the NYPD said. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead…
An intelligence leak from the Pentagon this year showed that the US and Ukraine were giving “high priority” to tracking down and destroying Russian Zhitel R-330Zh jamming stations, which are often deployed in military trucks, ahead of Ukraine’s much-talked-about counteroffensive…
Much of the blame for Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s tenure as Florida’s surgeon general belongs to Gov. Ron DeSantis. It was, after all, the far-right Republican who tapped the radical doctor in the first place.
But the Sunshine State’s GOP-led state Senate bears some responsibility, too, especially as Ladapo begins his second term. The Miami Herald reported late last week:
Fear is one word often cited by patients, doctors, public health experts, vaccine advocates and abortion providers when asked about the prospects of the second term of Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who was hand-picked by DeSantis 19 months ago during a coronavirus pandemic wave and reconfirmed Thursday by the state Senate in a 27-12 vote along party lines.
[…] it was last fall when Ladapo added to his list of dubious pronouncements: [He] recommended that males between the ages of 18 and 39 avoid commonly used mRNA Covid vaccines, pointing to possible health risks that credible experts said didn’t exist in reality. In fact, Ladapo simply discarded the conclusions from the Centers for Disease Control and American Academy of Pediatrics altogether.
David Gorski, a surgical oncologist and debunker of anti-vaccine nonsense, wrote soon after, “This is the first time that we’ve seen a state government weaponize bad science to spread anti-vaccine disinformation as official policy.” He went on to describe the move from Florida’s surgeon general as “a dangerous new escalation in anti-vaccine propaganda.”
[…] the story got worse two weeks ago: Politico reported that the Florida surgeon general [Ladapo] received a state-driven study about Covid vaccines, saw the evidence that said there were no significant risks associated with the vaccines for young men, and simply replaced the findings with the opposite conclusions that he liked better. [JFC]
The Washington Post’s editorial board concluded soon after, “By playing loose with the facts, Dr. Ladapo cast doubt on the safety of the coronavirus vaccines. His misdirection contributed to vaccine hesitancy, and that, in turn, led to a higher pandemic death toll. His actions also underscore how anti-vaccine activists create fear and suspicion. Rather than rely upon scientifically sound research, they traffic in half-truths and unsubstantiated declarations. In so doing, Dr. Ladapo betrayed the trust of the people of Florida and the nation.”
Five days after that editorial was published, Republican state senators considered Ladapo’s nomination for a second term. Literally none of the GOP legislators balked.
We’re left with limited possibilities: Either (a) the Republican state senators don’t know about Ladapo’s controversies; (b) they don’t care about Ladapo’s controversies; (c) they’re glad the state surgeon general “betrayed the trust of the people of Florida and the nation”; or (d) some combination thereof.
[…] this guy never should’ve been considered for the job. […] Ladapo’s former supervisor at UCLA discouraged Florida officials from hiring [Ladapo] explaining that he relies on his opinions more than scientific evidence. […] “violated the duty in the Hippocratic Oath to behave honestly and ethically.”
[…] Thanks to reporting from The Rachel Maddow Show, those claims [“taking care of patients with COVID-19 at UCLA’s flagship hospital.”] have since been called into question. As my colleague Kay Guerrero explained in a report in November, “Several former colleagues of Dr. Joseph Ladapo … say he misled the public about his experience treating Covid-19 patients.”
[…] Ladapo questioned the efficacy of Covid vaccines, denounced vaccine requirements, referenced unsubstantiated conspiracy theories to argue against the vaccines, and encouraged Floridians to “stick with their intuition,” as opposed to following the guidance of public health officials […]
the doctor also spent much of the pandemic questioning the value of vaccines and the efficacy of masks, while simultaneously touting ineffective treatments such as hydroxychloroquine.
It led the editorial board of The Orlando Sentinel to describe Ladapo as a “COVID crank” who’s been “associated with a right-wing group of physicians whose members include a physician who believes infertility and miscarriages are the result of having sex with demons and witches during dreams.”
Stepping back, the question is not whether Ladapo has a credibility problem. It’s painfully obvious that he’s a difficult man to take seriously. The more important question is why Republican officials are keeping him in office.
The 5 p.m. ET deadline came and went Sunday without former President Trump changing his mind and deciding to testify in his own defense in the trial of E. Jean Carroll’s rape and defamation claims.
The judge set the deadline after Trump made noises that he was returning early to the States from a trip to Ireland in order to confront his accuser. Trump’s lawyers had already told the court he would not be testifying, but the judge turned the knife by giving Trump the unusual chance to change his mind.
Bluff called.
Closing arguments are expected to begin today. The jury should get the case tomorrow.
“This is Ted Cruz,” the Texas senator (read: his campaign) wrote in a message to supporters on Saturday. “I have breaking news: Far-left Democrat Colin Allred just announced he’s running against me in 2024. Allred doesn’t represent Texas values – not even close.”
The text included a photo of a Black man who is clearly not Congressman Allred (D-Texas); it’s Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who’s pursuing criminal charges against former President Donald Trump…
Ukraine’s spring counteroffensive is going to happen … now. Or maybe next week. Or the week after. All we know is that it’s going to happen soon. Right?
Ukraine has certainly made every effort to suggest the counterattack is imminent, and if we are to believe what we’re told, we’re just waiting for the ground to dry. Spring rains bring on rasputitsa, the impassable mud swamps that thwarted Hitler’s Soviet campaign in 1941-1942 … and Putin’s Ukraine invasion 80 years later in 2022.
But a new chorus of voices are suddenly rising, warning against setting expectations too high, and worrying what might happen if Ukraine falls short. “In countries that are our partners, our friends, the expectation of the counteroffensive is overestimated, overheated, I would say,” Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, said to local media outlet RBC Ukraine.[…] “That is my main concern.”
He added: “Everyone wants another win. Earlier they did not believe in victory. Previously, they wanted Ukraine to survive at least minimally, to preserve at least some part of Ukraine. And when the Ukrainian armed forces showed success, everyone began to believe in victory – after Snake Island, after Kyiv Oblast, Chernihiv Oblast and Sumy Oblast, after Kharkiv Oblast, Kherson. They want the next victory. It’s normal, these are emotions – waiting for success.” He thinks it’s normal, but would rather people temper their hopes.
Reznikov isn’t alone, but he’s the highest-profile figure to try and lower expectations. The fear is real: Big gains last fall in Kharkiv and Kherson came against a Russian army that was stretched thin and hadn’t developed the extensive network of trenches that now scar a shorter (if still extensive) front line. Russia was also stupid, taking the bait from an obvious misinformation campaign by rushing forces to Kherson Oblast, leaving Kharkiv Oblast all but undefended.
On top of that, Russia massed tens of thousands of troops in a swath of Kherson Oblast supplied by just two bridges. Once Ukraine managed to destroy them, it proved impossible for Russia to supply its army, forcing them to retreat under the cover of darkness.
There is nothing that easy in Ukraine’s possible directions of counterattack. Russian troops can’t be logistically cut off in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, or (southern) Kherson oblasts. Russian troops may be spread out over a long front, but Russia mobilized 300,000 troops and plopped them down on those multilayered defenses. [map at the link]
No matter what direction Ukraine heads, they will have to hit Russian defenses head on, and that won’t just be costly in lives—it creates the kinds of Murphy’s Law scenarios that could prove catastrophic. And Ukraine doesn’t have much experience with complex NATO-style combined arms maneuvers; it’s just beginning to learn those tactics in recent months. […]
Meanwhile, Western and allied armor is still streaming into Ukraine. [Tweet and video at the link] We don’t know when that video was taken, but that doesn’t look like winter to me. It’s at most a few weeks old, which means Ukrainians are either still training on these new vehicles or they just arrived in Ukraine. Other gear is still in transit. Denmark donated 100 old-generation Leopard 1 main battle tanks, and the first 80 aren’t slated to be delivered until June 1.
All of these weapons and units would be invaluable in the counteroffensive. Why rush them to the front lines when there is no imminent deadline for Ukraine to launch it?
[…] With at least nine new combat brigades preparing for the counteroffensive, each of them around 5,000 men large, it would behoove Ukraine to drill large-scale attacks. That means integrating artillery, armor, infantry, engineering, electronic warfare, surveillance and combat drones, and bolstering the long-tail logistics efforts that will keep that spearhead moving. The engineers are particularly important as they’ll be breaching Russia’s defenses. […]
Meanwhile, keep Russia guessing. Is the attack today? Tomorrow? Next week? Keep drone-dropping grenades on their heads, hitting them with artillery, attriting their forces, blowing up their supply and command and control centers, sapping their morale. Bakhmut? At some point, Russia will take the 10% of the city still held by Ukraine, but so what—Ukraine can hold the high ground west of the city, raining artillery on any Russian effort to break out like we’ve seen around Vuhledar. And if Wagner continues to advance 100-200 meters a day, big deal. Ukraine can well afford to lose 3-5 kilometers per month. In a successful counterattack, they’ll take that in an hour.
This isn’t novel advice for Ukraine. “Apparently, they still have a feeling that they do not have everything to start successfully an operation,” newly minted Czech President Petr Pavel said in an interview with The Guardian. “Because it might be a temptation to push them, for some, to demonstrate some results. It will be extremely harmful to Ukraine if this counteroffensive fails, because they will not have another chance, at least not this year.” Not only is Pavel a former general and war hero, but he was the chair of the NATO Military Committee, the alliance’s top military advisory board.
In the end, all our jabbering means nothing. Ukraine will attack when they feel they’re ready to attack. The moral of this story is that if Ukraine decides to wait another month or two, that’s not a bad thing. Outside of meager gains in Bakhmut, Russia has lost all offensive capability, and there’re only so many trenches they can dig. Eventually they run out of manpower to occupy them.
With more western gear coming in, more artillery shells being delivered, and more training for the new storm brigades, chances for that all-important breakthrough increase dramatically. The wait may suck, but victory will be sweet, no matter when it arrives.
Just when you guess the laws of physics would prevent the complete collapse of conservatism into a singularity of hypocrisy, theft, and vandalism, along comes Texas to say to physics, “Hold my beer.”
The Texas House will soon vote on whether to expel Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) for having sex with a 19-year-old intern after giving enough alcohol to where she “could not effectively consent to intercourse and could not indicate whether [Slaton’s conduct] was welcome or unwelcome,” the House committee recommending his expulsion found.
Slaton, who has called for abortion to be a capital offense, had unprotected sex with the young woman and procured Plan B pregnancy-prevention medication the next morning, according to a friend of hers.
Proud East Texan Slaton, whose website credits him as having “values and principles that resemble(represent) the great people of East Texas,” (a designation with which the people of East Texas may choose to decline), has not expressed contrition for his acts. His lawyer instead said that “the complaints should be dismissed because the behavior occurred in Slaton’s Austin residence, not the workplace.”
The article is accompanied by a photo of Texas Rep. Bryan Slaton, proud family man, and conservative pastor, draped with ammunition belts and a long gun.
Posted by readers of the article:
Why hasn’t he been arrested for rape?
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When we prosecute crimes, we prosecute as THE STATE vs. ___________. I realize that prosecutions should have cooperating victims, but it’s possible to move ahead without them. Evidence exists that the victim was incapacitated. That should be all that is needed for a conviction. If it’s usually not, shame on the juries. But at least we could start socializing more people to the fact that lack of consent is rape.
