Last Call For The Road To Gilead, Con't

Abortion is now illegal in Oklahoma, and Republicans gleefully plan to make sure it's illegal everywhere.

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday signed a bill into law that makes performing an abortion illegal in the state, with an exception only in the case of a medical emergency. 

"As governor, I represent all 4 million Oklahomans and they overwhelmingly support protecting life in the state of Oklahoma. We want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country. We want to outlaw abortion in the state of Oklahoma," the governor said. 

Senate Bill 612, which cleared the state Senate last year and the House earlier this month, makes performing an abortion or attempting to perform one a felony punishable by a maximum fine of $100,000 or a maximum of 10 years in state prison, or both. The law does not provide exceptions in cases of rape and incest. 

Under the measure, the woman would not be criminally charged or convicted for the death of her "unborn child." The legislation does not prohibit the use, sale, prescription or administration of contraceptives. 

The governor was joined at the signing by members of the Oklahoma legislature, faith leaders from across the state, as well as representatives from anti-abortion advocacy groups.
"I know this bill will be challenged immediately by liberal activists from the coast, who always seem to want to come in and dictate, and mandate, and challenge our way of life here in the state of Oklahoma. The most important thing is to take a stand and protect the unborn and protect life in the state of Oklahoma," Stitt added. 

Stitt's signature on the legislation made Oklahoma the latest Republican-led state to approve new restrictions on abortion access in recent weeks. Last month, Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey signed into law a ban on most abortions in the state after 15 weeks, similar to a Mississippi law that's before the US Supreme Court, and South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has signed legislation that further restricts access to medication abortions in the state.

 

That third paragraph, where the mother won't be charged, and use of contraceptives won't be a crime, is not in this bill, true.

 

Those will be in the next bill, after the SCOTUS ruling that destroys Roe. 

I've been running this series of posts for years, and traveling down this road you can see the outskirts of Gilead in the distance.

We don't have much farther to travel, and much further to fall.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

NYPD are looking for a suspect who used a smoke device to cover their shooting of multiple people at the 36th Street Station in Brooklyn.

Eight people were shot and eight others were injured in a mass shooting in a Brooklyn subway during Tuesday morning rush hour, according to FDNY spokesperson Amanda Farinacci.

A preliminary investigation shows a possible smoke device was detonated, according to a senior law enforcement official. The NYPD said afterward that there are no active explosive devices.

The attack occurred at about 8:30 a.m. when the Fire Department of New York was called to the 36th Street subway station in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood for a report of smoke.

A male suspect possibly wearing a gas mask and orange construction vest fled the scene, police said, citing a preliminary report.

First responders encountered gunshot victims throughout the subway station and others who had been injured in the ensuing chaos, though it's not clear how the others were injured. Authorities haven't released detailed information on how the shooting unfolded yet.

The mass shooting comes amid a rise in shootings in New York over the past two years and a particular rise in violence on the subway that has become a focus of Mayor Eric Adams' administration. There have been 617 crime complaints so far this year on the transit system, a 68% increase from this point last year, NYPD data shows.

The incident is the second mass shooting, defined as at least four people shot, in Brooklyn this year and the fourth in New York State, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The first Brooklyn mass shooting of the year was on January 13 at a Brooklyn event hall.

 

Here's hoping they catch the bastard, but the planning here may signify a terrorist attack of some sort. We'll let the authorities find out for sure. 

Here's what I do know: firearms outnumber people in this country, and more will die every day.

It's A Gas Gas Gas, Con't

As highway robbery by energy companies continue, pushing up prices everywhere, the Biden administration is finally realizing that if they're not seen actively trying to lower the cost of fuel now, voters are going to raise the cost of being a Democrat in November.

President Biden will announce plans for the Environmental Protection Agency to allow a blended form of gasoline that uses ethanol, known as E15, to be sold this summer — a measure long resisted by some energy and environmental groups that could help deliver short-term relief at the pump.

The administration will do this by having the EPA issue an emergency waiver for the summer sale of E15. Typically, E15 cannot be sold in most of the country between June 1 and Sept. 15 because of air pollution rules. The White House has argued that the use of E15 can shave 10 cents off each gallon of gasoline. E15 is currently sold in 30 states at more than 2,300 gas stations, the Energy Department has said, but that is just a fraction of the more than 150,000 gas stations in the United States.

The news will come during a day the president is set to visit the Poet ethanol plant near Des Moines as the administration pushes Congress to approve new energy subsidies aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on foreign fossil fuels.

