Posted by Guitarguy567 on 3/4/2022 11:45:00 AM (view original):
Pretty cool mouthpiece for the regime you got there! If you go to HCR's twitter page, you can see she fawns over even the most basic Joe Biden tweet! But I guess all rulers need their flunkies right?

Again you are attacking her because you disagree with how she sees the world and our history and politics.
That’s rather small minded.

When you start objectively discussing what is - Is - on her page let me know.

A case in point. I don’t skewer a Marjorie Taylor Greene simply because she fawns over Trump.
I discuss what she has said or written or done or not done and the groups she supports and the people she associates with.

Posted by Guitarguy567 on 3/4/2022 11:45:00 AM (view original):
Pretty cool mouthpiece for the regime you got there! If you go to HCR's twitter page, you can see she fawns over even the most basic Joe Biden tweet! But I guess all rulers need their flunkies right?

Kinda like if you check Glenn Greenwald's twitter, he just takes the opposite stance to whatever the mainstream liberal belief is?

Do you think if we counted, you would find more people on Twitter who fawned over every Trump tweet when he was in office, or every Biden tweet now?

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

March 4, 2022 (Friday)

Just a few quick markers tonight because I need some sleep.

Russia’s war against Ukraine continues. Fourteen wide-bodied aircraft from the U.S. and the European Union delivered anti-tank missiles, rocket launchers, guns, and ammunition to Ukraine today to help it hold on against Russia. The extra aid was approved less than a week ago, and the munitions began flowing two days later.

Russia’s economy continues to nosedive. The Russian stock market has been closed all week, and yesterday, a Russian stock market analyst took out a bottle and drank to the death of the stock market on live television. According to CNN’s global affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga, the Moscow Stock Exchange will remain closed through next Wednesday, and possibly beyond. Russians are fleeing their country into Finland.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, who is bound to be strictly neutral on political matters, withdrew invitations for a diplomatic reception issued to Russian and Belarusian diplomats to show her disapproval of the attack on Ukraine. She also gave from her private funds a “generous donation” to Ukraine humanitarian aid.

The U.S. has swung against Russia after years in which members of the Republican Party in particular have spoken admiringly of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s strength and commitment to so-called conservative values. Former vice president Mike Pence was expected to try to open up some space between Putin and the Republicans, telling a gathering of Republican donors tonight, “There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin. There is only room for champions of freedom.”

Former president Trump, who still commands loyalty from party members, has spoken admiringly of Putin’s attack on Ukraine. Pence’s statement appears to be an attempt to recenter the party away from Trump.

And, speaking of Trump, a legal filing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday said that advisors repeatedly told the former president that he had lost the 2020 election and that he nonetheless insisted on pursuing the lie that he had won. In Salon, Amanda Marcotte pointed out that Trump apparently felt comfortable pursuing the lie because he did not believe there would be any consequences for his illegal behavior.

That conviction that the former president and his cronies were above the law clearly influenced Trump advisor Roger Stone, who permitted a Danish film crew to follow him around for more than two years, including during the days before January 6, 2021.

A stunning exposé in the Washington Post today by Dalton Bennett and Jon Swaine shows that Stone helped to coordinate the “Stop the Steal” protests and met before the January 6 riot with a member of the far-right Oath Keepers group who has since pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy. Stone refused to let the filmmakers see him for about 90 minutes during the height of the violence on January 6—an aide said he was napping—but when the extent of the crisis became clear, he slipped out of Washington on a private plane, claiming he was afraid incoming attorney general Merrick Garland would prosecute him.

Stone then lobbied hard for a presidential pardon for himself and a number of Trump supporters in Congress for trying to overturn the election. When White House counsel Pat Cipollone opposed the requests, Stone texted a friend, “See you in prison.”

Stone has categorically denied all the conclusions drawn from the film footage.

On this date in 1789, the first U.S. Congress met for the first time, operating under the U.S. Constitution and cementing it into existence.