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“The Texas House will soon vote on whether to expel Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) for having sex with [raping] a 19-year-old intern after giving enough alcohol to where she “could not effectively consent to intercourse and could not indicate whether [Slaton’s conduct] was welcome or unwelcome,”
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What about plying the underage intern with alcohol? That’s still a crime wherever it took place. Technically, still a minor, the intern couldn’t consent to sex with this older man who held some authority over her as a supervisor.
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not a minor, but under the drinking age of 21 for sure.
——————–
there were no banned books involved, no CRT or gay stuff mentioned, and he was not in drag. See, all is OK now.
‼️ Dmitry Peskov said that due to the busy schedule for May 9, Vladimir Putin will host the parade via video link. The equipment for this is now being installed on the square. The image will be broadcast on several large screens, which will be clearly visible to all participants of the ceremony.
Is there anything more pathetic than a terrified and paranoid Putin afraid to attend his country’s biggest national holiday in person? He’s pretty much attending it via Zoom, and that’s just sad.
A day after his bid to exit Bakhmut failed, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group mercenaries launched a fierce attack on the remaining Ukrainian pockets in the city, backed by a massive artillery barrage. So much for “shell hunger.” I’m writing this Sunday night, so I’ll update later Monday with the results of this attack. [video at the link]
Those high rises are in the last little Ukrainian-held corner of Bakhmut. Russia really wants their big victory—Ukraine’s 58th largest city—for their big Tuesday parade, and it looks like they’ll have to flatten all those buildings to make it happen. [Tweet regarding “incredibly high costs of this operation which any other sane command would have stopped months ago,” at the link] Eh, Putin doesn’t care. All he wants is his trophy to parade via his Zoom link on Tuesday.
[…] we are finally slowly starting to hear stories that at least sound to us like they’re related to the real reason Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News. They’re along the lines of Tucker being under the false impression that he was too big to fire, that he was bigger than Fox News. These are things that would actually piss off the man upstairs. (We mean Rupert Murdoch, not Jesus.) [Sounds about right.]
Looking at this through a more “Succession”-type lens just makes more sense — certainly more sense than the idea that Fox News execs were alarmed to read a text message that suggested Tucker might be li’l bit white supremacist.
Rolling Stone came out with a story on Sunday that focuses on these exact subjects, and pinpoints what ultimately happened to the “death match” Tucker got himself into when he started actively trying to get Irena Briganti, Fox’s famously hardass comms chief, fired. Tucker hates her. Her name has been all over these stories, in a number of ways.
Now RS says that starting in spring of 2020, Tucker started trying actively to get her fired. It did not work and now he is the one who is fired.
The sources say Carlson made his case to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, Fox’s chief legal officer Viet Dinh, Murdoch family heir and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, and even other Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity.
In pleading his case, Carlson argued Briganti spent too much time badgering on-air talent and the channel’s personnel; that she was generally incompetent and mean-spirited; and that she regularly engaged in dirty tricks against him and other hosts and contributors, when her job was ostensibly to protect them. One current Fox source with knowledge of the matter described the Carlson-Briganti feud as an intra-network “death match.”
“I do know that he was telling [Fox executives] that [Briganti] should be fucking fired,” a former Fox News commentator tells Rolling Stone. “She’s terrible. He was very bold there.”
But not bold enough. Or powerful enough. Or he just wasn’t a strong or important enough guy. Maybe he didn’t spend enough time in the nut-tanner, tanning his nuts.
But despite Carlson’s high ratings, influence in Republican political circles, and hyper-devoted fan base, he lacked the juice to oust Briganti. Her ties to other top executives were too tight for Carlson to overcome. In some cases, executives laughed off Carlson’s attempt to get Briganti fired, assuring him and others that Briganti was not going anywhere anytime soon.
Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, they said about Tucker, behind his back. Yes, we are finding this plotline much more believable.
RS says when Briganti found out about what Tucker was doing, she reacted like this:
Word of Carlson’s attempt to get her fired got back to Briganti, exacerbating an already terrible relationship. Briganti “hates all the talent,” the former Fox News commentator says. “She was so disgusted by the level of fucked up idiots who work there, in her opinion, and had to clean up their messes and their overblown egos.”
This continues to make sense.
“He really thought he was going to make a change, and I kind of shook my head,” says a different former Fox News talent. “It was such a terrible idea. It was such a clear suicide mission … But then again at the time I guess he thought he was big enough to do anything.”
Bless his heart. Tucker fought a woman and the woman won, sounds like. That can’t be good for his masculinity issues.
RS notes that this still isn’t exactly the smoking gun of why Tucker was fired, but we feel that it gives us a much clearer backdrop. […] also read the new one in the Daily Beast with more unredacted messages between Tucker and Bret Baier, which features Tucker calling people a “[C-word to insult women]” a bunch more. That’s reportedly been part of this whole saga, as well, Tucker using that word against various people […] “One thousand percent” that was partially about Briganti, says one of their sources.
In related news, Axios came out yesterday with its own scooplet that Tucker is “ready to torch Fox News.”
“The idea that anyone is going to silence Tucker and prevent him from speaking to his audience is beyond preposterous,” says his lawyer. But unfortunately, to speak to his audience the way he wants — he wants to start his own media empire of some kind — he needs to get out of his contract with Fox, which doesn’t expire until January of 2025. Axios says Fox would rather pay Tucker a bunch of millions to stay off the air.
Of course, other idiot wingnut outfits are courting Tucker, and Axios drops this little nugget:
Axios has learned that Carlson and Elon Musk had a conversation about working together, but didn’t discuss specifics.
Christ, that’s terrifying.
Here are some tough guy words Axios printed about how ready Tucker is to torch Fox News […]:
The ousted host “knows where a lot of bodies are buried, and is ready to start drawing a map,” said a Carlson source who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.
Bare-knuckle brawlers from Trumpworld are standing by.
“They’re coming to him and saying: ‘Do you want me to hit Fox?’ ” a close Carlson friend said. “He’s been saying: ‘No. I want to get this done quiet and clean.’ ”
“Now, we’re going from peacetime to Defcon 1,” the friend added. “His team is preparing for war. He wants his freedom.
In a sign of what could be coming, Megyn Kelly hit her former employer for its post-Carlson ratings by tweeting a reference to conservative attacks on Bud Light: “My audience is calling them #Foxweiser.”
That is the stupidest fucking thing we have ever heard, but Megyn Kelly’s audience is pretty fucking stupid.
Well, if Tucker and Fox can’t get along, we guess they’re just going to have to fight a whole bunch.
In the recent past, automatic voter registration was a familiar policy in many advanced democracies, but not in the United States. Slowly but surely, however, the idea is gaining traction on American soil.
CBS News reported late last week on the latest state to join the growing club.
Minnesota’s Democrat Gov. Tim Walz on Friday signed the “Democracy for the People Act” into law, a sweeping bill aimed at expanding access to the polls that includes long-sought after provisions from voting rights advocates. The legislation implements automatic voter registration, allows 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, and creates a permanent absentee voter list that will automatically send people who sign up a ballot each election.
“Today is a great day for democracy,” the Democratic governor declared. “The ballot is the most powerful thing we have. Your voice is in your ballot. And if you don’t have access to that or it’s made more difficult, your voice is stifled.”
According to Minnesota’s secretary of state’s office, there are roughly 575,000 eligible voters in the Land of 10,000 Lakes who are currently unregistered. The newly signed “Democracy for the People Act” is expected to move many of them onto the voter rolls.
A report in the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, applications for the following would result in automatic voter registration:
– New or renewed driver’s license or state identification card.
– Initial or renewal application for MinnesotaCare or Medical Assistance.
– Application for benefits or services to another participating agency.
If the overall tally from the National Conference of State Legislatures is correct, Minnesota is the 23rd state, plus the District of Columbia, to adopt AVR.
Not bad for a policy that didn’t exist in any state as recently as eight years ago.
[…] Under the policy, states automatically register eligible voters who interact with state agencies, shifting the burden away from the individual. Those who want to withdraw from the system can do so voluntarily without penalty, but otherwise, Americans in these states are simply added to the voters rolls as a matter of course.
As of today, it’s reached nearly half of the nation’s states. The holdouts tend to be Republican strongholds, led by GOP officials who are generally reluctant to open up the electoral process, but AVR advocates continue to made progress in ways that were tough to predict in the recent past.
Postscript: At the federal level, it’s worth noting that automatic voter registration was a key element of the Democrats’ “For the People Act,” which Republicans derailed in the last Congress. When that bill failed, Democrats tried again with a more narrowly tailored “Freedom to Vote Act,” which also included automatic voter registration, and which GOP senators also used a filibuster to defeat.
[…] “Our priority is to make sure that Congress does its job,” Yellen said on ABC News’ “This Week” when asked about it. “There is no way to protect our financial system in our economy, other than Congress doing its job and raising the debt ceiling and enabling us to pay our bills and we should not get to the point where we need to consider whether the President can go on issuing debt. This would be a constitutional crisis.”
The part of the 14th Amendment in question reads, “validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
As the day when House Republicans may push the country to default on its debts draws closer, legal scholars have floated the theory that the 14th Amendment essentially declares the debt ceiling unconstitutional. Were the White House to embrace this argument, it might ignore Congress and continue to pay the U.S.’s bills. The move would almost certainly start a lengthy legal fight. […]
Biden and McCarthy — alongside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) — are scheduled to meet on Tuesday, the first time since Feb 1., to discuss the looming debt ceiling default and spending.
The meeting comes as Yellen announced last week that the country could default on its debt as early as June 1 if the borrowing limit is not raised.
Re: #492
Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) has resigned from his seat, one day before his colleagues were slated to vote on whether to expel him from the Texas House of Representatives…Slaton’s letter [of resignation] did not mention the allegations against him, which he has previously denied. He wrote that he was looking forward to “spending more time with my young family” ….
Pilot COVID-19 At-Home Test Kits, at least 516,000 of which went to CVS Health and Amazon, have been recalled across the United States by SD Biosensor after “potentially harmful bacteria were found” in a tube with liquid included in the test.
“Direct exposure to the liquid in the tube through misuse or spillage could potentially lead to serious illness,” the company-written, FDA-posted recall notice says.
On the heels of Gov. Ron DeSantis signing a law that would ban most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a coalition is mobilizing an effort to put the question of abortion on Florida’s 2024 ballot.
The group, called Floridians Protecting Freedom, is proposing a constitutional amendment to protect the right of a woman to have an abortion up to the point where the fetus could survive outside the womb…
“NEW: @SecBlinken announced Monday that the warring factions in Sudan had reached a ceasefire, ‘starting at midnight on April 24, to last for 72 hours’.
The agreement between the SAF and the RSF came ‘following intense negotiation over the past 48 hours’, Blinken said.”
Susan Rice to step down as domestic policy adviser
Szabolcs Panyi on Twitter:
Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC: the Atlanta Journal Constitution is reporting that Fani Willis has informed local police (to give them time to prepare) that she’ll announce this summer (July-September) whether she’ll be filing charges against Trump and his supporters.