The flurry of activity around gas prices will come just hours after the federal government is scheduled to release an inflation report that could show prices rising by as much as 8 percent relative to last year, despite the Biden administration’s months-long efforts to bring inflation down. High prices have emerged as a nettlesome political problem for the White House, lowering Biden’s popularity even as the United States sees a boom in job growth and economic output.

 

That CPI inflation report came in at 8.5% inflation, with gasoline up a third from last year. The hope is that this is peak inflation for this cycle, but who knows the answer to that.

Biden's at least taking action.  Republicans will attack him anyway.

Last Call For America Goes Viral Yet Again, Con't

As the COVID Omicron.BA2 variant sweeps across the country, with wishful thinking somehow not stopping the pandemic as we enter year three of widespread infections, cities are suddenly realizing that mask mandates are necessary. For cities still allowed to take action still instead of being made to suffer by Republican governors and state legislatures, a return to indoor mask mandates will be inevitable this spring, and Philadelphia is just the first US city to reinstate them.

With new coronavirus cases low but rising sharply in recent days, the city of Philadelphia announced on Monday that it will reinstate an indoor mask mandate a little more than a month after lifting it, becoming the first major U.S. city to do so.

“This is our chance to get ahead of the pandemic,” said Cheryl Bettigole, the city’s health commissioner, in a news conference. She acknowledged that the average number of daily new cases, currently at 142, is still nowhere near what it was at the beginning of the year, when the Omicron variant was pushing the seven-day average to nearly 4,000.

But she said that if the city failed to require masks now, “knowing that every previous wave of infections has been followed by a wave of hospitalizations, and then a wave of deaths, then it will be too late for many of our residents.” Over the past week, the city reported that the number of residents who had died of Covid-19 passed 5,000.

The mandate will go into effect next week. A spokesman for the city’s health department said it would end when case numbers and rates go beneath a certain threshold.

The decision comes as cases are ticking up across the country, fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron subvariant, known as BA.2. While the national increase is so far relatively small — about 3 percent over the last two weeks — the growth in cases in Northeastern cities like New York City and Washington, D.C., has been significantly steeper. Some colleges in the Northeast, including Columbia, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins, have reinstated indoor mask mandates in recent days.

Speaking at a virtual news conference on Monday afternoon, Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said that he would follow the advice of his health team in making any determination on reinstating mask mandates in spite of his positive test result on Sunday, rising virus cases in the city and Philadelphia’s decision.

“I am not special as being the mayor. What happens to me personally should not determine how I make policies,” Mr. Adams said. “It should be what happens to the City of New York.”

“I feel fine, no fever, no running nose, no aches and pains,” the mayor said, adding that with his health history of diabetes, “I would probably have had different outcomes if I was not vaccinated and boosted.”

Under Philadelphia’s Covid response plan, mitigation measures are triggered when caseloads or case trajectories pass certain thresholds. Since early March, as Omicron swiftly receded, the city had been at Level 1, or “all clear,” meaning most mandatory measures — including indoor mask mandates as well as proof-of-vaccine requirements in restaurants — had been lifted. Masks have no longer been required at city schools, though people visiting hospitals or riding public transportation still have had to wear them.

The indoor mask mandate is reinstated automatically when the city rises to Level 2, in which average new daily case counts and hospitalizations are still low but “cases have increased by more than 50 percent in the previous 10 days.” The health departments spokesman said over the last 10 days case the average number of news cases had risen nearly 70 percent.

Philadelphia’s system “allow us to be clear, transparent and predictable in our response to local Covid-19 conditions,” said Mayor Jim Kenney in a statement after the announcement was made. “I’m optimistic that this step will help us control the case rate,” he added.

 

Philly made it clear what the criteria is for reinstating mask measures, and the city has exceeded those numbers.

Expect more major cities to follow suit in the weeks ahead.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

Rolling Stone's Andy Kroll documents the atrocities of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, and how he made sure the Voting Rights Act will be left unprotected from the GOP assault as soon as they get power back, something already happening in GOP-run states.

 

“Giddy” is not a word people use to describe Jon Tester. The towering senior U.S. senator from Montana is blunt and pragmatic. In the halls of Congress, he’s one of the last surviving rural Democrats. When he’s not in Washington, D.C., Tester runs a dirt farm in Montana that’s been in his family for three generations.

A dirt-farming rural Democrat knows better than to overhype. So it came as a surprise when, one day this winter, Tester showed up visibly excited at the office of his friend Michael Bennet, one of Colorado’s two Democratic senators, to share a tantalizing piece of information.

“I think we’re gonna get this voting-rights thing done,” he said to Bennet.

“You got to be kidding me,” Bennet said.

