Once again, I’ve reached the point where I can’t bring myself to watch the news on TV. I check Twitter a few times a day and end up frightened and depressed. On the days I write posts, I read a number of articles, but then I need hours of down time to decompress. When will there be some good news for those of us who want the U.S. to be a democracy?
When will Democratic leaders understand that we are facing the strong possibility of losing the House and Senate in November? When will the House January 6 Committee begin the promised public hearings? When will the Justice Department prosecute the powerful people who planned the Capitol insurrection?
How can the pandemic end when the GOP has become the party of removing all restrictions designed to reduce the spread of the virus?
I don’t know the answers to these questions; I only know that, in terms of democracy, our country has been losing ground since 2016 and–even with a Democratic president–we are still in grave danger from Trump and his GOP sycophants who are still trying to overturn the 2020 election.
In statehouses and courtrooms across the country, as well as on right-wing news outlets, allies of Mr. Trump — including the lawyer John Eastman — are pressing for states to pass resolutions rescinding Electoral College votes for President Biden and to bring lawsuits that seek to prove baseless claims of large-scale voter fraud. Some of those allies are casting their work as a precursor to reinstating the former president.
The efforts have failed to change any statewide outcomes or uncover mass election fraud. Legal experts dismiss them as preposterous, noting that there is no plausible scenario under the Constitution for returning Mr. Trump to office.
John Eastman
But just as Mr. Eastman’s original plan to use Congress’s final count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to overturn the election was seen as far-fetched in the run-up to the deadly Capitol riot, the continued efforts are fueling a false narrative that has resonated with Mr. Trump’s supporters and stoked their grievances. They are keeping alive the same combustible stew of conspiracy theory and misinformation that threatens to undermine faith in democracy by nurturing the lie that the election was corrupt.
The efforts have fed a cottage industry of podcasts and television appearances centered around not only false claims of widespread election fraud in 2020, but the notion that the results can still be altered after the fact — and Mr. Trump returned to power, an idea that he continues to push privately as he looks toward a probable re-election run in 2024.
Democrats and some Republicans have raised deep concerns about the impact of the decertification efforts. They warn of unintended consequences, including the potential to incite violence of the sort that erupted on Jan. 6, when a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters — convinced that he could still be declared the winner of the 2020 election — stormed the Capitol. Legal experts worry that the focus on decertifying the last election could pave the way for more aggressive — and earlier — legislative intervention the next time around.
The article quotes Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative lawyer who was consulted by Mike Pence when Trump was pushing him to refuse to certify the 2020 Electoral College results:
“At the moment, there is no other way to say it: This is the clearest and most present danger to our democracy,” said J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative lawyer and former appeals court judge, for whom Mr. Eastman clerked and whom President George W. Bush considered as a nominee to be the chief justice of the United States. “Trump and his supporters in Congress and in the states are preparing now to lay the groundwork to overturn the election in 2024 were Trump, or his designee, to lose the vote for the presidency.”
Eastman’s latest effort in Wisconsin:
ABC News reported yesterday that Trump coup memo attorney John Eastman met privately w/ the Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos to pressure him to decertify the 2020 results…
A former lawyer for Donald Trump has claimed attorney-client privilege over 37,000 pages of emails related to his dealings with the then-president, he revealed in a court filing Monday night. John Eastman, known for penning a memo outlining how Team Trump might overturn the 2020 election, was ordered by a judge in January to review and turn over more than 90,000 pages of emails to the House select panel probing the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. After reviewing a reported 1,000 to 1,500 pages per day for three months, Eastman made no claims over 25,000 other records, according to Politico. However, after his Monday filing, the House committee said it objected to “every claim” of privilege. All 37,000 pages will now be sent to U.S. District Judge David Carter, who in March called Eastman and Trump’s post-election activities “a coup in search of a legal theory,” for him to rule individually on each of them.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) may have been in contact with Oath Keepers members during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A newly released trove of text messages shows members of the right-wing militia discussing security for some top Donald Trump allies ahead of the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win, and Oath Keepers co-founder Stewart Rhodes asked an associate for Jackson’s cell phone number, reported Politico.
“Dr. Ronnie Jackson — on the move,” wrote an unidentified person. “Needs protection. If anyone inside cover him. He has critical data to protect.”
“Help with what?” Rhodes replied. “Give him my cell.” [….]
Kelly Meggs, an Oath Keepers member among six indicted on seditious conspiracy charges, mentioned on Jan. 3, 2021, that allies had discussed militia members “on the call with congressmen” and “wanted to say thank you all for providing and protecting us.”
What kind of data was Jackson trying to “protect?”
In pandemic news, yesterday a Trump-appointed judge struck down the mask mandate for airline passengers and crew.
This is Kathryn Kimball Mizelle. She is a Federalist Society judge who worked for Clarence Thomas. The American Bar Association said she is unqualified to hold office, but Republicans confirmed her anyway after Trump lost.
The coronavirus pandemic may feel like a past-tense phenomenon for many Americans, even though the dangers are real and ongoing. But a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump just did everything she could to send the nation back into chaos.
On Monday, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Florida threw out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate for air travel and other forms of mass transportation. Deaths from COVID-19—and the mask mandates intended to prevent them—may be on the wane nationwide, but whatever you think about such policies, this is the latest and most egregious example of a judge acting as a partisan warrior in the COVID-19 culture wars.
Mizelle was appointed to the federal bench by President Trump in 2020. She was 33, and had been practicing law for only 8 years. She had never tried a case as a lead attorney. The Senate confirmed her even though the American Bar Association gave her a rating of “not qualified.” This nominee should have been rejected by the Senate not because of her judicial philosophy and not because of her age, but because she simply didn’t have the credentials and experience to be a federal judge with lifetime tenure.
Now she is substituting her opinion for that of scientific professionals at the CDC, and dictating health policy in America. The outcome could be disastrous, only serving to further embolden the right-wing activists who dispute the reality of this horrifically lethal pandemic.
Click the link to read the rest.
This could be a bit of good news:
Oh no, if it isn’t the consequences of Alex Jones’ own insane, conspiratorial actions. https://t.co/k7pgBC4cQ6
The conspiracy website Infowars has filed for bankruptcy protection as founder Alex Jones faces multiple defamation lawsuits tied to his false claims that the deadly shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a “giant hoax.”
