January 2023 in review

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PUTIN’S WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST UKRAINE

Prayers for Soledar: ‘The fate of a devastated salt-mining town in eastern Ukraine hung in the balance Wednesday in one of the bloodiest battles of Russia’s invasion, while Ukraine’s unflagging resistance and other challenges prompted Moscow to shake up its military leadership again.’ {AP 1/12}

Barbarians: ‘Russia unleashed a major missile attack on Ukraine on Saturday, smashing a nine-storey apartment block in the city of Dnipro, killing at least five people and striking vital energy facilities, officials said.’ {Reuters 1/14}

Putin’s propagandists ramp up their venom against military leaders after Ukrainian missile attack on Russian invaders stationed in Makiivka kills upwards of 400. {BBC 1/03}

Joint op-ed by Condoleeza Rice and Robert Gates warns that Putin is deeply committed to his ‘messianic mission’ of destroying Ukraine, and is counting on international support for Ukraine to eventually ‘erode and fracture.’ {WaPo 1/07}

Sen. Angus King: Ending U.S. aid to Ukraine would be a historic mistake. {AP 1/09}

Former Wagner mercenary group commander flees Russia to seek asylum in Norway - Andrei Medvedev states ‘(w)e were just thrown to fight like cannon fodder,’ and any conscripted prisoners who refused to fight were beaten or killed. {CNN 1/16}

President Zelensky honors those who were killed in deadly helicopter crash in Kyiv. {AP 1/21}

Sergio Lima/AFP

GEOPOLITICS & WORLD NEWS

January 6-style coup attempt by Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil. {AP 1/08}

A look at how Steve Bannon - somehow still a free man while appealing his conviction of contempt of Congress - and Trump’s propagandists in the United States manufactured the presidential palace riot/coup attempt in Brazil. {BBC 1/09}

Irish nationalists protest in Ballymun, Dublin, against Ukrainians and other refugees - Quote from the appalled Irish Minister of Housing: ‘We know from our own history what it’s like to be people who have had to leave our own shores due to oppression, due to war, due to famine.’ {Irish Times 1/09}

Over a million protest on streets of Paris to protest Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 - The French people are in the streets, while a demoralized, thoroughly gas lit American public largely remains silent (and/or in deep denial) as politicians diligently work to eliminate Social Security and Medicare. {AP 1/19}

Prince Harry draws heavy criticism for revealing in memoir that he killed twenty-five Taliban fighters while in the Royal Army, raising fears that his comments may ‘incite some people to attempt an attack on British soldiers anywhere in the world.’ {Sky News 1/06} 

Israel under Netanyahu’s new coalition of extremists - ‘Each day brings developments that were inconceivable a short while ago. No, it’s not the end of Israeli democracy. But it is the end of an Israeli consensus about what is and is not permissible in a democracy—and once the rules are no longer agreed on, political chaos is not far away. Israel has never been in such a place before.’ {Hillel Halkin 1/05}

‘It was obvious that this would come. In non-democratic countries, the leadership always threatens to arrest opposition leaders.’ Open talk of civil war in Israel as far-right lawmaker in Netanyahu’s governing coalition calls for the arrest of Lapid, Gantz, and others on grounds of ‘treason.’ {Times of Israel 1/10}

‘More than 30 graves at a historic Christian cemetery in Jerusalem were found toppled and vandalized, the diocese said Wednesday, jolting the Christian minority in the contested city.’ {AP 1/04}

‘A court in Romania’s capital Bucharest has upheld the 30-day arrest of divisive social media personality and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate on charges of organized crime, human trafficking and rape, an official said late Tuesday.’ {AP 1/10}

Japanese leaders discuss taking ‘measures of unprecedented levels’ to reverse birthrate decline. {Japan Times 1/19}

CNN

POLITICAL S**TSHOW IN #MURICA

Friends, please do not waste your time arguing with any Trumper. They do not care if the country around them burns, just so long as their resentments are being heard and the people they hate are being hurt. It truly is that simple: I spent too much time over the past seven years trying to understand these people and their reasoning, and my final conclusion is they hate the rest of us more than they value even their own lives. Therefore, they will believe any theory no matter how absurd, and follow a leader - no matter how corrupt, ill-mannered, and poorly spoken he is - who tells them what they want to hear, to the end of the earth. This is not going to end well, these people are petulant children throwing the temper-tantrum of all-time. At this point, there can be no other explanation for this absurdity. No matter what President Biden does, they are going to be invested in tearing him down at every opportunity, so do not even entertain any of their arguments about anything. Do not engage, it’s not worth the headache. The more they are relegated to their own echo chamber, the safer the rest of us will be. But that can only happen if everyone else stops taking the bait.

