Taegan Goddard says Trump Would Face Lawsuits if He Went Back to Twitter ~~~~but you have to be a paying member of his blog to find out why he says that.
U.S. intel helped Ukraine protect air defenses, shoot down Russian plane carrying hundreds of troops
Ukrainian forces have used specific coordinates shared by the U.S. to direct fire on Russian positions and aircraft, current and former officials .
As Russia launched its invasion, the U.S. gave Ukrainian forces detailed intelligence about exactly when and where Russian missiles and bombs were intended to strike, prompting Ukraine to move air defenses and aircraft out of harm’s way, current and former U.S. officials told NBC News.
That near real-time intelligence-sharing also paved the way for Ukraine to shoot down a Russian transport plane carrying hundreds of troops in the early days of the war, the officials say, helping repel a Russian assault on a key airport near Kyiv.
It was part of what American officials call a massive and unprecedented intelligence-sharing operation with a non-NATO partner that they say has played a crucial role in Ukraine’s success to date against the larger and better-equipped Russian military.
The details about the air defenses and the transport plane, which have not previously been reported, underscore why, two months into the war, officials assess that intelligence from U.S. spy agencies and the Pentagon has been an important factor in helping Ukraine thwart Russia’s effort to seize most of the country.
'Ukraine can win war': U.S. Defense Secretary Austin meets allies in Germany
Scott your new hero will cost homeowners millions. On Tuesday, writing for Bloomberg Tax, attorney Jacob Schumer walked through how the plan by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to strip the Walt Disney corporation of its special tax status could run into a brick wall.
The plan, passed as part of a special session bill in which legislators also approved DeSantis' plan to cut the number of Black congressional districts, would eliminate the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the special taxing district Disney uses to essentially run its own mini-government on the land used by the Walt Disney World resort complex near Orlando — a measure Florida Republicans openly admit is retaliation for Disney criticizing their so-called "Don't Say Gay" school legislation.
"Much ado has been made about the legality of Florida’s Senate Bill 4C purporting to dissolve Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District: whether it was retaliation prohibited by the First Amendment, whether it was passed with sufficient formality, and so on," wrote Schumer. "But there’s a much more basic reason Florida can’t dissolve Reedy Creek — it promised bond purchasers that it wouldn’t."
Some observers have noted that dissolving the special district would result in taxpayers in Orange and Osceola Counties being on the hook for $1 billion in Disney's bond debt. But, wrote Schumer, it gets worse than that.
"Stating that the county assumes the debt is simple enough — actually figuring out what that means is a different story. Reedy Creek spans both Orange and Osceola counties, so how will the debt be divided? Would it be by taxable value of property or by the properties themselves? And how would that apply to the utility revenue bonds when there is no easy way to divide which county the utilities rest in?" wrote Schumer. "These difficult questions point to the basic contractual issue. By dissolving Reedy Creek, the legislature essentially rewrote the promises made in the district’s bond offerings. Instead of bonds backed by a special district with the power to levy up to 30 mills in taxes, the property tax bonds will be backed jointly by two governments that can only generate a maximum of 10 mills in taxes."
"Florida simply cannot promise to prospective bondholders that it won’t interfere with Reedy Creek, and then dissolve Reedy Creek," concluded Schumer. "If Reedy Creek is ever dissolved, it would be a monumental and complicated enterprise even on a years-long timeline. The district has a nine-figure annual budget for expenditures, and even ignoring its various debts, it has a plethora of other contracts that somehow would have to be assigned to and divided between Orange and Osceola counties. However, the dissolution will have to wait until all of its bonds are paid in full."
Florida Man Asks School Districts to Ban the Bible April 26, 2022 at 8:21 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 48 Comments
“A Florida activist known for his tongue-in-cheek petitions to local government agencies has asked school districts in Florida to ban the Bible,” NPR reports.
“His petitions cited a bill signed into law last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which lets parents object to educational materials. That bill came about after some parents complained about sexually explicit books being taught in Florida schools. _________
Indeed, there are portions of the Bible, especially the Hebrew portion of it, that have some VERY sexually explicit passages.
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — The United States marshaled 40 allies on Tuesday to furnish Ukraine with long-term military aid in what could become a protracted battle against the Russian invasion, and Germany said it would send dozens of armored antiaircraft vehicles. It was a major policy shift for a country that had wavered over fear of provoking Russia.
The announcement by Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and one of Russia’s most important Western trading partners, was among many signals on Tuesday pointing to further escalation in the war and disappointment for diplomacy.
Germany’s shift on weapons also was seen as a strong affirmation of a toughened message by the Biden administration, which has said it wants to see Russia not only defeated in Ukraine but seriously weakened from the conflict that President Vladimir V. Putin began two months ago.
The increasing flow of Western weapons into Ukraine — including howitzers, armed drones, tanks and ammunition — also amounted to another sign that a war Mr. Putin had expected would divide his Western adversaries had instead drawn them much closer together.
“Putin never imagined that the world would rally behind Ukraine so swiftly and surely,” the American defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, said on Tuesday to uniformed and civilian officials at the U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany, where he convened defense officials from 40 allied countries.
“Nobody is fooled” by Mr. Putin’s “phony claims on Donbas,” Mr. Austin said, referring to the eastern region of Ukraine, where Russia recently refocused its assaults. “Russia’s invasion is indefensible and so are Russian atrocities,” he said.
The bottom line is that The President of the United States has united 40 countries. It will go down in history as one of the most important situations in history π―
McCarthy Feared G.O.P. Lawmakers Put ‘People in Jeopardy’ After Jan. 6 New audio recordings reveal Kevin McCarthy worried that comments by his far-right colleagues could incite violence. He said he would try to rein in the lawmakers, but has instead defended them. The country was “too crazy,” Representative Kevin McCarthy said, for members to be talking and tweeting recklessly at such a volatile moment. The country was “too crazy,” Representative Kevin McCarthy said, for members to be talking and tweeting recklessly at such a volatile moment.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, feared in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack that several far-right members of Congress would incite violence against other lawmakers, identifying several by name as security risks in private conversations with party leaders.
Mr. McCarthy talked to other congressional Republicans about wanting to rein in multiple hard-liners who were deeply involved in Donald J. Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election and undermine the peaceful transfer of power, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times.
But Mr. McCarthy did not follow through on the sterner steps that some Republicans encouraged him to take, opting instead to seek a political accommodation with the most extreme members of the G.O.P. in the interests of advancing his own career.