Tester said that Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a critical swing vote on sweeping voting-rights reforms, had signaled his support for the bill and, more crucially, the parliamentary-rules change needed to bypass a Republican filibuster of that bill. “I think it’s gonna happen,” Tester said.

For the previous six months, Tester and two of his colleagues, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Angus King of Maine, had lobbied Manchin on voting rights and the fate of the filibuster. On weekends and holidays, on conference calls and huddled in one another’s hideaways in the bowels of the Capitol, Kaine, King, and Tester had urged Manchin to support his party’s proposal for overhauling the country’s voting laws.

They needed him, with Senate Democrats holding onto the barest majority possible — 50 votes, with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as tiebreaker. Not a single Republican had said they would support the voting bill, which left Democrats with only one path to passage: Change the filibuster, the procedural tactic that requires a 60-vote majority to advance most types of legislation. Manchin had remained steadfast in his opposition to this plan, arguing that the filibuster protected small states like his and forced lawmakers to seek bipartisan compromise. Yet during months of conversations with Kaine, King, and Tester, Manchin had increasingly lamented the dysfunction in the Senate. He wanted, as he put it, “some good rule changes to make the place work better.”

By early January, Manchin had given the impression — at least according to his colleagues — that he was ready to amend the filibuster in a way that would open a path to passing voting rights. At the end of one of their calls, Tester recalls saying that with everyone in agreement on a filibuster deal, all they had to do was put the finishing touches on the voting legislation itself and they were ready to proceed. “Yeah,” Manchin replied, according to Tester.

A “yes” vote from Manchin could not have been more critical for free and fair elections. The Republican Party responded to Joe Biden’s victory with a backlash on the right to vote. Last year, GOP-run legislatures passed 34 laws in at least 19 states that limit access to voting, put partisan operatives in charge of running elections, and make it harder to participate in American democracy. At the same time, a belief that the last election was somehow stolen or fraudulent — the so-called Big Lie — has become an article of faith for many Republicans.

In response to this onslaught, Democrats in Congress introduced multiple pieces of legislation and vowed to pass the bills in time for the 2022 midterms. In public, Democratic leaders spoke in existential terms about the need for reform. “Failure is not an option,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said. In private, lawmakers and activists predicted victory, arguing that the importance of the issue would overcome the challenge of unifying a 50-member caucus.

They were wrong.

Rolling Stone interviewed more than 30 key figures inside and outside of Congress to understand how the most ambitious voting-rights bill in generations and the Democratic Party’s main policy response to the Jan. 6 insurrection ended in failure. The blame for this defeat, sources say, lies with multiple parties: Manchin either strung along his party for months with no intention of actually supporting the reforms or gave indications to his colleagues that he was on board only to reverse his position on multiple occasions. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, miscalculated that if they could flip Manchin, another swing vote, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, would follow his lead. As for the White House, these sources say, President Biden — despite saying as a candidate that “one of the first things I’ll do as president” is restore the Voting Rights Act — never seemed fully committed to passing voting-rights legislation. When Biden, who had vowed to run an “FDR-sized presidency,” did inject himself into the negotiations late in the fight, his contributions did more harm than good.

Manchin spokeswoman Sam Runyon says the senator “never said he was open to eliminating the filibuster.” If his colleagues believed that, she adds, they were mistaken. The White House responds by saying just because “we didn’t get the result we wanted, we can’t say the power of the presidency wasn’t behind it.” Nevertheless, a question lingers: Why did Democrats’ efforts fail?

“It was like riding a roller coaster,” Sen. Tester tells Rolling Stone. “There were many nights when I went to bed and I thought, ‘This thing is done. We just have to hammer out the details.’ But then something would always happen,” he added. “I don’t know what happened. I can guess. But I don’t know.”

 

Manchin and Sinema will never allow passage of bills like this. Biden fucked up the White House effort, such as it was. I can't remember the last time a President was afraid of pissing off a Senator, but Biden has been since day one in the White House.  Maybe because of his decades as a Senator himself, he knows all too well how much trouble Manchin could cause by making good on his threats to jump party.

Jared, The Galleria Of Crime, Con't

Donald Trump's son-in-law got $2 billion from the Saudis for his "investment firm" despite serious concerns about ever seeing a dime in profit from it, because the point was to pay off the Trump Crime family.

Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince, a close ally during the Trump administration, despite objections from the fund’s advisers about the merits of the deal.

A panel that screens investments for the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund cited concerns about the proposed deal with Mr. Kushner’s newly formed private equity firm, Affinity Partners, previously undisclosed documents show.

