President Joe Biden will deliver his first official state of the union Tuesday night, with a House chamber full and masks optional.
It’ll be an attempt to energize voters as the midterms loom, and to balance his domestic economic priorities with remarks on Russia’s continued attack on Ukraine.
Planned protests, most notably trucker convoys mimicking those in Canada, seem to have fizzled out somewhat. The Capitol building is still ringed in protective fencing “out of an abundance of caution,” according to Capitol Police.
Over the years, Pat Robertson and other fringe evangelicals and non-serious Christian scholars have become known for exegesis-ing any and all current news events into some sort of Biblical End Time prophesy. For some, COVID vaccines are the “Mark of the Beast.” For others, President Obama was the anti-Christ. (Trump got that distinction, too). The legalization of gay marriage in the U.S. was believed to be a signal that some hybrid Sodom and Gomorrah/rapture-induction event was imminent.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Here’s Why Some Evangelicals Think Putin’s War Is The Beginning Of The End Times” →
There’s one point I want to re-emphasize though it may sound a discordant note. In wartime communications even the good guys lie. Indeed, there’s at least some argument that wartime deception is a component of warfare itself. But the point is, governments and armies lie — especially when their backs are against the wall. The chaos and confusion of war also create erroneous reports. Sometimes the two intertwine. So while most of the claims we see coming out of the Russian side are downright Orwellian, we shouldn’t assume that all the claims we’re hearing from the Ukrainian side will bear out.
Continue reading “Retain a Healthy Skepticism” →
Four elected Republican politicians — including two U.S. representatives, a state senator, and the lieutenant governor of Idaho — spoke at a white nationalist conference Friday night, further strengthening the party’s ties to the racist right.
Continue reading “Multiple High-Profile Republicans Spoke At A White Nationalist Conference. Party Leadership Shrugs.” →
After Russia’s initial push to quickly take Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities failed, the invasion force seems to have settled on a new strategy involving heavy attacks on Ukrainian centers of resistance.
It’s an approach that, so far, has been hitting both civilian and military targets. Reports say was a Russian cruise missile struck Kharkiv’s central administrative building on Tuesday, as the city faced barrages of artillery and rocket bombardment in residential areas and on Ukrainian military positions.
Satellite images show a nearly forty-mile long convoy of Russian armored vehicles and equipment on the northern highway that runs from Belarus to Kyiv. Ukrainian defenders have managed to hold back assaults on the capital and on Kharkiv in recent days, but have lost ground as Russian troops encircle the southern city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, and reportedly stormed the central city of Kherson early Tuesday morning.
With sanctions imposed, Russia is now reacting. On Tuesday, it banned foreign companies from exiting investments in Russian enterprises. We’ll be following along throughout the day as the situation develops.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) aggressively countered Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) 11-point plan Tuesday as Democrats continue to hammer the party for its tax proposal.
Continue reading “McConnell Forced To Strongly Contradict Rick Scott’s Wacky GOP Agenda Amid Criticisms” →
Texas officials have already begun investigating parents of transgender children following Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) abrupt directive against care for trans youth in the state last week. And a parent who works for the state agency carrying out the governor’s order — and one of the first parents in the state targeted by an anti-trans rights probe — is waging a legal battle against it.
Continue reading “Abbott Sued For Ordering Investigations Of Parents With Transgender Children” →
The congressional Jan. 6 Committee on Tuesday subpoenaed several new witnesses in its probe of the Capitol attack, including a prominent Republican lawyer who advised Donald Trump during his effort to steal a second term, and a One America News Network anchor who worked on the side for Rudy Giuliani.
Continue reading “Jan. 6 Committee Subpoenas Trump Adviser Cleta Mitchell, OAN Anchor Christina Bobb” →
Hours after saying that “psychological special operations” based in Kyiv would be under attack, Russia appears to have launched a missile strike on Kyiv’s main TV tower.
Continue reading “Russia Bombs Kyiv TV Tower After Declaring That Ukrainian ‘Information Attacks’ Are In Crosshairs” →
Twitter is chock full of hyperbole, ignorance and deception. But one of its special qualities is that if you take some care and follow some basic rules you can find people who you can actually learn quite a lot from. They’re out there. And during chaotic and fast-moving news events you can learn a lot from them. One of those people is Michael Kofman, who is one of the people on my list of people to follow to keep track of developments in the Ukraine Crisis. Among other things he’s the Director of the Russia Studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses, the main Navy/Marines think tank in Washington, DC. His opinions may be right or wrong. But given the Navy’s/Marine Corps’ interest in keeping tabs on the Russian military we can be confident he’s highly knowledgable about that topic specifically. I’ve been following his commentary over the last week or so and yesterday he posted a lengthy Twitter thread about what we’ve seen over the last three days.
Continue reading “Why Have Russian Forces Underperformed in Their Opening Offensive?” →