Mr. McCarthy’s remarks represent one of the starkest acknowledgments from a Republican leader that the party’s rank-and-file lawmakers played a role in stoking violence on Jan. 6, 2021 — and posed a threat in the days after the Capitol attack. Audio recordings of the comments were obtained in reporting for a forthcoming book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.”
In the phone call with other Republican leaders on Jan. 10, Mr. McCarthy referred chiefly to two representatives, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama, as endangering the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex. But he and his allies discussed several other representatives who made comments they saw as offensive or dangerous, including Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Barry Moore of Alabama.
The country was “too crazy,” Mr. McCarthy said, for members to be talking and tweeting recklessly at such a volatile moment.
McCarthy Expresses Concern About Republican Lawmakers’ Rhetoric On a Jan. 10, 2021, conference call with House G.O.P. leaders, Representative Kevin McCarthy expresses concern that Republican lawmakers’ rhetoric could lead to someone getting hurt.
Mr. Brooks and Mr. Gaetz were the prime offenders in the eyes of G.O.P. leaders. Mr. Brooks addressed the Jan. 6 rally on the National Mall, which preceded the Capitol riot, using incendiary language. After Jan. 6, Mr. Gaetz went on television to attack multiple Republicans who had criticized Mr. Trump, including Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the leadership team.
Those comments by Mr. Gaetz alarmed Mr. McCarthy and his colleagues in leadership — particularly the reference to Ms. Cheney, who was already the target of threats and public abuse from Mr. Trump’s faction in the party because of her criticism of the defeated president.
Mr. McCarthy considered remarks made by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida a threat to the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex. Mr. McCarthy considered remarks made by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida a threat to the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol .
Make no mistake about it: What’s heard on the tape does not make McCarthy the “good guy.” And him telling reporters — a day after the audio was released — that he “never thought” the president should resign underscores that. But the alternative is a lot worse π
On one hand, we have a pusillanimous, prevaricating and somewhat feeble-minded leader who cows to Trump. But if these tapes ultimately take McCarthy out of the running for House GOP leader, we may be left with something entirely worse. We might be forced to reckon with a ruthless leader like Jordan as head of the House GOP — the same congressman who has refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack and who forwarded a text message to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows forcefully pushing an unproven legal theory to try to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to object to certifying the 2020 election results.
In the “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle wrote that “for the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil.” Although he penned those words over two millennia ago, he was aptly describing the situation the country finds itself in today, with one of its major parties having to choose between two different shades of awful when it comes to its congressional leadership. But let’s be honest: McCarthy is clearly the lesser of two evils. If someone like Jordan were to take the gavel of the U.S. House of Representatives, the nation would be stepping into very dangerous, uncharted territory.
Fortunately, criticism of McCarthy within the GOP seems to have dissipated somewhat as news emerged that he had called Trump to apologize after his audio became national news and that the former president was not particularly upset about the recorded remarks — a move that may muzzle grumblings about McCarthy among Trump’s legion of dedicated supporters in Congress.
McCarthy knows that any path to the speakership depends on him continuing to be in the former president’s good graces. If he does not manage that, we might be left with Jim Jordan.
Cold-hearted Truth. With no actual accomplishments to point to, having ruined everything that was running so well for the American people, Democrats are turning to what has become their most effective electoral tool in recent years: Fraud.
They did a magnificent job of perpetrating a total fraud on the country in the 2020 Presidential election. We all know what they did and what they got away with. Late night Democrat vote “discoveries” totaling in the thousands, untraceable interstate trucks delivering thousands of Biden ballots, voting locales reporting over 100% voter turnout, 19 of 20 bellwether counties being won by President Trump, Republicans not being allowed to monitor the vote counting process, state voting rules being changed in direct contravention to state law, and on and on. And this point needs to be re-emphasized: Just because the liberal media refuses to acknowledge these facts, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
The big question is what have the Republicans done to ensure that this degree of election-stealing fraud doesn’t happen again?
Unfortunately, it seems Republicans have done essentially nothing truly significant to stop Democrat vote fraud. There are statements from Republicans that they will be more vigilant while observing the voting process and the collection of ballots. Many Republican quarters have said they will be on the lookout for mystery trucks arriving at the polling station at 1:00 a.m. or for boxes of faked ballots being taken from their hiding places under cloth-draped tables after Republican poll workers have been kicked out.
That question emerged in various forms pretty early in his 2016 presidential campaign, which began with a speech railing against Mexican immigrants, and gained steam after he called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in December 2015, as a response to the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
At that point, the Muslim ban proposal, I contacted five fascism experts and asked them if Trump qualified. They all said no. Every one of them stated that to be a fascist, one must support the revolutionary, usually violent overthrow of the entire government/Constitution, and reject democracy entirely. In 2015, none were comfortable saying Trump went that far. He was too individualist for the inherently collectivist philosophy of fascism, and not sufficiently committed to the belief that violence is good for its own sake, as a vital cleansing force.
Roger Griffin, the author of The Nature of Fascism and a professor of history at Oxford Brookes University, summed it up well: “You can be a total xenophobic racist male chauvinist bastard and still not be a fascist.”
Five years have now passed, and the fascism questions have only grown more frequent. Trump has had time to implement quite anti-immigrant and anti-Black policies, and refused to denounce his most extreme and violent supporters, from the neo-Nazis and white nationalists in Charlottesville to the Proud Boys group. And every week, I receive dozens of emails from readers wondering if I stand by my conclusion in 2015, that Trump is simply a bigot with an authoritarian streak, not a fascist.
So I reached out to the experts I talked to back then. Four of the five replied, and I also got in touch with a few more scholars who have researched fascism to get a broader view.
The responses were, again, unanimous, albeit tinged with much greater concern about Trump’s authoritarian and violent tendencies. No one thinks Trump is a fascist leader, full stop. Jason Stanley, a Yale philosopher and author of How Fascism Works, came closest to that conclusion, saying that “you could call legitimately call Trumpism a fascist social and political movement” and that Trump is “using fascist political tactics,” but that Trump isn’t necessarily leading a fascist government.
But most experts did not even go that far, and some expressed concern that describing Trump as a fascist undermines the term and leads to a misanalysis of our current political situation. “If Trump was a fascist and we were in a situation akin to Germany in 1932 or Italy in 1921, certain kinds of actions would be justified,” Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College, says. “But we are not and they are not.”
Matthew Feldman, director, Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right
Although my position has not changed on Trump — less fascist than kleptocrat, more egoist than radical-right ideologue — that does little to mitigate the danger.
Four months ago, I warned that Trump was descending into naked authoritarianism. Low-information commentators seek to reassure rather than dig deeply, telling readers to look on the bright side. That the US is an exceptional country.