According to documents filed Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, three companies owned by Jones are seeking Chapter 11 protection, which would put civil litigation on hold while they restructure their finances.
Jones is being sued by the families of several victims of the 2012 attack that left 26 people dead, including 20 young children, in Newtown, in western Connecticut. It remains the deadliest elementary school shooting in U.S. history. The 20-year-old gunman died by suicide.
But Jones falsely claimed the massacre was fabricated by gun control advocates and the mainstream media, who he said pursued a “false flag” operation staged by “crisis actors.”
The families accused him of grifting off those false claims while defaming their loved ones. Some said they were harassed and threatened after Jones ran online segments accusing them of being a part of a hoax, with one receiving hate mail referencing the Second Amendment, according to a 2018 CBS news segment. They rejected settlement offers from Jones….
Jones has been found liable in two separate cases, one in Texas, where he and Infowars are based, and another in Connecticut where the mass shooting occurred. Damages have not yet been decided in either case, but an initial amount of $725,000 has been paid into a bankruptcy trust managed by two retired judges, court records show, with an expected $2 million to be funded at a later date. The Texas court is expected to determine damages first, with jury selection scheduled for April 25.
Or maybe not so good news?
Why are people celebrating Alex Jones filing for bankruptcy? Do you think that means he is broke? Far from it. It’s a ploy to try to avoid paying current and future legal judgments against him. That is all.
If Russia were to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine it would, as CIA Director William Burns put it in public remarks last week, “change the world in a flash.” It might not, however, according to several experts, result in the direct military involvement of the west or a broader nuclear war.
Although nuclear weapons have not been used since the American attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the late summer of 1945, concerns about their use are higher than they have been in decades. CIA Director Burns, in remarks at the Georgia Institute of Technology last Thursday, said, “Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership…none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons.” On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy echoed this warning saying that the international community should be concerned about Russian use of nuclear or chemical weapons, saying, “We should… not be afraid but be ready.”
Senior U.S. officials with whom I spoke emphasized that Burns was not basing his comments on any new intelligence or other evidence that Russia was preparing to use nuclear weapons, but rather on a prudent analysis of Russia’s situation. They mentioned that Russian doctrine had a “lower threshold” for the use of nuclear weapons than other nations, but that it was “still pretty high.” According to that doctrine, there were two kinds of events that would warrant consideration of the use of nuclear weapons. One was if the Russian military was facing a massive defeat that threatened its ability to further defend its country. The other was if there was a direct threat to the regime in Moscow.
Read the rest at the Daily Beast link.
That’s it for me today. Now I need to decompress with an escapist novel. I hope you are all well and taking care not to overdose on the news.
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Maria Prymachenko – A Dove Has Spread Her Wings And Asks for Peace, 1982. This work of art was lost when Russians bombed The Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum to the ground on February 25th
It’s Monday Sky Dancers!
And Putin’s incompetent army from hell continues to focus on missile launches aimed at killing and terrorizing Ukrainians. Here are just a few of the headlines via Twitter. It’s time for NATO to do more.
Russia offered to spare the lives of Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Mariupol if they laid down their arms Sunday as the weekslong resistance in the besieged port city appeared to finally be coming to an end.
The offer, made “out of purely humane principles,” gave Ukrainian forces still fighting in the city until 6 a.m. Moscow time (11 p.m. ET) to surrender, the Russian military said in a statement reported by the news agency Tass.
There were no immediate reports of activity from Ukrainian forces in Mariupol. If it falls, it would be the first major city to be taken by Russian forces since the Feb. 24 invasion.
There was also no immediate response from Kyiv.
#Ukraine In Irpin, the Russian military killed at least 269 civilians and destroyed 30% of the city. Police shared these facts: – 8 people were tortured by Russians – 12 people who helped the Ukrainian army were shot dead – A citizen who refused to obey an order was shot by RU pic.twitter.com/51e7Tjp1nz
A Russian strike killed at least seven people in Lviv, Ukraine, on Monday. They were the first reported casualties of the war in the western city, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have fled the fierce fighting in other parts of Ukraine. https://t.co/qeq9MA4ecTpic.twitter.com/JMVEk8X1tD
Russian missiles struck Lviv on Monday, killing at least seven people in the first reported deaths of the war in the western city, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people have fled to escape the fierce fighting in other parts of Ukraine.
The head of Lviv’s military administration, Maksym Koztyskyy, said three missiles hit empty military warehouses while a fourth hit a garage, killing and injuring civilians. He did not say whether all the casualties were from the garage strike, which hit a few hundred feet from a set of railway tracks.
“If the garage was the ultimate target, maybe they were aiming at the railway station,” he said. “There are no longer any safe or unsafe locations.”
The head of Ukraine’s railway service, Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, said he had no proof that the attack was aimed at the railway, which has some facilities near military sites.
Russia is leaking data like a sieve after Ukraine doxes Russian troops and spies: https://t.co/FyZZdZCIvI
NAMES, BIRTHDAYS, PASSPORT numbers, job titles—the personal information goes on for pages and looks like any typical data breach. But this data set is very different. It allegedly contains the personal information of 1,600 Russian troops who served in Bucha, a Ukrainian city devastated during Russia’s war and the scene of multiple potential war crimes.
The data set is not the only one. Another allegedly contains the names and contact details of 620 Russian spies who are registered to work at the Moscow office of the FSB, the country’s main security agency. Neither set of information was published by hackers. Instead they were put online by Ukraine’s intelligence services, with all the names and details freely available to anyone online. “Every European should know their names,” Ukrainian officials wrote in a Facebook post as they published the data.
Since Russian troops crossed Ukraine’s borders at the end of February, colossal amounts of information about the Russian state and its activities have been made public. The data offers unparalleled glimpses into closed-off private institutions, and it may be a gold mine for investigators, from journalists to those tasked with investigating war crimes. Broadly, the data comes in two flavors: information published proactively by Ukranian authorities or their allies, and information obtained by hacktivists. Hundreds of gigabytes of files and millions of emails have been made public.