Those objections included: “the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management”; the possibility that the kingdom would be responsible for “the bulk of the investment and risk”; due diligence on the fledgling firm’s operations that found them “unsatisfactory in all aspects”; a proposed asset management fee that “seems excessive”; and “public relations risks” from Mr. Kushner’s prior role as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, according to minutes of the panel’s meeting last June 30.

But days later the full board of the $620 billion Public Investment Fund — led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler and a beneficiary of Mr. Kushner’s support when he worked as a White House adviser — overruled the panel.

Ethics experts say that such a deal creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner’s actions in the White House — or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024.

Mr. Kushner played a leading role inside the Trump administration defending Crown Prince Mohammed after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that he had approved the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist for The Washington Post and resident of Virginia who had criticized the kingdom’s rulers.

 

So a $2 billion bribe from Prince Hacksaw of the Desert. Here's the real question: would you trust Jared Kushner with $2 billion, given his long track record as a grifter, thief, slum landlord and con man?

No sane person would. Look, investing 10 million or so is a big risk. Investing $2 billion in anything is alarming. Investing $2 billion in a member of the Trump family is laughably illegal. And how do we know it's a payoff and not an investment? The real investment money went to Trump's money guy, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The Saudi fund agreed to invest twice as much and on more generous terms with Mr. Kushner than it did at about the same time with former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — who was also starting a new fund — even though Mr. Mnuchin had a record as a successful investor before entering government, the documents show. The amount of the investment in his firm, Liberty Strategic Capital — $1 billion — has not been previously disclosed.

A spokesman for Mr. Kushner’s firm said of its relationship with the Saudi Public Investment Fund, “Affinity, like many other top investment firms, is proud to have PIF and other leading organizations that have careful screening criteria, as investors.”

A spokesman for the Saudi fund declined to comment on its investment process. If any additional discussions about the deal took place, they were not reflected in the documents and correspondence obtained by The New York Times.

The Times reported last fall that Mr. Kushner had been seeking a Saudi investment. Now, the internal fund records and correspondence obtained by The Times show the outcome, scale and timing of his firm’s deal as well as the debate it aroused. Those documents and other filings indicate that at this point Mr. Kushner’s venture depends primarily on the Saudi money.

Mr. Kushner planned to raise up to $7 billion in all, according to a document prepared last summer for the Saudi fund’s board. But so far he appears to have signed up few other major investors.

 

Weird how Kushner can't get anything else other than the Saudi money in his firm. It's almost like other folks in Trump's orbit don't think it's a wise financial investment. After all, a firm the Saudis are willing to give $2,000,000,000 to ought to be a shoe-in for RoI, right?

I mean it's not like this is a huge, massive bribe right in front of our eyes that happened ten months ago, right? And surely these billions in overseas money would never end up in Trump's campaign coffers, going forward, yes?

Oh well. The documents that showed all this weren't on Hunter Biden's laptop, so nobody gives a good good god damn I guess.

Last Call For January 6th Justice

Some Democrats on the House January 6th Committee are afraid to refer Trump for Justice Department prosecution because it would look partisan, and at this point I have to ask "Did any of you actually look at Washington for the last 30 years, because Republicans are going to be coming after all of you anyway."

The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack have grown divided over whether to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department of former President Donald J. Trump, even though they have concluded that they have enough evidence to do so, people involved in the discussions said.

The debate centers on whether making a referral — a largely symbolic act — would backfire by politically tainting the Justice Department’s expanding investigation into the Jan. 6 assault and what led up to it.

Since last summer, a team of former federal prosecutors working for the committee has focused on documenting the attack and the preceding efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election. The panel plans to issue a detailed report on its findings, but in recent months it has regularly signaled that it was also weighing a criminal referral that would pressure Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to open a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump.

But now, with the Justice Department appearing to ramp up a wide-ranging investigation, some Democrats are questioning whether there is any need to make a referral — and whether doing so would saddle a criminal case with further partisan baggage at a time when Mr. Trump is openly flirting with running again in 2024.

The shift in the committee’s perspective on making a referral was prompted in part by a ruling two weeks ago by Judge David O. Carter of the Federal District Court for Central California. Deciding a civil case in which the committee had sought access to more than 100 emails written by John C. Eastman, a lawyer who advised Mr. Trump on efforts to derail certification of the Electoral College outcome, Judge Carter found that it was “more likely than not” that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had committed federal crimes.

The ruling led some committee and staff members to argue that even though they felt they had amassed enough evidence to justify calling for a prosecution for obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiring to defraud the American people, the judge’s decision would carry far greater weight with Mr. Garland than any referral letter they could write, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.

The members and aides who were reluctant to support a referral contended that making one would create the appearance that Mr. Garland was investigating Mr. Trump at the behest of a Democratic Congress and that if the committee could avoid that perception it should, the people said.