Eleni Kounalakis launches 2026 campaign for California governor
Kyiv Independent:
“Czech, Polish, Slovak leaders pen letter calling for Ukraine’s postwar security guarantees”:
“Lithuanian President: ‘Red lines’ regarding military aid to Ukraine must be crossed”:
“National Resistance Center: Partisans destroy Russian checkpoint in occupied Kherson Oblast”:
House GOP: Give Us Everything We’ve Ever Wanted And We’ll Extend The Debt Ceiling … ‘Til March
Clarence Thomas didn’t recuse himself from a 2004 appeal tied to Harlan Crow’s family business
Guardian – “‘Let her speak!’: protests after Montana Republicans silence trans lawmaker”:
Lighter recommendations – streaming edition:
The Diplomat
Poker Face
Ukraine Update: The sad state of Russia’s hilariously bad propaganda
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Associated Press:
Gun Violence Is Actually Worse in Red States. It’s Not Even Close.
America’s regions are poles apart when it comes to gun deaths and the cultural and ideological forces that drive them.
Much more at the link, including historical details that are relevant the cultural differences that shape different uses of guns, different attitudes toward gun control, and even how males treasure their honor and believe it can be diminished if an insult, slight or wrong were ignored. In contrast, some cultural legacies dampen deadly violence.
Followup to comment 11.
More Ukraine updates.
Link. Scroll down to view updates.
Followup to SC’s comment #4.
DA Fani Willis to announce election fraud charges which “may provoke a significant public reaction”
Well, its official. Biden is running fro re-election. Via Aussie ABC :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-25/joe-biden-announces-2024-election-bid/102265240
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also from there:
LOL.
Guardian – “‘Like a dam breaking’: experts hail decision to let US climate lawsuits advance”:
Here’s a link to the Guardian’s Sudan liveblog.
Guardian – “The enemy within? Ukraine’s Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church faces scrutiny.”
Guardian liveblog:
Politico – “Law firm head bought Gorsuch-owned property”:
Tweet o’ the day.
France 24:
“À Paris, l’ONG Mémorial poursuit son combat contre un État russe qui réécrit l’Histoire”:
“Dix ans après le drame du Rana Plaza, la fast-fashion toujours coupable”:
“French bang pots, pans in fresh protest against Macron’s pension reforms”:
“Venezuelan opposition figure Guaido expelled from Colombia, slams ‘persecution’”:
“Air pollution kills more than 1,200 children a year in Europe, report says”:
Guardian liveblog:
Anzac Day today here, well, technically yesterday.. but I can’t sleep.. And the Band Played Waltzing Mathilda ..
As the old sent the young to their deaths because of course they do over and over and over again
Fuck those Masters of War
In music and metaphorically.
WW One, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq & more.
When will stop? When will it end?
EWinsteions quote about WW IV and its weaponry springs to mind.
Live Lunar landing by Indian spacecraft and work and effort and accomplishment here hopefully if it works..
Steve Rosenberg, BBC: “One Russian paper today asks ‘Can [US & Russia] ever be allies again?’ Responses include ‘Not for a hundred years’ & ‘only if Martians land’. Another paper warns against underplaying Stalin’s Terror: ‘If we don’t condemn Stalin’s crimes, our souls are empty’.”
Video at the (Twitter) link. That second article is noteworthy.
Ahem.. Japanese.. not Indian. Dóh! Apologies.
Hakuto craft :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakuto
Politico – “Florida surgeon general altered key findings in study on Covid-19 vaccine safety”:
“NEW: @Axios w/ a first look at RNC’s video response to Biden
It is also the committee’s first video that is 100% generated by AI software meant to create images that look and feel real (in this case an imagined dystopia look at the future of Biden wins)”
Video at the (Twitter) link. When one of our two major parties is doing this, things are pretty dystopian already.
Bout 3 mins till Hakuto lands..
Here’s Biden’s opening campaign ad (Twitter link) – positive, hopeful, inclusive,…real.
SC @34, I like the way Biden featured lots of women, including Kamala Harris, in that campaign ad. He also seems to be determined to take back the word “freedom” and to use it the way it was intended, unlike the MAGA doofuses.
Meanwhile, speaking of campaign ads, Trump’s campaign released a new ad slamming DeSantis for “failing to show enough gratitude to Trump,” as Steve Benen put it.
Anzac Day. Gallipoli.
Lest we forget?
Could we fucking remember before we start planning & making rhetorical sel fulfulling prophecy of WW III with China please?
Or any other fucking wars?
Followup to comment 35.
I am not the only one who noticed Biden’s emphasis on “freedom.”
In the fight with the GOP over ‘freedom,’ Dems like their chances
Democrats have an opportunity to reverse the terms of the debate over “freedom.” As the Biden campaign helped show, it’s a fight the party expects to win.
SteveR @36, please do not embed videos in this thread. Provide a link to the video, not the video itself. Thank you.
RNC accidentally makes an important point in new anti-Biden ad
Joe Biden’s actual record wasn’t scary, so the RNC found it necessary to peddle literally fake, made-up images referring to events that have not occurred.
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/maybe-tucker-was-a-blood-sacrifice
Maybe Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson are a team: together they can destroy Fox News.
Followup to comment 40.
Some interesting details:
Carlson was in the midst of negotiating a new 5-year contract when he was fired. Or so says Gabriel Sherman, referring to a “source” in a Vanity Fair article.
Other details, as reported by Talking Points Memo:
Link
Link
See also:
https://twitter.com/Annette_Taddeo/status/1650486572939198465
Laura Loomer: https://twitter.com/MarginalizedO/status/1650500142385057792/photo/1
Even Republican far rightwing whackos are weirded out by Ron Desantis’s strange personality traits. Maybe Ron can just skip that whole announcing-as-a-candidate-for-president thing. It would be a relief to dispense with him now.
Since flooding began in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on April 12, Governor Ron DeSantis has visited:
Ohio
South Carolina
Utah
Japan
He has not visited Fort Lauderdale.
Ryan J. Reilly is covering the Proud Boys trial and they’re in closing arguments:
Harry Belafonte has died.
Excerpt from the Guardian:
Belafonte was 96 years old when he died.
See also: […] key ally to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights struggle by Adam Bernstein for the Washington Post.
Followup to comments 45.
Excerpt from the Washington Post Article:
Heritage Foundation’s latest blueprint for wrecking the federal gov’t was published Friday
You can pay $35 to buy a copy of the “Mandate for Leadership” if you wish.
‘A total outrage!’ Russian TV reacts to Tucker Carlson news
Tucker Carlson’s Long Con
Trump is too afraid to stand on the debate stage. He’s making excuses:
Link
White Fascists Wistfully Remembering Times Tucker Brushed Up Against Them And Gave Them Starbursts
https://www.wonkette.com/tucker-carlson-nate-hochman-chris-hayes
Additional links to sources backing up the Wonkette article’s facts are available at the main link.
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Ukraine Update: Russia claims the T-14 Armata ‘super tank’ is now in Bakhmut
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
There’s no proof, there’s just the Republican farce playing over and over again.
Link
Re: Lynna, OM @ #53…
Re: Lynna, OM @ #53…
I’ll look forward to seeing a report in a couple of days that the Ukraine forces have caused the T-14 Armata to set a new turret tossing record.
Japanese company loses contact with spacecraft after attempting to land on the moon
Canadian Mitchell “The Moose” Hooper is the World’s Strongest Man
Tester vows to block Biden’s Amtrak board nominees
Russian spy intrigue fizzles as Hawaii stolen ID trial nears
Followup to comment 53.
More Ukraine updates.
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
Militarizing our schools is not the answer to gun violence
Florida Prosecutor’s Racism Policy Leaked</a
Barbie with Down’s syndrome on sale after ‘real women’ criticism
whheydt
Doubtful. The T-14 Armata (well those that have actually been completed which could be as low as 45 (minus, of course, the ones that are test mules for finding out if the high-tech technology actually works)) have an autoloader for the main gun which stores the ammunition in the turret. I have been unable to confirm, but it is extremely likely that the ammunition storage has a fireworks factory roof — thick walls to direct the blast upwards with a really thin roof to direct the blast upwards (as used in the M1 Abrams series (though, given the prevalence of drone mounted anti-tank rockets, having a thin roof over the ammo may be problematic) to ensure that a cook-off will be directed upwards and not into the rest of the turret) — which would, in the event of a cook-off, tend to drive the turret into the tank hull rather than up. There may be additional ammo storage in the rear hull under the after side of the turret, which makes me wonder just how strong the armour is on the rear side of the crew capsule. Anyway, a cook-off would most likely not flip the lid, just bottom out the suspension.
I suspect that this will be a difficult platform to fight from (sorry about the preposition at the end of the sentence). Situational awareness is essential to fight a tank. Even the most modern western tanks often have the vehicle commander partway out of the hatch to keep track of what is going on around the vehicle — sensors and periscopes only show so much.
Also, I was writing about ammunition cooking-off and started to wonder whether the kitchen unit built into the crew capsule is built to modern Russian standards. Naah, I’m sure that the Russians have fully taken into account the dangers of fire in the wrong area . . . .
Damnit, Ukraine, capture one of these so we can answer the questions.
Re: Oggie: Mathom @ #65…
I watched the video embedded in the Daily Kos article this is all from. One of the points made rather strongly (other than that the T-14 is unreliable and is a probably just for show) is that there are no backups for the sights and periscopes. Thus, if a Bradley encountered a T-14, the basic tactic would be to destroy the gunsights and driver’s periscopes and then maneuver to get a good TOW shot to take it out.
Lawmakers file amendment to give Florida the power to inspect Disney’s monorail system
Not looking good for Japan’s lunar lander :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-26/japan-ispace-moon-landing-fall/102266060
Live questions & answers on US politics here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-26/live-updates-joe-biden-presidential-campaign-2024/102263812
Worrying development here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-26/un-warns-of-lab-risk-more-displacement-amid-sudan-conflict/102266342
@38. Lynna, OM : Oops. My apologies. Wasn’t posting where I thought I was then.
Assorted podcast episodes:
Angry Planet – “Russia’s Fascist Youth Groups”:
This is hugely informative.
“How a 21-Year-Old Edgelord Stole Pentagon Secrets”:
The part about War Thunder is very funny.
Michael & Us – “#422- The Great Moving Right Show”:
NBN – “Paul A. Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell“:
Maintenance Phase – “The 10,000 Steps Myth”:
Guardian – “‘Values and lifestyles’ of small boat refugees threaten social cohesion, says Jenrick”:
Update to #9 – Montana state rep Zooey Zephyr:
Made me laugh.
So, by “condemn” he means “cave to”.
Tucker Carlson news – live: Fox News’ ‘dirt file’ on fired host revealed as OAN offers him $25m new job
Aussie ABC’s Foreign Correspondent recent episode on DeSantis and Florida and the Culture Wars Just under half an hour long.
Ex-New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to join Harvard
Judge tosses Devin Nunes’ libel suit, ruling it ‘objectively true’ his family farm used undocumented migrants
Florida GOP set to remove hurdle to DeSantis White House bid
Another job offer for Tucker Carlson:
Ex-Fox News Star Receives a Surprise Offer From Russia
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian liveblog. From there:
JFC.
(They also have UK, US, and Sudan liveblogs today, which I don’t have time to share.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65405312
About time….
New Fever Dreams – “Tuckered Out feat. Sam Adler Bell”:
(Link @ #479 in the previous chapter of the Thread to the Know Your Enemy episode about the DeSantis book. “Petulant” is a great descriptor for him.)
Guardian – “Record ocean temperatures put Earth in ‘uncharted territory’, say scientists”:
Guardian – “Judge rebukes Trump for ‘entirely inappropriate’ post before E Jean Carroll testimony”:
Guardian liveblog:
Here’s the link to the Guardian’s Sudan liveblog.