Pretty cool we’ve kept it going for 234 years.

hang the traitors

rah rah

sis boom bah

he's #1



on the traitor list

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

March 5, 2022 (Saturday)

Russia’s war on Ukraine continues.

If the broader patterns of war apply, Russian president Vladimir Putin is making the war as senselessly brutal as possible, likely hoping to force Ukraine to give in quickly before global sanctions completely crush Russia and the return of warm weather eases Europe’s need for Russian oil and gas.

Russian shelling has created a humanitarian crisis in urban areas, and last night, a brief ceasefire designed to let residents of Mariupol and Volnovakha escape the cities through “humanitarian corridors” broke down as Russian troops resumed firing, forcing the people back to shelter. This morning, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to more than 280 members of the U.S. Congress to describe Ukraine’s “urgent need” for more support, both military and humanitarian.

Today, Putin said that the continued resistance of President Zelensky and his government threatens Ukraine’s existence. He also said that the sanctions imposed against Russia, Russian companies, Russian oligarchs and their families, and himself by the global alliance arrayed against him are “akin to a declaration of war.” (Remember, saying things doesn’t make them so; words are often a posture.)

The global economic pressure on Russia and the Russian oligarchs is already crushing the Russian economy—today Mastercard and Visa suspended operations in the country—while other countries’ refusal to sell airplane parts, for example, will soon render Russian planes useless, a major crisis for a country the size of Russia. Meanwhile, support is pouring into Ukraine: aside from the military support coming, yesterday the World Bank said it was preparing ways to transfer immediate financial support.

There are suggestions, too, among those who study military strategy that the Russian invasion has been far weaker than they expected. The Russian forces on paper are significantly stronger than those of Ukraine, and by now they should have established control of the airspace. Ground forces are also not moving as efficiently as it seems they should be.

Today, Phillips P. O’Brien, Professor of Strategic Studies at University of St Andrews, outlined how the Russian military, so impressive on paper, might in fact have continued the terrible logistics problems of the Soviet Union. On the ground, they appear to have too few trucks, too little tire maintenance, out-of-date food, and too little fuel. In the air, they are showing signs that they cannot plan or execute complicated maneuvers, in which they have had little practice.

Russia expert Tom Nichols appeared to agree, tweeting: “Ukrainian resistance has been amazing, but I am astonished—despite already low expectations—at how utter Russian military incompetence has made a giant clusterf**k out of an invasion against a much weaker neighbor.”

Meanwhile, Russians are now aware that they are at war—something that Putin had apparently hidden at first—and a number are protesting. The government has cracked down on critics, and rumors are flying that Putin is about to declare martial law. It appears he is already turning to mercenaries to fight his war. The U.S. government has urged all Americans to leave Russia.

And so, time is a key factor in this war: will Russian forces pound Ukraine into submission before their own country can no longer support a war effort?

Closer to home, the Russian war on Ukraine has created a crisis for the Republican Party here in the U.S.

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post reported on Thursday that after Trump won the 2016 election and we learned that Russia had interfered to help him, Republicans’ approval of Putin jumped from about 14% to 37%.

In the Des Moines Register today, columnist Rekha Basu explained how the American right then swung behind Putin because they saw him as a moral crusader, defending religion and “traditional values,” from modern secularism and "decadence," using a strong hand to silence those who would, for example, defend LGBTQ rights.

Now, popular support has swung strongly against the Russian leader—even among Republicans, 61% of whom now strongly dislike the man. This is widening the split in the Republican Party between Trump supporters and those who would like to move the party away from the former president.

In a tweet today, Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) referred to the “Putin wing” of the Republican Party when she shared a video clip of Douglas Macgregor, whom Trump nominated for ambassador to Germany and then appointed as senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense, telling a Fox News Channel host that Russian forces have been “too gentle” and “I don’t see anything heroic” about Zelensky.

