The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

The White House said Friday that Russia’s offensive in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region has stalled and is unlikely to advance any further.

John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, said the arrival of U.S. weapons has helped change the trajectory of the battle around Kharkiv, which Russian forces mounted a major attack on around the middle of May.

“They have been able to thwart Russian advances, particularly around Kharkiv,” Kirby said. “The Russians really have kind of stalled out up there [and] … their advance on Kharkiv is all but over because they ran into the first line of defenses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and basically stopped, if not pulled back, some units.”

He added that Ukraine was still under pressure, and they were not taking anything for granted, but it “appears that they’ve stalled out,” noting that this assessment was shared between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden when the two met Friday in France to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

In that meeting, Biden apologized for the months-long delay of new U.S. military aid to Ukraine, which Washington and Kyiv have both said led to Russian advances across the battlefield, including in Kharkiv and in the eastern Donetsk region...

How many lives were lost while MAGAt House Republicans, acting with the approval of their cult leader/ convicted felon Malignant Loser, refused to vote on that vital military aid? 

The bad:

Early forecasts in the European Parliament elections on Sunday showed voters punishing ruling centrists and throwing support behind far-right parties, most notably in France, where disastrous results for French President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition prompted him to dissolve the National Assembly and call snap elections.

Although a combination of centrist, pro-European parties was projected to maintain a majority in the European Union’s legislative body, far-right parties claimed the largest share of seats from France and Italy while placing second in Germany. Green parties across the European Union took a particular hit.

“The center is holding,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Sunday night. But the outcome, with gains for parties on the extremes, “comes with great responsibility for the parties in the center” to ensure “stability” and “a strong and effective Europe,” she said.

Macron said legislative elections would give French citizens a chance to determine their country’s future. He warned: “The rise of nationalists, of demagogues, is a danger for our nation, but also for our Europe, for France’s place in Europe and in the world.”

The French presidency won’t be contested, but the vote, with a first round set for June 30, will be a referendum on Macron’s government.

The once-every-five-years European Parliament elections are the world’s largest democratic exercise outside India. Citizens of the European Union’s 27 member states cast ballots to determine the 720 representatives that sit in Brussels and Strasbourg. Since the last elections in 2019, once-fringe hard-right parties have entered the political mainstream in Europe, and the results seemed to reflect those shifts...

"Suckers of the world, unite!"

The Western world is slowly lighting itself on fire, to the great glee of authoritarians and fascist demagogues everywhere.

The ugly: 

An Ohio nonprofit that provides off-site Bible instruction to public school students during classroom hours says it will triple its programs in Indiana this fall after new legislation forced school districts to comply.

To participating families, nondenominational LifeWise Academy programs supplement religious instruction. But critics in Indiana worry the programs spend public school resources on religion, proselytize to students of other faiths and remove children from class in a state already struggling with literacy.

LifeWise founder and CEO Joel Penton told The Associated Press that many parents want religious instruction to be part of their children’s education.

“Values of faith and the Bible are absolutely central to many families,” Penton said. “And so they want to demonstrate to their children that it is central to their lives.”

Public schools cannot promote any religion under the First Amendment, but a 1952 Supreme Court ruling centered on New York schools cleared the way for programs like LifeWise. Individual places of worship often work with schools to host programs off campus, and they are not regulated in some states. 

LifeWise officials addressed the Oklahoma and Ohio legislatures in support of laws that would require schools to cooperate with off-site religious programs, Penton said, and Oklahoma’s Republican governor signed one such bill into law Wednesday.  

Similar bills have been introduced in Ohio, Nebraska, Georgia and Mississippi this year, according to an AP analysis of Plural, a legislative tracking database.

LifeWise programs will be available at over 520 locations in 23 states next school year, up from 331 in 13 states this year, and about 31,000 students attend LifeWise programs in the U.S., Penton said.

Penton wants LifeWise to be available to “50 million public school students nationwide,” he said...  (our emphasis)

Sunday, Saturday and after- school hours don't provide enough time for these Bible bangers to proselytize the kids?  They need public school hours, too?  Must be some awful wicked goings- on in these places!  If these people want religious training in schools, there are private academies and parochial schools, of course.  The taxpayer is already funding these religious schools in many states through state voucher programs.  But, we've been on this particular slippery slope ever since that 1952 Supreme Court ruling.  What do you think the odds are of our current Republican Supreme Court overturning that decision? 