Financial armageddon imminent as Janet Yellen announces the U.S. will hit its debt limit, and the House GOP licks its lips in anticipation of purposefully crashing the economy - Any recession, or worse, that results from this is, say, 75% to 80% the fault of Republican voters. For being so stupid as to elect those who outright vowed to shut down the government and play games with the debt ceiling. Blood is on their hands, but will they ever be held accountable for their stupidity and malevolence? No, citizens are always considered collectively infallible, but the reality is the opposite. This country will never be quite as wonderful a place to live as it proclaims itself to be so long as millions upon millions of these yahoos are among us. Civil war is coming. {AP 1/13}

On the first day of the new term, the U.S. House of Representatives adjourns for the day after three failed attempts at electing a Speaker - A historic embarrassment for Congress, and the Republican Party in particular. So happy I am not obligated, as every Republican and/or right-wing partisan in America is at the moment, to have to try and spin this disaster. Or any of their multitude of disasters. {AP 1/03}

Republicans nearly come to blows with each other, but finally elect their precious Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House on the 15th ballot in post-Midnight vote - A f**king disgrace this GOP is. They cannot govern, and even their own supporters have no choice but to acknowledge as such. Excerpt: ‘McCarthy strode to the back of the chamber to confront Republican Matt Gaetz, sitting with Lauren Boebert and other holdouts. Fingers were pointed, words exchanged and violence apparently just averted. At one point, Republican Mike Rogers of Alabama started to charge toward Gaetz before another Republican, Richard Hudson, physically pulled him back. “Stay civil!” someone shouted. Order restored, the Republicans fell in line to give McCarthy the post he had fought so hard to gain.’ {AP 1/07}

The gutless GOP - ‘Time and again, we’ve seen a vocal minority within the Republican conference exert an inordinate amount of influence over the majority. Each time, with each conflict, the response from the Republican leadership was to back down or fold. That reflex to pander to the most extreme voices within their party is what allowed President Trump to hijack it.’ {Kurt Bardella 1/03}

‘(I)t seems like the holdouts do not understand the dire consequences of default.’ Cuts to Social Security and Medicare looking more likely under the new GOP House - Senior citizens and disabled folks who voted Republican this cycle seemingly have a death wish. The truth is, however, they are all completely blind to their party’s intentions toward SS/Medicare. Pure bigotry and resentment are the only things that drive them. After 2016, that sad fact can no longer be denied. Most of the true believers are willing to suffer themselves if it means bringing suffering to those in this society they hate. Logic has nothing to do with their thinking, so appeals to saving Social Security and Medicare are never going to sway them; even if they are living out of a cardboard box and eating cat food to survive. The GOP is emboldened and no longer timid about crossing that ‘third rail’ of destroying Social Security and Medicare, and I believe they are going to succeed in doing so. Along with everything else around us. {Insider 1/12}

‘House Republicans are making clear that they intend to seek cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare with their new majority in the 118th Congress.’ {Huffington Post 1/09}

The U.S. has become ‘an exporter of cultural and political anxieties. The world seems eager to engage in the kind of societal conflicts that nowadays divide the United States’ - In other words, be very afraid for the future of this planet. {Moisés Naím 1/13}

‘Sobering’ report shows how deeply committed the GOP and its base have become to silencing their appointed enemies - One political scientist notes: ‘“(T)he core goal shared by all factions of the Republican conference is to gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security" — all ideas that are notorious losers at the ballot box. Unable to persuade voters to back their policy preferences, he argues, Republicans are increasingly looking for ways to enact their agenda outside of democratic means.’ {Salon 1/12}

‘The Supreme Court said Thursday an eight-month investigation that included more than 120 interviews and revealed shortcomings in how sensitive documents are secured has failed to find who leaked a draft of the court’s opinion overturning abortion rights.’ - It must have been purposely leaked by the controlling theocratic wing that has essentially declared holy war on secular America. Leaked, I believe, in order to have a chilling effect. Cruelty is the point. {AP 1/19}

GOP efforts to restrict mail-in ballots anger military families - Way to piss off a constituency that was widely assumed by most to be part of your base up to now. {AP 1/14}

