Good overview of the current Rus-Ukr war. Includes hard numbers. Warning: tough viewing

It makes me ill to watch this. Most of what I watch on the war is has a clear pro-Ukraine bias--not misinformation, but with a spin that celebrates the Ukraine victories and makes it seem like the Republican (ooops) Russian losses are significant. They aren't; their numbers are replenishable. They don't mind the casualties since a lot are coming out of prisons anyway.

So I needed to hear this bad news. I'm sharing it here cause it might help you too.

That's the bad news: Russia is advancing and they're learning from their mistakes, finally. The curtailing of Ukrainian ground-to-air defenses (by Trump & Johnson) means Russia is increasing its air campaign in some locales on the front. They are expanding their ability to make new artillery. So they're not running out of offensive capability.
But there's also good news: France is floating with NATO taking on a more radical involvement with "non-combat troops." Pro-Ukrainian Russian militias have risen inside Russia. Ukraine is holding the line on most of the fronts. They're upping their ability to reconstitute lost combat supplies. Once the Ukraine package has broken through the Republican obstructions, the stalemate can resume.
The bottom line: a lot of these Ukrainian losses are because of Ukraine's artillery shortages. So Russian advances are directly linked to Republicans blocking the latest aid packet. Republican attacks on democracy are not solely at home.

GOP Proposals to Cut Social Security, Medicare, & Jack up Rx Drug Prices and Health Care Premiums

Congressional Republicans’ Many Proposals to Cut Social Security and Medicare, and Increase Prescription Drug Prices and Health Care Premiums

Congressional Republicans’ long record of working to cut Medicare, Social Security:

* Senator Mike Lee said: “One thing that you probably haven’t ever heard from a politician: it will be my objective to phase out Social Security. To pull it up by the roots, and get rid of it.”

* In November, John Thune, the number two Senate Republican in leadership, declared that Social Security and Medicare benefits should be slashed.

* Florida Senator Rick Scott is championing a plan to put Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security on the chopping block every five years, which would put the health and economic security of 63 million Medicare beneficiaries, 69 million Medicaid beneficiaries and 65 million Social Security beneficiaries at risk. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin proposed sunsetting these laws every year...

News that trumpeted "old Biden" now discover "nuance" in the transcript

From Media Matters for America:

News outlets that trumpeted Hur’s story now discover “context” and “nuance” in transcript

But after reviewing the full transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur, released Tuesday morning before Hur’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, several outlets are concluding that the then-special counsel’s claims in his report lacked necessary context.

The Washington Post ran 33 reports on Biden’s mental fitness in the four days following Hur’s report, according to a review by Popular Information. On Tuesday, however, the Post reported that the transcript “paints a more nuanced portrait of the exchanges between Biden and the special counsel” and that “Biden doesn’t come across as being as absent-minded as Hur has made him out to be.” With regard to some of the specific instances Hur cited in describing Biden’s memory as “significantly limited,” the Post found that “the transcript provides more detail on those exchanges, with questioning jumping around the timeline in some instances.”

The New York Times ran 30 reports on Biden’s mental fitness in the four days following Hur’s report, according to Popular Information. But on Tuesday, the Times reported the transcript “shows that on several occasions the president fumbled with dates and the sequence of events, while otherwise appearing clearheaded.” As to Hur’s claim Biden “did not remember when he was vice president,” the Times noted: “The transcript provides context for those lines. In both instances, Mr. Biden said the wrong year but appeared to recognize that he had misspoken and immediately stopped to seek clarity and orient himself.”

The Wall Street Journal ran 18 reports on Biden’s mental fitness in the four days following Hur’s report, Popular Information found. On Tuesday, however, the paper reported that the transcript shows Biden “veering into frequent digressions, but not stumped on basic factual questions.”

