Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

In a bit of a dog-bites-man revelation, the January 6 committee, in the form of Rep. Liz Cheney, has enough goods on the Malignant Loser to make a criminal referral to the DOJ:

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol has enough evidence to refer former President Donald Trump for criminal charges, the vice chair of the panel, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), said Sunday.

“It’s absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway,” Cheney told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

She was responding to a New York Times report that the committee leaders were divided over whether to criminally refer Trump to the Justice Department, despite concluding they had enough evidence to do so on charges of obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiring to defraud the American people. The report cited people involved in the discussions.

According to Cheney, the committee has not yet decided whether to make a referral.

“I think what we have seen is a massive and well organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election,” Cheney said.

The division over referral seems to center around whether it would complicate any ongoing investigation that DOJ was already conducting--  an investigation, we might add, that is very slow in developing and whose targets remain largely unknown.

Putin's kleptocracy is on the verge of defaulting on its bond payments:

Ratings agencies say Russia is on the verge of defaulting on government bonds following its invasion of Ukraine, with billions of dollars owed to foreigners. That prospect recalls memories of a 1998 default by Moscow that helped fuel financial disruption worldwide.

Ratings agency Fitch said Wednesday that “a default or a default-like process has begun” because Russia missed a March 2 payment to foreign investors, such as funds that invest in emerging market bonds. That set off a 30-day grace period before the country would officially default.  [snip]

Once a country defaults, it can be cut off from bond-market borrowing until the default is sorted out and investors regain confidence in the government’s ability and willingness to pay. Russia’s government can still borrow rubles at home, where it mostly relies on Russian banks to buy its bonds.

Russia is already suffering severe economic impact from the sanctions, which have sent the ruble plunging and disrupted trade and financial ties with the rest of the world.

So the default would be one more symptom of Moscow’s wider political and financial isolation as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.

Sad!

They're going to a runoff in France's elections, as expected.  And the stakes are high, as E.J. Dionne, Jr., lays out:

French President Emmanuel Macron, the forces of liberal democracy and the alliance against Ukraine won a reprieve in the first round of France’s presidential election on Sunday.

Despite the worries of Macron’s supporters that he would barely take the top spot, he won 27.4 percent with nearly all the votes counted, well ahead of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who secured 24 percent in her third presidential contest. Macron’s relatively strong showing increased the likelihood that he will prevail when the two face off in the second round April 24. [snip]

Sunday’s outcome was a relief for Macron, an eloquent defender of liberal democratic values. A critic of a narrow and authoritarian nationalism, he drifted to the right on immigration in the face of the right-wing challenge.

Most Western leaders — center-left and center-right — will be rooting hard for Macron for fear that Le Pen, whose party was supported financially by Russian banks, will threaten the European Union and unified Western support for Ukraine. Macron will surely use Le Pen’s ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin against her. After Russia invaded Ukraine, her campaign had to discard more than 1 million leaflets containing a picture of her smiling alongside Putin.  [snip]

The good news Sunday is that the total for the two extreme right candidates was lower than seemed likely only a few months ago. But the burden on Macron is enormous. He must fend off a far right that threatens not only his own nation, but liberal democrats everywhere — and, perhaps most immediately, the people of Ukraine.

Lastly, please consider a visit to Infidel 753's link round-up to interesting posts from around the Internet. His periodic essays on Putin's war on Ukraine are also recommended;  his latest is on Russian atrocities.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

In an election with implications for Hungary, Europe and Putin's war on Ukraine, Hungarian Christofascist Viktor Orban apparently won reelection by a dominating margin:

Hungary's authoritarian leader and longtime Russian ally, Viktor Orban, has declared victory in the country's parliamentary elections, clinching a fourth consecutive term in power.

Orban's Fidesz party had a commanding lead with 71% of the votes counted, Hungary's national elections board said on Sunday evening.

 

The election campaign was dominated by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, which put Orban's lengthy association with Russian President Vladimir Putin under scrutiny. In his victory speech, Orban called Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky one of the "opponents" he had to overcome during the campaign.

 

Hungary is heavily reliant on Russian energy and Orban has dodged opportunities to condemn Putin's assault on its neighboring state, complicating the EU's efforts to present a united front against him.

 

But despite opinion polls forecasting a tighter race, Orban's Fidesz party won comfortably across much of the country. Opposition leader Peter Marki-Zay even failed to win in his own district, where he had served as mayor.

 

"We have such a victory it can be seen from the moon, but it's sure that it can be seen from Brussels," Orban said in his speech on Sunday night, making light of his government's long-running tensions with EU leaders.

Orban has been steadily leading Hungary back in time to its days of Soviet-style repression.  This will only accelerate that movement, to which we can only ask "WTF Hungary?"

Speaking of Putin pals, keep an eye on what's going on in Pakistan with Putin ally Prime Minister Khan:

Pakistan's supreme court is expected to decide the fate of embattled Prime Minister Imran Khan, following a day of political turmoil.

Mr Khan has faced an attempt to oust him from office in recent days.

But in a move that has roiled the country, members of Mr Khan's party on Sunday blocked a vote of no-confidence in the PM and dissolved parliament.

Mr Khan had claimed the vote was part of a US-led conspiracy to remove him, but the US has denied this.

Furious opposition politicians have now filed a petition to the Supreme Court to rule on whether the move to block the vote was constitutional.

The court was initially expected to decide by the end of Monday, but delayed the decision until Tuesday.

Mr Khan was widely regarded as having come to power with the help of Pakistan's army, but they have since fallen out, according to observers.

