I went back and forth over whether to share this email from TPM Reader ME. But I decided to do so because I think he focuses our attention on aspects of the Ukraine war which aren’t at the top of the headlines but are central to how this conflict turns out and how the conflict plays out beyond Ukraine’s borders. I confess that while I certainly knew how Ukraine is the “breadbasket of Russia” or the “breadbasket of Europe” I didn’t appreciate how central Ukrainian grain production remains in our globalized 21st century world when so many regions of the world have been opened to mechanized agriculture and the trade systems that move grain production worldwide.

It was only a matter of time. A candidate for Governor in Colorado has a proposal: create an in-state electoral college that will systematically over-weight rural votes and thus make it almost impossible for a Republican not to win the governorship as well as other statewide offices. Basically, counties take the place of states and Colorado has a ton of rural counties where very few people live. From what I can tell, he’s not the most likely nominee. But he won the top spot on the primary ballot at the state convention. So he’s not some random gadfly either. In any case, Gov. Jared Polis is popular and seems like a shoe-in for reelection. But this seems like the leading edge of the broader trend.

Some clarification from TPM Reader RM on nasal vaccines and their utility.

I just thought I would add to your statement that nasal vaccines “likely offer a different level or kind of immunity”.  This is totally correct, but I would comment on some of the biology that underlies that statement. 

You can see some of the headlines from last night’s primaries here on the front page of TPM. I wanted to share a couple other general observations.

To me the most striking thing about last night was how much same-day voting, as opposed to early or mail-in voting, has become a central feature of partisan identity for Trumpy Republicans. If you’re for Trump, you vote in person on Election Day. The other stuff is all suspect. The fairly unique dynamics of the 2020 election and its Big Lie aftermath have ossified into doctrines.

Some of you likely have had similar experiences or know people who have. I continue to hear from people who got COVID, got fairly sick, then took the main antiviral, Paxlovid, and basically within a day or so went from bad flu to mild cold at worst. I just heard another story like this from a reader. To be clear, these weren’t people who were hospitalized. But the people who I’m talking about were, either because of age or health conditions, people who had heightened vulnerability to COVID. They were getting sick and then they got almost totally better very quickly. Probably most or all of them would have been fine. And in many cases they were just saved a miserable week or two. But as we know, a bad case of COVID can degenerate quickly.

For Democrats to survive the 2022 midterm with their majorities intact they must walk a very, very narrow tightrope. They also need a number of things that are mostly out of their control to fall into place. One of those things is the hope that you will see some replay of what happened in 2010 and 2012. The first was an extremely good year for Republicans. The second was just so-so — Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama after all. But it should have been a decent year for Senate Republicans since Democrats were defending their class of 2006, when they’d won Senate seats basically everywhere. In both years Republicans failed to win the Senate even though by rights they really should have. They just kept nominating crankish and extreme candidates in races that should have been winnable. That’s why there’s a Senator Chris Coons (“I’m not a witch”). That’s why Claire McCaskill (“Legitimate rape”) had one more term in the Senate. There are a bunch of other examples.

At some point around the new year I switched from obsessively checking my curated COVID experts Twitter list to obsessively checking my two newly curated Ukraine crisis Twitter lists (Ukraine Crisis and Ukraine military experts). Such is life.

This morning I was browsing through the COVID list and I found my way to this post by Eric Topol. Topol is a physician generalist who heads up a biomedical institute at the Scripps Research Center in California. He’s not an epidemiologist or virologist. But COVID has been his focus since the beginning of the pandemic. The post is entitled The Covid Capitulation. And it is part of that genre of COVID writing in which a COVID expert bemoans the fact that the whole country has decided the epidemic is over when in fact it’s clearly not.

Here’s a fascinating and humorous (for reasons I’ll explain presently) quick segment from Russian TV. One of the panelists is a Russian military affairs commentator who goes completely rogue and starts setting forth the dire strategic picture Russia faces — poor morale, an almost unlimited supply of soldiers in Ukraine, arms pouring in from Europe and the United States, geopolitical isolation.

The other panelists take potshots at his reasoning but to little real effect.

But the best part is about halfway through he says, no, not even Rand Paul can save us. Really! He doesn’t refer to Paul by name but he notes that the Lend-Lease type program is finally getting underway, marrying unlimited troops with unlimited weaponry “and even the resistance of a single senator will be overcome quickly.” That single senator is Rand Paul, who he is so far blocking passage of the bill.

Video after the jump …

We all get stuck in our ways. And over time we all learn the peculiarities of how our brains function. Relatively early in my writing career I realized that I write in a way that is different from how most people do it. I don’t actually write. Not precisely. What I do is speak in my head and basically transcribe the sounds. This sometimes leaves funny artifacts in my writing. Like many who write fast and online I have no shortage of missing words or typos, “theirs” that should be “theres” and vice versa. But that’s not what I mean. Sometimes I will actually include words which sound vaguely similar to the intended word but are not homonyms and are totally different words. They just create a similar set of sounds if you run them together in a spoken sentence. Read English sentences they can read like gibberish. but if you speak them quickly aloud the meaning will often be clear.

People will sometimes point out that I’m clearly using transcription software that is screwing up. But in fact I’ve never used transcription software in my life. My brain is just wired in this particular way. There actually is transcribing. But I’m the one doing it.

According to Susquehanna Polling & Research, a GOP polling firm, the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania is now a dead heat between Trump endorsed TV Doctor Mehmet Oz (28%) and outsider candidate Kathy Barnette (27%), with the late-breaking deciders favoring Barnette.