Possibly eager to show their participation in Ukraine’s defense, when Zelensky spoke to Congress this morning, two Republican senators—Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Steve Daines (R-MT)—shared screenshots of his Zoom call while it was going on, despite the explicit request of Ukraine’s ambassador not to share details of the meeting until it was over, out of concern for Zelensky’s safety.

In an appearance on Newsmax, Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton pushed back when the host suggested that the Trump administration was “pretty tough on Russia, in a lot of ways.” Bolton said that Trump “barely knew where Ukraine was” and repeatedly complained about Russian sanctions. Bolton said Trump should have sanctioned the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany, rather than letting it proceed, and concluded: “It’s just not accurate to say that Trump's behavior somehow deterred the Russians.”

Still, the sudden attempt of the Republicans to rewrite history cannot erase the fact that every Republican in the House of Representatives voted against impeaching Trump when he withheld $391 million in aid for Ukraine that Congress had appropriated, offering to release it only on the condition that President Zelensky announced an investigation into Hunter Biden. That is, they were willing to look the other way as Trump weakened Ukraine in an attempt to rig the 2020 election by creating a scandal he hoped would sink his chief opponent.

Democrats supported impeachment, though, and the case went to the Senate to be tried. And there, every single Republican senator except Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT), who voted to convict him for abuse of power, acquitted Trump of the charges stemming from his attempt to hamstring Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

March 6, 2022 (Sunday)

It was a beautiful sunny day today in Selma, Alabama, where thousands of people, including Vice President Kamala Harris and five other senior White House officials, met to honor the 57th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when law enforcement officers tried to beat into silence those Black Americans marching for their right to have a say in the government under which they lived.

The story of March 7 in Selma is the story of Americans determined to bring to life the principle articulated in the Declaration of Independence that a government’s claim to authority comes from the consent of the governed. It is also a story of how hard local authorities, entrenched in power and backed by angry white voters, made that process.

In the 1960s, despite the fact Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So, in 1963, local Black organizers launched a voter registration drive.

It was hard going. White Selma residents had no intention of permitting their Black neighbors to have a say in their government. Indeed, white southerners in general were taking a stand against the equal right of Black Americans to vote. During the 1964 Freedom Summer voter registration drive in neighboring Mississippi, Ku Klux Klan members worked with local law enforcement officers to murder three voting rights organizers and dispose of their bodies.

To try to hold back the white supremacists, Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, designed in part to make it possible for Black Americans to register to vote. In Selma, a judge stopped voter registration meetings by prohibiting public gatherings of more than two people.

To call attention to the crisis in her city, voting rights activist Amelia Boynton traveled to Birmingham to invite the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the city. King had become a household name after the 1963 March on Washington where he delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech, and his presence would bring national attention to Selma’s struggle.

King and other prominent Black leaders arrived in January 1965, and for seven weeks, Black residents made a new push to register to vote. County Sheriff James Clark arrested almost 2000 of them for a variety of charges, including contempt of court and parading without a permit. A federal court ordered Clark not to interfere with orderly registration, so he forced Black applicants to stand in line for hours before taking a “literacy” test. Not a single person passed.

Then, on February 18, white police officers, including local police, sheriff’s deputies, and Alabama state troopers, beat and shot an unarmed 26-year-old, Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was marching for voting rights at a demonstration in his hometown of Marion, Alabama, about 25 miles northwest of Selma. Jackson had run into a restaurant for shelter along with his mother when the police started rioting, but they chased him and shot him in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Jackson died eight days later, on February 26. Black leaders in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles—from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression.

On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bull whips, and tear gas. They fractured the skull of young activist John Lewis, and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.

Images of “Bloody Sunday” on the national news mesmerized the nation, and supporters began to converge on Selma. King, who had been in Atlanta when the marchers first set off, returned to the fray.

Two days later, the marchers set out again. Once again, the troopers and police met them at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but this time, King led the marchers in prayer and then took them back to Selma. That night, a white mob beat to death a Unitarian Universalist minister, James Reeb, who had come from Massachusetts to join the marchers.

