Month: February 2022

The Empire State Building, NYC, lit in the colors of the Ukrainian flag:

• Infidel753 frequently demonstrates an astute understanding of events. This week is especially useful. We have the unfolding of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
   
• Green Eagle reads an op-ed trying to answer why Putin’s invasion matters to America. Green Eagle can name that tune after one note.
   
• Nojo does not want us to forget that American conservatives led to the rise of Putin.
   
• CalicoJack in The Psy of Life speculates, reasonably, that a four year long presidential attack on NATO may have emboldened Putin enough itself to cause the invasion.
   
• The Palmer Report explains how one primary sycophant spent four years joining with Puton to weaken NATO. Now that Putin seeks to exploit that weakness, he finds NATO is more unified than he may have anticipated.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger goes to the polls and finds that most Americans find the invasion of Ukraine to be critical to US interests.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit notices official Russian Putin-folk offering threats to Finland and Sweden. Too bad for you if you even think about joining NATO. They’re considering it anyway.
   
• Sarah Cooper points out that Putin is also fighting on a cyber battlefield:
   

  Putin is waging this war on social media too, and these companies are not prepared. Beware of bots posting gaslighting memes and messages like “this is bad, but so is this”

  — Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) February 24, 2022

• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors sees flags at half mast for Ukrainian heroes of Snake Island. Amazing courage.
  We also see a simple map that explains the entire issue involved with the Putin invasion.
   
• In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson watches Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky speak directly to the Russian people in Russian. A leader showing us how bravery can inspire.
   
• Hackwhackers has a series of spot-on illustrations of the Putin invasion and our own fifth column.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz wonders if any public figures in America could support Putin during the invasion, decides nobody could lose their soul to that extent, then discovers he was wrong.
   
• Remember 2016 candidate Trump’s false witness about seeing Arabs in New Jersey celebrate the 9/11 attack in 2001? There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Scotties Playtime covers Mr. Trump’s gleeful celebration of Vladimir Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine.
   
• At The Moderate Voice, retired Air Force officer Dorian de Wind points to loving public comments about Vlad Putin that Mr. Trump will not soon live down.
   
• News Corpse seems incredulous as Mr. Trump phones it in. Had he, Trump, still been in office, Putin would never have invaded Ukraine. Seems they liked each other too much, and besides, he was stronger than President Biden.
   
• Tucker Carlson wonders what Americans hate about Putin. Julian Sanchez provides one answer:
   

  He undermined the integrity of an American election, which you periodically pretend to care about. https://t.co/nyIwcBueiC

  — Julian Sanchez (@normative) February 24, 2022

• I do recall enough of history during my life to recognize Tucker’s reference:
  

  An oblique reference to boxing hero Muhammad Ali, who famously refused the draft during the Vietnam war. No Vietnamese had ever called him the 'N' word.

  A few differences:
  – Ali didn't cheerlead the Vietcong
  – Nobody demands Tucker pick up a gun
  – Tucker isn't being prosecuted

  — Burr Deming (@BurrLand01) February 23, 2022

• Dave Dubya has names and quotes, showing that joyful praise for Mr. Putin’s aggression goes beyond Misters Trump and Carlson.
   
• Former Secretary of State under Trump, Mike Pompeo, speaks glowingly enough about Putin to get played prominently on Putin controlled Russian TV. Tommy Christopher reports on a reporter who confronts Pompeo about his support for Putin. CPAC security agents get physical with the reporter. Video evidence included. HEY! HEY! Hands Off!
   
• Frances Langum carries an account of the bizarre actions of our own Senator from here in Missouri. As Putin’s invasion roils the world, an expert on Russia is rushed to the Senate for a quick confirmation. The idea is to make America, and the world, a bit safer. Josh Hawley delays the process by forcing a floor vote, and turns out to be the only vote against. Why? Who knows, except Hawley answers to his own inner Josh.

Continue reading “Putin Invasion, Ukraine Courage, GOP, NATO, Polls, Cyber War, Covid, Protests”

Let’s start with rare and graceful talent:

@kyleswingsarah All this all day #queen @Ball Cecilia Deonna #handdance #westcoastswing #soul #improvdance #dc #groove #rnb ♬ Gooey – Glass Animals

• Scotties Playtime goes to Canada for news, watching antivax protesters scream at students as they leave school. But in Canada, there seems to be an occasional consequence or two.
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged looks at the right-wing financed truck blockade in Canada and sees an important difference with civil disobedience. She’s okay with some corrective action.
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson mentions the discovery by journalists who actually talk with them, that almost all truckers are vaccinated, that they resent the protesters, and that prominent protest leaders are not truckers.
   