Even if the final report does not include a specific referral letter to Mr. Garland, the findings would still provide federal prosecutors with the evidence the committee uncovered — including some that has not yet become public — that could be used as a road map for any prosecution, the people said.

 

Well holy shit, isn't that the point of an investigation, to gather fucking evidence?

 

Jesus wept, folks. The GOP is already calling you partisan. 

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy says he has no regrets about having Republicans boycott the special committee probing the Jan. 6 riot, dismissing the investigation as a political hit job.

“This is nothing but a political show,” McCarthy told NBC News in an interview last week just off the House floor. “They already have the report written and they’re trying to create a narrative for it instead of trying to get to the truth.”

But with the Jan. 6 committee preparing to shift next month from the investigative phase to public, televised hearings, McCarthy’s decision last summer to shun the panel will face perhaps its biggest test.

Unlike the first Trump impeachment hearings in 2019, loyalists of the former president will not be in a position to “run interference,” in the words of one GOP source, during the Jan. 6 panel proceedings. Specifically, they won’t be able to aggressively cross-examine witnesses, rebut or interrupt Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and other Democrats, or introduce their own evidence.

Instead, the hearings will be tightly controlled and well-choreographed, focusing on areas like the plot to overturn Joe Biden’s election victory; intelligence and security breakdowns related to the attack; and what former President Donald Trump and his inner circle were doing during the hourslong riot that claimed several lives.

That's opened McCarthy up to criticism from some fellow Republicans.

“I would say it’s absolutely a strategic mistake,” said a senior House GOP aide. “You’re going to have a united front, you’re not going to have a sideshow.

“One of the reasons Democrats’ impeachment hearings failed so spectacularly in 2019 was because you had [GOP Reps.] Elise Stefanik and Jim Jordan and Doug Collins and Mike Turner — all of them running interference because they were sitting on the panels," the aide added. "And they were able to push back on whatever Democrats were trying to press Gordon Sondland and Fiona Hill about. They’re not going to have that this time.”

McCarthy’s decision to yank his members off the Jan. 6 panel — a response to Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocking two of his picks — means pro-Trump Republicans largely have been left in the dark about what's in store for the public hearings. Other than public reporting, Republicans aren't aware of leads the committee is chasing, what witnesses are saying in the 750 depositions the panel has conducted in private, and what’s in the nearly 90,000 documents received by the panel.

“That’s an error,” the GOP aide said. “If Republicans were on a committee and were able to participate in any of this right now, they could be leaking things, they could be setting their own narratives.”

 

GOP aides bragging about using the press, and the press covers it approvingly.

 

We're in so much trouble.

 

The Big Lie, Con't

The Big Lie is the driving force of the GOP campaign in 2022, with Republican after Republican not only repeating the Big Lie in order to win in November, but implying that if they win, that they will do everything they can to make sure no Democrat will ever be allowed to claim victory again.  Nearly 18 months after the 2020 election, Alabama GOP Gov. Kay Ivey is running on this exact platform.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump by “the fake news, Big Tech and blue state liberals” in a campaign ad released Monday, making her the latest high-profile candidate to support unfounded conspiracy theories that the election was illegitimate.

“The fake news, Big Tech and blue state liberals stole the election from President Trump, but here in Alabama, we are making sure that never happens,” the governor says in the ad, titled “Stole.” “We have not, and will not, send absentee ballots to everyone and their brother. We banned corrupt curbside voting, and our results will always be audited. I’m Kay Ivey. The left is probably offended – so be it. As long as I’m governor, we’re going to protect your vote.”

The ad did not elaborate on why Ivey believed the election was stolen from Trump.

There has been no evidence to suggest the 2020 election was stolen.

Ivey campaign manager William Califf said in a statement that the governor would ensure that Alabama’s elections are secure if she wins re-election.

“Gov. Ivey stood with Trump and fought to secure our elections. Here in Alabama, we didn’t have the issues they had in other states,” Califf said. “Gov. Ivey will continue to stand strong and make sure that our elections are secure so that what happened to President Trump in other states will never happen in any election in Alabama.”

 

Now this is Alabama, a state where Democrats don't have a prayer anyway thanks to racist white Republicans dominating the state for years.  Black Democrats have all been stuffed in Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell's 7th District connecting Birmingham and Montgomery for the last decade, and the rest of the state's six districts all have a 30-point GOP lean. 

Which means there's no threat of a close election, and Kay Ivey is running on The Big Lie because she thinks the people of her state are stupid.

Thing is, stupid people have a vote, too.

For now.