His political opponents then seized this opportunity to demand a no-confidence vote after persuading a number of his coalition partners to defect to them.

On Sunday, MPs meeting to hold the vote - which Mr Khan was expected to lose - were told of an "an operation for a regime change by a foreign government".

The deputy speaker chairing the session - a close ally of the prime minister - then proceeded to declare the vote unconstitutional.

Shortly afterwards Pakistan's president Arif Alvi - who is from Mr Khan's ruling PTI party - dissolved parliament in a step towards early elections.

Sounds like they took notes from the Malignant Loser's January 6 coup playbook (aside -- BBC sure likes one sentence paragraphs).

What happens when dedicated viewers of Fox "News" are paid to watch CNN instead? This:

The establishment of Fox News in the late 1990s forever changed both media and politics in America, transforming the formerly staid world of television news into the series of political shoutfests we know and love-hate today. More than a quarter-century after its founding, however, the question persists: Does watching Fox News actually change voters’ minds?  [snip]

It’s a slightly different question how watching Fox affects someone’s views of the day-to-day controversies of politics. One view is that Fox is such an echo chamber that it can’t possibly be changing minds. Only committed conservatives, the theory goes, would bother to tune in to Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson, so what difference could it make what they say?

A pretty big difference, as it turns out, according to a new study by political scientists David Broockman of Stanford and Joshua Kalla of Yale. The research offers a much more granular look at the impact of Fox on its viewers, thanks to reliance on a resource-intensive experiment, rather than the broad aggregates of that earlier paper.

Broockman and Kalla recruited a sample of regular Fox News viewers and paid a subset of them to watch CNN instead. (Compliance was enforced with some news quizzes, for which additional compensation was offered.) Then the treatment group of switchers and the control group of non-switchers took three waves of surveys about the news.

The results: Not only did CNN and Fox cover different things during the September 2020 survey period, but the audience of committed Fox viewers, which started the month with conservative predispositions, changed their minds on many issues.

We'll chip in a few bucks to get more Fox "News" addicts to switch -- but given the changes coming at CNN, it might be better to pay them to switch to MSNBC.

In a related story, 

In a forthcoming book, a pair of New York Times reporters and CNN political analysts report that President Joe Biden "assessed" Fox News "as one of the most destructive forces in the United States."

The reporters, Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, say that Biden was even more critical of Fox Corp patriarch Rupert Murdoch.

According to the book, Biden told an unnamed associate in mid-2021 that Murdoch was "the most dangerous man in the world."

Finally, please consider a visit over to Infidel 753's link round-up to posts of interest from around the Internet.  Always a stimulating and wide- ranging  selection!

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/op eds.

David Rothkopf remembers Madeleine Albright:

I remember recounting to her my unease the first few times I found myself in the Situation Room during my time in the Clinton Administration; telling her how out of place I felt. She responded, “Let me tell you something, everyone in that room has impostor’s syndrome. We all think we don’t belong. We all remember who we were in high school and wonder how we got to where we are now.”

It was a great leveler. It was also the kindest and most helpful thing she could have said.

But, of course, I knew when she said it that she was anything but an impostor. She was one of those rare leaders who are set apart not just by their hard work or public achievements, but by their humanity.

For those who knew her, that is undoubtedly why she will be most missed. But for those who did not, it is also why her actions—as a diplomat, a teacher, a champion of women—will resonate with so many for so very long. She had the strength to translate compassion, decency, and values into action. In a moment as fraught as our current one, we can only hope fate sends our way more leaders like her.

We can hope, but...

Will Bunch discusses the Supreme Court's ongoing legitimacy crisis, heightened by the Ginni Thomas- Mark Meadows cuckoo coup texts:

There was an endless stream of chatter on social media this weekend about the Ginni Thomas file, yet folks had a hard time pinning a name on the great angst they were feeling. I’ll take a stab at it. The majority of Americans — the people who gave more votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and even more to Biden in 2020 and put the Democrats back in nominal control of Congress — are still, despite those victories, watching the car careen off the cliff, and we are unable to find the brakes. There seems to be no way or no will to hold our staggeringly corrupt leaders accountable — whether it’s Trump defrauding the banks or plotting an attempted coup from the Oval Office, or a Supreme Court justice ruling on his wife’s bat-guano crazy political crusade. And there’s seemingly no way to stop the crazy, like QAnon, from getting crazier. I’m in a total funk over the state of the union, and when I wrote that on Twitter hundreds of people agreed with me.  [snip]

It felt fitting that the high court’s legitimacy crisis was reaching a crescendo right in the middle of the fraught confirmation for a new justice, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her ascension — likely to occur on close to a straight party-line vote — could have been a reaffirming moment, with KBJ bringing experience, a sharp legal mind, and, most important, new perspectives as a former public defender and as the first Black woman in Supreme Court history. Instead, the hearings were a tawdry showcase for Republican senators to spout some of the same QAnon-flavored nonsense that seems to have poisoned Ginni Thomas’ brain — and a reminder of how a toxic right-wing movement has been slowly infecting our justice system for decades.

A good read, as usual.

Margaret Sullivan explains how, even after Putin shut down Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's operation in Russia, it only increased the level of traffic to the private non- profit's other outlets:

In the first three weeks after the invasion, page views from Russia to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sites skyrocketed to 26 million, more than 50 percent more than an earlier corresponding period. Video views from Russia to their YouTube channels more than tripled to 237 million. And this was happening despite sites being blocked within Russia.

“Despite the Kremlin pressure, people are still hungry for the truth,” Fly told me. “To some extent, they see through the propaganda, and they want to explore broader sources of information.”