• Nojo contemplates the trucker insurrection and develops a brief modest proposal.
   
• The Palmer Report sees some interesting design flaws as pillow guy Mike Lindell really wants to deliver his pillows to truck highway obstructers in Canada and plans to drop them from helicopters.
   
• PZ Myers looks at the sacrifices that must be made as the pandemic continues and decides that life is filled with little tradeoffs,
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger briefly points out which political party wants to lower gas prices and which has been pushing to increase what we pay at the pump.
   
• In Hackwhackers, conservatives are outraged at the Super Bowl scandal. Seems Snoop Dogg smoked marijuana in California where it’s …uh… legal.
   
• The Propaganda Professor has no difficulty detecting a cancel culture double standard in how conservatives see Whoopi Goldberg and Joe Rogan.
   
• Julian Sanchez reviews what looks like federal intelligence agencies unconstitutionally collecting private information about ordinary citizens. The Catch 22 on testing the legality seems to be that they can’t be taken to court because all the evidence is related to national security. But not to worry. Intelligence agencies have lawyers. Those agency lawyers will decide that everything is according to the Constitution. No legal test needed.
   
• It wasn’t just Anita Hill. Imani Gandy says way back when President Biden was Senator Biden, the senator running the Clarence Thomas hearings, he should have done right by the witnesses we never heard: Angela Wright and Lillian McEwen. With a new Supreme nomination coming up, our President has a chance to apply lessons from the past.
   
• At The Moderate Voice, Michael De Groot of Indiana University suggests that the current crisis in Eastern Europe is caused by fear. Putin is terrified at signs democracy is spreading into former Soviet captive nations, even into Russia itself.
   
• About the Ukraine:
  

  If you’re rooting for Russia to invade Ukraine just because you think it hurts Biden you’re what’s wrong with American Politics.

  — Chris Hahn (@ChristopherHahn) February 17, 2022

• Frances Langum has the story and the videos as our own Senator Josh Hawley from here in Missouri proves himself a jerk once again by working hard against national security. I’m considered elderly by some, and maybe I’m missing something. Voting to keep security experts out of key positions strikes me as suboptimal.
   
• At The Onion, a judge dismisses a libel suit brought against the New York Times by cannibal terrorist Sarah Palin.
   
• driftglass looks at a couple of statements, and that’s pretty much all it takes, by the most well known Republican candidate for US Senator from Illinois.

Continue reading “Truck It, COVID, Pump Price, Privacy, Super Bowl, Biden, SCOTUS, Ukraine”

Physics is very cool pic.twitter.com/wxIg0oQd40

— Physics-astronomy (@Physicsastronmy) February 11, 2022

• Various right-wing media are accusing mainstream reporters of hypocrisy -> replaying Joe Rogan using racial epithets – like the “N” word – while ignoring Joe Biden’s use of the same word in 1986. Tommy Christopher is a target.
   
  Tommy carefully explains, as he did decades ago, that the use of that offensive word, is qualitatively different, when it is used in a quote from a racist in order to criticize that racist for casually using that word.
   
  That was what Joe Biden was doing in 1986. Tommy provides comparative videos.
   
• Never-Trump types seem bent on explaining how they, the conservative adults, will show leftist hippie Democrats how real opposition is done. Hold my beer, Sonny.
   
  It is all a bit too arrogant for driftglass, who responds that
  The enemy of my enemy is my friend
  is not the same as
  The enemy of my enemy is my Supervisor.
   
  He suggests those folks stop bossing or get off the boat.
   
• The Financial Times editorializes. Seems the real problem in America, one that should be President Biden’s priority, is cultural overreach by the left. M. Bouffant at Web of Evil, looks at book banning by the right, armed intimidation by rightists, a various continuations of January 6, voter & voting suppression, and Republican state legislatures picking and choosing whose votes are to be counted. For some strange reason, M Bouffant regards the Financial Times observation as an absurdity.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit remembers what most of us have at least half forgotten: How our once-upon-a-President went beyond mere democracy and endangered the world in a nuclear way. And that the danger continues.
   