Aid organizations say they're seeing signs that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is driving up global food prices and pushing millions of people into hunger.
One food price index shows that prices spiked 12% between February and March. https://t.co/JMHy4Ra8Rk
Aid organizations say they’re seeing signs that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is driving up global food prices and pushing millions of people into hunger.
A food price index tracked by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization shows that prices spiked 12% between February and March to its highest point since the index started in 1990.
Ukraine and Russia provide an outsized share of the world’s supply of key foods including wheat, corn, barley and more.
The impact on people who were already struggling to afford food has been severe, aid groups say. In Afghanistan a month ago, 55% of people were at crisis levels of food insecurity. Now the number has risen to 65%.
In some West African countries, including Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and Mali, 27 million people are currently going hungry.
Aid groups are calling on wealthy countries to immediately step up assistance.
Don’t like high food prices? Blame Putin and Texas Governor Gregg Abbot. This is from Salon: ‘”Political theater”: Abbott’s border stunt could raise food prices after causing $240M in damages. “This is not just a localized issue. It’s going to hit you in St. Louis or up in Seattle,” advocate warns.’
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott — who is running for reelection in the 2022 midterms — made it much more difficult for goods and produce to enter the United States from Mexico when he ordered “enhanced safety inspections” of commercial vehicles at the Texas/Mexico border. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee running against Abbott, has slammed the Republican governor’s political stunt as bad for business. And journalists Alicia Wallace and Vanessa Yurkevich, reporting for CNN in an article published on April 16, describe some of the difficulties that Abbott has inflicted on the supply chain.
“A week-long protest by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott against President Biden’s recent immigration policy reached a resolution on Friday, (April 15), but the gridlock it created has resulted in hundreds of millions of lost dollars and delays in shipments of everything from avocados to automobile parts that will have a longer-term impact,” Wallace and Yurkevich explain. “On Friday, Abbott reversed course on an order he put in place last week that required lengthier ‘enhanced safety inspections’ of commercial vehicles entering Texas. The efforts, he said, were to help stop the flow of illegal contraband and human trafficking.”
The CNN reporters add, “Abbott’s move, which Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller criticized as ‘political theater,’ ultimately created a logjam of trucks between the U.S. and its largest goods trading partner. Vegetable producers say their produce is spoiling in idling trucks and they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Some 35 percent of Americans—including 68 percent of Republicans—believe the Big Lie, pushed relentlessly by former President Donald Trump and amplified by conservative media, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. They think that Trump was the true victor and that he should still be in the White House today.
I regularly host focus groups to better understand how voters are thinking about key political topics. Recently, I decided to find out why Trump 2020 voters hold so strongly to the Big Lie.
For many of Trump’s voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought. It’s more of an attitude, or a tribal pose. They know something nefarious occurred but can’t easily explain how or why. What’s more, they’re mystified and sometimes angry that other people don’t feel the same.
As a woman from Wisconsin told me, “I can’t really put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t feel right.” A man from Pennsylvania said, “Something about it just didn’t seem right.” A man from Arizona said, “It didn’t smell right.”
The exact details of the story vary—was it Hugo Chávez who stole the election? Or the CIA? Or Italian defense contractors? Outlandish claims like these seem to have made this conspiracy theory more durable, not less. Regardless of plausibility, the more questions that are raised, the more mistrustful Trump voters are of the official results.
Perhaps that’s because the Big Lie has been part of their background noise for years.
Remember that Trump began spreading the notion that America’s elections were “rigged” in 2016—when he thought he would lose. Many Republicans firmly believed that the Democrats would steal an election if given the chance. When the 2020 election came and Trump did lose, his voters were ready to doubt the outcome.
Or it’s about White Christianist Male Hegemony and they really don’t want to proudly state they are racist, homophobic, and misogynistic out loud in less technical–more graphic–words. By now, we all know where this big dose of white male grievance and whining comes.
Here is the doyenne of that. Lady Tuckums Carlson. He’s managed to produce the most homoerotic film in ages while remaining safely closeted at Faux News.
The promo for the new season of Tucker Carlson Originals incurred a veritable tsunami of mockery online for its montage of mostly shirtless men firing guns, wrestling, doing push-ups, swinging axes — and one stark naked fellow who was standing in front of some sort of machine that projected a red light onto his crotch.
Mediaite can now confirm that, yes, Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson’s new special, “The End of Men,” does in fact promote “testicle tanning” as a way that men can raise testosterone levels.
Here’s my personal tribute to shrinking Tucker Carlson’s testosterone level some more!
All of this is encouraging me to write a book called “WTF is the matter with White Men?” My guess–but I would like to check with an expert–is not low testosterone.
Anyway, this is more than I can take and I have case studies to grade. Some of these folks really need to spend more time reading The Beatitudes and less time on Porn Hub and watching Fox news.
Anyway, I hope you have a good week. I seriously can’t watch the news anymore on TV so I’m glad we can get some glimpses of what we’re capable of and should be incapable of in the modern age.
Give yourself all hugs for me. And I need them all back at me too!!
I was a real sucker for the balloon drops at the ends of the Republican and Democratic parties’ National Conventions as a kid. Dad used to pop popcorn for us when we finally got a color TV so we could see the funny hats and all the hoopla. We even got to drink a Coca-Cola!
I think the first presidential debate I remember was between Nixon and Kennedy but it might be because it was shown a lot in history and journalism classes. Nixon was all sweaty and tricky dickyish and Kennedy looked like the dashing newcomer. I also saw the Checkers speech when TV and video reels became a thing in the classrooms. Debates are a staple of American democracy.
I always watch the debates now but not with popcorn and Coke. My friend from Connecticut –a hard-core daughter of labor unions who voted strictly for Democrats–turned me on to a new tradition as we watched the debates in the Carter and Reagan years. I always have a big old pot of New England-Style Crab boil that’s morphed into a big old pot of New Orleans-Style seafood boil and the local brew. I also have started the tradition of throwing out the first nerf ball at the screen for the debate season. It’s saved for the first really, really stupid remark. I ran out of them during the Trump Debates.