Mona Charen: The normalization of Marjorie Taylor Greene - The GOP went down a slippery slope by falling behind Trump in 2016, and there is no return. Either this nationalist populist cancer festers or it is eradicated, but the Republican Party is forever tarnished and is never to be trusted again. {The Bulwark 1/10}

All just a ‘Democratic hoax,’ he said: ‘A former senior aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was convicted Thursday after being found guilty of helping to funnel illegal foreign campaign contributions from a Russian national into former President Trump's 2016 campaign.’ {Axios 1/03}

‘George Santos, the freshman Republican congressman from New York who lied about his biography, has deeper ties than previously known to a businessman who cultivated close links with a onetime Trump confidant and who is the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch’ - The Grand Ole Putinists sat back and did nothing when it was revealed this jerk lied about his entire background, and will do nothing now. ‘Unfit to govern’ does not even scratch the surface of how rotten today’s Republican Party is. Resign now, you son of a bitch. {WaPo 1/16}

AG Garland announces he is appointing a special council to investigate Biden classified records - The top law enforcement officer in the nation is too much of a sissy to charge Trump, but has no problem harassing his own boss over this foolishness? Enough of this bulls**t: Mr. President, fire Merrick Garland, now! {CNBC 1/12}

More classified documents found by lawyers at President Biden’s home - Definitely not Mr. Biden’s finest hour, but I’ll be damned if his detractors - namely, the mainstream news media, the GOP, #Cult45, the hard-left, the Russians, perhaps his own AG, et al - get away with destroying this man while continuing to prop up the most corrupt and malevolent president in U.S. history, Donald Trump. Not happening, a**holes. {AP 1/14}

Thirteen hours to find six documents? FBI searches President Biden’s Delaware home - Sorry, #Cult45, nothing is going to come of this, no matter how hard the president’s enemies try. I don’t deny this is disappointing, though. {BBC 1/21}

The National Archives requests that all former presidents and VPs check their records for potentially misplaced classified documents. {AP 1/26}

President Biden to migrants seeking to enter the United States: ‘Do not, do not just show up at the border. Stay where you are and apply legally from there’ - Amen. Just because the man does not want to resort to gutter racism and inhumane measures to solve this ‘crisis’ (if that is the accurate word) does not mean he is soft on border security. To his detractors, it does not matter what the president does or what the facts are, they will just keep shouting the same old lines and casting the same aspersions. All the while pretending that their orange god actually did anything substantial during his time in office; apart from separating families, imprisoning children, and building about 80 miles of fencing - and not even particularly effective fencing - along a border that is nearly 2,000 miles long. {AP 1/05}

‘Since the court moved sharply to the right with Donald Trump’s appointment of three new justices, its default position has been to allow executions to proceed even in cases where serious constitutional issues are at stake’ - Whatever one feels about capital punishment - in extreme cases, I am for it - know that it has been a defining feature of every theocracy or theocratic-leaning society in history. {The Guardian 1/12}

‘Florida lawmakers will move to increase state control of Walt Disney World's private government, according to a notice published Friday, the latest development in a feud over what law critics have dubbed "Don't Say Gay."’ {CBS News 1/07}

Getting tired of this crap: ‘Law enforcement officials swarmed and entered a white van Sunday afternoon that officials suspect was driven by a gunman who opened fire on a Southern California ballroom dance studio, killing 10 people and wounding 10 more.’ {AP 1/22}

FAA grounds all flights across America due to a computer system glitch - A f**king outrage. Nobody can do anything right anymore, everything is broken, everybody is stupid. Am absolutely bulls**t just learning of this, so I can only imagine how those stuck in airports for however long must be feeling. We're becoming a Third World s**thole. A reflection of the orange a**hole that led this nation to ruin from 2016 to 2020; we still haven't even scratched the surface of the damage that has been done to our psyches, our infrastructure, economy, national security, foreign relations, should I go on? Gross incompetence plagues #Murica. By and large, the American people are a lost cause now. Unacceptable. {Sky News 1/11}

‘Planes were stuck on the ground for hours across the United States on Wednesday, leading to thousands of canceled and delayed flights after a government system used to give pilots safety and other information broke down overnight.’ {AP 1/11}

‘Shortages of computer chips and other parts continued to hobble the U.S. auto industry last year, contributing to vehicle sales dropping 8% from 2021 to their lowest level in more than a decade.’ {AP 1/04}