It is not.
Democratic regression and political polarization are not unique to the US. Having more guns than people is. So are militias, usually formed of lower- and middle-class white Americans harboring anti-government sentiments. The threat posed by these anti-government extremists — though not necessarily terrorists — was thrown into relief when at least 13 members of Michigan’s Wolverine Militia were arrested for planning to kidnap, “judge,” and potentially execute for treason the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
The term “fascist” regarding Trump continues to mislead rather than inform. But that cannot inure us to what Alexander Reid Ross has called the “fascist creep.”
Melber argued that as the owner of Twitter, Musk does not have to explain himself: “You don’t even have to be transparent. You could secretly ban one party’s candidate, or all of its candidates, all of its nominees!” he warned with wide-eyed horror. “Or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it til after the election.”
How is it possible for someone to be so lacking in self-awareness?
Leftists habitually use projection to accuse their political opponents of doing what they themselves are guilty of doing. In this instance, Melber accused Musk of potentially suppressing free speech to benefit one political party over another.
It is ironic that Melber would share these concerns, given Twitter’s egregious history of throttling conservative voices.
Biden jeopardizing millions of people with uncontrolled heat in the far east!!!!!
Record-breaking heat wave gripping India and Pakistan threatens crops, leaves millions sweltering
A spring heat wave is scorching parts of India and Pakistan, with record-breaking April temperatures of 120 degrees Fahrenheit forecast along the border of the two countries in the coming days. The extreme heat threatens the health of millions of people as well as the harvest of wheat at a time when climate change and the war in Ukraine have sparked a global food crisis.
The Indian Meteorological Department warned this week that a heat dome, similar to ell as the harvest of wheat at a time when climate change and the war in Ukraine have sparked a global food crisis.
The Indian Meteorological Department warned this week that a heat dome, similar to the one that sent temperatures soaring over the Pacific Northwest last year, had formed over the region. Millions of people in the areas of India and Pakistan where temperatures have remained in the triple digits are now at risk of illness and death from the heat.
“It’s become impossible to work after 10 o’clock in the morning,” Sunil Das, who works as a rickshaw puller on the outskirts of Delhi, told Quartz India.
We’ve known for a long time, based on audits, investigations, and court reviews, that Donald Trump’s allegations about massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election are false. We also know, based on firsthand accounts from Trump’s former aides, attorneys, and political allies, that Trump’s advisers repeatedly told him the allegations were false. That leaves two possibilities: Either Trump is lying, or he’s trying to overthrow the government based on an impenetrable delusion. Take your pick.
Now we’re compiling similar evidence against Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff during the election. He, too, knew Trump’s accusations were false. And instead of telling the truth, Meadows helped spread the lies.
The latest evidence comes from a batch of more than 2,000 text messages, revealed by CNN that were sent to or from Meadows between November 3, 2020, and January 20, 2021. Three of the exchanges are particularly instructive: one in early November of that year, another in late November, and a third in early December.
It would be a shame if everyone saw this and shared it. Joe Biden outright lied about Hunter Biden's laptop and blamed it on Russia. Trump was 100% right.
Tim Young https://twitter.com/TimRunsHisMouth/status/1518935576212295681 How long until the default COVID propaganda tab is removed from Twitter trending?
the whole "trending" information was a farce and everyone knew it.
Twitters "descriptions" of trends was also a farce and everyone knew it except those being led by the nose
The descriptors are still a farce though what is "trending" does appear to closer reflect reality
but the left-wingers are still in control
hopefully just for a short while
same with their "fact" checkers
paid for by ultra left-wing liberals
who even write off their "contributions" against their taxes
amazing that Bill Gates was the worlds richest man when he "gave away" most of his wealth to the Bill Gates Foundation (since then added Melissa) leaving his with "just" around 20 billion. He still completely controls the foundation and his personal wealth has swelled to over 130 billion.
and still has managed to avoid paying taxes
The story of Fauci and Gates may be the 2nd greatest story ever told, if it actually gets told
amazing that Bill Gates was the worlds richest man when he "gave away" most of his wealth to the Bill Gates Foundation (since then added Melissa) leaving his with "just" around 20 billion. He still completely controls the foundation and his personal wealth has swelled to over 130 billion.
Warren Buffett did the same thing. Bequeathed almost all of his fortune to the Gates Foundation. Warren & Bill made a big deal out of it at the time.
You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger tax hypocrite than Buffett, as public as he's been about his assistant paying a higher % of her income in taxes than he does.
Every single part of the leftist meltdown over Musk and Twitter is projection. They're terrified that we might now treat them like they treat us. We won't, because we're not ideological sociopaths like they are.
Fauci Says the U.S. Is Out of the Pandemic Phase April 27, 2022 at 8:36 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 28 Comments
Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the United States is finally “out of the pandemic phase,” the Washington Post reports.
“While infections are still spreading — with an average of over 50,000 new cases per day as of Tuesday — the country is far from the peaks of the pandemic, when daily counts surpassed 1 million. Restrictions, too, are easing as many Americans appear to be putting the pandemic behind them.”
Said Fauci: “We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase.”
He added that the coronavirus will not be eradicated, but can be handled if its level of spread is kept “very low” and people are “intermittently” vaccinated. _________
He has always sought to be cautious, frank, and truthful about the virus situation. Unlike TRUMP.
How Elon Musk’s Deal for Twitter Could Still Unravel April 27, 2022 at 9:09 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 27 Comments
Matt Levine: “I guess it is worth saying that Elon Musk does not own Twitter Inc. He did not buy Twitter Inc. yesterday for $54.20 per share in cash. He did sign an agreement yesterday to buy Twitter for $54.20 in cash. That is a big step! It means that he probably will end up owning Twitter within a few months or so. (The deal ‘is expected to close in 2022’; it might take up to six months.) But he does not own it yet.”
The United States and our allies will not allow Russia to be able to invade any other country forever.
Russian President Vladimir Putin protested to Kremlin visitors Monday that his adversaries were trying to “win on the battlefield” and “destroy Russia from within.” For once, he wasn’t just being paranoid.
Western resolve is hardening in the Ukraine war. For months, the Biden administration beseeched Putin to find an “exit ramp” from the confrontation. Now, the United States’ openly stated goal is to help Ukraine beat Russia and to disable Putin’s war machine so that it won’t threaten neighbors in the future.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a man careful with his words, stated it plainly Monday after a trip to Kyiv to bolster Ukraine’s resistance: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” Austin repeated that message Tuesday after talks with NATO allies in Germany.
This is how the people of Ukraine πΊπ¦ recover from the Russian invasion.