I’ll say one thing about today’s Trumpist Republican Party. They sure know how to ruin a party and yes, I meant that as a double entendre.
The Republican National Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, saying the group that has run the debates for decades was biased and refused to enact reforms.
“We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make their case to the American people,” the committee’s chairperson, Ronna McDaniel, said in a statement.
The RNC’s action requires Republican candidates to agree in writing to appear only in primary and general election debates sanctioned by the committee.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the entire GOP is apparently behind this embarrassing turn of the tail. After all, the Republicans had no platform in 2020, and they’ll have none in 2024. They have no real policies save shoving the nation’s wealth upwards and ginned-up moral panics for the rubes. Mitch McConnell is already on record saying that he has no intention of talking about what he plans to do with a Senate majority if the country happens to hand it to him next fall. Why should we know? We’re not the people to whom he’s sublet himself for his entire adult life. This is a party that has very few ideas, and the ones they have are massively unpopular and increasingly detached from the reality of the country’s problems. And even if that were not the case, their putative 2024 frontrunner thinks windmills cause cancer. What came first, the chicken or the…chicken?
But did you know that in Ukraine, Easter egg decorating is an important art form that dates back centuries? Known as pysanky, these Ukrainian Easter eggs are decorated using the wax-resist (batik) method. Covered in stunning motifs often taken from Slavic folk art, you’ll also find these decorated eggs in many parts of eastern Europe.
Creating these precious eggs takes focus and attention to detail, but the results are stunning works of art that are traditionally given as gifts to family members and community leaders. In fact, pysanka is so important to the culture that it’s thought that it was even produced in prehistoric Ukraine. Archaeologists have found decorated ceramic eggs to back up this theory and, according to folklore, pysanky can help ward off evil from overtaking the world. Later, this blended with Christian beliefs, though many people still feel that the decorative eggs work to scare off bad spirits from the home.
For many Americans, presidential debates are a staple of the political process. Every four years, an independent commission arranges a series of public events for the electorate, giving voters a chance to see those seeking national power field questions and explain their governing visions.
But as regular readers may recall, these quadrennial debates are a relatively modern phenomenon. John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon participated in a historic discussion in 1960, but there were no such events in 1964, 1968, and 1972.
In recent decades, political norms and Americans’ expectations have changed, and many simply assume that presidential hopefuls will take part in debates, but it appears that the Republican National Committee has effectively ended the modern era of debates for national candidates.
In the weeks between the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, almost 100 text messages from two staunch GOP allies of then-President Donald Trump reveal an aggressive attempt to lobby, encourage and eventually warn the White House over its efforts to overturn the election, according to messages obtained by the House select committee and reviewed by CNN.
The texts, which have not been previously reported, were sent by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The text exchanges show that both members of Congress initially supported legal challenges to the election but ultimately came to sour on the effort and the tactics deployed by Trump and his team.
“We’re driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic,” Roy texted Meadows on January 1. That text was first released in December by the House select committee and described as being written by a House Freedom Caucus member. Roy’s authorship has not been previously reported.
When situated in the overall timeline of events between the election and January 6, the series of texts from Lee and Roy provide new details about how two Trump allies went from fierce advocates of the former President’s push to overturn Joe Biden’s win to disheartened bystanders. By January 3, Lee was texting Meadows that the effort “could all backfire badly.”
But shortly after the election, both men were encouraging Trump to keep fighting.
Now we know who we have to thank for the Kraken: Sen. Lee lobbied Meadows to get attorney Sidney Powell access to Trump. "Sydney Powell is saying that she needs to get in to see the president, but she's being kept away from him," Lee wrote on 11/7. https://t.co/VlaL2RUn8w
Twitter adopted a limited duration shareholder rights plan, often called a “poison pill,” a day after billionaire Elon Musk offered to buy the company for $43 billion, the company announced Friday.
The board voted unanimously to adopt the plan.
Under the new structure, if any person or group acquires beneficial ownership of at least 15% of Twitter’s outstanding common stock without the board’s approval, other shareholders will be allowed to purchase additional shares at a discount.
The plan is set to expire on April 14, 2023.
Such a move is a common way to fend off a potential hostile takeover by diluting the stake of the entity eying the takeover.
“The Rights Plan will reduce the likelihood that any entity, person or group gains control of Twitter through open market accumulation without paying all shareholders an appropriate control premium or without providing the Board sufficient time to make informed judgments and take actions that are in the best interests of shareholders,” the company said in a press release.
Twitter noted that the rights plan would not prevent the board from accepting an acquisition offer if the board deems it in the best interests of the company and its shareholders.
Economic fallout worsened Thursday evenas Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) moved incrementally to roll back newinspection rules for commercial trucks entering from Mexico, with some companies saying they aren’t able to fulfill orders because trucks are stuck in multi-mile backups at a number of entry points.
Little Bear Produce is a Texas-based grower-packer-shipper, farming 6,000 acres in Texas and supplementing its inventory with Mexican-grown produce so it can be a year-round supplier to major grocery chains such as Wegmans, H-E-B, Publix, Albertsons and Kroger.
Bret Erickson, senior vice president of business affairs for Little Bear, says the added inspections have cost it “hundreds of thousands of dollars” already, not to mention the reduced paychecks for many loaders who have had no work as trucks fail to show up.
“This has directly impacted our business since late last week. We would typically be receiving 10 to 12 loads of watermelon per day from Mexico, as well as different kinds of herbs and greens. Since the middle of last week, we have received zero of those shipments of watermelon,” Erickson said. That means the company did not meet its business obligations with major retailers, which have in turn had to find Mexican melons from farther away, such as from Arizona. Added distance means added fuel costs.
Kentucky ended virtually all in-state abortions on Wednesday, enacting a sweeping law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, restricts minors’ access to the procedure, and cracks down on medication abortions. It’s now the state with the harshest abortion restrictions in the United States.
The new law, which goes into effect immediately, will force the state’s two remaining abortion clinics in Louisville to close due to onerous new requirements on doctors, forcing Kentuckians to look elsewhere for abortion care.