Why a GOP senator’s blockade on military promotions is so radical
Sen. Tommy Tuberville is blocking several dozen military promotions as part of an anti-abortion tantrum. The impact on our national security matters.
Biden picked up union support yesterday. After he officially announced his campaign for president, the following unions endorsed him:
Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)
International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers (IW).
Far-Right Podcaster Steven Crowder Implies Ex-Wife Shouldn’t Have Been Allowed to Divorce Him
@87:
Sen. Mike Lee Posts Angry Rant on Military Women Getting Paid Leave for Abortion Travel
Billionaire Peter Thiel Is Pissed, Says He Won’t Donate to GOP Candidates This Year
1) It’s not an election year.
2) He will probably change his mind at some time before the next elections.
3) The position of the GOP on social issues is hardly news.
4) No matter his decision, Thiel is still an awful person.
Maria Bolotnikova from Vox had linked to this oped by an activist named Curtis Vollmar in the Salt Lake Tribune a few days ago – “Is free speech dead in rural Utah?”:
Yesterday, Direct Action Everywhere tweeted:
…all while laying off workers. Here’s a surprisingly detailed article about the trial from the St George News – “Beaver judge finds animal activist guilty of trespassing, disorderly conduct during Pioneer Day event.”
Re: Lynna, OM @ #87..
Or as the old comment has it, “An officer and a gentleman…by Act of Congress.”
Since my father was a commissioned officer in the US Maritime Service, he would have been on such a list four times, I think. He left the Maritime Service as a Lt. Commander.
Slate – “Pour One Out”: “The boozy story of how we decided alcohol was a health boon in the ’90s—and how it all fell apart….”
Fact-checking Trump’s reaction to Biden’s reelection announcement
That’s a Washington Post article by Glenn Kessler
More at the link.
All In last night (YT link) – “Tucker’s firing shows being a ‘misogynistic, bullying menace’ may backfire”:
Ben Collins on Twitter (video at the link):
Tweet o’ the day.
“Breaking:
Erdogan cancels tomorrow night’s big live interview event which was set to broadcast with Euro D, ATV Europe, NTV Europe ve TRT World joint show”
He’s canceling upcoming events after getting sick during a live televised interview last night. He’s claimed it’s a stomach bug, but who knows.
Science – More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered
ProPublica – As Rail Profits Soar, Blocked Crossings Force Kids to Crawl Under Trains to Get to School
SC @92: Mormons.
Ukraine Update: Russia and Ukraine engage in the battle of the apps
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
How E. Jean Carroll camp’s opening statement went from compelling to can’t-look-away
The start of the Carroll v. Trump defamation and battery civil trial was unlike anything I’ve seen in a federal courthouse.
New York Times:
Re: Lynna 103
Not locker room talk? Maybe locker room talk is about things like what did and making up stories about it.
That should be “what Trump did”.
Followup to comment 102.
More Ukraine updates:
WonketteRon Johnson: What If Global Warming Is Awesome
Supreme Court on ethics issues: Not broken, no fix needed
Fox to hand over documents for 2nd voting machine lawsuit
Kansas enacts first anti-abortion law since Roe fell after lawmakers override Kelly’s veto
Abortion providers in Kansas will soon face additional criminal penalties if they do not provide care to infants “born alive” in an abortion after lawmakers approved the first anti-abortion bill since voters overwhelmingly opted to retain the state-level right to the procedure last year.
The Kansas Legislature voted Wednesday to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of the bill, which goes beyond existing federal law protecting infants “born alive” in abortions to create new criminal penalties.
The House voted 87-37 to and the Senate voted 31-9 Wednesday override the veto on the “born alive” bill. The new law will take effect in July…
Happy World Tapir Day everyone!
See : https://www.tapirday.org/
House passes McCarthy’s debt ceiling proposal
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Guardian – “Elon Musk’s statements could be ‘deepfakes’, Tesla defence lawyers tell court”:
Guardian – “‘I don’t want more children to suffer what I did’: the 50-year fight to clear US bombs from Laos”:
More at the link. They have a link at the end to “Laos: The Most Bombed Country on Earth” on BBC Radio 4.
New episode of Tech Won’t Save Us – “Does Banning TikTok Make Sense? w/ Shoshana Wodinsky & Daniel Greene”:
The Reidout last night (update to #s 9 and 71 above) (YT link) – “Trans Montana St. Rep. Zooey Zephyr calls out state house GOP for barring her from House chamber”:
Travis Akers:
Screenshots and links at the (Twitter) link.
Adam Klasfeld on Twitter:
Livetweeting and more at the link. Carroll’s testimony is continuing this morning. From the thread:
The fuck? (Twitter link)
One more brief moment in time when Pence is smarter than Trump:
Link
SC @120: Jack Teixeira, mass shooter in the making. A wannabe. One wonders how long it would have taken him to fulfill those fantasies.
Tucker Carlson doesn’t have a First Amendment right to work at Fox
More at the link.
BBC – “Turkish mass arrests target Kurdish areas ahead of election”:
Ben Collins tweeted: “Been on BlueSky for hours now and have not been called a pedophile for saying I like sandwiches yet. It’s euphoric. Kind of incredible how low the bar is for me to be happy online.”
From Adam Klasfeld’s thread:
FWIW via Aussie ABC news – Jerry Springer has died :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-28/jerry-springer-dies-aged-79/102275904
Fascist Ftucker has spoken post sacking :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-27/tucker-carlson-re-emerges-targets-us-media-and-political-system/102275402
Tuvalu’s future? :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-27/tuvalus-plan-to-create-digital-twin-metaverse-climate-change/102223008
On a lighter note, I was trying to figure out how to get one of my stainless steel saucepans clean (I accidentally carbonized some sauerkraut while making a sausage/sauerkraut/apple caserole) and I started humming the theme from one of the shows my granddaughters love to watch” “Work it out, work it out, work it out, wombats . . .
Being a grandfather is fun. Tiring, but fun.
The FBI Found a Bazooka in Alleged Pentagon Leaker’s Home
He is going to get free housing at a federal facility for a very long time!
Ukraine Update: Russia brings the (literal) big guns to Bakhmut
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Crazier and crazier. More of a whacko, more narcissism on display: Trump Leans Into Globalist Conspiracy Theories With New ‘Make America Great For Us Again’ Ad
Re: SC (Salty Current) @ #126…
When correcting the proofs for a book, my late wife cited a different Swift work. (The copy editor had changed “little endian vs. big endian” to “little Indian vs. big Indian.” She changed it back and wrote a marginal note, “See, J. Swift.”)
She would be so proud of the judge.
Followup to comment 131.
Posted by readers of the article:
At least hadean crust sort of still exists. I don’t know about the sample quality, but apparently the old mountains are still there.
https://www.geologyin.com/2023/04/scientists-find-mountains-widespread.html?m=1#:~:text=The%20ULVZs%20can%20be%20thought,to%20more%20than%2025%20miles.
Followup to comment 130.
More Ukraine updates:
Probably not the actual old mountains. I misread part.
YouTube link to Ari Melber’s segment in which he discusses “CRUZ TAPES”: NEW HEAT ON GOP SENATOR OVER 2020 PLOT.” It’s basically about what Cruz did to try to help Trump steal the election.
YouTube link to the next Melber segment, an exclusive in which actual tapes of Cruz speaking are revealed.
Cruz is caught pushing a fake “commission” to steal the 2020 election and outlining his plot just four days prior to January 6th, 2021.
Melber breaks down the damaging “Cruz tapes” and how Cruz went from a Trump foe to a planner of 2020 plot for Trump.
NBC News:
That looks like progress. Pence was at the courthouse from 9 AM to 4 PM.
Re Bakhmut
As long as the Ukrainian tactics mean that many more Russian soldiers are wounded and killed compared to the Ukrainian soldiers, and they’re getting a better ratio than they could elsewhere, then this is a great deal for the Ukrainians, and they should keep it up. It doesn’t matter if they lose the city. At least not strategically. Bakhmut was never important militarily. It was always a political objective for Russian to claim some kind of victory, and perhaps unfortunately, Ukraine decided to also make Bakhmut a symbol of resistance and so Ukraine might have committed more to its defense than they should have. And maybe Ukraine chooses to fight there because Bakhmut is already destroyed, and better for Ukraine to fight in a city that is already destroyed compared to fighting in another city and having that other city be destroyed too.
More western military aid cannot come fast enough, and more western sanctions on the whole Russian economy including its oil and gas exports cannot come fast enough.
Marjorie Taylor Greene suggests stepmoms aren’t real mothers in nasty hearing clash
Especially hypocritical and hideous since anti-abortion activists have to pretend to be pro-adoption.
Good News, as posted by Politico:
Voting Rights Group Sues Florida For Registration Process That Sets Former Felons Up To Fail
NYT:
Abortion Bans Fail in South Carolina and Nebraska
By Adeel Hassan and Eliza Fawcett / April 27, 2023
The Chair of the BBC, corrupt Tory (but I repeat myself) Richard Sharp, has resigned following the publication of a report pointing out his corruption (or “possible perceived conflict of interest” in its mealy-mouthed terms – Sharp helped arrange a large loan for Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson at the same time Johnson was appointing him, and failed to declare this to Parliament). Now Sunak will have to find another corrupt Tory (but I repeat myself again) who is less obviously corrupt, to replace Sharp.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also in the Guardian – “‘We created our own weapon’: the anti-invasion magazines defying Putin in Ukraine.” (This was too short! There’s so much more I want to know!)
Guardian liveblog:
Also in the Guardian:
George Monbiot – “I back saboteurs who have acted with courage and coherence, but I won’t blow up a pipeline. Here’s why”:
“Debris blast from SpaceX rocket launch faces environmental scrutiny”:
“Kansas enacts most sweeping transgender bathroom law in the US”:
From the Guardian UK liveblog (linked by KG @ #144):
He tweeted: “From protecting European security to tackling people smugglers, the UK and Italy are united.” They also report that he met with Ron DeSantis earlier.
Yesterday’s tweet o’ the day.
Mark Joseph Stern:
Video clips at the (Twitter) link.
A couple from The Guardian this morning.
92yo Rupert Murdoch may be having age-related issues: Marina Hyde asks “Nixed nuptials, Fox in trouble and ‘erratic’ behaviour … Is Rupert Murdoch OK?”
And more Supreme Court: Revealed: Senate investigation into Brett Kavanaugh assault claims contained serious omissions. This based on a 28 page report released by Chuck Grassley who chaired the hearings in 2018. What they are calling “omissions” seems more like outright lies. One of Brett’s sexually inappropriate incidences at Yale was defended by someone saying they thought it was another student. Turns out the person they named was a senior in high school and not even in New Haven.
New York Times:
Commentary:
Link
Kevin McCarthy’s spending bill is about wrecking the economy
Republicans want to wreck the economy so that they can campaign on the lie that President Biden is wrecking the economy.
Just remembered a story from February that I don’t recall seeing here.
Medium – So, a Top Guardian Editor Was Married to the Founder of Mumsnet
Guardian – “Ron DeSantis in Guantánamo: how questions about his past haunt the Florida governor.”
CounterVortex – “Alphabet at issue in Great Game for Central Asia”:
Texas Is “Fixing” Its Power Grid in the Most Texas Way Possible
Pending legislation imperils ordinary Texans—but it’s great for the gas industry.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain@155,
Looking him up, I find that Katz left the Guardian in 2013, and Newsnight in 2017. So it seems a bit of a stretch to blame him for current or recent transphobia at the BBC, let alone the Guardian!