Clearing booby traps and reopening shops: Irpin rebuilds after Russians leave
The shattered homes of this formerly comfortable suburb of Kyiv offer a glimpse of what besieged cities in Ukraine's east and south may now be experiencing.
Engineers examine the destroyed bridge over the Irpin River in Irpin, Ukraine, on Thursday in preparation to build a new one.Brendan Hoffman for NBC News
IRPIN, Ukraine — An explosives specialist from the Ukrainian military spent an hour crawling on the floor of Andriy Rhyzenko’s bedroom in search of Russian booby traps, combing through his belongings scattered wall-to-wall by occupying forces.
Rhyzenko is a retired Ukrainian naval captain who had trained with NATO forces and in the United States. He and his wife fled Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv that was demolished by the Russians’ assault, in the late afternoon on Feb. 24 — the first day of the war.
His friends in the U.S. government believed he could be a potential Russian target, he said. That remained a concern this past weekend as he returned home and the search for Russian explosives began. One booby trap was recovered in a building across the street, designed to blow when the electricity was switched back on, but Rhyzenko’s home appeared to be safe based on the expert’s search.
Andriy Rhyzhenko, a retired Ukrainian navy officer, looks at his bedroom Thursday after it was ransacked by Russian soldiers in Irpin. He hadn't cleaned up the mess because of concerns that it was booby-trapped and was waiting for Ukrainian military experts to clear it.Brendan Hoffman for NBC News
“It’s a bit of shock to see it looted and very emotional,” he said, noting that he bought this home upon selling his parents' house in Crimea, after Russia illegally seized the territory in 2014. “It is awful, but it’s not as bad as some people.”
Many like Rhyzenko are now returning to areas outside Kyiv that were occupied by Russian forces to find out what’s left of their homes, which bear clear evidence of the violence that took place here.
Seventy-one percent of Irpin was damaged by bullets, missiles, explosives and shells under Russian attack and occupation, Mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said earlier this month, citing United Nations satellite imagery. More than 1,060 buildings that included housing and social infrastructure — including four schools and three health care centers — were damaged.
Residents are now contending with this formerly comfortable suburb’s new status as a former battlefield. What the world sees here now may be a glimpse of what cities like Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kramatorsk and Donetsk in the country’s east and south are going through as they still suffer under continued Russian fire and shelling.
While Russian attacks on this country carry on and thousands of displaced Ukrainians continue to flee homes destroyed in this invasion, residents here face the quiet trauma after a disaster. As they work to pick up the pieces in Irpin, they hope that the Kremlin’s ambitions don’t call for further military attacks.
For now, residents are pushing for stores to reopen and for utilities to get back online. They are even having to fix holes that Russians cut into fences and garages to create shooting positions. And all this is taking place amid craters left by Russian bombs, apartment buildings that are nothing more than burnt shells, and houses that are crumbling bits of cinderblock and brick.
_____ The Biden administration promist support like we did after the Second World War. π
Nasdaq gives up early gains as it attempts comeback from worst rout since 2020 PUBLISHED TUE, APR 26 20226:04 PM EDTUPDATED 4 MIN AGO thumbnail Hannah Miao @HANNAHMIAO_ Sarah Min @_SARAHMIN U.S. stocks struggled Wednesday, a day after the Nasdaq Composite posted a new low for the year, amid a tech-led sell-off in April.
The Nasdaq Composite was little changed, after being up more than 1% at its highs earlier in the day. The index is coming off its biggest daily loss since September 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was near flat. The S&P 500 rose 0.2%.
The United States is finally “out of the full-blown explosive pandemic phase” that has led to nearly a 1 million deaths from covid-19 and more than two years of suffering and hardship, Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said Wednesday.
“We’re really in a transitional phase, from a deceleration of the numbers into hopefully a more controlled phase and endemicity,” Fauci told The Washington Post.
Fauci’s comments came a day after he told PBS’s “NewsHour” that he believed the country is “out of the pandemic phase,” and he expanded on, and clarified, that view Wednesday, making clear that the pandemic is not over and the United States could still see an increase in coronavirus infections. But the virus is no longer causing the level of hospitalization and death seen in this country in previous waves of infection.
50 comments:
Lmao
Scott, let Roger move in with you.
Roger is in fatal amount of Debt.
Why has the Leftist here stop telling us about the "Great BIDEN Economy"?
Taegan Goddard says
Trump Would Face Lawsuits if He Went Back to Twitter
~~~~but you have to be a paying member of his blog to find out why he says that.
rrb is mad at me and Biden because of this
RUSSIA-UKRAINE CONFLICT
U.S. intel helped Ukraine protect air defenses, shoot down Russian plane carrying hundreds of troops
Ukrainian forces have used specific coordinates shared by the U.S. to direct fire on Russian positions and aircraft, current and former officials .
As Russia launched its invasion, the U.S. gave Ukrainian forces detailed intelligence about exactly when and where Russian missiles and bombs were intended to strike, prompting Ukraine to move air defenses and aircraft out of harm’s way, current and former U.S. officials told NBC News.
That near real-time intelligence-sharing also paved the way for Ukraine to shoot down a Russian transport plane carrying hundreds of troops in the early days of the war, the officials say, helping repel a Russian assault on a key airport near Kyiv.
It was part of what American officials call a massive and unprecedented intelligence-sharing operation with a non-NATO partner that they say has played a crucial role in Ukraine’s success to date against the larger and better-equipped Russian military.
The details about the air defenses and the transport plane, which have not previously been reported, underscore why, two months into the war, officials assess that intelligence from U.S. spy agencies and the Pentagon has been an important factor in helping Ukraine thwart Russia’s effort to seize most of the country.
'Ukraine can win war': U.S. Defense Secretary Austin meets allies in Germany
Scott, let Roger move in with you.
Roger is in fatal amount of Debt.
I have backyard tiny house for rent...
Perfect for Roger!
House
'Ukraine can win war’
Ukraine not weak.
Scott your new hero will cost homeowners millions.
On Tuesday, writing for Bloomberg Tax, attorney Jacob Schumer walked through how the plan by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to strip the Walt Disney corporation of its special tax status could run into a brick wall.
The plan, passed as part of a special session bill in which legislators also approved DeSantis' plan to cut the number of Black congressional districts, would eliminate the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the special taxing district Disney uses to essentially run its own mini-government on the land used by the Walt Disney World resort complex near Orlando — a measure Florida Republicans openly admit is retaliation for Disney criticizing their so-called "Don't Say Gay" school legislation.