And it comes as Republican-led legislatures across the country are passing seemingly unconstitutional, draconian anti-abortion laws in anticipation of a coming Supreme Court decision widely expected to eliminate Americans’ right to an abortion.Oklahoma, for example, recently passed a law similar to Kentucky’s that imposes a near-total ban on abortions except in cases where the pregnant person’s life is in danger — though it isn’t slated to go into effect for another few months.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, vetoed the bill last week, arguing that it’s likely unconstitutional, due to the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which recognized a pregnant person’s fundamental right to seek an abortion. The Court also found, however, that states could still impose restrictions on the procedure in the service of protecting the pregnant person’s health and the potential life of a fetus once it can survive outside the womb.
Beshear also argued that Kentucky’s bill should have included exclusions for victims of rape and incest, and that the law can’t be enforced without additional state-allocated funding. But the state House and Senate, which are both controlled by Republicans, overrode his veto on Wednesday evening.
“The Kentucky legislature was emboldened by a similar 15-week ban pending before the Supreme Court and other states passing abortion bans, including in Florida and Oklahoma, but this law and others like it remain unconstitutional,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement.
That’s it for me! “Chag Pesach Sameach!” (Happy Passover Holiday) to our Jewish Sky Dancers! Blessed Good Friday and Easter! to our Christian Sky Dancers!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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There was a mass shooting inside a subway station in New York this morning. Five people were shot and thirteen were injured. There also were IED’s found that didn’t detonate. The suspect was wearing a gas mask and some type of construction worker’s vest.
Multiple people were shot in the subway system in Brooklyn during the Tuesday morning rush, officials said, a violent episode that came amid fears about public safety as New York City struggles to recover from the pandemic.
Police officers were called to the 36th Street station, where the D, N and Rlines pass through the Sunset Park neighborhood, around 8:30 a.m., the Police Department said. The Fire Department said that 13 people were injured, several by gunfire. Police officials said that preliminary reports suggested that five people were shot.
A senior law enforcement official said that the police were seeking a heavyset man with a gas mask and an orange construction vest who had been wearing a dark blue outfit that appeared to resemble that of a transit worker.
The official said that investigators believed that a smoke bomb went off and that the gunman had shot from inside a subway train. Videos posted on social media showed panicked riders pouring from a train and onto a platform at 36th Street as smoke billowed through the station.
See footage from inside the train car where at least 13 people were injured and five were shot in an NYC subway shooting in Brooklyn, New York. Sources are reporting a possible smoke device was detonated during the incident. https://t.co/s7flP955tupic.twitter.com/v9zaycOHcc
The US and Britain say they are looking into reports that chemical weapons have been used by Russian forces attacking the Ukrainian port of Mariupol.
Ukraine’s Azov regiment said three soldiers were injured by “a poisonous substance” in an attack on Monday.
However, no evidence has been presented to confirm the use of chemical weapons.
UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said officials were working to “urgently” investigate what she called “a callous escalation” of the war.
The Pentagon called the potential use of the weapons “deeply concerning”.
Western nations have warned that the use of chemical weapons would mark a dangerous escalation of the conflict and have pledged to take firm action if Russia carries out such attacks.
Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said the government was investigating the allegations, adding that early assumptions suggested phosphorous ammunition had been used.
Phosphorus is not classed as a chemical weapon under the Chemical Weapons Convention, but using it as an incendiary weapon near civilians would be illegal.
Did Russia really use chemical weapons in Ukraine? Experts remain sceptical https://t.co/ZiLfuYl52G
President Vladimir Putin vowed Tuesday that Russia’s bloody offensive in Ukraine would continue until its goals are fulfilled, and insisted the campaign was going as planned, despite a major withdrawal in the face of stiff Ukrainian opposition and significant losses.
Russian troops, thwarted in their push toward Ukraine’s capital, are now focusing on the eastern Donbas region, where Ukraine said Tuesday it was investigating a claim that a poisonous substance had been dropped on its troops. It was not clear what the substance might be, but Western officials warned that any use of chemical weapons by Russia would be a serious escalation of the already devastating war.
Russia invaded on Feb. 24, with the goal, according to Western officials, of taking Kyiv, toppling the government and installing a Moscow-friendly one. In the six weeks since, Russia’s ground campaign stalled, its forces suffered losses that may number in the thousands and it stands accused of killing civilians and other atrocities.
Putin insisted Tuesday that his military action aimed to protect people in areas in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed rebels and to “ensure Russia’s own security.”
He said Russia “had no other choice” but to launch what he calls a “special military operation,” and vowed it would “continue until its full completion and the fulfillment of the tasks that have been set.”
The article says that the Russian forces are hoping he will get popular support from Ukrainians when he attacks the Donbas region.
Video of kids near Kyiv:
💔Children in #Kyiv region villages, liberated by #Ukrainian army
"If you don't leave our land, I'll shoot you all," boys have vivid memories about #RussianInvasion
Russia is receiving munitions and military hardware sourced from Iraq for its war effort in Ukraine with the help of Iranian weapons smuggling networks, according to members of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias and regional intelligence services with knowledge of the process.
RPGs and anti-tank missiles, as well as Brazilian-designed rocket launcher systems, have been dispatched to Russia from Iraq as Moscow’s campaign has faltered in the last month, the Guardian has learned.
An Iranian-made Bavar 373 missile system, similar to the Russian S-300, has also been donated to Moscow by the authorities in Tehran, who also returned an S-300, according to a source who helped organise the transport.
Using the weapons-trafficking underworld would signal a dramatic shift in Russian strategy, as Moscow is forced to lean on Iran, its military ally in Syria, following new sanctions triggered by the invasion of Ukraine.
The developments also have huge implications for the direction and volume of trade in the international weapons trafficking business.
Iraq has hosted US and western troops since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the US has trained and supplied various Iraqi army and special forces units to defend the Baghdad government against insurgencies. After two decades of war, the country is awash with weaponry.
Putin is feeling the sting of failure.
Thousands of Russian battlefield deaths. Three front-line retreats by the Russian military. Millions of Ukrainians who will never forgive Moscow. More isolation than ever — and perilously few goals achieved.https://t.co/JEBWzB17Ut
More than six weeks into his war against Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is feeling the sting of failure.