He and his colleagues are particularly proud of the on-the-ground reporting in Ukraine, such as a March 10 video headlined “Ukrainian Troops Attempt to Drive Russian Forces from Village Near Kyiv.” There have been thorough reports about civilian deaths in Mariupol and about mortar fire directed at Ukrainian interior minister and journalists.

Many listeners and viewers are getting around Russia’s media barricades through the use of VPNs (virtual private networks) and “mirror sites” that duplicate content but use a different URL.

Putin's attempts to turn Russia into a hermetically sealed North Korea are doing about as well as his army in Ukraine so far.

El Salvador's 40-year-old presidential bro is getting ready to crash his country's economy:

The president of El Salvador is making a huge bet on bitcoin with his country's treasury. President Nayib Bukele is hoping to launch bitcoin-backed bonds to raise $1 billion for the country.

Bukele wants to raise the funds through international cryptocurrency traders, and to avoid his critics in the United States, including at the International Monetary Fund.

Last year, Bukele got El Salvador to become the first nation to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, right alongside the national currency, the U.S. dollar.

The bitcoin bond launch would mark another first of its kind. But while these moves are welcomed by crypto enthusiasts, they've raised concerns among detractors of the popular, unregulated asset market.

El Salvador's finance minister had announced the launch would happen in mid-March, but on Tuesday, he said it was postponed because of Russia's war in Ukraine and cryptocurrency volatility, Reuters reported.

What could possibly go wrong?

Finally, we recommend a visit to Infidel 753's link round-up for a collection of links to some of the most interesting posts from around the Internet. You likely won't agree with every point of view, but the scope of what he does every week is impressive.  Also, he has another good summation of "Putin's failed war" this week.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds. 

Today, confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be a Supreme Court Associate Justice will begin:

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s mission is simple as her confirmation hearings to become the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court start Monday: Don’t fall for the traps.

Jackson, 51, will spend three days testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, playing her role in what President Joe Biden, a former chairman of that panel, once called a “kabuki dance.” Like past nominees, Jackson in all likelihood will seek to skirt controversy and resist attempts to pin her down on divisive issues that might come before the court, such as gun rights and affirmative action.

Jackson has successfully navigated the process before. Last year she won confirmation to be a federal appeals court judge in Washington and in 2013 she was approved to be a district judge. But the stakes have grown, and Republicans, many still rankled by contentious hearings for former President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, may try to trip her up on key election-year issues like crime.

We've already discussed the scurrilous attacks Republicans are preparing to make, mostly to set a narrative for the mid-term elections that Democrats are soft on crime. It's not likely to keep Brown Jackson off the Court, but Republicans will try to smear her anyway, because it's who they are.

Former Republican hatchet man Rick Wilson warns about the coming flip by Republicans on Ukraine:

... Republican leaders are desperately trying to find a weak spot in Biden’s handling of this war. Even if there is unity for a moment, they will soon lay any mistake, or misstep, or outcome where the Russians prevail at Biden’s doorstep.

If that sounds cynical, I would ask: Have you met my former party?

It wants to play the most beloved game in the GOP playbook: that the Democrats are weak on defense. In my decades as a GOP ad maker and strategist, I made some pretty notorious ads about it. And I can tell you they work. [snip]

Republicans specialize at turning Democratic successes overseas into disasters. It’s a slow-burn strategy designed to trigger an outrage culture that doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. GOP leaders don’t care about reality; their audience doesn’t care about the truth, and their political media apparatus always stays on message. [snip]

Democrats haven’t sorted out a simple reality yet; the GOP will soon try to flank Biden on Ukraine. Some, like Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), will try to box him in on a no-fly zone — ignoring the negative externality of a nuclear exchange — while others will push him further than he wants on lethal aid to Ukraine. Win or lose, the GOP will declare that Biden blew his main chance. Even many sober foreign policy thinkers in the GOP will try to leverage Democratic “weakness” in Ukraine in the 2022 elections.

But let’s also be honest about the landscape: A not-so-secret faction of the GOP is rooting for the bad guys in this one. We’ve already heard that from the Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) wing of the party. Many Republican base voters are dictator-curious and believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is the savior of White, straight, law-and-order Christianity; the virus of Trumpian hyper-nationalism, with its constant call to reject alliances, diplomacy, smart power and multilateral action, has deeply infected the GOP.

He knows his treasonous rats, all right.

Philip Bump at the Washington Post explains why "we have a free speech problem 'problem,'" in his astute analysis of a recent, grossly off-base editorial in the New York Effing Times:

Friday’s Times column on the same subject — titled “America has a free speech problem” — is the rhetorical equivalent of activating every fire station in the city because someone smelled smoke. A lot of people are worried without a lot of because these specific things happened to them. That and an odd bit of partisan both-sidesing, conflating the left’s engagement in criticism with the right’s leveraging the law to control speech, one of which is more of a risk to the First Amendment than the other.  [snip]

Americans now have different boundaries for speech and behavior about race and gender than in years past. That means that some people very familiar with the old boundaries suddenly find the ground shifting beneath their feet. That can seem like a new infringement on speech when, instead, it’s a change in how speech is received.

“Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country,” the Times wrote on Friday: “the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.” This isn’t really true (in addition to being an obvious erroneous conflation “right” and “ability”). Instead, the change is often that what triggers “shaming” or “shunning” isn’t the same as what might once have done so.

He concludes:

Older Americans have been used to following their own agreed-upon guidelines for speech for decades and have enforced those guidelines through sheer force of scale. So now it becomes politically useful when appealing to conservative older people to elevate “cancel culture” as a left-wing threat. And, in the Times-Siena poll, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they feel less free than they once did to share their views.