Sunday Long Read: The Day The Curtain Fell

Our Sunday Long Read comes to us from Michele Berdy, the Arts editor for the independent Moscow Times, who had lived in Moscow for more than 40 years, as she recounts her career and her escape from Russia as she mourns the future of journalism in Putin's regime.

The day before Russia launched its war against Ukraine, I was in the seaside city of Sochi in southern Russia, not far from the Ukrainian border, attending an arts festival and enjoying a break from the dark and snowy Moscow winter among palm trees and verdant hillsides.

Sochi is on the Black Sea, as is Ukraine. My colleagues and I had been talking for months about aerial photographs that showed a build-up of troops near Russia’s borders with Ukraine, apparently threatening a new invasion. Was it preparation or intimidation? Nothing seemed to be happening, even as the U.S. started warning of an imminent attack.

I work at The Moscow Times, an independent newspaper founded in 1992 after the dissolution of the Soviet Union that publishes online in both English and Russian. As the paper’s arts editor, I was planning to attend the Sochi Winter International Arts Festival beginning on February 16. A few days before I was to leave, I asked my editor if I should go — would it be safe for me to be on the Black Sea coast if war broke out?

“You’ll be in a group,” she said, “and I don’t think it will start.” I said, “I don’t either, but the thing is — I didn’t think Russia would annex Crimea in 2014.” She said, “I didn’t think they’d invade Georgia in 2008.”

I recognize now that the dots were all there. We just couldn’t connect them. We couldn’t imagine a full-scale invasion because a full-scale invasion was unimaginable.

And so I went to Sochi, what now feels like a thousand years ago, and spent every night in the city’s seaside Winter Theater watching the best of Russian and foreign culture, a mix of traditional and very untraditional musical and theater performances, with standing ovations and curtain calls and the local babushkas holding the hands of grandchildren while whispering instructions on proper theater etiquette.

I flew back to Moscow on the evening of February 23. The next morning the war began.

Everything changed in the blink of an eye. Within two weeks, I would find myself in a minivan with a driver and six people, three dogs and mountains of suitcases and bags, getting ready to cross the border out of Russia. I would be the last one of the Moscow Times staff to leave the country, part of an exodus that included most of the foreign correspondents in Russia and thousands of Russians.

I was leaving a place I’d lived for more than 40 years.

 

It's amazing to me that journalists who had lived in Moscow for decades simply didn't see -- or refused to see -- Putin's invasion plans and his military invasion of Ukraine. His goal was always to rule Russia as a new czar, and to reconstitute the Soviet Empire.

I'm glad Berdy was able to escape, but such lotus-eating globally is how we got here in the first place.

Last Call For The Cold Man's War

Republicans threaten people all the time, it's what they do, the question is how and when they make good on those threats, and who suffers - or dies - in the process. But I don't recall a sitting Republican governor threatening an entirely different state if a Democratic governor was elected there before.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday warned of a coming “Cold War” between Florida and Georgia if Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams wins the gubernatorial election in the latter state.

During a press conference in Gulf County, located in northwest Florida, DeSantis referenced the ongoing Masters golf tournament in Georgia, using it as an apparent segue into discussing the state’s elections.

DeSantis said he “really appreciates our Georgians” but that voters would have to “take care” of the 2022 election to prevent Abrams from winning.

“If Stacey Abrams is elected governor of Georgia, I just want to be honest, that will be a cold war between Florida and Georgia,” he said. “I can’t have [former Cuban communist leader Raul] Castro to my south and Abrams to my north, that would be a disaster. So I hope you guys take care of that and we’ll end up in good shape.”

The Hill has reached out to DeSantis’s office for comment.

 

He can't have a Black woman as a neighboring state governor. What's he going to do, cut off orange juice shipments?

 

In all seriousness though, this is just more posturing and trolling because this is what you have to do in order to get ahead in GOP politics: threaten Democrats. Frankly, if both Abrams and DeSantis end up in office, I fully expect things to get much worse on the border than just words.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

The difference between simple racism and white supremacy as a power structure in America is Republicans can do racist things like call for the lynching of a Black Secretary of Defense, and white supremacy as a power structure means that racist gets to keep his job.

 

A Republican official in Virginia is refusing to step down after a racist Facebook post he apparently authored last year surfaced recently.

The post attributed to Hampton, Virginia Electoral Board Chair David Dietrich was added to the platform in February 2021 and is just coming into public view for some reason.

The post appeared to be prompted by an effort by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, to expunge White supremacists and other far-right elements in the United States military.

Dietrich specifically mentioned Austin, who is Black, and claimed the measure was in fact a plot “to remove conservative, freedom-loving Americans from the roles.”