"Much ado has been made about the legality of Florida’s Senate Bill 4C purporting to dissolve Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District: whether it was retaliation prohibited by the First Amendment, whether it was passed with sufficient formality, and so on," wrote Schumer. "But there’s a much more basic reason Florida can’t dissolve Reedy Creek — it promised bond purchasers that it wouldn’t."
Some observers have noted that dissolving the special district would result in taxpayers in Orange and Osceola Counties being on the hook for $1 billion in Disney's bond debt. But, wrote Schumer, it gets worse than that.
"Stating that the county assumes the debt is simple enough — actually figuring out what that means is a different story. Reedy Creek spans both Orange and Osceola counties, so how will the debt be divided? Would it be by taxable value of property or by the properties themselves? And how would that apply to the utility revenue bonds when there is no easy way to divide which county the utilities rest in?" wrote Schumer. "These difficult questions point to the basic contractual issue. By dissolving Reedy Creek, the legislature essentially rewrote the promises made in the district’s bond offerings. Instead of bonds backed by a special district with the power to levy up to 30 mills in taxes, the property tax bonds will be backed jointly by two governments that can only generate a maximum of 10 mills in taxes."
"Florida simply cannot promise to prospective bondholders that it won’t interfere with Reedy Creek, and then dissolve Reedy Creek," concluded Schumer. "If Reedy Creek is ever dissolved, it would be a monumental and complicated enterprise even on a years-long timeline. The district has a nine-figure annual budget for expenditures, and even ignoring its various debts, it has a plethora of other contracts that somehow would have to be assigned to and divided between Orange and Osceola counties. However, the dissolution will have to wait until all of its bonds are paid in full."
https://www.rawstory.com/ron-desantis-disney-2657219811/
https://news.bloombergtax.com/tax-insights-and-commentary/the-contractual-impossibility-of-unwinding-disneys-reedy-creek
Scott, if the Democrats win these elections they might keep the Senate
These six states — four held by Democrats, and two held by Republicans — are currently the core of the 2022 competitive Senate map,
Georgia: D
Arizona: D
Nevada: D
New Hampshire: D
Pennsylvania: R
Wisconsin: R.
If we win the Senate the crazy Republicans won't impeach Sleepy Joe Biden
https://www.vox.com/23030164/senate-2022-midterm-elections-battlegrounds
Lola
Seinfeld
Florida Man Asks School Districts to Ban the Bible
April 26, 2022 at 8:21 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 48 Comments
“A Florida activist known for his tongue-in-cheek petitions to local government agencies has asked school districts in Florida to ban the Bible,” NPR reports.
“His petitions cited a bill signed into law last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which lets parents object to educational materials. That bill came about after some parents complained about sexually explicit books being taught in Florida schools.
_________
Indeed, there are portions of the Bible, especially the Hebrew portion of it, that have some VERY sexually explicit passages.
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany — The United States marshaled 40 allies on Tuesday to furnish Ukraine with long-term military aid in what could become a protracted battle against the Russian invasion, and Germany said it would send dozens of armored antiaircraft vehicles. It was a major policy shift for a country that had wavered over fear of provoking Russia.
The announcement by Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and one of Russia’s most important Western trading partners, was among many signals on Tuesday pointing to further escalation in the war and disappointment for diplomacy.
Germany’s shift on weapons also was seen as a strong affirmation of a toughened message by the Biden administration, which has said it wants to see Russia not only defeated in Ukraine but seriously weakened from the conflict that President Vladimir V. Putin began two months ago.
The increasing flow of Western weapons into Ukraine — including howitzers, armed drones, tanks and ammunition — also amounted to another sign that a war Mr. Putin had expected would divide his Western adversaries had instead drawn them much closer together.
“Putin never imagined that the world would rally behind Ukraine so swiftly and surely,” the American defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, said on Tuesday to uniformed and civilian officials at the U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany, where he convened defense officials from 40 allied countries.
“Nobody is fooled” by Mr. Putin’s “phony claims on Donbas,” Mr. Austin said, referring to the eastern region of Ukraine, where Russia recently refocused its assaults. “Russia’s invasion is indefensible and so are Russian atrocities,” he said.
The bottom line is that The President of the United States has united 40 countries. It will go down in history as one of the most important situations in history π―
McCarthy Feared G.O.P. Lawmakers Put ‘People in Jeopardy’ After Jan. 6
New audio recordings reveal Kevin McCarthy worried that comments by his far-right colleagues could incite violence. He said he would try to rein in the lawmakers, but has instead defended them.
The country was “too crazy,” Representative Kevin McCarthy said, for members to be talking and tweeting recklessly at such a volatile moment.
The country was “too crazy,” Representative Kevin McCarthy said, for members to be talking and tweeting recklessly at such a volatile moment.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, feared in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack that several far-right members of Congress would incite violence against other lawmakers, identifying several by name as security risks in private conversations with party leaders.
Mr. McCarthy talked to other congressional Republicans about wanting to rein in multiple hard-liners who were deeply involved in Donald J. Trump’s efforts to contest the 2020 election and undermine the peaceful transfer of power, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times.
But Mr. McCarthy did not follow through on the sterner steps that some Republicans encouraged him to take, opting instead to seek a political accommodation with the most extreme members of the G.O.P. in the interests of advancing his own career.
Mr. McCarthy’s remarks represent one of the starkest acknowledgments from a Republican leader that the party’s rank-and-file lawmakers played a role in stoking violence on Jan. 6, 2021 — and posed a threat in the days after the Capitol attack. Audio recordings of the comments were obtained in reporting for a forthcoming book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future.”
In the phone call with other Republican leaders on Jan. 10, Mr. McCarthy referred chiefly to two representatives, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Mo Brooks of Alabama, as endangering the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex. But he and his allies discussed several other representatives who made comments they saw as offensive or dangerous, including Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Barry Moore of Alabama.
The country was “too crazy,” Mr. McCarthy said, for members to be talking and tweeting recklessly at such a volatile moment.
McCarthy Expresses Concern About Republican Lawmakers’ Rhetoric
On a Jan. 10, 2021, conference call with House G.O.P. leaders, Representative Kevin McCarthy expresses concern that Republican lawmakers’ rhetoric could lead to someone getting hurt.
Mr. Brooks and Mr. Gaetz were the prime offenders in the eyes of G.O.P. leaders. Mr. Brooks addressed the Jan. 6 rally on the National Mall, which preceded the Capitol riot, using incendiary language. After Jan. 6, Mr. Gaetz went on television to attack multiple Republicans who had criticized Mr. Trump, including Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a member of the leadership team.