On March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a nationally televised joint session of Congress to ask for the passage of a national voting rights act. “Their cause must be our cause too,” he said. “[A]ll of us…must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.” Two days later, he submitted to Congress proposed voting rights legislation.

The marchers were determined to complete their trip to Montgomery, and when Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, refused to protect them, President Johnson stepped in. When the marchers set off for a third time on March 21, 1900 members of the nationalized Alabama National Guard, FBI agents, and federal marshals protected them. Covering about ten miles a day, they camped in the yards of well-wishers until they arrived at the Alabama state capitol on March 25. Their ranks had grown as they walked until they numbered about 25,000 people.

On the steps of the capitol, speaking under a Confederate flag, Dr. King said: “The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.”

That night, Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old mother of five who had arrived from Michigan to help after Bloody Sunday, was murdered by four Ku Klux Klan members who tailed her as she ferried demonstrators out of the city.

On August 6, Dr. King and Mrs. Boynton were guests of honor as President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson recalled “the outrage of Selma” when he said "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless. It gives people, people as individuals, control over their own destinies."

The Voting Rights Act authorized federal supervision of voter registration in districts where Black Americans were historically underrepresented. Johnson promised that the government would strike down “regulations, or laws, or tests to deny the right to vote.” He called the right to vote “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men,” and pledged that “we will not delay, or we will not hesitate, or we will not turn aside until Americans of every race and color and origin in this country have the same right as all others to share in the process of democracy.”

But less than 50 years later, in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. The Shelby County v. Holder decision opened the door, once again, for voter suppression. Since then, states have made it harder to vote. In the wake of the 2020 election, in which voters handed control of the government to Democrats, Republican-dominated legislatures in at least 19 states passed 34 laws restrict­ing access to voting. As legislatures start their 2022 sessions, those in at least 27 states are considering more than 250 bills with restrict­ive provi­sions.

On this 57th anniversary of the Selma march, President Joe Biden vowed to continue to promote voting access through last year’s executive order and with the help of the Department of Justice, and he called, again, for Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the young man on the Pettus Bridge who went on to serve 17 terms in Congress. Together, these acts would protect the right to vote.

“I will continue to use every tool at my disposal to strengthen our democracy and keep alive the promise of America for all Americans,” Biden said in a statement. “The battle for the soul of America has many fronts. The right to vote is the most fundamental.”

In Selma today, Vice President Harris told the people gathered: “Today, the eyes of the world are on Ukraine, and the brave people who are fighting to protect their country and their democracy. And, their bravery is a reminder that freedom and democracy can never be taken for granted by any of us.”

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

March 7, 2022 (Monday)