• Andy Borowitz reports that former President Trump is using a written excuse from a Podiatrist during the Russian invasion of Ukraine to avoid being drafted into Putin’s armed forces.
   
• Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson hates to be a broken record, so Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson explains just who broke the record (note FY 2021 was passed in 2020 and signed into law by then President Trump):
   

  "Out of control deficit spending."
  Who is going to tell him.https://t.co/2Fzqjzym1U
  Added to debt:
  FY 2021: $1.5 trillion
  FY 2020: $4.2 trillion
  FY 2019: $1.2 trillion
  FY 2018: $1.3 trillion https://t.co/cCfvtbQilX

  — James Wigderson (@jwigderson) February 10, 2022

  
  and elaborates:

  "When Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017, the national debt stood at about $19.9 trillion. As he leaves office this month, the national debt has grown to about $27.7 trillion. That's an increase of 39.2 percent."https://t.co/TDiLNPxH7L

  — James Wigderson (@jwigderson) February 10, 2022

• So what if, right after the election, the Trump campaign called law officials in Michigan with orders to seize voting machines and turn them over to the campaign?
   
  Well… the Palmer Report says a story pretty much drowned out this week might turn out to be very ugly news for Rudy Giuliani.
   
• Part of that gawdawful conservative activity happened when an election official illegally turned over voter private data to a conservative activist.
   
  It is always a joy to see a do-you-know-who-I-am type encounter honest law enforcement. Watching Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters handcuffed, kicking and screaming her how-dare-you’s, can bring tranquility to a troubled soul.

  UPDATE: Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters appeared to attempt to kick a law enforcement officer while struggling with police during her arrest. This is video from a witness. pic.twitter.com/TILJ1198BV

  — Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) February 8, 2022

• In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson contrasts the overwhelming treatment of the relatively minor story in 2016 of mishandled but unimportant Clinton emails with underwhelming coverage of massive Trump document destruction as well as unmistakable theft.
   
  One accurate and telling comment from Aaron Rupar:
  If two prominent reporters broke news that Joe Biden was flushing documents down White House toilets, [Fox News Channel personality Sean] Hannity would anchor special Fox News coverage that would last through 2024. Trump flushing documents down WH toilets has been mentioned twice on Fox News today, once in passing.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors detects a pattern during the waning days of the Trump administration; in addition to the illegal shredding of records, flushing of records, dining on records, stealing of records; there seem to have been phone records that illegally disappeared from official logs.
   
• We’ve all heard about legitimate political discourse, words used by the Republican National Committee to describe the January 6 MAGA riot. But are the words as reported really reported in context? Is that how national Republicans really view the attempt to pull down our democracy, the attempt to find and assassinate Senators, kill Members of Congress, murder the Vice President of the United States?
   
  Nojo helps us out publishing the entire context in the form of the entire resolution condemning 2 Republicans for investigating the crime as if it was …well… a crime.
   
• Of course, denizens of the internet have been having fun with it:
  

  Good one

  — cyn (@Clc143) February 10, 2022

• Republican officials have begun responding to criticism. The RNC resolution only endorses non-violent legal protest. Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara, always skeptical of liberal press reporting, wonders about all that legitimate political discourse talk. Are national Republicans really, truly, endorsing the violence at the Capitol? He decides to look at the RNC resolution itself.
   
  He reads, and analyzes, and considers, and decides that they, sure as hell, are doing exactly that!

Continue reading “Joe Biden, Never-Trump, Ukraine, Deficits, Legitimate Political Disgrace”

Outrageously wonderful:

When Lunar New Year and the first day of Black History Month fall on the same day pic.twitter.com/hFz8KkS3zN

— Wanda Sykes (@iamwandasykes) February 1, 2022

• Everyone knew the January jobs report was not going to be good. Pandemic and all. Tommy Christopher watches financial people pick up their teeth from where they fell on the table, as Biden policies produce jobs creation at multiples of what those analysts had predicted.
   
  It isn’t just January. Biden’s first year’s jobs report was the highest in the history of jobs reports.
   
• News Corpse watches the gleeful anticipation on the Fox Network of a horrible jobs crisis. When record smashing, massive, jobs creation emerges instead, the televised disappointment is palpable. Fox anti-American hopes are crushed as pundits discover that, no, the numbers were not a misplaced decimal.
   