None of this is to say that there are not moments of discomfort surrounding free expression nor situations in which people are likely to face blowback for public comments that is being distorted or misinterpreted — on infrequent occasions even with negative personal consequences.

It is, instead, to say that speaking freely, which the Times conflates with “free speech,” has always been something subject to cultural standards. Those standards are currently changing, as is the way in which speech is able to be heard. We’re navigating that. The real threat, as always, isn’t 20 people chiding someone in Twitter mentions but, instead, in passing laws to restrict what people do on Twitter in the first place.

This "Reader's Digest" version of Bump's article doesn't do it justice;  it should be read in its entirety.

McSweeney's Maureen McEly has a hilarious essay on the pitfalls of a "strict policy of only educational toys" for her baby:

“Mother, I tire of the coding caterpillar.”

The words send a chill up my spine, not just because of the outsized vocabulary that sounds, frankly, unsettling, coming out of the mouth of someone who doesn’t even have all of her teeth, but because I know what’s next: she wants more. More educational toys. More knowledge. But I’m unable to keep up, and to be honest, I’m no longer sure I want her to learn more.

She already speaks more languages than I do, and I’m almost certain she’s been mocking me in Mandarin. Plus, the coding caterpillar taught her how to actually code. She built a functional robot out of an old Oscar the Grouch toy and a broken microwave. She shouldn’t be able to do that, right? She doesn’t even know how to pee on the potty!

Finally, a visit to Infidel 753's link round-up to posts from around the Internet is again recommended, as is his recent essay on "The paper bear" that is war criminal Putin's Russia.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Adding to the evidence that Russian war criminal and thug Putin badly miscalculated the fury and effectiveness of the response by Ukraine and the world to his war, there's this:

Russia has turned to China for military equipment and aid in the weeks since it began its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, did not describe what kind of weaponry had been requested, or whether they know how China responded.

The development comes as White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan plans to travel to Rome on Monday to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi.

“We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions, evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them,” Sullivan told CNN.  [snip]

While Sullivan, who spoke on several Sunday talk shows, focused his remarks on economic aid and sanctions evasion, the officials said that Russia is running low on certain types of weapons. They declined to specify which kinds.

“If Beijing is offering any type of military assistance to aid Moscow’s war in Ukraine, the spillover effects on U.S.-China policy could be vast,” said Eric Sayers, a former adviser to the U.S. Indo Pacific Command and now senior vice president at Beacon Global Strategies.

In a related development,

Ukrainian officials said negotiations with Russia will continue Monday. Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Sunday that Russia is “starting to talk constructively” and predicted “some concrete results” in a matter of days.

To coin a phrase, never trust Putin and always verify.

Oh noes:

Russia’s promised ban on Instagram has kicked into effect today, with the social media platform inaccessible for the vast majority of the country’s population, according to internet monitoring service GlobalCheck.

The country announced plans to ban Instagram last week, in response to parent company Meta’s decision to allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russian soldiers following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has been steadily restricting access to online platforms in an effort to control the flow of information about the war and has already banned Facebook and Twitter.

Last Friday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in a tweet that “This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world as ~80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country. This is wrong.”

Fuck you, Mosseri.  Get with the program.

Noah Smith says it's time for a diplomatic revolution, to create an anti-authoritarian coalition:

Now we find ourselves at another dangerous, potentially pivotal moment in history. Three weeks ago, it seemed as if a partnership between a newly ascendant China and a revitalized Russia might dominate the globe, bringing authoritarian values back into preeminence. The U.S.’ NATO allies seemed sleepy and irresolute, while India — the next great power on the horizon — still maintained close ties with Russia. When Putin sent tanks rolling into Ukraine without any provocation, it looked as if the authoritarian coalition’s moment had finally arrived.

Then two remarkable things happened. First, the Ukrainians resisted the invasion with a ferocity and skill that exposed the deep weaknesses in Putin’s vaunted military machine, and reminded the world that people will fight to resist totalitarian tyranny. Second, Europe suddenly roused itself from its post-Cold War torpor, imposing fierce sanctions that threaten to cripple Russia’s economy for decades, furnishing the Ukrainians with all the anti-tank weapons they can carry, pledging to boost defense spending back to late Cold War levels, and uniting around the NATO alliance.

This changes the global strategic situation overnight. Suddenly, the U.S. has a new and powerful ally in the form of a reunited Europe, while China’s most important ally turned out to have feet of clay. The war is not yet over, but things are looking much brighter for the democratic powers.

It’s not enough, though. To meet the new authoritarian challenge, the U.S. and its existing allies will have to bring more partners into the fold. A 21st century diplomatic revolution is necessary in order to create a coalition that has the power both to stabilize international relations and safeguard the human rights that have gradually but steadily made the world a better place to live.

It starts with India.

Smith points out the obvious issues with the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and how a deeper alliance can help resolve those issues.  Good read.

Here are your NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament brackets, and your NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament brackets.  You're welcome. 

Last but never least, please visit Infidel 753's link round-up for his excellent compilation of links to worthy blog posts from around the Internet.  He also has several excellent posts about the war in Ukraine here and here.  Keep an eye on his blog for more.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/op eds.

The value of the Russian ruble has crashed, as Western sanctions have started to bite:

Russia was scrambling to prevent financial meltdown Monday as its economy was slammed by a broadside of crushing Western sanctions imposed over the weekend in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin was due to hold crisis talks with his top advisers after the ruble crashed to a record low against the US dollar, the Russian central bank more than doubled interest rates to 20%, and the Moscow stock exchange was shuttered for the day.