For all the breathless reports of Russia’s war on Ukraine, it is unclear who is gaining advantage. This is in part because both sides are fighting the war with propaganda as well as with missiles, and it is hard to sort out what is real and what is not. Indeed, image and reality may merge, since images often shape what later becomes real. So, for example, the many stories of Ukrainian resistance feed that resistance, while the stories of Russian failures hurt morale.
One thing that is absolutely clear is that Russia is firing on civilian areas indiscriminately, creating horrific damage and humanitarian crises in urban areas that two weeks ago were normal city blocks. More than 1.7 million Ukrainians have had to flee their homes.
But the war is not proceeding according to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s plans. To control Ukraine, Russia needed to take it quickly, and although its military is 8 times the size of Ukraine’s, it has not managed to do so. The Russian government has admitted the loss of 498 soldiers; U.S. officials say the number is conservatively more than 3000, and Ukrainian officials estimate the Russian troop deaths at over 10,000.
According to a briefing by a senior U.S. defense official reported by Washington Post military reporter Dan Lamothe, the U.S. assesses that the Russian combat power massed at the Ukrainian border before the war is now fully committed, and there is no evidence they are moving in more troops, although there are reports that Russia is trying to recruit soldiers accustomed to urban combat from Syria. Without the troop power it needs or an effective air assault, Russia is using long-range, inaccurate weapons that create widespread devastation.
In the short term, the Russian invasion is going far more slowly than expected and economic sanctions are biting the Russian economy hard. Officials warn that Russia will continue to grind Ukraine down, but how much Putin can afford to do over time as the sanctions hurt more and more is not clear.
Outside of the horror that is happening within Ukraine, Russia’s apparent weakness and Ukraine’s strength will almost certainly rework geopolitics.
At the very least, the underperformance of the Russian military will enable opponents to exploit the holes it now sees (today, for example, it appeared that Russia’s boasted encrypted battlefield communications system doesn’t actually work).
More, though, the missteps of the Russian army have significantly weakened the country. Estonia’s chief of defense, Lieutenant General Martin Herem, told reporters “Today what I have seen is that even this huge army or military is not so huge.” Brigadier General Rauno Sirk, commander of Estonia’s air force, said of the Russian air force: “If you look at what’s on the other side, you’ll see that there isn’t really an opponent anymore.”
Andrei Kozyrev, Russia’s foreign minister from 1990 to 1996, tweeted: “The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor you cannot report that to the President. So they reported lies to him instead. Potemkin military[.]”
Perhaps the actions of Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, who is facing an election on April 3, reveal how that weakness might change political alliances. Orbán had brought his country close to Russia but now opposes the invasion.
If Putin’s authoritarian government has turned out to be weaker militarily than was expected, democracies have proved stronger.
Max Bergman, a senior fellow for Europe and Russia at the Center for American Progress, noted that U.S. security assistance to Ukraine appears to have been unusually effective because it did not focus on high-tech gadgets and bells and whistles, but rather on reforming what was in 2014 a corrupt military and on helping the Ukrainian forces with basic systems, like secure cell phones, stockpiles, and resupply. It wasn’t flashy, but it appears to have been effective, helping the Ukrainians to hold their own against the Russians. If this observation holds up, it could lead to a reassessment of foreign military aid.
Logistics seem to have been key to addressing the humanitarian crisis outside Ukraine as well, as 1.7 million Ukrainians have fled their country. In two weeks, that astonishing number of refugees has been absorbed by Poland (1,028,000), Hungary (180,000), Moldova (83,000), Slovakia (128,000), Romania (79,000), Russia (53,000), and Belarus (406), and others, according to the United Nations. The communications and plans necessary simply to move that many people, let alone feed and shelter them, show an astonishing level of cooperation. Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday was in Moldova, the small former Soviet state that borders Ukraine, where he pledged America’s support.
The ability of European countries to come together to stand against Russia, as well as the global cooperation in cutting Russia off from the world economy, has offered an illustration of how countries can enforce a rules-based world and showed the strength of democracies.
The widespread crackdown on illicit Russian money will have an equally important long-term effect. A recent study revealed that Russian money has corrupted British politics; now we are beginning to learn just how much of it has done the same in the U.S. A piece today in the Washington Post by Peter Whoriskey explained that, according to the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, oligarchs associated with Putin have donated millions of dollars to U.S. philanthropies, museums, and universities since Putin rose to power, using their money to buy access to elite circles. Also today, a former campaign staffer for Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has been charged with funneling Russian money into the 2016 election.
Also clear over the past month is that the U.S. seems to have finally begun to take on Russian propaganda. The administration was ahead of every Russian false flag operation and warned the world what our intelligence community believed was going to happen. This took away the element of surprise that has worked so well for Putin in the past.
Even more, though, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration have replaced Putin’s popular vision of an invincible Russia with one in which the Russians seem weak and Ukraine strong, its success inevitable. They have turned Russian propaganda on its head.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

March 8, 2022 (Tuesday)

This morning, President Joe Biden announced an executive order that will ban the import of Russian oil, liquified natural gas, and coal to the United States, as part of a plan to cut Russia off from the world economy.

