After weeks of traipsing to various Senate offices to meet lawmakers one-on-one, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday for the start of a multi-day hearing marathon.
Day one should be relatively low-key — committee members, individuals introducing Jackson and Jackson herself will deliver opening statements. The speeches may provide a roadmap of where lawmakers intend to go in the next couple days of questioning.
This is hard to make sense of. But let me give you a brief update. A short time ago the Russian paper Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article which cited official Russian military numbers of killed in action in Ukraine as 9,861. That is a mind-blowing number. In one month Russia would have lost 2/3rds of the soldiers it lost in a decade in Afghanistan. But then a very short time later the article was pulled and replaced by a 404 error. Then it was reposted without any numbers.
What lends some credibility to these numbers is that that is in the ballpark of many Western estimates for Russian fatalities. I’ve been watching expert Russia watchers debate this in real time on Twitter and they seem to disagree on whether this was a real number that was rapidly pulled or whether it was just a complete goof, a typo.
From the outset of the Ukraine Crisis, Ukraine’s relationship with Europe and potential integration into Europe via the European Union has been a, perhaps the, cornerstone issue. I got to thinking about this over the weekend since almost every European language originated in the country we now call Ukraine. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t argue that what I’m describing has any particular relevance to the current crisis. But it’s a fascinating prism through which we can look at our connections to the distant past. The language which I am now writing and which you are now reading originated on the steppeland just north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. In other words, in the region we now call Ukraine and some adjoining parts of Russia and perhaps Romania. This is true of English — a loose hodgepodge language — but not only English. All European languages except Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and Basque start there. (Maltese, an official EU language, is derived from Arabic, a Semitic language. Turkish is an Altaic language so it depends what you count as “Europe.”) And not just Europe. This is also the origin point for the languages of Iran, much of Central Asia and northern India (including Hindi and Urdu). This is not to mention the Spanish, Portuguese and French that are spoken in the Western Hemisphere outside of Anglophone Canada and the United States.
Continue reading “Digging Into the Archeology of Language”Senate candidate Rep. Mo Brooks’ (R-AL) coveted Trump endorsement is on the rocks – and he knows it.
Continue reading “Mo Brooks Puts Out Ad Bashing McConnell As Trump Mulls Yanking Endorsement”I mentioned last week that a significant part of high energy prices which have fueled inflation have been driven by the refusal of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies to increase supply and moderate prices. As we discussed last week, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, has been fairly open about the fact that he sees no urgency about cooling oil prices as long as the U.S. government has not provided him with immunity for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi or total support for its war in Yemen.
Just this morning, the Saudi Foreign Ministry put out more of what amount to threats if the U.S. doesn’t back its war in Yemen. From Al Arabiya …
Continue reading “Why Do We Still Support the Saudis?”I mentioned a few days ago that one of the most promising innovations of the COVID pandemic in the U.S. is the use of wastewater analysis to predict the ebbs and flows of pandemic waves. The technology isn’t new — it’s just testing sewage water. It’s not that no one had thought about it or done it before. But the society-wide crisis of the COVID pandemic has demonstrated its utility and potential in dramatically new ways. So two thoughts: We’ve seen the potential of these approaches already. Mandates and other interventions are now maniacally polarized. But the federal government should be using this strategy to create a simple and easy to understand forecasts of COVID prevalence. I knew that cases were likely to rise a week ago because I follow wastewater analysis trends and also follow patterns around the world. But it shouldn’t be that hard. It should be available in something like a weather forecast, done in a systematic fashion, made available to the public through all the logical channels. It could and should be like weather reports or the daily and weekly allergy forecasts you can find online.
Continue reading “A Random Thought On COVID and the Future”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
The Supreme Court announced on Sunday that Justice Clarence Thomas was admitted to Sibley Memorial Hospital in D.C. over “flu-like symptoms” on Friday, and has been diagnosed with an infection.
The Senate’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, Biden’s pick to replace outgoing Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, are kicking off today.
We’ve already gotten a pretty good idea of how Republican senators plan to oppose Jackson’s appointment, even though it’s all but guaranteed that she’ll be confirmed:
The Kremlin gave Ukraine an ultimatum demanding that its forces give up Mariupol, a key port city at the center of Russian bombardment, by 5 a.m. Moscow time Monday, a demand the Ukrainians flatly refused.
The President will be traveling to Warsaw, Poland on Friday to hold a bilateral meeting with President Andrzej Duda to discuss Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
A member of the team that planned the pro-Trump Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse that preceded the Capitol attack told Rolling Stone that he overhead rally organizer Kylie Kremer’s call on speakerphone between then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson in which they discussed plans for a march to the Capitol.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) isn’t giving up his seat even in the face of an ongoing sex trafficking investigation: On Saturday, the GOP congressman announced that he will be running for reelection in this year’s midterms.
NBC News has this interactive graphic to help you navigate your state’s rules on voting in November, including voter registration deadlines and whatever rule changes your state might’ve made since the 2020 election (so you Texans might find the guide to be especially helpful).
Rep. Don Young (R-AK), Alaska’s sole U.S. House representative, died on Friday. He was 88 and was first elected to the House in 1973. Once Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) sets the dates for the special elections to fill Young’s seat, the state will get to vote via ranked-choice system for the first time.
Please just watch this:
Are you trying to tell him something? Sorry, he can’t hear you, it’s too loud!
? Morning Memo Radio ?
On Saturday, disgraced ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted a screenshot of himself holding a public briefing on the pandemic before he resigned in disgrace. At one point during that briefing, according to the screenshot, the then-governor informed New Yorkers that it was Saturday:
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Marina Ovsyannikova, a producer of Russia’s state-run Channel One who was arrested after protesting the Ukraine invasion in the middle of a live broadcast last week, explained her “spontaneous decision” to crash a broadcast with an anti-war sign during an interview on ABC News on Sunday.
Continue reading “Russian TV Producer Explains ‘Spontaneous Decision’ To Protest Ukraine Invasion On Air”Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Sunday described Republican lawmakers who have parroted Kremlin talking points about Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as “lonely voices” within the GOP.
Continue reading “McConnell Insists It’s Just A ‘Few Lonely Voices’ In GOP Who Support Putin”Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), vice chair of the Jan. 6 Select Committee, on Sunday expressed confidence in the panel uncovering new information about the events surrounding last year’s deadly Capitol insurrection.
Continue reading “Cheney Outlines Why ‘There Certainly Will Be New Information’ From Jan. 6 Committee”