Those comments by Mr. Gaetz alarmed Mr. McCarthy and his colleagues in leadership — particularly the reference to Ms. Cheney, who was already the target of threats and public abuse from Mr. Trump’s faction in the party because of her criticism of the defeated president.
Mr. McCarthy considered remarks made by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida a threat to the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol complex.
Mr. McCarthy considered remarks made by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida a threat to the security of other lawmakers and the Capitol .
NO ONE FUCKING CARES,
GO OUTSIDE
MY, MY. SOMEBODY F'N CARES.
Quote of the Day
April 26, 2022 at 10:53 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment
“Kevin McCarthy is a puppet of the Democrat Party.”
— Tucker Carlson, on his Fox News show.
THE KINGMAKER HAS TURNED AGAINST HIM.
Make no mistake about it: What’s heard on the tape does not make McCarthy the “good guy.” And him telling reporters — a day after the audio was released — that he “never thought” the president should resign underscores that.
But the alternative is a lot worse π
On one hand, we have a pusillanimous, prevaricating and somewhat feeble-minded leader who cows to Trump. But if these tapes ultimately take McCarthy out of the running for House GOP leader, we may be left with something entirely worse. We might be forced to reckon with a ruthless leader like Jordan as head of the House GOP — the same congressman who has refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack and who forwarded a text message to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows forcefully pushing an unproven legal theory to try to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to object to certifying the 2020 election results.
In the “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle wrote that “for the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil.” Although he penned those words over two millennia ago, he was aptly describing the situation the country finds itself in today, with one of its major parties having to choose between two different shades of awful when it comes to its congressional leadership. But let’s be honest: McCarthy is clearly the lesser of two evils. If someone like Jordan were to take the gavel of the U.S. House of Representatives, the nation would be stepping into very dangerous, uncharted territory.
Fortunately, criticism of McCarthy within the GOP seems to have dissipated somewhat as news emerged that he had called Trump to apologize after his audio became national news and that the former president was not particularly upset about the recorded remarks — a move that may muzzle grumblings about McCarthy among Trump’s legion of dedicated supporters in Congress.
McCarthy knows that any path to the speakership depends on him continuing to be in the former president’s good graces. If he does not manage that, we might be left with Jim Jordan.
Cold-hearted Truth.
With no actual accomplishments to point to, having ruined everything that was running so well for the American people, Democrats are turning to what has become their most effective electoral tool in recent years: Fraud.
They did a magnificent job of perpetrating a total fraud on the country in the 2020 Presidential election. We all know what they did and what they got away with. Late night Democrat vote “discoveries” totaling in the thousands, untraceable interstate trucks delivering thousands of Biden ballots, voting locales reporting over 100% voter turnout, 19 of 20 bellwether counties being won by President Trump, Republicans not being allowed to monitor the vote counting process, state voting rules being changed in direct contravention to state law, and on and on. And this point needs to be re-emphasized: Just because the liberal media refuses to acknowledge these facts, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
The big question is what have the Republicans done to ensure that this degree of election-stealing fraud doesn’t happen again?
Unfortunately, it seems Republicans have done essentially nothing truly significant to stop Democrat vote fraud. There are statements from Republicans that they will be more vigilant while observing the voting process and the collection of ballots. Many Republican quarters have said they will be on the lookout for mystery trucks arriving at the polling station at 1:00 a.m. or for boxes of faked ballots being taken from their hiding places under cloth-draped tables after Republican poll workers have been kicked out.
Biden responsible for the catastrophic water shortage in Ca!!!! GW has nothing to do with the emergency!!!!!!!
https://www.aol.com/news/millions-must-cut-water-drought-050352028-092024748.html
Is Donald Trump a fascist?
That question emerged in various forms pretty early in his 2016 presidential campaign, which began with a speech railing against Mexican immigrants, and gained steam after he called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in December 2015, as a response to the San Bernardino terrorist attack.
At that point, the Muslim ban proposal, I contacted five fascism experts and asked them if Trump qualified. They all said no. Every one of them stated that to be a fascist, one must support the revolutionary, usually violent overthrow of the entire government/Constitution, and reject democracy entirely. In 2015, none were comfortable saying Trump went that far. He was too individualist for the inherently collectivist philosophy of fascism, and not sufficiently committed to the belief that violence is good for its own sake, as a vital cleansing force.
Roger Griffin, the author of The Nature of Fascism and a professor of history at Oxford Brookes University, summed it up well: “You can be a total xenophobic racist male chauvinist bastard and still not be a fascist.”
Five years have now passed, and the fascism questions have only grown more frequent. Trump has had time to implement quite anti-immigrant and anti-Black policies, and refused to denounce his most extreme and violent supporters, from the neo-Nazis and white nationalists in Charlottesville to the Proud Boys group. And every week, I receive dozens of emails from readers wondering if I stand by my conclusion in 2015, that Trump is simply a bigot with an authoritarian streak, not a fascist.
So I reached out to the experts I talked to back then. Four of the five replied, and I also got in touch with a few more scholars who have researched fascism to get a broader view.
The responses were, again, unanimous, albeit tinged with much greater concern about Trump’s authoritarian and violent tendencies. No one thinks Trump is a fascist leader, full stop. Jason Stanley, a Yale philosopher and author of How Fascism Works, came closest to that conclusion, saying that “you could call legitimately call Trumpism a fascist social and political movement” and that Trump is “using fascist political tactics,” but that Trump isn’t necessarily leading a fascist government.
But most experts did not even go that far, and some expressed concern that describing Trump as a fascist undermines the term and leads to a misanalysis of our current political situation. “If Trump was a fascist and we were in a situation akin to Germany in 1932 or Italy in 1921, certain kinds of actions would be justified,” Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College, says. “But we are not and they are not.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21521958/what-is-fascism-signs-donald-trump
Matthew Feldman, director, Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right
Although my position has not changed on Trump — less fascist than kleptocrat, more egoist than radical-right ideologue — that does little to mitigate the danger.
Four months ago, I warned that Trump was descending into naked authoritarianism. Low-information commentators seek to reassure rather than dig deeply, telling readers to look on the bright side. That the US is an exceptional country.
It is not.
Democratic regression and political polarization are not unique to the US. Having more guns than people is. So are militias, usually formed of lower- and middle-class white Americans harboring anti-government sentiments. The threat posed by these anti-government extremists — though not necessarily terrorists — was thrown into relief when at least 13 members of Michigan’s Wolverine Militia were arrested for planning to kidnap, “judge,” and potentially execute for treason the state’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer.
The term “fascist” regarding Trump continues to mislead rather than inform. But that cannot inure us to what Alexander Reid Ross has called the “fascist creep.”