Biden did this under pressure from Congress, which was preparing its own bill for this outcome. The administration hesitated to take this step independently from other allies and partners. In 2021, the U.S. imported only 3% of its oil from Russia, and that number has been dropping in 2022, while Europe is not in a position to cut off Russian oil, although the European Union did offer a plan to cut Russian gas imports by two thirds this year, and Britain declared it would stop importing Russian oil in 2023.

According to a new Reuters poll, 63% of Americans approve of cutting off Russian oil despite expected price hikes. Still, rising gasoline prices are a big problem, and the optics of cutting off any oil supplies right now will hurt the administration.

The government has little to do with the cost of gasoline. Since our oil companies are privately owned, the cost of oil goes up and down according to supply and demand. That, in turn, can depend on disruptions to crude oil supplies, refinery operations, or pipeline problems, or even on what people think will be future demands. Last year, in the midst of the pandemic, the economic recession meant there was little demand for oil, and prices were very low. That meant producers reduced production, and they have not yet fully ramped it up again.

Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, the booming U.S. economy meant increased demand for oil and thus increased prices. U.S. companies increased their production, but perhaps not enough to address the imbalance between supply and demand that would address soaring gasoline prices. And in that gap, oil companies made huge profits.

On February 20, 2022, Tom Wilson of Financial Times reported that the seven top oil companies, including BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron, would return a near-record $38 to $41 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks, after distributing $50 billion in dividends. The Wall Street Journal in January noted, “While that is good for investors in the company, there are mounting concerns that there isn’t enough investment in new fossil-fuel supply to meet growing demand.”

Low supplies are driving prices up, but Republicans are trying to turn those high gas prices into a culture war, blaming Biden’s cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline for the nation’s high gas prices. Representative Jake LaTurner (R-KS), for example, has launched a paid ad on Facebook and Twitter saying that the Keystone XL pipeline “would have produced 830,000 barrels of oil per day, more than enough to offset what we import from Russia.” Others blame Biden’s cancellation of new oil permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for high prices.

In fact, both of these points are misleading.

The Keystone Pipeline, which runs from oil sand fields in Alberta, Canada, into the United States and to Cushing, Oklahoma, exists and is fully operational. The XL Pipeline consists of two new additions to the original pipeline, together adding up to 1700 new miles. One addition was designed to connect Cushing to oil refineries in Texas, on the Gulf Coast. That section was built and went into operation in January 2017.

The second extension is the one that caused such a fuss. It was to carry crude oil from Alberta to Kansas, traveling through Montana and North Dakota, where it would pick up U.S. crude oil to deliver it to the Gulf Coast of Texas. (This would have had the effect of raising oil prices in the middle of the country.) This leg crossed an international border, and thus the Canadian company building it needed approval from the State Department. The proposed pipeline would threaten water supplies in the Northwest if it leaked, for it would run over a huge aquifer, and the people who lived downstream from the proposed route, including Lakotas and members of other Indigenous tribes, protested the pipeline’s construction.

The Trump administration approved this construction, and the opposition of environmentalists, Indigenous Americans, and Democrats to the pipeline enabled Republicans to turn it into a cultural symbol, suggesting that the opposition of these groups was hobbling the economy. In fact, the company behind the project was Canadian and wanted the extension to shorten transportation routes for its oil. The winners on the American side were the refinery owners; the jobs the project would create were primarily in the construction of the project.

As soon as he took office, Biden halted the construction. But blaming today’s high prices on the cancellation of this spur of the Keystone Pipeline is a resort to that culture war. Even if Biden had not overturned Trump’s approval of the project, it would not be completed yet, and even if it were completed, there is no guarantee that it would have delivered more oil to the U.S., rather than to the ports for export elsewhere. The U.S. exports about half of its oil production to other countries, both because the crude we produce is hard for us to refine and because of the demand for it overseas. The Keystone pipeline was designed for export.