Link
Reporters working for the New York Times will fuck this up. No doubt. Will more reasonable, thoughtful and logical media sources be able to counter the false narrative?
In Missouri news…
NBC – “Raising a trans kid in Missouri has become a ‘dystopian nightmare’ for families”:
More at the link.
VeganFTA – “Missouri’s New Bill to Make Blocking the Transport of Animals a Felony Passes its First Stage”:
@KG #159:
Yeah, recent staff are to blame for recent scandals. I think the gist was it was an entanglement that ought to be shocking, yet isn’t, after considering the environment, how normalized it’s been.
Guardian liveblog:
The full article – “Leaked Amnesty review finds own Ukraine report ‘legally questionable’”:
@KG #159:
Your’s is a reasonable reading of it though.
“At least half of all decisions in this industry come down to who someone’s boyfriend is, or who their Dad is, or who said what to who at a party twenty years ago. […] This is what it looks like when the TERFS take over.”
Politico – “North Carolina Supreme Court clears way for partisan gerrymandering “:
France 24 – “‘Unbearable’: Spain swelters in ‘exceptionally high’ temperatures for April”:
Link
Wonkette: “Sham Investigation Of Brett Kavanaugh That Everyone Assumed Was Sham Was In Fact Sham”
LOL – France 24 – “IA : Pékin rêve d’un ChatGPT respectueux ‘des valeurs du socialisme’.”
“Nothing to see here, just Erdogan’s interior minister calling his country’s coming elections (which his party and his president risk losing) a coup attempt by the West.
‘May 14, 2023 is the West’s political coup attempt’.”
Video with no subtitles at the (Twitter) link.
Donald Trump embraces Jan. 6 defendant who wants Mike Pence executed
Micki Larson-Olson, who served months in jail for her actions on Jan. 6, told NBC News that politicians who certified the results of the 2020 election deserve to be be killed for treason.
Steve Rosenberg, BBC:
Video at the (Twitter) link.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Makes Bizarre Quip About Taxes During The Ice Age, Insults AOC
I could try to parse that, but why? She is a demented fuckwit.
Oral Sex Is a Leading Factor in the Throat Cancer ‘Epidemic’ in the United States, Doctor Says
Ukraine Update: Russia forced to face its own incompetence, corruption, and isolation
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Bloomberg:
Also, those banks were poorly managed by doofuses.
Roll Call:
Glad that Gaetz and the 102 House members who backed him up failed.
WTF is Matt Gaetz doing trying to decide U.S. troop deployments in Somalia? Russia’s Wagner troops are in Somalia, as well as other terrorists.
Telling it like it is:
Link
Followup to comment 175.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
Tim Minchin has got very rich, and is turning into a Tory.
@180
Just read through that interview. That was a lot of words to say not very much.
Like “identity fundamentalism”? You can’t drop a term like that and then just move on, with no definition or clarification. Well, not unless you’re just full of it.
And holy FUCK am I tired of the argument that we have to be extra-super-nice to the assholes because otherwise they’re justified in being even bigger assholes.
Newfound ‘brain signature’ linked to multiple psychiatric disorders
‘Not a chance’: Fox News viewers reject Tucker Carlson’s replacement
The network threw him in unprepared. He has not yet mastered that look of perpetual bewilderment and constipation.
Scientists discover never-before-seen brain wave after reading octopuses’ minds
Fact Check: Did Ron DeSantis Get Married at Disney World?
Russian pilots tried to ‘dogfight’ US jets over Syria, US Central Command says
Same broad source but different and puzzling finding around the ice dwarf type planet Quaoar here :
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-dwarf-planet-quaoar.html
Whilst we have more watery news from the rusted red planet here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-29/china-mars-rover-finds-signs-of-recent-water-in-sand-dunes/102282434
Thanks to a Chinese rover and also core habitabilty insight from, er, InSight here :
https://www.space.com/mars-core-seismic-waves-life-insight-lander
That says Mars’es innermost core is still liquid but also sulphurous.
Via PBS Newshour :
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/judy-blume-describes-latest-wave-of-book-bans-and-censorship-as-disgusting-and-fascist
Also :
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/republicans-uses-nonviolent-state-capitol-protests-to-redefine-insurrection
In somewhat better news : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/colorado-governor-signs-4-gun-control-bills
Palate cleanser of sorts and rather fascinating even if I don’t overly like the, at times, annoying tone of voice here in this clip about a brain battered ankylosaur dinosaur which is 15 minutes long.
Russia pledges harsh response after Polish ‘seizure’ of embassy school in Warsaw
Axios:
Fox News poll finds voters overwhelmingly want restrictions on guns
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-29/greens-rent-freeze-federal-parliament/102283334
LA’s Atheist Street Pirates go national in efforts to remove illegal religious signs
Ukraine Update: Smoke on the water, fire in the sky
More ukraine updates coming soon.
The lone female justice retiring. And a majority-male legislature rallying behind the one male candidate to replace her. This is how South Carolina ended up with an all-male Supreme Court as new abortion legislation looms.
More at the link.
Follow up to comment 196.
Posted by readers of the article:
Followup to comment 195.
More Ukraine updates.
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
Man in Texas murders five after he was asked to stop shooting near home so a baby could sleep
Followup to comment 153:
Link
Followup to comment 200.
Posted by readers of the article:
Wonkette: “Florida Censor Lady Should Know Better Than To Come At Betty White”
Sam Alito Says Criticism of Supreme Court Is ‘Unfair’: ‘Practically Nobody Is Defending Us’
Poor man-baby. Maybe no one is defending you because you’re wrong.
Arizona Democrat apologizes for hiding Bibles at state Capitol after she was caught on video
@ 180:
JEEZ-us! Why are all the outspoken atheists turning into fucking fascists! Don’t they fucking realize the right HATES nonbelievers! They aren’t going to be nice to you when they gain power! They are going to kill you, stupid!
Election Law Blog
Formerly incarcerated North Carolinians can’t vote while serving felony sentences
News & Observer on a third election-related ruling coming out of the North Carolina Supreme Court today:
Akira @205:
You really don’t understand irony, do you?
Russian baker fined over anti-war cakes
Followup to comments 195 and 198.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. These updates are at the top of the web page.
Wonkette: “QAnon Momfluencer Convicted Of Falsely Claiming Craft Enthusiasts Tried To Kidnap Her Kids”
Russian-speaking residents in Riga call on Putin “not to protect” them after Russian State Duma statement
Thanks to Missouri’s voter ID law, Kansas Citians must pay to vote. I refuse to do it
A man of principle!
University Of Nebraska Tweaks Its Logo As ‘OK’ Sign Became Gesture For White Supremacists
From the illustrations, I noticed that those people in Nebraska also slimmed down their corn farmer.
Ukraine’s National Guard downs Russian “invisible” drone
Fox ratings tumble in Tucker Carlson slot after his firing
Joe Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
A followup of sorts to SC @83.
Link
Much more at the link.
NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn’t happen this week
“Comedic Duo of Roy Wood Jr And Dark Brandon Dazzle White House Correspondents Dinner”
https://www.wonkette.com/white-house-correspondents-dinner
Italy is suffering the worst drought in 70 years.
Ukraine Update: Wagner mercenary chief Prigozhin: ‘Russia is on the brink of catastrophe’
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Some interesting commentary concerning Tucker Carlson, (excerpts from a longer New Yorker article written by Benjamin Wallace-Wells):
New Yorker link
Why are Americans shooting strangers and neighbors? ‘It all goes back to fear.’
Washington Post link
Excerpts from a longer article:
Followup to comment 221.
More Ukraine updates.
Link Scroll down to view the updates.
PinkNews – Kansas’ new anti-trans bill is so extreme some cis women could be banned from toilets
* The 2-page SB 180 is underwhelmingly lazy.
* “whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova” Telelogical sleight of hand. Doesn’t? Well used to, or should have, in a counterfactual universe.
Twitter Thread:
For $1 Million, You Can Buy Your Own Private Train Car—and Attach It to Any Amtrak Route You Want
Even under the most generous interpretation (to the scumbags producing this hate-filled garbage), this will (not “could”), if passed, make it illegal for some people AFAB, always self-identified as girls/women, and with female external genitalia, to enter a women’s toilet. Conditions such as complete androgen insensitivity and 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency, can cause individuals with an XY karyotype and testes (and not ovaries) to develop in this way. By no possible interpretation, therefore, is their “biological reproductive system… developed to produce ova”.
Well, ensuring that refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean drown will sort that out!
Ruben Gallego calls out Nikki Haley as gun ‘poser,’ points out mistakes in firearms form
News summarized by Steve Benen:
Link
Donald Trump says it is ‘great to be home’ on visit to Scotland
Ukraine Update: Bakhmut could be Russia’s glass jaw
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Russian train derailed by explosives.
Images at the link.
Wonkette: “Junior Posting Memes About Putting Drag Queens In Woodchippers. Sorry, No Jokes In This Headline.”
Longtime Maryland U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin won’t seek reelection, creating rare Senate vacancy
@KG #228:
I wasn’t being generous. Telelogy is one of the TERF tropes, for cohorts they want to handwave in instead of disregard/exclude. But yes, your clarification is important.
That seems pretty dumb, since three of those 5 are well above the equator.
Reginald @230, That’s a good takedown of Nikki Haley!
In other news, here is a followup to comments 234 and 235. More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the update.
Posted by readers of the article from which text was quoted in comment 234:
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
WaPo – He blew the whistle on Trump’s Truth Social. Now he works at Starbucks.
The rest of the article was spinning so HARD to make this guy look good.
NBC News:
HuffPost:
NBC News:
A memorable Will Ferrell line from “Zoolander” — “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills” — came to mind watching the Republicans’ newest debt ceiling ad.
Followup to comment 247.
Yellen Warns McCarthy That Treasury Could Run Out Of Money To Pay Country’s Debts ‘Early As June 1’
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/yellen-treasury-debt-ceiling
https://www.wonkette.com/megyn-kelly-is-an-asshole
Source : https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-rocket-environmental-groups-sue-faa
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also from there:
Shaun Walker in the Guardian – “‘They don’t know how they are viewed here’: Russians in Georgia revive old tension”: “Russians in Tbilisi often arrive unaware of historical sensitivities and simmering hostility…”
Every article I read about Georgia makes me want to go there.
I’ll google eventually, but for now I’m having fun speculating on the meaning of “exotic toasts.”
NBC – “Hollywood writers go on strike after contract negotiations fail”:
France 24:
“French unions announce new day of pension protests, strikes for June 6”:
“Manifestation du 1er-Mai à Paris : ‘Il faut qu’on se rende ingouvernables’.”
Descriptive article with photos and quotes from protesters. They suggest elsewhere that yesterday’s demonstrations were 7 to 10 times larger than usual May Days.
Long but some really good paleontology science stuff here.
An example of online harassment.
David Wood is streaming a podcast with a discussion with an ex-muslim (Apostate prophet)
At the six-minute mark there is a viewer comment that is taunting David Wood about the recent death of his son.
“Dawah wars: The apocalypse explodes”
(I am trying to make the link work- it gets weird when it is a live stream that is forwarded)
https://www.youtube.com/live/sua5-TmIr8 or possibly
https://www.youtube.com/live/sua5-Tmlr
Rachel Maddow last night (YT links):
“Anti-trans neo-Nazis in Ohio find common cause with state Republicans”:
“Blue states passing laws to protect against red state overreach”:
This is starting to resemble the days of the Fugitive Slave Act.