• Of course, the economy is not all that is at stake:
  

  Republicans are simultaneously insisting that Covid is a nothing-burger and also that Biden is doing too little and too much about it. And also that Trump’s response was perfect but that fauci was a disaster and the vaccines are amazing but don’t take them because they don’t work

  — Luke Zaleski (@ZaleskiLuke) January 29, 2022

• At The Moderate Voice Professor Amitrajeet A. Batabyal of Rochester Institute of Technology explores one great weakness of dictatorships and how that flaw applies to China’s future.
   
• In the Palmer Report, our own Josh Hawley, Senator from here in Missouri, goes all Tokyo Rose, coming an inch or so from explicitly defending Putin’s right to invade Ukraine.
   
• At the Borowitz Report, Vlad Putin claims the Ukraine as consolation for losing the White House.
  That was parody.
   
• This is not:
  

  I know you've been getting a lot of flack because your quote is actually from neo-nazi Kevin Strom

  But people should give you a break. Anyone can get a little confused late at night about the author of their bedtime reading.

  — Burr Deming (@BurrLand01) February 1, 2022

• In Letters from an American, renowned historian Heather Cox Richardson takes a look at two stories this week.
   
  The more widely reported: The carefully planned battle in which US forces killed terrorist leader of the Islamic State militant group – ISIS, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi.
  As Biden announced, it sends “a strong message to terrorists around the world: We will come after you and find you”
   
  The less reported story, potentially as significant to the Republic, was a Trump administration proposal after the election to use intelligence agencies illegally to target the private information of individual voters. The idea was to generate disinformation about fictional vote interference by foreign governments.
   
  The Trump attempt to overturn our democracy is now documented to have been more developed and detailed than is generally recognized.
   
• In Hackwhackers, it turns out that then-President Trump actually went a little further than inciting an insurrection. He plotted to seize voting machines.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger points out how Donald Trump has always been a control freak, trying to micro-manage pretty much everything. Should we be surprised that he was behind so many details of the Jan 6 insurrection?
   
• Dave Dubya watches Trump rally in Texas, promising that if criminal laws are applied to him he will have his mobs tear the country violently apart.
   
  Too big to jail.
   
• I admit this made me chuckle:
  

  Many people are saying Trump will be tried as an adult.

  — The USA Singers (@TheUSASingers) February 1, 2022

• CATO Institute’s own Julian Sanchez gives Mike Pence semi-applause. Okay, maybe applaw:
   

  It’s nice to hear Pence state clearly that he had no right to overturn the election; would’ve been nicer if he’d more strongly said there was no legitimate reason to question the result. https://t.co/RGm4DPEJkd

  — Julian Sanchez (@normative) February 4, 2022

  “Irregularities” is how R politicians who still feel some vestigial shame about lying can do so with plausible deniability. It lets you say something you can argue is technically true, even though you know that what your audience hears is something outrageously false.

  — Julian Sanchez (@normative) February 5, 2022

• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has a word for Liz Cheney:
   

  Courage. https://t.co/IgZA3UcemC

  — James Wigderson (@jwigderson) February 4, 2022

• What we have known for a while is finally official. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has the details. In addition to condemning Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney for investigating the coup attempt, the Republican National Committee has declared last year’s January 6 violence to have been legitimate political discourse.
   
• Green Eagle also reads the Republican manifesto on the legitimate insurrection and explains the really frightening part.
   
• Seems violence and insurrection are becoming acceptable through much of contemporary conservatism. Scotties Playtime tracks a Republican candidate for Michigan state senate who tells backers to bring guns to voting places.
   
  …if we can’t change the tide, we need to be prepared to lock and load.
  That’s a quote.
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, has a suggestion for Florida Governor DeSantis. Nazis are bad, very bad, and it doesn’t hurt to say that again and again.
   
  In the interest of fairness, I suppose I should point out that DeSantis did have a brief lapse early this week, mentioning during a Monday session that some jackasses had done something on an overpass and would be held accountable for anything criminal. That’s about as far as he would go.
   
  At least he didn’t travel into good-people-on-both-sides territory.
   
  So why the reticence from some Republicans? Why the difficulty in saying the obvious: that what is truly and obviously evil is truly and obviously evil?

  Doesn't seem complicated https://t.co/7SbnOSAWmz

  — Burr Deming (@BurrLand01) February 1, 2022

Continue reading “Biden, Jobs, China, Vlad, Ukraine, Hawley, Trump, Jan 6, GOP, Psaki”