He added, “These so-called ‘leaders’ are so vile and racist, there’s no way to describe them other than in terms their own people understand. They are nothing more than dirty, stinking ni***rs.

“We are being forced into a corner by these enemies of the People. If it is a civil war they want, they will get it in spades. Perhaps the best way to pull us back from the brink is a good public lynching.”

In response, the head of the Hampton GOP has called on Dietrich to resign. The group also called on Dietrich to resign in a Facebook post on Thursday, which included a screen shot of the offending remarks.

 

Thing is, Dietrich says he's not going anywhere.  Republican want an excuse to start shooting Black folk in the street. They want a civil war. They want their racist power fantasies to come true in an ocean of blood. And they're doing everything they can to make it happen.

Georgia Republican candidate Kandiss Taylor goes full theocracy explaining her “Jesus, guns, and babies” slogan:

“Don't talk to me about separation of church and state.”

“We are the church and we run the state.”

“[Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists] don't get to silence us.” pic.twitter.com/9nkkn3JRbM

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) April 9, 2022

 

When I say Republicans want a white Christian ethnostate, this is what I mean.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

The first woman arrested in Texas for determining what her own body should be doing now faces felony charges and prison under the state's new Gilead laws, and she will not be the last.

Lizelle Herrera, 26, was arrested on Thursday by the Starr County Sheriff’s Office and charged with murder.

According to a sheriff’s office spokesperson, Herrera was arrested after it was learned she “intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.”

Herrera remains in the custody of the Starr County Sheriff’s Office at this time on a $500 thousand bond.

There aren't more details as of yet, but it could be that Herrera had a medical abortion, and that somebody who knew about it informed the police in order to collect the state's bounty money. If that's actually what happened, it's as vile as it comes.

I would expect Gov. Greg Abbott to gleefully demand that she be made an example of.

 

My biggest fear of course is that by the end of the summer there's going to be hundreds, if not thousands joining her.

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The verdict on the trial for the four men accused of a plot to kidnap, ransom, and possibly execute Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: 2 acquittals, 2 deadlocks, and white supremacy protecting itself.

Jurors found two men accused by the government of plotting to kidnap and hurt Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer not guilty and failed to reach unanimous verdicts against two others.

The jury said it found Lake Orion resident Daniel Harris, 24 and Brandon Caserta, 33, of Canton Township not guilty and couldn't reach verdicts on accused Whitmer kidnap ringleaders Adam Fox, 38, of Potterville and Barry Croft, 46, of Delaware.

The four men faced kidnapping conspiracy charges, a felony punishable by up to life in prison. Three faced multiple charges, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Earlier Friday, jurors indicated they had reached a verdict on some counts in the case but were locked on others. Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker announced the development just before 11 a.m. and encouraged the jurors in federal court in downtown Grand Rapids to keep deliberating in hopes of reaching a unanimous verdict.

"It is not unusual to come back somewhere along the line of deliberations and say 'we tried, but couldn’t get there,'" the judge said. "At least not on everything."

Around 2 p.m., the jury reemerged before Jonker to indicate they remained at an impasse. Jonker instructed them to return to the jury room to confirm the impasse and fill out forms to indicate what charges they were in agreement on if so.

On Friday, Jonker likened the situation to the game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire,” and the famous catchphrase “Is that your final answer?”

“Before that’s the final answer, I would like you to go back and make another effort to see if you can come to an agreement on issues you are stuck on as a group,” the judge told jurors.

The trial has coincided with jurors in federal court in Washington, D.C., hearing the first cases involving people charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Together, the trials provide the first tests of federal laws being used to punish extremist behavior that erupted nationally in 2020 and 2021 around the presidential election and pandemic.

 

Those laws failed. Here's the best part:

 

Two others, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks, earlier pleaded guilty and testified during the trial, telling jurors the plot originated with the group and that they were not entrapped by FBI agents and informants. Eight others are awaiting trial in state courts on domestic terrorism charges.

 

Remember this verdict when you believe you can find 12 people to convict Trump on anything.

The Return Of Lend-Lease

I didn't think it would happen, but in the wake of the largest ground military conflict since WWII, we have the United States gearing up to unleash the full might of American productivity with the return of Lend-Lease.

 

The Senate unanimously passed major legislation late Wednesday to revive a World War II-era program allowing President Joe Biden to more efficiently send weapons and other supplies to Ukraine amid Russia’s bloody invasion.

Senators quickly rallied behind the proposal, known as Lend-Lease, as Ukraine’s military proved it could fend off Russian troops who have been shelling Ukrainian cities and towns since late February. The Lend-Lease program created during World War II was seen as a game-changer in the conflict, as it allowed the U.S. to quickly resupply the Allies without time-consuming procedural hurdles.