@255 ^ Despite the title a lot more than just Dinosaurs there. (1 hour & 50 mins or so long.)
Also on the Triassic era dinosaurs & more a good youtube doco here – 51 mins temporal length.
Related to #92 above – Marina Bolotnikova on Twitter:
Photos, links, and screenshots at the link.
Gordon Lightfoot has died.
“If You Could Read My Mind.”
Stephen Colbert on Tfucka’s firing here – classic. Almost a dozen mins long.
As the link says here :
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-senate-judiciary-committee-hearing-on-supreme-court-ethics-reform
Source : https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/idahos-strict-abortion-laws-create-uncertainty-for-ob-gyns-in-the-state
Predictable, grim, horrific. “Welcome” (?) to Gilead…
PBS American Experience (YT link) – “The Sun Queen – Chapter 1”:
This is only the first segment, but the show was great. I knew almost none of this history.
Guardian liveblog:
LOL. (Twitter link)
Pornhub Blocks All of Utah From Its Site
Yesterday’s tweet o’ the day.
King (already Chuckie de turd.. the tourist attraction for ye olde Englande.
Opposite side of tehworld fromme. Luterally couldnt be furtherbaway yet “my King.”
I didn’t see him passing by could not give a stuff if he would die.
Just by bitrth he’s monarch mine.
Well shit ain’t that the rule divine..
I did not choose him not one bit even if of royalty he ain’t least shit.
I guess this could be even worse.
Of pedo Prince Andrew could be writing in this verse..
With apologies toThe Digital Cuittlefish & looking forward to seeing what he says on this. Please.
Aaaarrgh! F N typos. Sorry folks.
Opposite side of the world from me. Literally couldn’t be further away yet suposedly “my King.”
(Of Brext Brits & resentful Scots & Irish Oz & Canada & Aotearoa/ NZ & other places that haven’t been quick enough to sod off outta the ole brutal theiving empire yet.)
Alito wallows in self-pity while women’s lives are in jeopardy
On crowning day remember
How the Raj in India did dismember
How they took the Koh-i-noor * away
They stole it from a child and worse..
They stole that Rajah’s Mom away
And while he’d view that diamond hence..
He’s never see his mom again .. no not once.
She died still grieving. So did he.
But, yay,** the royal ceremony!!
.* See this powerful episode of Stuff the British Stole
.** Does this really need a sarc tag?
“Russian military blogger Romanov confirms Ukrainian forces ‘penetrated 1.5km deep into defensive Russian positions’.”
Near Avdiivka.
Retraction Watch – “US-backed researchers in Colombia accused of experimenting on animals, humans without approval.”
Lauren Boebert Poses with T-Shirt Calling AR-15 ‘Cordless Hole Puncher’ on Same Day as Tx. Mass Shooting
Wisconsin Supreme Court won’t order ivermectin use for COVID
What our Aussie Indigenous MPs think of the Voice – plus nearly 15 mins long video on it here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-01/first-nations-mps-senators-on-voice-to-parliament/101976080?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=facebook&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web&fbclid=IwAR2BiUkCz3Qy45M8dZTyw12hTWtyw_9VDq-EX946_ipUu6NYS3TFcqRgmyw
Thing is.. If we don’t get an Indigenous Voice what chance for treaties or more?
Dunno.
Bundy files to move St. Luke’s case to federal court. He never showed up in state court
Followup to comment 271.
Commentary from Steve Benen:
Link
Tweet (thread) o’ the day.
Have We Learned Absolutely Nothing About Covering Donald Trump?
“It is Congress’s constitutional obligation to act, not hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage unless we allow them to make cuts to programs hard-working Americans rely upon. Threatening to default and crash the economy unless the president agrees with Speaker McCarthy’s entire agenda isn’t just unreasonable. It’s dangerous,” Jean-Pierre told reporters at the daily briefing.
She said that at next week’s meeting, Biden will make clear that he remains willing to have “a separate process” to talk about spending priorities.
Time – “150 African Workers for ChatGPT, TikTok and Facebook Vote to Unionize at Landmark Nairobi Meeting”:
More at the link.
“Kevin McCarthy Suddenly Takes Bold Stand For Ukraine, Wonder What He’s Not Scared Of Anymore”
https://www.wonkette.com/kevin-mccarthy-ukraine-russia
Scientists in India protest move to drop Darwinian evolution from textbooks
Darwinian evolution was irrelevant during a viral epidemic? In which universe?
Tinder swipes left on Russia a year after invasion
Second Russian train hit by explosive near Ukraine border
911 call about fight ends with Florida cop separating 2 brawling goats, sheriff says
Texas Rep. Colin Allred, a Former NFL Player, Will Challenge Sen. Ted Cruz in 2024: Report
Montana Transgender Rep. Zooey Zephyr’s Girlfriend Foils SWATting Attempt
Ukraine Update: The counteroffensive is important, and not just for Ukraine
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
NBC News:
Associated Press:
Good news for now.
Washington Post:
Well that will kill high school drama classes that want to put on plays of musicals.
Followup to comment 291.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
They’re so good at this. (Twitter link) (cats!)
Follow-up to #252:
“Why the World’s Greatest Toasts Happen in Georgia.”
(So not pumpernickel with bananas and a tamari reduction.)
Source : https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-exoplanet-water-vapor-atmosphere-or-star
@ ^ See also this :
https://scitechdaily.com/earth-has-a-hot-new-neighbor-discovery-of-a-nearby-exoplanet-suitable-for-atmospheric-investigation/
article on the GJ486 b here as well as this :
https://www.iac.es/en/outreach/news/gliese-486-b-rosetta-stone-study-exoplanets
with a beautiful model of what this exoplanet – the third nearest transiting one – might be like plus this good 2 mins 15 secs long youtube clip on this story here.
In much less pleasing news :
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/judge-rejects-trans-lawmaker-zooey-zephyrs-effort-to-return-to-montana-house
Texas manhunt ends after suspect accused of killing 5 neighbors found hiding in laundry pile
288 arrested in multinational Monopoly Market takedown
@126:
What Is Bluesky Social? The Twitter Alternative Explained and How to Join
Promising Jobs at the U.S. Postal Service, ‘US Job Services’ Leaks Customer Data
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
A Senate Republican believes “30 or 40” Senate Democrats might vote for the GOP’s right-wing debt ceiling bill. That’s hilariously wrong.
Embedded within the article at the main link are several links to additional information, including the details about taking “a crowbar to efforts to combat climate change,” etc.
SC @305, Podolyak’s response was really well written. Smart.
Also, “governors of the Russian regions that border Ukraine have frequently reported shelling that crosses the border into Belgorod and Kursk regions” is not the same as someone supposedly sending drones to directly attack the Kremlin. One little puff of smoke, eh? And no damage done? It does sound like the Russians building a pretext to target more civilians in Ukraine because “terrorists” flew a drone over the Kremlin.
Elon Musk has a new hostage: Your Twitter handle
Somnambulant Fox Board Shocked To Discover Tucker Carlson’s Racism!
Saying the quiet part out loud, as reported by HuffPost:
Followup to comments 305 and 307.
Posted by readers of the Talking Points Memo article:
on not just leaves and some of the earliest land plants but also carbon dioxide, heat vs water loss, stoma and Devonian climate change just seen.
Stevo R @ 312
Thanks you!
.
God Awful Movies has released their latest review of a horrible film.
My cellphone cannot see the difference between I and l so I will write four slightly different links, one of them will lead you to Youtube.
https://youtu.be/h5BR2IWZsUI
https://youtu.be/h5BR2IWZsUl
https://youtu.be/h5Br2IWZsUI
https://youtu.be/h5Br2lWZsUl
OK
GAM402 The Nibiru movie.
Dan and Jordan from The Knowledge Fight podcast joins the gang (they are heroes, they voluntarily watch wossname the guy who Stephen Colbert parodied with his “Tuck Buckford” persona).
https://youtu.be/h5Br2IWZsUI
@315
…Alex Jones, that was the one!
Even after being used to watch Alex Jones, Dan and Jordan found this latest film one of the absolutely worst they have ever seen.
Noah: “Welcome”
Dan & Jordan “Fuck you!”.
Noah: “We get a lot of that”
Right-Wing Doctors’ Org Accidentally Leaks Massive Trove of Sensitive Documents
Followup to Reginald’s comment 278.
Link
Trump’s lawyer is an idiot, but the judge was too kind to say so
TX weatherman almost shot 6-year old looking for lost kitty because she dared to ring his doorbell
“It begins”: Wagner Group leader says Ukrainian Armed Forces launch offensive
Wonkette: Texas Lege Well Into Annual WTF Season
Floridian Columnist ‘Praises’ DeSantis for Going After Disney: ‘Donald Duck Is Not Wearing Pants, That Doesn’t Bother You?’
I presume everyone here understands that Dave Barry does satire.
Voters oust Michigan clerk who doubts election results
Texas bill allows secretary of state to overturn elections
Woman accused of hiding suspected gunman who killed 5 in Texas arrested, sheriff says
Ukraine Update: Air defenses active in Moscow as Ukraine takes out more Russian fuel depots
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
FDA Approves First Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Vaccine
Suspect at large in shooting at Atlanta medical facility that left 1 dead and multiple injured, police say
The public was urged to stay away from the area around Northside Family Medicine and Urgent Care in the city’s Midtown area.
Bolsonaro home searched as Brazil probes fake vaccine cards
Ex-Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga confirmed as World Bank leader
Followup to comment 327.
More Ukraine updates.
Why a New Jersey mayor was uninvited from a White House celebration
Texas is first step in a national plan to install ‘chaplains’ in public schools instead of professional counselors
Trump’s New Anti-Biden Ad Has One Problem: It Shows Photos From His Own Presidency
From Lynna @327:
I no longer have the book (I read for enjoyment, and this book was very informative, well researched, and, to put it mildly, almost unreadably boring), nor can I remember the title (they say as you get older, you’re memory is the second thing to go . . . ), but it covered the dissolution of the USSR from the late 1970s (giving a lot of credit to Carter’s human rights initiatives and their effect on the legitimacy of the soviet government) right up through the attempted military coup and Boris Yeltsin’s rise to power. One of the most significant events that allowed Gorbachev to clear out the older communists and, especially, the older military leaders (who he saw as blocking reform) was Matthias Rust’s flight over East Germany, over Poland, and over a large chunk of the USSR, a flight over the most heavily protected air space in the world, to land in Red Square. The USSR and Russia have a (well-earned) reputation for having wonderful weapons (in this case, integrated anti-aircraft systems) that either don’t work because technicians to repair and maintain them are not available, or don’t work because the system itself, or important components of the system, are gone (sold off) or were never installed (the money went to someone’s dacha). So drones overflying Moscow, during a war? Not a huge surprise to me.
Judge Tosses Trump’s Lawsuit Against NY Times, Orders Him to Pay All Legal Fees
re Reginald Selkirk @337: I hope that the Orange Fool comes to regret the day he decided to run for president. Every loss of his in court is a win for all of the rest of us.
Election denier Jim Marchant running for US Senate in Nevada
Ghana national pleads not guilty to defrauding Wisconsin GOP
Emails Reveal ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Herschel Walker Money Scandal
Colorado Sun – Colorado hospitals that won’t allow women to get their tubes tied, provide gender-affirming care will have to say so publicly
Yes, but we all know Democratic Presidents have access to a time machine which allows them to retrospectively sabotage their Republican predecessors – remember how Obama caused the 2008 financial crash that occurred under George W. Bush.