The argument that Biden’s cancellation of new oil drilling leases on public property has driven prices up is similarly misleading. On November 17, 2020, after he lost the election, former president Trump abruptly allowed oil and gas companies to pick out land for drilling rights on about 1.6 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Biden froze those permits as soon as he took office. Only about 10% of drilling takes place on public land, and there are currently about 9000 permits already issued that have not been developed.

But oil drilling on public land returns huge sums of money to the states in whose boundaries the drilling occurs; at the hearing for the confirmation of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said that his state collects more than a billion dollars a year in royalties and taxes from the oil, gas, and coal produced on federal lands in the state, and warned that the Biden administration’s opposition to oil permits is “taking a sledgehammer to Western states’ economies.”

Oil prices are skyrocketing because of the dislocation of the pandemic, the Russian invasion, and the disinclination of countries to buy from Russia, even though oil sales have not yet been sanctioned.

To combat those prices, the Biden administration asked Saudi Arabia to increase production; the Saudis declined. On Saturday, U.S. officials met Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, who has run a brutal regime, is accused of human rights violations, and is aligned with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Venezuelan oil has been under U.S. sanctions since 2019, and with Russian assets frozen, Maduro needs financial support, while the U.S. and its allies need oil. After Saturday’s talks, the Venezuela government released two of six U.S. citizens from custody, apparently as a gesture of goodwill as talks go forward.

For all the fighting over oil, Biden pointed out today that we have an interest in stopping Putin’s aggression, and that the best way to reduce the price of oil is to shift to renewable energy. “[T]ransforming our economy to run on [electric vehicles], powered by clean energy, will mean that in the future, no one has to worry about gas prices.”

It is nice that you post these but I seriously doubt that anyone reads them ( I get it in my inbox ) otherwise I would be the only one - ironic isn’t it.
There has not been a thank you or a comment or anything generated since you started it.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

March 10, 2022 (Thursday)

On June 5, 1944, the day before the D-Day operation in which the Allied forces in World War II invaded German-occupied western Europe, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his 29th Fireside Chat.

Roosevelt told the American people that Rome had fallen to American and Allied troops the previous day. He used the talk not only to announce this important milestone in the deadly war, but also to remind Americans they were engaged in a war between democracy and fascism. And while fascists insisted their ideology made countries more efficient and able to serve their people, the Allies’ victory in Rome illustrated that the ideology of fascism, which maintained that a few men should rule over the majority of the population, was hollow.

Rome was the seat of fascism, FDR told his listeners, and under that government, “the Italian people were enslaved.” He explained: “In Italy the people had lived so long under the corrupt rule of Mussolini that, in spite of the tinsel at the top—you have seen the pictures of him—their economic condition had grown steadily worse. Our troops have found starvation, malnutrition, disease, a deteriorating education and lowered public health—all by-products of the Fascist misrule.”

FDR continued: “We and the British will do and are doing everything we can to bring them relief. Anticipating the fall of Rome, we made preparations to ship food supplies to the city…we have already begun to save the lives of the men, women and children of Rome…. This, I think, is an example of the magnificent ability and energy of the American people in growing the crops, building the merchant ships, in making and collecting the cargoes, in getting the supplies over thousands of miles of water, and thinking ahead to meet emergencies—all this spells, I think, an amazing efficiency on the part of our armed forces, all the various agencies working with them, and American industry and labor as a whole.”

“No great effort like this can be a hundred percent perfect,” he said, “but the batting average is very, very high.”

That speech highlighting logistics as a key difference between democracy and fascism comes to mind these days as we watch democracy and authoritarianism clash in Ukraine.

A report last month by Washington, D.C., nonprofit Freedom House, which studies democracy, political freedom, and human rights, painted a bleak picture. “Global freedom faces a dire threat,” authors Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz wrote. “Around the world, the enemies of liberal democracy—a form of self-government in which human rights are recognized and every individual is entitled to equal treatment under law—are accelerating their attacks.”