Lawmakers are resorting to extraordinary tactics last used during the most significant global conflict of the 20th century — yet another sign that the U.S. and its allies in Europe believe Russia’s invasion presents an existential threat to liberal order.

It’s also an indication that the Western world believes Ukraine can now win the fight against the Russian invaders. Congress recently approved nearly $14 billion of military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, some of which has already been doled out. On Tuesday, the State Department announced an additional $100 million in funding for Javelin missiles and other materiel, bringing the total security assistance to $1.7 billion since Russia invaded on Feb. 24.

The necessity of resupplying Ukraine’s armed forces took on greater urgency in recent days as the brutality of Russia’s war was further exposed, with lawmakers reacting swiftly to urgent pleas from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in particular.

Horrific images emerged from the town of Bucha last weekend showing civilians laying dead in the streets with their hands tied behind their backs, prompting Western leaders to amplify their allegations of war crimes.

In a brief speech on the Senate floor Wednesday night, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the massacres “pure evil,” adding that Russian troops are carrying out a “genocide” in Ukraine.

“When we murder wantonly innocent civilians because of who they are, whether it be their religion, their race, or their nationality, that is genocide, and Mr. Putin is guilty of it,” Schumer said.

The Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, as it’s known, would expedite the transfer of critical military equipment and other critical supplies to Ukraine by cutting bureaucratic red tape. It allows for the de facto gifting of equipment, with provisions stipulating that recipient countries would repay the U.S. at a later date.

“As the war in Ukraine unfolds, delivering military aid as quickly as possible is pivotal for Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Putin’s unprovoked attacks,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the lead Democratic sponsor of the effort. “The Kremlin is committing horrific assaults throughout the nation on civilian infrastructure and targeting innocent men, women and children.”

 

Republicans wanted a separate vote on Russian trade/embargo status and got that today, also 100-0. The House will be voting on Russian sanctions later today. Whether the House takes up the Ukrainian Lend-Lease legislation before Easter break on Friday night isn't clear yet. I expect Pelosi will make it happen.

It's mostly a good thing, let's remember there's always blowback from American military weapons flooding a warzone, but in this case, considering what we're fighting, this is the right call and everyone in the Senate sees it.

Let's go, Lend-Lease!

The Big Lie, Con't

Some 17 months after the 2020 election, Arizona Republicans still haven't been able to find any evidence of that "widespread voter fraud" that Trump insists happened.

A report issued Wednesday by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich found no evidence of widespread voter fraud or irregularities associated with the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County while raising concerns about some voting procedures.

The interim report, six months into an investigation, was detailed in a 12-page letter to Senate President Karen Fann. Brnovich, a Republican, said his office “has left no stone unturned in the aftermath of the 2020 election.”

Former President Donald Trump is pursuing a persistent pressure campaign to uncover any illegal activity that would support his false claims that he defeated President Joe Biden in Arizona 17 months ago.

Trump lost Arizona by less than 10,500 votes, and a GOP-commissioned review in Maricopa County confirmed Biden’s victory.

Trump repeated his Arizona claims as recently as January, when he alleged mass fraud at a rally where he was joined by three of the state's House Republicans — Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Debbie Lesko — who voted against certifying Biden’s victory.

“It’s far more than necessary to win the state of Arizona,” Trump said at the rally, where he referred to Brnovich.

“I think he’s a good man. I think he’s going to do his job,” Trump said.

Brnovich initially defended the integrity of election results — much to the disappointment of GOP gubernatorial front-runner Kari Lake.

“There is no evidence, there are no facts that would lead anyone to believe that the election results will change,” Brnovich said days after the 2020 election was called for Biden.

Lake called this week for the decertification of Biden’s victories in Arizona and Wisconsin.

Brnovich’s tenor toward the 2020 election began to shift under pressure from Trump and a host of Arizona Republicans. He is running for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Mark Kelly.

Although Wednesday's report did not find mass fraud or conspiracy in the 2020 election, it outlined his office’s concerns with "serious vulnerabilities" involving certain procedures during the campaign, including the signature verification process and the transportation of ballots from drop box locations.

GOP state Sen. Wendy Rogers blasted Brnovich minutes after the release of his letter. In a tweet, she said: “I don’t like letters. I like arrests and prosecutions. Criminals don’t respect legal gobbly-gook that just fills pages when really we can use handcuffs, jail cells and jump suits.” 

I still stand by my belief that Trump will instruct Secretaries of State to refuse to certify Democratic wins in red states due to "election fraud" in November. The evidence will simply be created.

They will make fraud happen.