The European subsidiary of Russia's biggest bank was on the brink of collapse as savers rushed to withdraw their deposits. Economists warned that the Russian economy could shrink by 5%.

The ruble lost about 20% of its value to trade at 100 to the dollar at 6 a.m. ET after earlier plummeting as much as 40%. The start of trading on the Russian stock market was delayed, and then canceled entirely, according to a statement from the country's central bank.

The latest barrage of sanctions came Saturday, when the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada said they would expel some Russian banks from SWIFT, a global financial messaging service, and "paralyze" the assets of Russia's central bank.

"The ratcheting up of Western sanctions over the weekend has left Russian banks on the edge of crisis," wrote Liam Peach, an emerging market economist at Capital Economics, in a note on Monday.

The Russian stock market closed today following the ruble's crash.  The sight of Russians waiting in line at banks to close accounts and carting their rubles away in wheelbarrows won't make thug Putin any more popular in a nation whose anti- war sentiment is spreading from the streets to the oligarchs' dachas.  Tell us again how sanctions don't work.

Following BP's lead, Norwegian oil giant Equinor ASA is divesting its Russian oil and gas investments:

Norwegian oil giant Equinor ASA says it has decided to stop new investments into Russia and divest from its joint ventures in Russia after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Norway-based energy group has been in Russia for over 30 years and made a cooperation agreement with state-controlled Russian oil and gas company Rosneft in 2012.

CEO Anders Opedal said the company was “deeply troubled by the invasion of Ukraine, which represents a terrible setback for the world, and we are thinking of all those who are suffering because of the military action.”

He added that “we regard our position as untenable” and added that the company was exiting “in a manner that is consistent with our values.”

On the battlefront in Ukraine, events are taking a decidedly negative turn for Russian thug Putin:

OBOZREVATEL is reporting that 5,000 contract servicemen -not conscripts, professional soldiers- rioted in the Belgorod region of Russia, which is right across the border from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

About 5,000 contract soldiers, who were hastily collected to be sent to Ukraine, refused to go to fight for Putin on the territory of our state.

Formally, the rebellious contractors argue their refusal to participate in hostilities in Ukraine by the fact that this is not provided for in their contracts.

The incompetence of the Russian invasion is startling to Western observers.  They're demonstrating logistical and tactical malfeasance unworthy of a military of Russia's relative sophistication.

It's also reported that troops from Putin puppet Alexander Lukashenko's Belarus and Putin's Chechen fiefdom are engaging in battle, with at least one Chechen motorized regiment (56 tanks) destroyed and this fascist leader killed:

Magomed Tushayev, one of Ramzan Kadyrov’s top warlords, has been killed in action in Hostomel.
🇺🇦Ukraine’s elite Alpha Group is reportedly fighting Chechens in the airfield. pic.twitter.com/bPHgBPK8sL

— Illia Ponomarenko (@IAPonomarenko) February 26, 2022

 

More updates at the link above, and an excellent summary of the situation in Ukraine and Moscow at Infidel 753's blog.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., reminds us how we got here, and where it might lead us:

Like Putin, much of the right bears allegiance not to truth, much less to democracy, but rather, to the brutish power of the strongman to do as he pleases, unfettered by such niceties. That’s what they very nearly imposed in 2016. It is what they promise in 2024. And if you’re not frightened, you’re not paying attention. 

This moment has been a long time coming. A little more than a quarter century ago, a House speaker named Newt Gingrich declared politics war and an upstart cable network called Fox declared facts optional. It was called a conservative resurgence, but it was actually the foundation stone for the kingdom of lies our country has become.

No wonder Trump likes Putin and claims the feeling is mutual. Each recognizes himself in the other. 

What they recognize, what they have in common, is that transactional disdain for the truth and, more to the point, for anyone naive enough to expect it. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented her Russian counterpart a red “reset” button, Russia accepted it, but kept right on being a thugocracy. TV pundits kept assuring us Trump was going to “become presidential” any second now, but to his last day, he remained a willful child. Now families seek refuge in Ukrainian subways, while Trump cheers their tormentor on. 

Let no one be surprised. 

What begins in lies tends to end in carnage.

Last but not least, it's highly recommended that you make a visit to Infidel 753's link round-up to posts of interest from around the Internet.  As noted above, he also has an excellent round-up of the military and political situation in the Russia/Ukraine war.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch writes about the severe damage wrought by the constant promotion of lies by Fox "News," including the Big Lie, "Biden crack pipes," and the "worse than Watergate" faux Clinton "spying" nothingburger:

For an embattled Donald Trump, the news that scrolled continuously this week across the bottom of America’s most-watched cable news network — the Fox News Channel — could not have come at a more welcome time. The 45th — and hopeful 47th — president had been battered in mainstream outlets over his habit of destroying government documents and the hasty retreat of his business empire’s long-time accounting firm. But those stories weren’t airing on Fox, because its primetime hosts were pushing what they saw as a much bigger scoop.

Calling it “the biggest election and presidential spying scandal in the history of this great country,” Fox News veteran host Sean Hannity went large with a claim that the 2016 Democratic presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton had paid operatives to spy on rival Trump by “infiltrating” his computers at Trump Tower and even at the White House. Hannity’s breathless report on the alleged scandal was backdropped by a graphic calling it “Worse Than Watergate,” while his higher-rated colleague Tucker Carlson went with “Clinton campaign paid to ‘infiltrate’ Trump orbit.”