Two criminals charged with attacking power substation near Tacoma, WA, told police they knocked out power so they could rob an unspecified business without being detected. {AP 1/03}

The populist freak-out of the week (or one of their freak-outs, at least): No, you gullible fools, the Biden administration is not moving to ban gas stoves and specifically stated as much. {Politico 1/14}

Elon Musk breaks Guinness world record for the largest loss of personal fortune in one year - At least $165 billion. A heavy price to pay for the privilege of declaring himself king of the Internet trolls. {BBC 1/11}

Elon Musk gets his $8.00 a month from prominent Taliban figures now displaying the useless ‘blue check’ on their Twitter profiles. {BBC 1/16}

COVID-19 & OTHER HEALTH NEWS

‘A leading QAnon promoter who urged both her followers and strangers she passed on the street not to take the COVID vaccine died Thursday of the coronavirus, making her just the latest vaccine opponent killed by the disease.’ {Daily Beast 1/07}

‘Patients, most of them elderly, are lying on stretchers in hallways and taking oxygen while sitting in wheelchairs as COVID-19 surges in China’s capital Beijing.’ {AP 1/04}

COVID misinformation/disinformation proliferates online following NFL safety Damar Hamlin’s on-field collapse - Especially on Twitter, a direct result of Elon Musk lifting the company’s COVID misinfo policy. {WaPo 1/03}

‘Immunization rates for measles, polio and other diseases once again dropped among kindergartners last school year, a trend public health officials warn puts kids at risk for vaccine-preventable diseases.’ {USA Today 1/12}

‘The U.S. is poised to make COVID-19 vaccinations more like a yearly flu shot, a major shift in strategy despite a long list of questions about how to best protect against a still rapidly mutating virus.’ {AP 1/26}

‘The time has come for a major reset at the CDC.’ {WaPo editorial board 1/26}

CLIMATE CHANGE

Atmospheric river: Extreme weather ravages California, 90% of the state under flood watch - After all these years of natural disasters - to say nothing of political and social disasters - it is patently obvious that the two glorified warm weather havens, Florida and California, are actually glorified hell holes. All due respect to residents, but maybe you folks ought to consider leaving these doomed places while it is still possible to do so. #JustSaying. {Axios 1/10}

Anecdotes of economic, societal, and climate-related collapse from across the United States and elsewhere - Some of these are quite alarming. Most people are in denial, but I sense strongly they know in their guts that everything is going wrong. {Reddit 1/16}

Citing the need to conserve water for its own residents, the Arizona city of Scottsdale turns off water supplies for folks in an outlying, unincorporated area. {NYT 1/16}

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

‘A new U.S. law has eliminated the requirement that drugs in development must undergo testing in animals before being given to participants in human trials.’ {NPR 1/12}

LauncherOne: What would have been the first-ever satellite launch from Western Europe is foiled by an ‘anomaly.’ {Sky News 1/10}

Predictions for 2023, from 1923 - A four-hour workday is a pipe dream, cancer has not been eradicated, ugly people still exist, and nobody is living to be 300 years-old. {NPR 1/04}

Robert Knight Archive

MISC.

Jeff Beck, without question one of the greatest guitar players of all-time, dies at 78 - Well, if this isn’t a kick in the gut. Rest in peace, good sir, and thank you. {Rolling Stone 1/11}

Founding Yardbirds lead guitarist - before Clapton, Beck, and Page - Anthony ‘Top’ Topham passes at 75, just two weeks after Jeff Beck left us - A sad time for all Yardbirds fans. Rest in Peace. {Irish Times 1/25}

Unholy idiots: Pink Floyd announces 50th anniversary box set celebrating ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ and certain, bigoted fools cry foul over the rainbow prism that has been a part of that record’s cover design the entire time. {NME 1/21}

Luciano Viti/Getty Images

A true American original: Rest in Peace, David Crosby. {Variety 1/19}

Congratulations to Scott Rolen on being elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame - An amazing achievement for an amazing player, I couldn’t be happier than I am right now. And also to Fred McGriff, very deserving. {CBS Sports 1/24}

‘Jill Biden’ s advocacy for curing cancer didn’t start with her son’s death in 2015 from brain cancer. It began decades earlier, long before she came into the national spotlight, and could now be further energized by her own brush with a common form of skin cancer.’ {AP 1/16}

IMDB

Rest in Peace, Gina Lollobrigida - Italian film actress of the 1950s and 60s dies at age 95. {BBC 1/16}

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