Four months ago, I warned that Trump was descending into naked authoritarianism.
LMAO.
Not even close to the authoritarianism of your average leftist, but you do you, drunkard.
oh, and by the way alky...
Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI)
DJI - DJI Real Time Price. Currency in USD
33,240.18 -809.28 (-2.38%)
At close: April 26 05:02PM EDT
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EDJI?p=^DJI
Leftists - masters in the art of projection...
Melber argued that as the owner of Twitter, Musk does not have to explain himself: “You don’t even have to be transparent. You could secretly ban one party’s candidate, or all of its candidates, all of its nominees!” he warned with wide-eyed horror. “Or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it til after the election.”
How is it possible for someone to be so lacking in self-awareness?
Leftists habitually use projection to accuse their political opponents of doing what they themselves are guilty of doing. In this instance, Melber accused Musk of potentially suppressing free speech to benefit one political party over another.
It is ironic that Melber would share these concerns, given Twitter’s egregious history of throttling conservative voices.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/26/msnbc-host-frets-about-musk-taking-over-twitter-in-pathological-display-of-liberal-projection/
Biden jeopardizing millions of people with uncontrolled heat in the far east!!!!!
Record-breaking heat wave gripping India and Pakistan threatens crops, leaves millions sweltering
A spring heat wave is scorching parts of India and Pakistan, with record-breaking April temperatures of 120 degrees Fahrenheit forecast along the border of the two countries in the coming days. The extreme heat threatens the health of millions of people as well as the harvest of wheat at a time when climate change and the war in Ukraine have sparked a global food crisis.
The Indian Meteorological Department warned this week that a heat dome, similar to
ell as the harvest of wheat at a time when climate change and the war in Ukraine have sparked a global food crisis.
The Indian Meteorological Department warned this week that a heat dome, similar to the one that sent temperatures soaring over the Pacific Northwest last year, had formed over the region. Millions of people in the areas of India and Pakistan where temperatures have remained in the triple digits are now at risk of illness and death from the heat.
“It’s become impossible to work after 10 o’clock in the morning,” Sunil Das, who works as a rickshaw puller on the outskirts of Delhi, told Quartz India.
The Big Lie is dead.
We’ve known for a long time, based on audits, investigations, and court reviews, that Donald Trump’s allegations about massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election are false. We also know, based on firsthand accounts from Trump’s former aides, attorneys, and political allies, that Trump’s advisers repeatedly told him the allegations were false. That leaves two possibilities: Either Trump is lying, or he’s trying to overthrow the government based on an impenetrable delusion. Take your pick.
Now we’re compiling similar evidence against Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s chief of staff during the election. He, too, knew Trump’s accusations were false. And instead of telling the truth, Meadows helped spread the lies.
The latest evidence comes from a batch of more than 2,000 text messages, revealed by CNN that were sent to or from Meadows between November 3, 2020, and January 20, 2021. Three of the exchanges are particularly instructive: one in early November of that year, another in late November, and a third in early December.
Get over it Scott
The Big Lie is dead.
and it's a FANTASTIC MORNING !!!
Fauci fraud quickly coming to light
election fraud exposures will soon no longer be banned
There's a crack in the big tech and state media wall !
Help is on the way !!!
1984 may soon be fiction again
libs are screaming
and getting crushed
Omidyar's Bul-shit hired a leftist hack from Slate:
https://www.thebulwark.com/the-most-damning-part-of-the-meadows-texts/
Give credit where credit is due alky, you fucking thief.
TD Patriot
@TD_Patriot
VIDEO:
https://gab.com/TD_Patriot/posts/108197981025526733
It would be a shame if everyone saw this and shared it. Joe Biden outright lied about Hunter Biden's laptop and blamed it on Russia. Trump was 100% right.
Pepperidge Farm remembers...
10% held by H for the Big Guy
and watch state media protect Biden
as well as the corrupt intellegence officers
Who organized that btw ???
any investigation yet?
definitely election interference
Leftist authoritarian assholes are fucking EVERYWHERE:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1518976955948822529
Tim Young
https://twitter.com/TimRunsHisMouth/status/1518935576212295681
How long until the default COVID propaganda tab is removed from Twitter trending?
the whole "trending" information was a farce and everyone knew it.
Twitters "descriptions" of trends was also a farce and everyone knew it except those being led by the nose
The descriptors are still a farce though what is "trending" does appear to closer reflect reality
but the left-wingers are still in control
hopefully just for a short while
same with their "fact" checkers
paid for by ultra left-wing liberals
who even write off their "contributions" against their taxes
amazing that Bill Gates was the worlds richest man when he "gave away" most of his wealth to the Bill Gates Foundation (since then added Melissa) leaving his with "just" around 20 billion. He still completely controls the foundation and his personal wealth has swelled to over 130 billion.
and still has managed to avoid paying taxes
The story of Fauci and Gates may be the 2nd greatest story ever told, if it actually gets told
evil
Alex Bruesewitz
VIDEO:
https://mobile.twitter.com/alexbruesewitz/status/1518413576561647621
January 6 will go down in history as a BIG LIE!
Shaney Boy
Insurrection my ass!!!
and the FBI still hasn't released all the video
or come clean on how many of the violent protestors were actually FBI agents/informers
would appear to be kind of important to know
unless you are a fascist regime with a narrative to protect
state media is silent
big tech is censoring...
DC courts are stacked
amazing that Bill Gates was the worlds richest man when he "gave away" most of his wealth to the Bill Gates Foundation (since then added Melissa) leaving his with "just" around 20 billion. He still completely controls the foundation and his personal wealth has swelled to over 130 billion.
Warren Buffett did the same thing. Bequeathed almost all of his fortune to the Gates Foundation. Warren & Bill made a big deal out of it at the time.
You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger tax hypocrite than Buffett, as public as he's been about his assistant paying a higher % of her income in taxes than he does.
Every single part of the leftist meltdown over Musk and Twitter is projection. They're terrified that we might now treat them like they treat us. We won't, because we're not ideological sociopaths like they are.
https://twitter.com/stephenkruiser/status/1519013728292798464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1519013728292798464%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fcolumns%2Fstephen-kruiser%2F2022%2F04%2F27%2Fthe-morning-briefing-lib-twitter-tantrum-day-2-send-fainting-couches-and-diapers-n1593171
Fauci Says the U.S. Is Out of the Pandemic Phase
April 27, 2022 at 8:36 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 28 Comments
Dr. Anthony Fauci said that the United States is finally “out of the pandemic phase,” the Washington Post reports.