But these claims were 99% adulterated baloney. The so-called “Hillary spied on Trump” storyline was based on a new court filing by federal prosecutor John Durham, who was tasked by then-Attorney General William Barr during the Trump years to investigate their theory that the Trump-Russia probe was rife with official misconduct — and who has little to show for his work so far.

It always seems they come up with the most fabulous bullshit just when their cult leader is in the greatest peril.  Coincidence no doubt.  (We would note Fox "News'" fabricating fascists have backed off the Clinton tale after she threatened them with a malicious defamation lawsuit.)

Bunch goes on to explain why this firehose of falsehoods pumped into the heads of millions of gullible Americans every day is a precursor to installing an autocratic, anti- democratic regime that practices just this kind of thought control.

Thomas Lecaque at Religion Dispatches has an alarming look at the Christofascist "Jericho Marches," their role in the recent Canadian trucker Freedumb Convoy, and their participation in insurrection movements here and worldwide:

Jericho Marches are organized by a group by the same name. They were created by a coalition of Christian nationalists in the US. They are co-led by a Catholic think-tank writer, Arina Grossu of the Family Research Council, and an evangelical businessman, Rob Weaver. 

The Jericho Marches rose to prominence recently. Supporters have been marching around the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa for around 20 days. They are, for Americans, a gothic reminder of what had been brewing in the lead up to the J6 sacking and looting of the US Capitol. [snip]

Jericho March, the group, is one of the religious groups, movements and ideologies at play in the insurrection. The Uncivil Religion project has uncovered a bevy of beliefs. The Jericho Marches, however, were the principal symbol of J6 and the Christian nationalism at its heart, not only in DC but at state capitols around the country.

Christian nationalism is a religious idea that transcends borders, attracting a lot of support from like-minded insurrectionists abroad. 

Last year, when journalist Emma Green wrote “A Christian Insurrection” for The Atlantic, it was subtitled, “Many of those who mobbed the Capitol on Wednesday claimed to be enacting God’s will,”while the CBC Investigates’ piece on the Ottawa convoy this week is titled, “For many inside the Freedom Convoy, faith fuels the resistance.”

The links are quite clear between groupings. And now, organizing in small groups and marching around Parliament, is a new Jericho March. 

He concludes:

The elements of spiritual warfare—repeatedly deployed by Christian nationalist groups before in service of Trump and elsewhere—on the borderline of where it crosses over into physical violence, the Jericho Marches, the violent commentary supporting it, the prayer, the shofars, the echoes of J6 expressed from abroad and divorced from the actual Canadian context—these are a symptom of a broader problem. 

Illiberalism is growing. The variant around Trump—conspiracy-laden, seditionist, Christian nationalist—is getting stronger by the minute. 

Last year, it was in Washington.

This year, Ottawa. 

Next year? We should worry.

We should go beyond worry and prepare to engage and counteract.

Sasha Abramsky writed in The Nation about how the far right is targeting schools and education policy, and crime rates, to draw people to its side (and to the ballot box), sometimes with help from progressives:

Right-wing organizers regard schools both as epicenters of political battles and as arenas that draw more people into the wider conservative orbit. At times, so-called progressives have made life much easier for the conservatives in this task; witness the blithering stupid actions of the San Francisco school board over the past couple of years: debating name changes to several dozen schools instead of working to get students safely back into classrooms during the pandemic, and, with only a minimum of public comment and input, gutting the school system’s gifted program by introducing a lottery for entry into those supposedly selective schools—which resulted in this week’s recall of three school board members. In one of the country’s most liberal cities, the result wasn’t close: 70 percent of those who cast ballots voted yes on the recall question. 

Which brings me to a larger point: Right-wing organizers are showing themselves to be rather talented at harvesting popular resentment and/or fears to tarnish the entire progressive agenda. And, unfortunately, at times these days progressives are giving them ample fodder. Yes, the anti-CRT effort is both disingenuous and often laced with racist undertones; but when San Francisco school board members behave like caricatures, they provide grist to the conservative mill. 

Abramsky also discusses crime and criminal justice as another front in the emerging battle, where the right has been on the offensive:

The right has gotten criminal justice wrong for decades. They have preached punishment over rehabilitation, and promoted violent, coercive institutions as a default response to all the societal problems that lead to crime. Their solutions tend to be nonsolutions, but they do come across as “tough”—and thus viable—to a scared public.

Progressives can’t afford to ignore the rising fear that accompanies rising crime; nor can they, or should they, wash their hands of the problem of a bloated criminal justice system simply by releasing thousands of people onto the streets and into homeless encampments without wraparound, and, if need be, mandatory, services. 

It's a fair and pointed critique that progressive would do well to heed now rather than later.

So you think CNN has problems now?  Clare Malone at The New Yorker thinks you may want to fasten your seatbelts for what may be coming following a merger later this year between WarnerMedia and Discovery, with its far- right" libertarian" billionaire mega shareholder John Malone (no relation to the writer):

There are also concerns at CNN about Malone’s potential influence on the network’s editorial tone, which, during the Trump years, centered opinion in prime time more than it ever had. Some at the network have argued that the Trump Presidency and its assault on fact and the press necessitated that change in tone and emphasis. A few months ago, in another interview with CNBC, Malone said, “I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with and actually have journalists—which would be unique and refreshing.” CNN’s chief media correspondent, Brian Stelter, interpreted the remark ominously, writing, “Malone’s comments stoked fears that Discovery might stifle CNN journalists and steer away from calling out indecency and injustice.” Malone once praised Rush Limbaugh for his willingness “to say politically incorrect things” and told Ken Auletta, in the 1994 New Yorker Profile, that he and his wife were “not socialistic.”