Thousands of Russian battlefield deaths. Three front-line retreats by the Russian military. Millions of Ukrainians who will never forgive Moscow. More isolation than ever — and perilously few goals achieved.
Putin is now regrouping to focus his military campaign on Ukraine’s east in what is widely seen as “Plan B,” after his forces failed to topple Ukraine’s government or wrest control of its biggest cities. All the while, questions are mounting about how a Russian leader steeped in security policy and known for railing against the folly of regime-change wars could have sleepwalked into a such a strategic morass.
At issue is a broader quandary that will occupy historians for years: How could Russia — a country with such deep familial, cultural and historic ties to its western neighbor — get Ukraine so wrong?
Officials in the United States and Europe are piecing together the answer to that question. What emerges, those officials say, is a picture of a hubristic and isolated leader, beset by biases and skewed information, pressing forward with a calamitous decision without consulting his full cohort of advisers. Putin rushed headlong into Ukraine, confident in his ability to secure a quick victory and weather any blowback within the authoritarian system he erected at home, they said. Underpinning his assumptions: misconceptions about Ukraine fundamentally rooted in Moscow’s colonial past.
“Historically, there just hasn’t been expertise on Ukraine in Russia at all,” said Alina Polyakova, president and CEO of the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis. “When you don’t believe a country’s a real country and a people’s a real people, why would you invest any expertise in a thing you don’t think exists?”
Read the rest of this interesting piece at the WaPo.
Dozens of politicians running for state or federal officeare aligning themselves with the right-wing, conspiracy-rich, sometimes-violent movement known as QAnon. They’re drawing tens of millions of dollars in donations as the movement’s popularity stays strong among voters, a Grid investigation has found.
And despite the movement’s penchant for lies and violence, key Republicans — from influential megadonors to prominent elected officials — are welcoming the QAnon movement into the party, Grid found. In sum: QAnon appears to be a growing political movement with increasing clout and significant mainstream appeal.
Grid reviewed public records and reporting, social media posts, and campaign materials and events to identify and confirm at least 78 QAnon-aligned candidates running for office in 26 states in 2022. They’re running for governorships, secretaries of state, seats in the Senate and House, and in state legislatures. They have raised over $20 million this cycle — and over $30 million since 2018.
David Reinert holds up a large “Q” sign while waiting in line to see President Donald J. Trump at his rally on August 2, 2018 at the Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.
All but six of the QAnon-aligned candidates Grid examined are Republican. Over a dozen are incumbents: Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) serve in the House of Representatives, while another 14 serve at the state level, mostly legislatures. Most are running against fellow Republicans in primaries, which will take place throughout the spring and summer.
Arizona has the highest number of QAnon-aligned candidates running in 2022, at 13. Other states with high numbers of QAnon candidates include Florida (12), California (10) and Texas (six)….
While some Republican elites were circumspect about aligning themselves explicitly with the movement, their reluctance has ebbed as the popularity of QAnon’s theories have grown.
QAnon candidates receive support from GOP megadonors like Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, casino mogul Steve Wynn and San Francisco Giants owner Charles Johnson, as well as from party-affiliated fundraising machines. They have enjoyed exposure on right-wing outlets from Fox News to OANN. The movement’s causes and themes are echoed by prominent elected officials like Republican Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), and by former president Donald Trump himself.
Which raises a related riddle: What to call the influx of QAnon messages and candidates into the political mainstream? The movement has no apparent party structure or central organization, yet it appears stronger than any third party. The community doesn’t appear to have a candidate recruitment strategy but fielded dozens of federal and state candidates in over half of U.S. states this cycle.
There’s much more at the link. This is part one of a two-part investigation.
For more than a year now, Fox News star Tucker Carlsonhas gone out of his way to avoid confirming whether or not he’s vaccinated. This month, however, he bragged about having not gotten a single jab.
While speaking at Awaken Church earlier this month, the primetime star heaped praise on the San Diego megachurch for defying COVID-19 restrictions throughout the pandemic before mocking the need for additional booster shots.
“I skipped the first three, I’m not getting that one either,” Carlson said, to rapturous applause from the crowd, Voice of San Diego first reported.
Additional audio provided to Source Material by the nonprofit investigative outfit confirmed Carlson’s remarks, which further included him citing his having grown up “next to the Salk Institute in La Jolla” as evidence that he is “obviously” not opposed to vaccines.
“I’ve had like a million of them,” he said, but regarding the COVID shots, Carlson added of its proponents: “I look at these people, like, this just does not make sense at all. And I have no idea what’s up here, but whatever you’re telling me it’s just not true.”
The loudest anti-vax voice among a plethora of Fox News cranks, Carlson had repeatedly leaned on privacy rights to justify not providing his vax status when asked. “When was the last time you had sex with your wife and in what position? We can trade intimate details,” Carlson texted The New York Times last year when asked.
Supposedly Fox News requires all its employees to be vaccinated. I’m waiting to see what Carlson’s bosses have to say about this.
When I was 19, I had surgery for sex reassignment, or what is now called gender affirmation surgery. The callow young man who was obsessed with transitioning to womanhood could not have imagined reaching middle age. But now I’m closer to 50, keeping a watchful eye on my 401(k), and dieting and exercising in the hope that I’ll have a healthy retirement.
In terms of my priorities and interests today, that younger incarnation of myself might as well have been a different person — yet that was the person who committed me to a lifetime set apart from my peers.
There is much debate today about transgender treatment, especially for young people. Others might feel differently about their choices, but I know now that I wasn’t old enough to make that decision. Given the strong cultural forces today casting a benign light on these matters, I thought it might be helpful for young people, and their parents, to hear what I wish I had known.
I once believed that I would be more successful finding love as a woman than as a man, but in truth, few straight men are interested in having a physical relationship with a person who was born the same sex as them. In high school, when I experienced crushes on my male classmates, I believed that the only way those feelings could be requited was if I altered my body.
It turned out that several of those crushes were also gay. If I had confessed my interest, what might have developed? Alas, the rampant homophobia in my school during the AIDS crisis smothered any such notions. Today, I have resigned myself to never finding a partner. That’s tough to admit, but it’s the healthiest thing I can do.