In 2019, Russian president Vladimir Putin told the Financial Times that the ideology of liberalism on which democracy is based has “outlived its purpose.” Multiculturalism, freedom, and human rights must give way to “the culture, traditions, and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has been open about his determination to replace western-style democracy with what he has, on different occasions, called “illiberal democracy,” or “Christian democracy,” ending the immigration that he believes undermines Hungarian culture and rejecting “adaptable family models” with “the Christian family model.”

According to President Joe Biden, Chinese president Xi Jinping believes that autocracies are “the wave of the future—democracy can’t function in an ever complex world.”

Freedom House documents that for sixteen years, global freedom has declined. Authoritarians are undermining basic liberties, abusing power, and violating human rights, and their growing global influence is shifting global incentives toward autocratic governments and away from democracy, “jeopardizing the consensus that democracy is the only viable path to prosperity and security, while encouraging more authoritarian approaches to governance.” Over the past year, 60 countries became less free, while only 25 improved.

“They're going to write about this point in history," Biden told a group of news anchors in April 2021, shortly after he took office. "Not about any of us in here, but about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century…. Things are changing so rapidly in the world, in science and technology and a whole range of other issues, that—the question is: In a democracy that's such a genius as ours, can you get consensus in the timeframe that can compete with autocracy?"

The last few weeks have demonstrated the same advantage of democracy over authoritarianism that FDR saw in the fall of Rome. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was supposed to demonstrate the efficient juggernaut of authoritarianism. But Putin’s lightning attack on a neighboring state did not go as planned. Ukrainians have insisted on their right to self-determination, demonstrating the power of democracy with their lives.

At the same time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown the weakness of modern authoritarianism. Putin expected to overrun a democratic neighbor quickly, but his failure to do so has revealed that his army’s perceived power was FDR’s “tinsel at the top”: lots of bells and whistles but outdated food, a lack of support vehicles, conscripted and confused soldiers, and compromised communications. The corruption inherent in a one-party state of loyalists, unafflicted by oversight, has hollowed out the Russian military, making it unable to feed or supply its troops.

That authoritarian government, it turns out, depended on democracies. As businesses pull out of Russia, the economy has collapsed. The ruble is worth less than a penny, and the Russian stock market remains closed. Today, the Russian economic ministry announced it would take the property of businesses leaving the country. Notably, it claimed the right to take about $10 billion of jets that had been leased to Russian airlines, quite possibly a way to get spare parts for the airplanes the huge country needs and can no longer get.

Putin is trying to prop up his power by insisting his people believe lies: on Friday, he signed a law making it a crime for media to produce any coverage the government says is “false information” about the invasion. He is now pushing the false claim that the U.S. is developing biological weapons in Ukraine, and has requested a meeting of the U.N. Security Council tomorrow to discuss this issue. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby called the story “classic Russian propaganda.”

In contrast, democracies and allies, marshaled into a unified force in large part by Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the U.S. State Department, have done the boring, complicated, hard work of logistics, diplomacy, and intelligence, a combination that has crushed the Russian economy and is enabling the Ukrainian army to hold off an army 8 times its size. While there is a horrific humanitarian crisis inside Ukraine, those over the borders have managed the extraordinary logistics of processing and moving 2 million refugees from Ukraine in two weeks.

In 1944, FDR pointed out that democratic government was messy but it freed its people to work and think and fight in ways that authoritarian governments could not. In Fireside Chat 29, he warned his listeners not to read too much into the fall of Rome, because fascism had “not yet been driven to the point where [it] will be unable to recommence world conquest a generation hence…. Therefore, the victory still lies some distance ahead." But, he added, "That distance will be covered in due time—have no fear of that."

i read every one of these heather cox richardson posts so far

every couple days or whatever

i think i mighta disagreed with her once

she might be my opinion piece go-to

i give her a A

all credit to rsp