“While infections are still spreading — with an average of over 50,000 new cases per day as of Tuesday — the country is far from the peaks of the pandemic, when daily counts surpassed 1 million. Restrictions, too, are easing as many Americans appear to be putting the pandemic behind them.”
Said Fauci: “We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase.”
He added that the coronavirus will not be eradicated, but can be handled if its level of spread is kept “very low” and people are “intermittently” vaccinated.
_________
He has always sought to be cautious, frank, and truthful about the virus situation.
Unlike TRUMP.
How Elon Musk’s Deal for Twitter Could Still Unravel
April 27, 2022 at 9:09 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 27 Comments
Matt Levine: “I guess it is worth saying that Elon Musk does not own Twitter Inc. He did not buy Twitter Inc. yesterday for $54.20 per share in cash. He did sign an agreement yesterday to buy Twitter for $54.20 in cash. That is a big step! It means that he probably will end up owning Twitter within a few months or so. (The deal ‘is expected to close in 2022’; it might take up to six months.) But he does not own it yet.”
LOTs of good stuff at politicalwire.com this morning for those who want truth, not propaganda.
The United States and our allies will not allow Russia to be able to invade any other country forever.
Russian President Vladimir Putin protested to Kremlin visitors Monday that his adversaries were trying to “win on the battlefield” and “destroy Russia from within.” For once, he wasn’t just being paranoid.
Western resolve is hardening in the Ukraine war. For months, the Biden administration beseeched Putin to find an “exit ramp” from the confrontation. Now, the United States’ openly stated goal is to help Ukraine beat Russia and to disable Putin’s war machine so that it won’t threaten neighbors in the future.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a man careful with his words, stated it plainly Monday after a trip to Kyiv to bolster Ukraine’s resistance: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” Austin repeated that message Tuesday after talks with NATO allies in Germany.
Putin is claiming the lies told about Russian atrocities near Kiyv caused him to call off peace negotiations.
I guess the Ukrainians murdered their own people and put them in mass graves to make the Russians look bad.
see politicalwire.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/26/revised-american-strategy-on-ukraine-seeks-to-weaken-russia/
He is getting more paranoid as his countrymen are dying by the thousands.
https://www.thebulwark.com/the-most-damning-part-of-the-meadows-texts/
This is how the people of Ukraine πΊπ¦ recover from the Russian invasion.
Clearing booby traps and reopening shops: Irpin rebuilds after Russians leave
The shattered homes of this formerly comfortable suburb of Kyiv offer a glimpse of what besieged cities in Ukraine's east and south may now be experiencing.
Engineers examine the destroyed bridge over the Irpin River in Irpin, Ukraine, on Thursday in preparation to build a new one.Brendan Hoffman for NBC News
IRPIN, Ukraine — An explosives specialist from the Ukrainian military spent an hour crawling on the floor of Andriy Rhyzenko’s bedroom in search of Russian booby traps, combing through his belongings scattered wall-to-wall by occupying forces.
Rhyzenko is a retired Ukrainian naval captain who had trained with NATO forces and in the United States. He and his wife fled Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv that was demolished by the Russians’ assault, in the late afternoon on Feb. 24 — the first day of the war.
His friends in the U.S. government believed he could be a potential Russian target, he said. That remained a concern this past weekend as he returned home and the search for Russian explosives began. One booby trap was recovered in a building across the street, designed to blow when the electricity was switched back on, but Rhyzenko’s home appeared to be safe based on the expert’s search.
Andriy Rhyzhenko, a retired Ukrainian navy officer, looks at his bedroom Thursday after it was ransacked by Russian soldiers in Irpin. He hadn't cleaned up the mess because of concerns that it was booby-trapped and was waiting for Ukrainian military experts to clear it.Brendan Hoffman for NBC News
“It’s a bit of shock to see it looted and very emotional,” he said, noting that he bought this home upon selling his parents' house in Crimea, after Russia illegally seized the territory in 2014. “It is awful, but it’s not as bad as some people.”
Many like Rhyzenko are now returning to areas outside Kyiv that were occupied by Russian forces to find out what’s left of their homes, which bear clear evidence of the violence that took place here.
Seventy-one percent of Irpin was damaged by bullets, missiles, explosives and shells under Russian attack and occupation, Mayor Oleksandr Markushyn said earlier this month, citing United Nations satellite imagery. More than 1,060 buildings that included housing and social infrastructure — including four schools and three health care centers — were damaged.
Residents are now contending with this formerly comfortable suburb’s new status as a former battlefield. What the world sees here now may be a glimpse of what cities like Kharkiv, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kramatorsk and Donetsk in the country’s east and south are going through as they still suffer under continued Russian fire and shelling.
While Russian attacks on this country carry on and thousands of displaced Ukrainians continue to flee homes destroyed in this invasion, residents here face the quiet trauma after a disaster. As they work to pick up the pieces in Irpin, they hope that the Kremlin’s ambitions don’t call for further military attacks.
For now, residents are pushing for stores to reopen and for utilities to get back online. They are even having to fix holes that Russians cut into fences and garages to create shooting positions. And all this is taking place amid craters left by Russian bombs, apartment buildings that are nothing more than burnt shells, and houses that are crumbling bits of cinderblock and brick.
_____
The Biden administration promist support like we did after the Second World War. π
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/clearing-booby-traps-reopening-shops-irpin-rebuilds-russians-leave-rcna25877
Nasdaq gives up early gains as it attempts comeback from worst rout since 2020
PUBLISHED TUE, APR 26 20226:04 PM EDTUPDATED 4 MIN AGO
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Hannah Miao
@HANNAHMIAO_
Sarah Min
@_SARAHMIN
U.S. stocks struggled Wednesday, a day after the Nasdaq Composite posted a new low for the year, amid a tech-led sell-off in April.
The Nasdaq Composite was little changed, after being up more than 1% at its highs earlier in the day. The index is coming off its biggest daily loss since September 2020. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was near flat. The S&P 500 rose 0.2%.
The United States is finally “out of the full-blown explosive pandemic phase” that has led to nearly a 1 million deaths from covid-19 and more than two years of suffering and hardship, Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said Wednesday.
“We’re really in a transitional phase, from a deceleration of the numbers into hopefully a more controlled phase and endemicity,” Fauci told The Washington Post.
Fauci’s comments came a day after he told PBS’s “NewsHour” that he believed the country is “out of the pandemic phase,” and he expanded on, and clarified, that view Wednesday, making clear that the pandemic is not over and the United States could still see an increase in coronavirus infections. But the virus is no longer causing the level of hospitalization and death seen in this country in previous waves of infection.
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