A Key Vote In The Netherlands: Fascism Or Democracy? [UPDATED]

The parliamentary elections in the Netherlands pit the incumbent center/right Prime Minister Mark Rutte's party against the neo-fascist, anti-immigrant, anti-EU party of demagogue Geert Wilders, who has become a hero to the far- right in the U.S. (see bigoted shitpile Rep. Steve "Cantaloupe Calves" King for example). It's the first electoral test of an active white nationalist movement in western Europe, a movement backed by Russian autocrat Vladimir "Vlad the Invader" Putin, who want western democracies to decline into fragmented isolationism as his expansionist kleptocracy expands beyonds its borders. However, with 15 parties in the Netherlands, Wilders' chances of gaining even 20% of the seats are slim, and should he win a small plurality of seats, other major parties in the Netherlands have vowed not to form a government with his far-right party. Polls in the Netherlands close at 4 o'clock Eastern time, so preliminary indications of the Dutch vote should be available later today.

France goes to the polls in April to elect a new government. Far-right candidate Marine LePen has pledged to "liberate" France from the European Union (something that delights Putin) and to roll back laws favorable to immigration. Ominously, Le Pen's party has received financial backing from Russia and would be beholden to the Kremlin if they succeed in the elections.

When Russia intervened in the 2016 elections on behalf of their neo-fascist poodle Donald "Rump" Trump, they succeeded in their wildest dreams: deny Secretary Clinton the election, and install a man in the White House that has been compromised by them or bought by their oligarchs' money. Now, they're pushing to topple liberal democracies in western Europe, thereby threatening the NATO alliance and the European Union. It's not to late for the voters in the Netherlands, France and other democracies to spoil their election plans, even if it's too late for the U.S.

UPDATE:  Exit polls indicate that Prime Minister Mark Rutte's party has won the election, defeating far-right demagogue Geert Wilders' insurgents by a substantial margin.

UPDATE II: Here's PM Mark Rutte (emphasis added):

“This night is a night for the Netherlands — after Brexit, after the American elections — where we said, ‘Stop it, stop it,’ to the wrong kind of populism,” Rutte told cheering supporters at his election-night party.

The French and German foreign ministries chimed in as well:

Large majority of Dutch voters have rejected anti European populists. That's good news. We need you for a strong #Europe! #tk2017 @MinBZ

— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) March 15, 2017

Félicitations aux Néerlandais d'avoir enrayé la montée de l'extrême droite. Volonté de travailler à une Europe plus forte.

— Jean-Marc Ayrault (@jeanmarcayrault) March 15, 2017

(Which translates to, “Congratulations to the Netherlands for halting the advance of the far right. Willingness to work for a stronger Europe.”)

Far-Right "Values" In Europe -- And Here

Anne Applebaum writes in today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle about the convergence of far-right "values," expressed in recent European Parliament elections, with those of Russian homophobe/ autocrat/ czar Vladimir "Vlad the Invader" Putin:

Indeed, on the same day that Ukrainians voted for “European values” — and almost exactly a quarter-century after the Poles voted for “European values” — another landmark, landslide election propelled an unusually virulent group of anti-Europeans into prominence. Millions of French citizens voted the National Front, an anti-European party with anti-Semitic roots, to the top of France’s European parliamentary election list. A few days earlier, millions of British voters opted for the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), another anti-European organization composed of a charismatic leader, Nigel Farage, and a strange coalition of cranks, cheats and open racists. Dutch, Danish, Italian, Austrian and Hungarian voters sent similarly inclined candidates to the European Parliament, so much so that they may be able to form a full-fledged far-right voting bloc. 

Not only do the leaders of these two parties reject “European values,” they also have gone out of their way to declare their solidarity with a man who symbolizes everything that Poles and Ukrainians have been trying to escape. During a trip to Moscow, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, declared her admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “patriotism.” UKIP’s Farage has also named Putin as the world leader he “most admires.” Le Pen and Farage aren’t alone in admiring the Russian “model” — corruption, media manipulation, disregard for borders and the rule of law, all included. What Ukraine is desperate to escape, in other words, Europe’s far right is now desperate to become.

Not mentioned unfortunately, but not unexpectedly (this is the Bezos Bugle, after all), is the crush the American far-right has for Putin.  As authoritarians at heart, they admire the "strong man," as they perceive the strutting Putin to be.  In fact, the vertically-challenged Putin is acting out, as has every over-compensating tyrant with a personal and national inferiority complex.  The chronically paranoid, phobic right in Europe and America naturally see him as kindred in spirit, someone who has the "will" to turn back the tide of change that they fear so much.