Last but not least, please take time to check out Infidel 753's link round-up for the best collection of links to posts of interest from around the Internet.  Check it out, as well as his essays posted throughout the week.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

First, Happy Valentine's Day to the "observant"!  If you're curious, here's a history of the holiday.

The Freedumb Convoy hosers are melting away, thanks to overdue enforcement actions:

North America's busiest land border crossing has reopened after a nearly weeklong blockade by protesters decrying Covid-19 mandates crippled the key trade route, while demonstrators in the nation's capital are expected to begin shifting out of residential areas Monday.

The standoff at the Ambassador Bridge, which links Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, had paralyzed traffic between Canada and the United States. Its reopening allows "the free flow of commerce between the Canada and US economies once again," the Detroit International Bridge Company said in a statement Sunday night.

 

Protesters with the "Freedom Convoy" in recent weeks also have gridlocked Ottawa's downtown core and impeded border crossings at Alberta and Montana, Manitoba and North Dakota, and British Columbia and Washington state.  [snip]

 

Windsor Police on Sunday started arresting protesters blocking the Ambassador Bridge. Up to 30 protesters had been arrested, most of whom were charged with "criminal mischief," Windsor Police Chief Pamela Mizuno said Sunday afternoon.

 

Police also seized five vehicles from protesters Sunday, Mizuno said, and seven vehicles were towed Saturday. Police expect to have a heightened presence in the area to maintain order, the chief said.

 

"Let me be crystal clear: It is illegal and punishable to block and impede the movement of goods, people and services along critical infrastructure," Ontario Premier Doug Ford tweeted Sunday. "Fines for noncompliance will be severe, with a maximum penalty of $100,000 and up to a year imprisonment." 

 

Hopefully, we've learned some lessons from this, because the fascists and their dupes are already planning to have Freedumb Convoys here in the States as they have in other Western nations.

 

David Ignatius writes about Putin's impending "march of folly" into Ukraine:

 

The world will be watching in horror if Russia invades Ukraine this week — but just watching. Ukraine will fight alone, as Russian tanks roll across the flat, frozen terrain; precision bombs destroy key targets near Kyiv and other cities; and the country becomes a killing field unlike anything Europe has seen since 1945.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will quickly win the initial, tactical phase of this war, if it comes. The vast army that Russia has arrayed along Ukraine’s borders could probably seize the capital of Kyiv in several days and control the country in little more than a week, U.S. officials believe.

But then Putin’s real battle would begin — as Russia and its Ukrainian proxies try to stabilize a country whose people largely detest them. If just 10 percent of Ukraine’s 40 million people decided to actively resist occupation, they would mount a powerful insurgency. Small bands of motivated fighters subverted America’s overwhelming military power in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Russia’s problems wouldn’t just be inside the borders of Ukraine. As Putin tried to digest what U.S. officials hope will be a Ukrainian “porcupine,” Russia’s economy would be squeezed tight by sanctions; its business and political leaders would become international pariahs; and much of the wealth Putin and his chums have accumulated would be frozen.

We'd rather Putin alone digest a porcupine and not have the people of Ukraine, and even his fellow Russians, suffer and die for his megalomania.

 

David French reports on disturbing examples of a growing Christofascist movement:

On Thursday night in Castle Rock, Colorado, a group called “FEC United” (FEC stands for faith, education, and commerce) held a “town hall” meeting that featured a potpourri of GOP candidates and election conspiracy theorists. Most notably, the event included John Eastman, the Claremont scholar who authored the notorious legal memos that purported to justify the decertification and reversal of the 2020 election results.

During the meeting, a man named Shawn Smith accused Colorado secretary of state Jena Griswold of election misconduct. “You know, if you're involved in election fraud, then you deserve to hang,” he said. “Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.” 

“I was accused of endorsing violence,” he went on. “I’m not endorsing violence, I’m saying once you put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned.” As soon as he said, “you deserve to hang,” an audience member shouted “Yeah!” and applause filled the room. You can watch the moment here. 

The moment, almost entirely ignored by the national media, is worth noting on its own terms, but perhaps the most ominous aspect of the evening was its location—a church called The Rock. 

If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event. 

Having seen their Lord Jesus Trump ousted from the White House, these Christofascists are organizing for the next battle to restore him to power.  (Btw, why is seditionist John Eastman still at large?)

If you're a fan of rap and hip-hop, last night's Super Bowl halftime performance was a star- studded spectacle.  You can read one largely non- judgemental review here. Wonkette's humorous view here.

On the other hand, we feel we can be totally judgemental about Infidel 753's latest link round-up to interesting posts from around the Internet:  it's an epic labor of love (very appropriate for today), and well- worth checking out!

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Michaelangelo Signorile writes about the "Biden boom, GOP bust", how the Republican- wired media continues to be caught wrong- footed, and how Democrats must campaign:

The economy is booming. There is no denying it. The media has had a chokehold on this story, pushing a narrative that was untrue and driven by the GOP. With the news today, the president and Democrats should smash through the media’s narrative once and for all — and condemn the coverage if need be.

Republicans are hellbent on attacking the economy and those attacks just can’t stand. They run from talking about anything regarding January 6th. Democrats have to throw it in their faces, and focus on the complete and total crack up of their party, which has allowed extremists to take control.

Hitting on those two issues — Biden boom and GOP bust — will help Democrats keep the House and Senate this November, hopefully expanding the Senate and getting past obstructionists. That will ensure continued progress for the American people. And it will push back the authoritarian assault on democracy. 