As a teenager, I was repelled by the thought of having biological children, but in my vision of the adult future, I imagined marrying a man and adopting a child. It was easy to sacrifice my ability to reproduce in pursuit of fulfilling my dream. Years later, I was surprised by the pangs I felt as my friends and younger sister started families of their own.
Sadly, because of his early decision, Cohn is sterile and apparently unable to enjoy sex.
Surgery unshackled me from my body’s urges, but the destruction of my gonads introduced a different type of bondage. From the day of my surgery, I became a medical patient and will remain one for the rest of my life. I must choose between the risks of taking exogenous estrogen, which include venous thromboembolism and stroke, or the risks of taking nothing, which includes degeneration of bone health. In either case, my risk of dementia is higher, a side effect of eschewing testosterone.
What was I seeking for my sacrifice? A feeling of wholeness and perfection. I was still a virgin when I went in for surgery. I mistakenly believed that this made my choice more serious and authentic. I chose an irreversible change before I’d even begun to understand my sexuality. The surgeon deemed my operation a good outcome, but intercourse never became pleasurable. When I tell friends, they’re saddened by the loss, but it’s abstract to me — I cannot grieve the absence of a thing I’ve never had.
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The Huntley-Brinkley Report with Chet Huntley anchoring in New York and David Brinkley manning the desk in Washington, D.C., began on NBC on this date in 1956. The news series continued through July 1970. Photo from the L.A. Times files.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I find myself keeping the TV off these days. I never watch any shows or things but I do indulge in the nightly news a habit long practiced in my home. This dates back to the Huntley-Brinkly Report. We also had morning and evening newspapers. My Nana ensured the arrival of the National Geographic and The Christian Science Monitor. Dad always got the big weekly magazines which eventually wound up in the waiting room of the service shop in our little eastern Iowa town. That’s where someone dropped off the John Birch Society’s newsletter one time and I became aware of those right-wing conspiracy theories so prevalent today. My Dad was a Goldwater/Reagan Republican and immediately told me to trash it. I never had to be told again.
That’s one of the reasons I was really sad when my dad got addicted to Fox News and my sister and I had to find ways to keep him away from the TV. My trick was to call him up during football season or baseball season and have him call the game for me which is also something he did when I was a kid. I’m glad my parents never had to live those horrid 4 years of the previous guy. The TV news has become an hourly horror show of human atrocities and crimes.
It impacted sentiment against the Vietnam War and eventually the Afghanistan/Iraq Invasions. What are we to make of what’s going on in Ukraine? What did and can we do?
The New York Times Magazine has a podcast by Robert Draper up today with the transcript that’s got me realizing how important it is to have professional diplomats that stay out of the political arena once again. Here’s the headline: “‘This Was Trump Pulling a Putin’. Amid the current crisis, Fiona Hill and other former advisers are connecting President Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine to Jan. 6. And they’re ready to talk.”
In the Oval Office, Hill recalls, describing a scene that has not been previously reported, she told Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that offering a membership path to Ukraine and Georgia could be problematic. While Bush’s appetite for promoting the spread of democracy had not been dampened by the Iraq war, President Vladimir Putin of Russia viewed NATO with suspicion and was vehemently opposed to neighboring countries joining its ranks. He would regard it as a provocation, which was one reason the United States’ key NATO allies opposed the idea. Cheney took umbrage at Hill’s assessment. “So, you’re telling me you’re opposed to freedom and democracy,” she says he snapped. According to Hill, he abruptly gathered his materials and walked out of the Oval Office.
“He’s just yanking your chain,” she remembers Bush telling her. “Go on with what you were saying.” But the president seemed confident that he could win over the other NATO leaders, saying, “I like it when diplomacy is tough.” Ignoring the advice of Hill and the U.S. intelligence community, Bush announced in Bucharest that “NATO should welcome Georgia and Ukraine into the Membership Action Plan.” Hill’s prediction came true: Several other leaders at the summit objected to Bush’s recommendation. NATO ultimately issued a compromise declaration that would prove unsatisfying to nearly everyone, stating that the two countries “will become members” without specifying how and when they would do so — and still in defiance of Putin’s wishes. (They still have not become members.)
“It was the worst of all possible worlds,” Hill said to me in her austere English accent as she recalled the episode over lunch this March. As one of the foremost experts on Putin and a current unofficial adviser to the Biden administration on the Russia-Ukraine war, Hill, 56, has already made a specialty of issuing warnings about the Russian leader that have gone unheeded by American presidents. As she feared, the carrot dangled by Bush to two countries — each of which gained independence in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and afterward espoused democratic ambitions — did not sit well with Putin. Four months after the 2008 NATO summit, Russian troops crossed the border and launched an attack on the South Ossetia region of Georgia. Though the war lasted only five days, a Russian military presence would continue in nearly 20 percent of Georgia’s territory. And after the West’s weak pushback against his aggression, Putin then set his sights on Ukraine — a sovereign nation that, Putin claimed to Bush at the Bucharest summit, “is not a country.”
You may continue to read more of Hill’s recollections as she served in the next two administrations before Trump came after her.
Her assessment of the former president has new resonance in the current moment: “In the course of his presidency, indeed, Trump would come more to resemble Putin in political practice and predilection than he resembled any of his recent American presidential predecessors.”
The big three network news anchors in 1968 — Huntley, Brinkley (NBC), Cronkite (CBS), and Frank Reynolds (ABC). Definitely, it was a small cadre of white men.
Charles Kupperman told the New York Times Magazine that the former president, who was impeached over his alleged 2019 extortion scheme against Ukraine, flew into a rage on May 23 of that year at the mention of the country’s name.
“He just let loose,” Kupperman recalled. “‘They’re [expletive] corrupt. They [expletive] tried to screw me.’”
Kupperman knew there was no chance that Trump understood the value of a good relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine after seeing the way he treated other allies, including France, Britain and South Korea, and he said the former president basically was not capable of making foreign policy because he didn’t even understand the concept on the most basic level.
“He felt like our allies were screwing us, and he had no sense as to why these alliances benefited us or why you need a global footprint for military and strategic capabilities,” Kupperman said. “If one were to ask him to define ‘balance of power,’ he wouldn’t know what that concept was. He’d have no idea about the history of Ukraine and why it’s in the front pages today. He wouldn’t know that Stalin starved that country. Those are the contextual points one has to take into account in the making of foreign policy.”