Montana’s Governor’s Changes To TikTok Ban Bill Would Ban All Social Media Entirely
National Guard shoots down Russian drone and strikes invaders’ positions based on its memory card
Happy Star Wars Day to one and all.
May the Fourth Be With You.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210411-asias-isle-of-five-separate-genders
This was useful on nextdoor in supporting other genders being hidden by our culture explaining the reason so many are becoming visible now.
I also mentioned that I think it’s a consequence of living in large groups with authoritarian characteristics. Some of us finding it useful to pretend about the rest of us. Relatedly it feels like our species is transitioning from troop to swarm living badly.
I thought the stories about visitors from Europe in centuries past thinking about their experiences interesting.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/3/2167341/-Ten-Commandments-bill-is-anything-but-Christian-legislator-says
“I’ll probably have more later but, and I say this to you as a fellow Christian representative, I know you’re a devout Christian, and so am I. This bill to me is not only unconstitutional, it’s not only un-American; I think it is also deeply un-Christian.
And I say that because I believe this bill is idolatrous. I believe it is exclusionary and I believe it is arrogant. And those three things in my reading of the Gospel are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus. You probably know Matthew 6:5 when Jesus says, “Don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners. When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret.””
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog:
Also in today’s Guardian – “Belize likely to become republic, says PM, as he criticises Rishi Sunak”:
There’s a partial verdict in the Proud Boys’ trial.
At least four of the Proud Boys, including Enrique Tarrio, have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Still waiting on Pezzola. Big victory for the DoJ.
Guardian podcast series – Cost of the Crown:
“Cost of the crown part 1: valuing the royal family”:
“Cost of the crown part 2: duchies, diamonds and Dalís”:
“Cost of the crown part 3: the hidden history of the monarchy and slavery”:
“Cost of the crown part 4: calculating the king’s wealth”:
Assorted podcast episodes:
If Books Could Kill – “‘Nudge’ Part 1: A Simple Solution For Littering, Organ Donations and Climate Change”:
Michael & Us – “#424 – Know Thyself (w/ Alex Shephard)”:
Why Is This Happening? – “TikTok’s Uncertain Future with Jacob Ward”:
99% Invisible – “Craptions”:
Bribe, Swindle or Steal – “‘The Art of the Bribe’ under Stalin”:
NYT:
Four Proud Boys Convicted of Sedition in Key Jan. 6 Case
By Alan Feuer and Zach Montague / May 4, 2023
Oggie @336, fascinating. Thanks for the additional information. This is certainly true: “The USSR and Russia have a (well-earned) reputation for having wonderful weapons (in this case, integrated anti-aircraft systems) that either don’t work because technicians to repair and maintain them are not available, or don’t work because the system itself, or important components of the system, are gone (sold off) or were never installed (the money went to someone’s dacha). So drones overflying Moscow, during a war? Not a huge surprise to me.”
A retired general who was interviewed by an MSNBC host made the point that Putin would have had to be standing bare-headed on the dome of the Kremlin at 2:30 AM in order to be threatened by that drone.
Richard Engel pointed out that even the way the initial video, and then later the followup videos, appeared was weird.
Others have noted that the drone in the video was too small to have flown all the way from Ukraine to Moscow. Independent partisans in Russia?
If it was partisans behind the drone attack, they sent too small a drone with too little explosive. Putin might be spinning a partisan attack to make the most of it in terms of propaganda.
Operation Golden Orb, good grief. (Twitter link)
Ron DeSantis and his fellow Republicans in Florida are still on the wrong path:
Link
Ian Dunt at i News – “The most draconian assault on free speech in living memory is now law”:
More at the link.
And they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. And some of them, suffering from psychological and emotional wounds from their experiences in Iraq and returning to an unjust, unequal, angry, and armed society, have engaged in domestic and organized violence.
@ 355
Based on the sentencing of other Jan 6. traitors, the only question left is how hard the hand slaps Enrique and this fellows are going to receive?
SC @360, good points.
In other news, here is Josh Marshall’s take on the Clarence Thomas scandals:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/sugar-justice-the-clarence-thomas-story
How the feds caught a notorious credit card fraudster
Utah’s Suicide Pact With the Fossil Fuel Industry
The state’s fixation on oil and gas development threatens the Colorado River watershed.
Link
A followup of sorts to comment 364.
Utah State Board of Education considers removing ‘climate change’ from curriculum
Trump is in a hole and still digging:
Link
Russia is attacking Kyiv with drones, which Ukrainian air defense is shooting down over the city.
Clarence Thomas Forgets Gifts, Disclaims Child, Is Disgraceful
Video of #368. (Twitter link)
Christopher Miller:
Video at the link. Tweet o’ the day.
Kyiv Independent:
Ukraine Update: Russia is not about to nuke Ukraine
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
This is the most recent tweet in Adam Klasfeld’s live thread from the E. Jean Carroll case against Trump. Scroll up to get to the start.
Followup to comment 372.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view the updates.
New polling: Dominion case took a toll on Fox News’ standing
There’s fresh evidence that the recent revelations from the Dominion case about Fox News weren’t at all flattering, and they did not go unnoticed. [Consequences for bad actions. Yay!]
Update: Pezzola has been found not guilty of seditious conspiracy (he was found guilty on several other serious charges earlier). Ryan Reilly was saying earlier that he was a newer member and not in on the planning as much as the others. He said just now that this might actually help prosecutors on appeal since it shows the jury looked at the cases very carefully. They deadlocked on the assorted remaining lesser charges for the group.
Exploring the utter weirdness and cluelessness of Tucker Carlson … a job for Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/tucker-carlson-pillow-fights-womens-bathroom
Columnist Todd Dorman in The Gazette – “Pressure washes away must-read Iowa water blog”:
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Guardian – “Inside big beef’s climate messaging machine: confuse, defend and downplay”:
Much more at the link.
CORRECTION to #s 368. 370, and 371: The drone shot down was a Ukrainian TB2 that had strayed off course!
Former candidate for Florida governor Andrew Gillum found not guilty of lying to FBI
“The star reporter at the French outlet @brutofficiel, who has interviewed Macron, got beat up by police at a protest, and says he believes he was intentionally attacked. Disturbing video….”
Video at the (Twitter) link. He says he’s going to file a complaint tomorrow.
Ed Sheeran’s hit song Thinking Out Loud didn’t copy Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On, jury finds
Marc Elias on Twitter:
Haiti’s top diplomat in the U.S. is fired after a passport scandal in the Washington embassy
Coastal VegNews:
“The 34 Restaurants Celebrating the 2nd DC Vegan Week.”
“Vegan Restaurants Near Me: The Best Places for Plant-Based Food in San Francisco.”
“Thinking about the National Review blogger who spent the whole day writing a post explaining why Harlan Crow paying for Clarence Thomas’s kid’s tuition is Super Cool and Legal, and now has to deal with Leonard Leo being like ‘GIVE GINNI THOMAS THIS SACK OF CASH, NO FINGERPRINTS’.”
WaPo link at the (Twitter) link.
An outright bribe.
Judd Legum – Unhappy Meals
“Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder screws up about trans kids care”
https://youtu.be/r6Kau7bO3Fw
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian (support them if you can!) Ukraine liveblog. From their latest summary:
Also from there:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian UK liveblog, which of course is all about election results. From there:
Elie Mystal in the Nation – “One Man Killed Jordan Neely—but We All Failed Him”:
Trainer suspended from Kentucky Derby after two of his horses mysteriously die after races
SC@393,
Leading psephologists such as John Curtice seem to think Labour may not be doing quite well enough to expect an overall majority at the general election. In terms of winning seats, they have to do about as well as Bliar in 1997, which itself was exceptional. They currently hold 196 seats, need 326 for an overall majority (slightly less to be sure of outvoting all other parties combined, as the Speaker and 3 Deputy Speakers don’t vote, and Sinn Fein members (currently 7) don’t take their seats). If I’ve got my sums right, that means 320 would be enough to always win votes if all their MPs turned up and supported the way the leadrship wanted. But making things harder for them, the redrawing of constituency boundaries, although done by a non-partisan body, is expected to favour the Tories by several seats because of demographic changes; and incumbent MPs generally have some advantage. The current turmoil within the SNP would give Labour maybe as many as 20 extra seats in Scotland if a general election was held now, but a general election is not going to be held now, and could happen as late as 28th January 2025. A lot will depend on whether the police investigation into the party’s finances produce criminal charges, and if so, when and against whom.
Ukrainian MP punches Russian delegate in Turkey after scuffle over flag
Guardian liveblog:
Job growth totals 253,000 in April, beating expectations even as the U.S. economy slows
Dmitri on Twitter:
I’m amused by this video. The angle and distance of the camera makes him look like a cartoon character. The whole genre of standing in a group while one person shouts out demands is so weird. It’s ostensibly addressed to the Russian military brass, whom he proceeds to insult repeatedly (along with the entire military), and then it ends “Thank you, that’s it.” More comically evil content from Russia.
South Africans call for UK to return diamonds set in crown jewels
Guardian – “Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency, says WHO”:
Developing story.
That can’t be. All my GOP politicians who have me on their mailing lists claim that the economy is already in the worst recession since the Obama Recession of ’08! Besides, if the economy was that good, there would be new construction all over the place and lots and lots and lots of trucks on the road.
New episode of Tech Won’t Save Us – “Elon Musk Is Destroying Twitter w/ Matt Binder”:
SC @402,
“Covid-19 no longer represents a global health emergency, the World Health Organization has said.”
This messaging is a disaster. That is the Dr Tedros who in early 2020 accidentally spilled the truth about Covid’s airborne transmission mode in a press conference, and was forced to row back by his collegue Dr Ryan minutes later, because if it was airborne, effective mitigation measures such as air filters and UVC lights could have been implemented, and those cost money.
The number of deaths hasnt changed, the number of chronically ill and disabled hasnt changed, 3000 deaths from Covid in the US every week, but world economies now need people to go back to restaurants, concerts and markets, so the dead and disabled, and number of infected, have been disappeared from public view. To be fair, the WHO held out the longest, long after the CDC folded to political pressure, and Dr Walensky sold us all out to the stock market. But they too have folded now, and for the vulnerable, the very old and very young, but in principle for all of us, a new time begins, where your death or permanent disability is your problem. We are on our own.
So LARPing that the pandemic is over by people in authority?
Good news, as summarized by Steve Benen from an NBC News source:
Colin Allred is a really high-quality candidate. I’ll be rooting for him to vanquish Ted Cruz.
Unrelated campaign news from North Carolina, as summarized by Steve Benen:
JFC. Low-quality candidate.
Okay. WTF?
Where Things Stand: Trump Makes Sure Jury Knows He’s Not Attracted To E. Jean Carroll’s Lawyer, Either
Funny, pathetic and damaging to women all at the same time. Hair Furor is such a fool.
Link
Quoting Barb McQuade when she was interviewed by Nicolle Wallace:
https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1654257185201741824
Video at the link. Related to the many scandals surrounding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Quoting Barb McQuade when she was interviewed by Nicolle Wallace:
https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1654257185201741824
Video at the link. Related to the many scandals surrounding Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
hmmm. I have no idea why comment 410 was posted again as comment 411.