Ex-evangelical Chrissy Stroop has a thoughtful read on secularism in the U.S., it's diversity, and how the media (yes, they keep popping up) gets the causes of asymmetric social and political polarization wrong:

... Nonreligious Americans are generally a pro-social bunch, and overwhelmingly in favor of the very rights the anti-social, anti-democratic Christian Right is actively working to take away, like voting rights, reproductive rights, and LGBTQ rights. Yet, according to the legacy media’s punditocracy, America’s rapid secularization is something we should all be terrified of. 

Starting from the demonstrably false assumption that religion is essentially the only source of social cohesion, philanthropy, and pro-social behavior, prominent pundits and religion journalists (who should know much better) continually insinuate that secularization is somehow destroying the fabric of American civil society, and that the nonreligious are somehow to blame for American polarization. How, exactly, is unclear, and it could hardly be otherwise, given that both of these premises are entirely without factual basis.

Think pieces—and often even supposedly “straight” reporting—tend to ignore the empirically demonstrated fact that the social and political polarization that pervades these not-so-United States is asymmetric and significantly worse on the political Right. Not coincidentally, that side of the proverbial aisle consists largely of the conservative, mostly white Christians from whom the newly nonreligious are fleeing. These same conservative Christians, directly encouraged by their defeated president and a host of powerful Republican leaders, attempted to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by means that included a violent Christian nationalist insurrection in which people were injured and killed, very nearly destroying what was left of American democracy, such as it is. But, you know, there are problems with liberals and progressives too, so…

An example of how the radical "Christian" right is extending its disruptive political reach comes via the anti- vax truckers protest in Canada (where 90% of truckers are vaccinated):

After being denied several million dollars raised on GoFundMe, organizers of a trucker-led protest disrupting life in Canada’s capital have found a new platform: a Christian crowdfunding site where they raised more than $3.5 million in two days to demonstrate against the country’s vaccine mandate.

The new fundraiser hosted by GiveSendGo, which describes itself as the “#1 free Christian crowdfunding site,” reported Sunday that the “Freedom Convoy” campaign had raised several million dollars two days after GoFundMe announced that it was freezing more than $8 million in donations to the cause, a move that led Republican officials in the United States to announce investigations.

The rapid influxes of donations have prompted questions about the origin of the funds and sparked concerns among analysts about the use of the online platforms for financing fringe organizations that could allow the interference of foreign entities.

The convoy began as a protest to U.S. and Canadian rules requiring that cross-border truckers be fully vaccinated to enter either country, and it turned into a movement against many public health measures. The demonstrations have drawn praise from Republican leaders in the United States and left residents on edge — with police saying some have been subject to racist vitriol.

"Freedom convoy" my ass.  They're a bunch of loudmouthed, far- right, violent knuckle- draggers.

It's hard to exaggerate just how big a mistake Virginia voters made in electing Trumpist weasel Glenn Youngkin governor.  In office less than a month, he's tried to eliminate mask mandates in schools, vaccine mandates for Virginia colleges, wants to limit abortion access,  promoted laws banning teaching of certain subjects that (white) children might find "disturbing," and set up a snitch line for people to turn in teachers.  His "Team Youngkin" campaign staff prefers going after children rather than protecting them, however:

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s campaign lashed out at a high school student as well as Democrat Ralph Northam on Twitter this weekend, tweeting out the teen’s name and photo after the boy shared a news story about part of the Executive Mansion where enslaved workers once lived.

On Saturday afternoon, Ethan Lynne, 17, retweeted a report from the Richmond public radio station VPM suggesting that Youngkin (R) might be scrapping efforts pursued under two previous governors, Northam and Democrat Terry McAuliffe, to highlight the history of enslaved people at the mansion. The report contained an error, which Lynne noted on Twitter hours later, when VPM issued a correction.

But by then, “Team Youngkin” — the official Twitter account for Youngkin’s campaign — had attacked Lynne, posting a photo of the teen with Northam taken at a Democratic fundraiser in October.

“Here’s a picture of Ethan with a man that had a Blackface/KKK photo in his yearbook,” Team Youngkin tweeted a little before 5 p.m., pairing the October photo with a racist picture from Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook that surfaced in 2019.

No matter how bad a campaign the Democrats ran, or the issues they ran on or ignored, you only had to scratch Youngkin's surface to see a typical hypocritical, ambitious, base- pandering Republican who was going to do everything he promised to do once in office. Only a state senate controlled by Democrats stands in his way.

The Washington Post editorial board addresses the seditious, off- the- rails censure resolution by the rotted- out Republican National Committee:

The Republican Party on Friday took an official stand — against truth and democracy. At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City, party leaders censured Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and moved to aid her primary opponent, Harriet Hageman, who is former president Donald Trump’s preferred candidate for Wyoming’s lone congressional seat.

The Orwellian censure resolution accuses Ms. Cheney and fellow GOP dissident Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) of engaging in behavior “destructive to the institution of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Republican Party and our republic.” Her transgression? Co-leading the House committee investigating the Capitol invasion, an act of political violence Mr. Trump inspired when he was a sitting president charged with protecting the nation from enemies foreign and domestic. The investigation, the censure resolution claimed, is “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”  [snip]

Republicans have started their election year by revealing what they really stand for. Voters must remember this moment in November.

Will they?  See also Signorile, above.

As usual, Infidel 753 has assembled a kaleidoscopic link round-up covering all manner of topics.  We recommend a visit, and also check out his essays while you're in his neighborhood.