Barbara Walters became the first female co-anchor of an evening news program in 1976; co-anchor Harry Reasoner wasn’t happy.
I’ve had a lot to say about Joe Biden starting with what he did while I was in high school and the Supreme Court decision’ to integrate schools included bussing. Most of it is not all that complimentary. He lost me completely during the Anita Hill testimony during the Thomas hearings. Thomas’ tenure on the court has been thorny at best. President Biden has foreign policy chops. Obama’s treatment of Putin does not fare well in the podcast above. Alexander Vindman and John Bolton had this to say about Trump’s treatment of Ukraine also from the New York Times Magazine podcast..
Instead, Vindman said, the opposite occurred: “Ukraine became radioactive for the duration of the Trump administration. There wasn’t serious engagement. Putin had been wanting to reclaim Ukraine for eight years, but he was trying to gauge when was the right time to do it. Starting just months after Jan. 6, Putin began building up forces on the border. He saw the discord here. He saw the huge opportunity presented by Donald Trump and his Republican lackeys. I’m not pulling any punches here. I’m not using diplomatic niceties. These folks sent the signal Putin was waiting for.”
Bolton, a renowned foreign-policy hawk who also served in the administrations of Reagan and George W. Bush, also told me that Trump’s behavior had dealt damage to both Ukraine and America. The refusal to lend aid to Ukraine, the subsequent disclosure of the heavy-handed conversation with Zelensky and then the impeachment hearing all served to undermine Ukraine’s new president, Bolton told me. “It made it impossible for Zelensky to establish any kind of relationship with the president of the United States — who, faced with a Russian Army on his eastern border, any Ukrainian president would have as his highest priority. So basically that means Ukraine loses a year and a half of contact with the president.”
Max Robinson in 1978 became the first Black person to anchor the nightly network news.
You may listen to or read more at the link above.
There are still many useful fools in the Republican Party and Right-Wing Media that make it hard to believe that the John Birch society was once fiercely anti-communist. They have to be ignoring the fact that Putin really wants a renewed Soviet Union with its former satellite states in place. John Mearsheimer is a political science professor at the University of Chicago who blames the Western intervention for Putin’s hostilities. He argues the Russians see us as Nation-building in their backyard.
I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the nato Summit in Bucharest, where afterward nato issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of nato. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Of course, this includes more than just nato expansion. nato expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat.
You said that it’s about “turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.” I don’t put much trust or much faith in America “turning” places into liberal democracies. What if Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, want to live in a pro-American liberal democracy?
If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of nato, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no nato expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, nato expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.
You keep saying “turning Ukraine into a liberal democracy,” and it seems like that’s an issue for the Ukrainians to decide. nato can decide whom it admits, but we saw in 2014 that it appeared as if many Ukrainians wanted to be considered part of Europe. It would seem like almost some sort of imperialism to tell them that they can’t be a liberal democracy.
It’s not imperialism; this is great-power politics. When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this full well with regard to the United States.
The Monroe Doctrine, essentially.
Of course. There’s no country in the Western hemisphere that we will allow to invite a distant, great power to bring military forces into that country.
Meanwhile, huge military operations in the Donetsk Oblast by the Russians prove that they still seriously want Ukraine.
More than 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege of Mariupol, the city's mayor tells @AP. Mayor Vadym Boychenko said bodies “carpeted” the streets of the Ukrainian port city and he fears the actual death toll could be double that figure. https://t.co/Hm5WoWYvVS
The mayor of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol tells The Associated Press that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the southeastern city since the Russian invasion in February.
Mayor Vadym Boychenko told The Associated Press by telephone Monday that corpses were “carpeted through the streets of our city” and that the death toll could be more than 20,000.
Boychenko also said Russian forces have brought mobile crematoria to the city to dispose of the bodies and accused Russian forces of refusing to allow humanitarian convoys into the city in an attempt to disguise the carnage.
Simpson broke barriers in 1988 as the first Black woman anchor and then again in 1992 as the first Black woman to moderate a presidential debate.
So, as foretold, the Russians regrouped. They will have some new NATO allies and they are already harping about it. This is from the BBC. “Ukraine War: Russia warns Sweden and Finland against Nato membership.” Mother Russia appears to be frightened by its neighbors.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “the alliance remains a tool geared towards confrontation”.
It comes as US defence officials said Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has been a “massive strategic blunder” which is likely to bring Nato enlargement.
US officials expect the Nordic neighbours to bid for membership of the alliance, potentially as early as June.
Washington is believed to support the move which would see the Western alliance grow to 32 members. US State Department officials said last week that discussions had taken place between Nato leaders and foreign ministers from Helsinki and Stockholm.
Before it launched its invasion, Russia demanded that the alliance agree to halt any future enlargement, but the war has led to the deployment of more Nato troops on its eastern flank and a rise in public support for Swedish and Finnish membership.
All is not quiet on the Western Front.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Once again, I’ve reached the point where I can’t bring myself to watch the news on TV. I check Twitter a few times a day and end up frightened and depressed. On the days I write posts, I read a number of articles, but then I need hours of down time to decompress. When will there be some good news for those of us who want the U.S. to be a democracy?
Oh, before I get ahead of the chickens, let me introduce you to 
Read Mark Meadows’ texts with Mike Lee and Chip Roy at this 
I’m still trying to make sense of the Texas Governor’s truck stoppage at the Mexico/Texas border. It doesn’t do anything to check trucks for anything else but bad tires and other safety features. And, it’s screwing the state’s economy royally. 
And don’t even get me started with Kentucky. They’re gearing up to ensure women die from pregnancies and backstreet abortions. This is from VOX: 
While speaking at Awaken Church earlier this month, the primetime star heaped praise on the San Diego megachurch for 
I once believed that I would be more successful finding love as a woman than as a man, but in truth, few straight men are interested in having a physical relationship with a person who was born the same sex as them. In high school, when I experienced crushes on my male classmates, I believed that the only way those feelings could be requited was if I altered my body.
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