Ah well. In other news, which is, in part, a followup to SC’s comment 392: Ukraine Update: The bizarre case of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s descent into madness
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
re Lynna @412:
Maybe because it is worth repeating? Every sane person should be shouting this constantly. Thomas is a crooked liar and should resign. If the same were true of one of the more liberal justices, you know that the republicans would be screaming for their dismissal.
Republicans want to ‘drive the American economy off a cliff’
johnson catman @413: “If the same were true of one of the more liberal justices, you know that the republicans would be screaming for their dismissal.” True! So true.
In other news that is troubling and difficult to watch as it plays out: Senator Dianne Feinstein’s staff composes two Tweets pretending to be her, the replies are scathing
Might it be useful for the Ds to tell the Rs they just want to vote on paying the budget bills by itself? In the event the Rs do hurt the economy it would make responding simpler. They think paying debts and bills is something you can attach a political price too.
rorschach @ #405:
? The CDC has US deaths around 3,000/week the first week of February and declining steadily – along with hospitalizations – since, to around 1,100 the past few weeks (the lowest since mid-March 2020).
U.S. Bitcoin Mining Consumed 50 Billion kWh of Energy in 2022
Sorry… in the event the Rs hurt the economy at a higher rate.
Kansas election law ruled unconstitutional as federal judge sides with voter advocates
Ukraine shoots down Russian hypersonic missile using US Patriot system
Baroness Benjamin: ‘My place in the Coronation proves the King embraces diversity’
Of course. Because having one black friend proves you’re not racist.
/s
Ex-Rep. Cawthorn fined after guilty plea over gun at airport
@237:
Maryland Rep. David Trone announces US Senate run
Followup to comment 377.
Fox sends cease-and-desist letter to Media Matters over leaked Tucker Carlson footage
Not a good idea: Mississippi Gov Launches Reelection Bid With Video Of Him As Clint Eastwood Shooting People Of Color
Satire written by Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Anyone else sick of the coronation as I am. Here’s some aural relief.
Kentucky lawmaker apologizes for referencing Jewish women’s sex life amid abortion debate
Kevin M. Kruse
Barr: Trump will deliver ‘chaos’ and ‘horror show’
Yes, and we all remember how you helped him to do that during his first term, you scumbag.
Shards of Christ’s cross to feature in King’s Coronation procession
Catholicism, royalty, religious relics – what’s the term for all this?
Oh yes; “Crank Magnetism.”
Eight alleged fake Trump electors in Georgia accept immunity deals in grand jury probe
Recall effort against Arizona election denier fails
The head of the UK’s leading republican movement and five other organisers of an anti-monarchist protest at the coronation have been arrested on King Charles III’s procession route. The police apparently won’t say why the abductions occurred. The largest and most powerful criminal gang in London has also been confiscating anti-monarchy placards, and they are going to be using live facial recognition technology, supposedly in the hope of identifying wanted individuals in the crowds. So the coronation has been used to take several steps toward a police state in the UK.
@ ^ KG Also via Al Jazeera here :
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/5/6/king-charles-iii-coronation-live-news-uk-prepares-for-ceremony
& Julian Assange has invited King Chuckie de Turd to visit his jail cell :
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1654742793171107840/photo/1
Whilst Indigenous Australian journalist,author & TV host Stan Grant has this to say here :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-06/trapped-spectacle-king-charles-coronation-war-waged-my-people/102307848
PS. No Koh-i-noor stolen form an Indian boy rajah as they stole his mother from him too :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-03/camilla-coronation-crown-replaces-kohinoor-with-cullinan-diamond/102266562
Just blood diamonds from ancient Africa in an old new king’s bloody crown.
SC @417,
it is becoming ever more difficult to judge what is happening with this pandemic, as the attempts to make this thing disappear from public view at all cost have largely succeeded. No more regular genome sequencing, no testing, in particular in hospitals before admission, and now, eg in Canada, attempts to even prevent doctors from writing “Covid19” on death certificates.
Over here in Europe, we can still guesstimate from wastewater viral loads(which are at an alltime high) and the occasional university incidence surveillance program what is going on, but it’s getting harder. Therefore I expect deaths in the US and elsewhere to still be at the level from the end of the northern hemisphere winter. The official numbers we are given are essentially all useless now.
@433: Prosecutors would not have offered immunity without something in return. So I am eager to see whom they are throwing under the bus.
McConnell warns he won’t back debt-ceiling increase without ‘substantive’ reforms
Romney: Lawmakers should stop ‘posturing and politicizing’ over the debt ceiling
Why don’t you take that up with Mitch?
Ukraine Update: Prigozhin declares he is pulling Wagner from Bakhmut, to be replaced by Kadyrov
That’s a misleading headline for this first section of the update. I’ll post details concerning Wagner forces and Bakhmut later.
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
I forgot to watch the coronation of the King Charles and Queen Camilla this morning. Oh well.
I went back and looked at a few photos online and have come to the conclusion that the horses looked good, the little children looked clean and sleepy, and there were some nice flowers. Much of the rest looked absolutely ridiculous.
Arizona official targeted by election deniers now struggles with PTSD
Washington Post link
Much more at the link, including how relentless and cruel Trump was.
Followup to comment 442.
More Ukraine updates:
Link. School down to view updates.
Even more Ukraine updates coming soon.
A short note found among all the details about who wore what to the coronation ceremony:
New York Times link
Jill Biden was picture perfect.
Followup to comments 442 and 445.
Even more Ukraine updates:
Link. Scroll down to view updates.
Trump wrecks himself in E. Jean Carroll video deposition
‘Idaho isn’t a safe place to practice medicine anymore,’ doctors flee strict abortion ban
Other comments posted about the lack of diversity evident at the coronation:
Commentary:
Link
I noticed that some “diversity” had been sort of artificially included by, for example, featuring one group of Black gospel singers.
Expelled GOP lawmaker fails to regain Arizona House seat
I just saw an amusing Finnish news headline saying literally “Britain crowns its first monarch in 70 years”, as if the British monarchy was being re-established after a long break.
Jan. 6 rioter in pink beret identified after ex spotted her in a viral FBI tweet
Chris Hayes Says Trump Is Running for President to ‘Finish the Job He Started on Jan. 6th’
@lumipuna #452:
Aw, a headline like that could’ve shamed them for low turnover. =P
Wikipedia – Monarchy of Finland
Changes to Twitter’s verification system make it easier to spoof accounts reporting election results
Gun Deaths More Likely in Small Towns Than Major Cities
The Largest Source of Stolen Guns? Parked Cars.
@445 Lynna
White phosphorous is horrific, and it’s not just Russia that does it. Basically everyone does it using the bullshit cover story that they have white phosphorous grenades for “smoke cover”. WP smoke grenades should also be banned via international treaty.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-07/victorian-liberal-party-divisions-moira-deeming-john-pesutto/102313978
Good. Hope more join him here.
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-07/un-warns-of-new-power-plant-threats-in-ukraine/102314822
Plus spaaaace neeeeeews :
Source : https://www.space.com/black-hole-shredding-star-closest-to-earth-ever-seen
Rallygoers in Pakistan kill man accused of blasphemy
Ted Nugent Concert in Alabama Canceled Following Backlash Over His Political Views
In Alabama!
Texas congressman says people who think ‘prayers aren’t cutting it’ as a solution to gun violence ‘don’t believe in an almighty god who is absolutely in control of our lives.’ 9 people died in a mass shooting in his district today.
Lynna, OM@443,
The more sophisticated monarchists in the UK are defending the coronation, and by extension the monarchy, not despite but because of its absurdity! Apparently, we need something that cannot be rationally defended in order to unite us. Along with the arrests of republicans “on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”.
Sonia Sodha, one of the Guardian’s leading transphobes, has predictably used the police arrests of republicans, environmentalists, and charity workers in possession of rape alarms to give to vulnerable people, to attack transpeople (under the usual pretence of attacking “gender ideology”).
Trio Of Texas Churches Donated To Political Candidate Despite Clear IRS Prohibition
Clarence Thomas has been bought by the worst people
Embedded links are available within the article at the main link, including the “hook him up with tires” reference to a Washington Post story.
At least 9 dead, multiple injured in mall shooting near Dallas
Followup to comment 468.
The weapon used in the Dallas mass shooting was an AR-15 style rifle. Many people are warning against watching some of the videos that have been posted online.
From The Washington Post:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/live-blog/texas-mall-shooting-live-updates-rcna83240
Ukraine Update: Kicking and screaming, Prigozhin and Wagner staying put in Bakhmut for now
https://twitter.com/AleksandrX13/status/1655219737452789760
Second Amendment Racks Up More Victories Against Human Life In Allen, Texas
https://www.wonkette.com/second-amendment-racks-up-more-victories-against-human-life-in-allen-texas
This is good journalism and analysis from Wonkette. I can’t post it here because the content triggers one of PZ’s filters.
Followup to comment 473.
Posted by readers of the Wonkette article:
Center for Biological Diversity – Bill would permit radioactive phosphogypsum material to be built into Florida roads
Brownsville: Seven dead as car strikes people in Texas border town
Fox News Guest’s Answer to Mass Shootings: ‘Plan to Kill Everyone You Meet’
Guardian – mass walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees
Tweet: Ukraine Ministry of Defense
Followup to comments 468, 469, 470, 473 and 474.
Marge Greene, Worst of the Worst, Mass Shooting Edition
David Attenborough will be 97 years old tomorrow.
❤
Followup to comment 480:
NBC News link
Followup to comments 480 and 482.
Texas gunman’s white supremacist views eyed as possible motive.
Washington Post link
Investigators found a patch on the dead man’s chest that said “RWDS,” an acronym for Right Wing Death Squad.
After a 35-year break, the US Navy is building frigates again, and it has a lot of catching up to do
A senior software engineer dies after falling from the 14th floor of Google’s NYC headquarters
Ukraine forced to update Himars software after Russia jams rockets
Elon Musk’s Tesla tunnels are a ‘fake alternative’ to solve traffic but if he made them for subways we’d all be better off, expert says
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo was just caught up in an important and damaging scandal. Days later, GOP officials gave him a second term anyway.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/trump-testimony-carroll-trial
@289
Ted Cruz Uses Photo of Wrong Black Man in Fundraising Text About His Challenger
Ukraine Update: We don’t know when Ukraine will counterattack, but it’s okay to wait
More Ukraine updates coming soon.
Link
The article is accompanied by a photo of Texas Rep. Bryan Slaton, proud family man, and conservative pastor, draped with ammunition belts and a long gun.
Posted by readers of the article:
Followup to comment 491.
More Ukraine updates:
Wonkette:
https://www.wonkette.com/tucker-carlson-irena-briganti-fox-news
Good news, in a limited way: Minnesota is the 23rd state to adopt automatic voter registration. Not bad for a policy that didn’t exist in any state as recently as eight years ago.
Debt Limit update:
Graeme Souness became atheist after seeing Scots girl’s ‘butterfly skin’ agony
Re: #492
Texas state Rep. Bryan Slaton (R) has resigned from his seat, one day before his colleagues were slated to vote on whether to expel him from the Texas House of Representatives…Slaton’s letter [of resignation] did not mention the allegations against him, which he has previously denied. He wrote that he was looking forward to “spending more time with my young family” ….
COVID home tests recalled after bacteria that could lead to ‘serious illness’ was found
Abortion could be on Florida’s 2024 ballot, if groups gathering signatures succeed