Hur has raised more questions about his own credibility since issuing his report. The lawyer who reportedly prepped him for Tuesday’s hearing is William Burck, a veteran Republican attorney who represented several senior Trump administration aides and serves as a Fox Corp. board member. And Hur arranged to leave the Justice Department on Monday, ensuring that “instead of appearing as a DOJ employee who is bound by the ethical guidelines which govern the behaviour of federal prosecutors, he will appear as a private citizen with no constraints on his testimony,” The Independent reported.

Too many premature Katie Britt obituaries

People keep saying this speech was bad for her career.

I think it's silly assuming, just because her speech was emotionally deranged, riddled with dishonesty, factually dubious, comically manipulative, and tonally bipolar, that this is going to somehow hurt her with the Alabama electorate. If she'd only had to sense to boil an actual bunny in that kitchen set, she'd be a shoe-in for Vice President nominee.

I'd say Supreme Court nominee too, but she's past 40.

Quark

TPM: A Secret Society of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping for a 'National Divorce'

I don't know if A Handmaid's Tale has an official prequel, but this sure feels like its inspiration

Inside a Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping for a 'National Divorce'
A trove of documents obtained by TPM reveal the society’s inner workings.
by Josh Kovensky | March 9, 2024 | TPM

It sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but it’s real. The group is called the Society for American Civic Renewal (the acronym is pronounced “sacker” by its members). It is open to new recruits, provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a “trinitarian” Christian, heterosexual, an “un-hyphenated American,” and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism in the right way. One chapter leader wrote to a prospective member that the group aimed to “secure a future for Christian families.”

It’s an uncanny mimicry of the clandestine engine that, in the right-wing’s furthest imaginings, has driven recent social changes and left them feeling isolated and under siege: a shadowy network occupying the commanding heights of business, politics, and culture, open only to a select, elite few, committed to reshaping the United States to align it with the group’s radical values.

{snip}

The group speaks earnestly about itself and tries to downplay its more controversial views. It is, the group’s leaders say, merely another in a long line of fraternal organizations that try to foster civic engagement. But there’s a lot that’s almost zany about the group’s aims and activities. An Idaho chapter sought to fight back against marriage equality by making stickers representing traditional marriage to compete with the rainbow, pro-LGBTQ-rights symbols which adorned coffee shops in the area. In another episode, that chapter supported a quixotic bid to court wealthy conservative donors into funding a website focused on unearthing the spread of DEI in Idaho. The man who incorporated the national umbrella group is an Indiana shampoo tycoon who refers to himself as “maximum leader” and blogs about Rhodesian anti-guerilla tactics and how the must-read dystopian fiction novel for white supremacists, The Camp of the Saints, is actually a vision of America’s present.

Group members hold a distinct vision of America as a latter-day ancient Rome: a crumbling, decadent empire that could soon be replaced by a Christian theocracy. To join, the group demands faithfulness, virtue, and “alignment,” which it describes as “deference to and acceptance of the wisdom of our American and European Christian forebears in the political realm, a traditional understanding of patriarchal leadership in the household, and acceptance of traditional Natural Law in ethics more broadly.” More practically, members must be able to contribute either influence, capability, or wealth in helping SACR further its goals.

You can't spell propaganda without "prop"

For God's sake, someone get Katie Britt a box of Kleenexes. I'm mortified that the Republican National Committee put that poor vulnerable woman on TV in her obviously distraught condition

Nikki Haley going out on a high note after two wham-bam victories in DC *AND* Vermont

Nikki Haley to exit GOP presidential race Wednesday

CNN
—
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will announce Wednesday that she is exiting the Republican presidential race, according to sources familiar with her plans, clearing the path for former President Donald Trump.

Haley, who was Trump’s US ambassador to the United Nations, was the last of a dozen major candidates the former president vanquished in a GOP primary that he dominated from start to finish — including winning 14 of the 15 GOP contests on Super Tuesday – even as he skipped the party’s debates and maintained a much lighter schedule of early-state travel than all of his rivals.

Haley had vowed to stay in the race through at least Super Tuesday. She had also begun sharpening her attacks on Trump, questioning his mental fitness and lumping him together with President Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee, as one of two “grumpy old men.”

But her home state of South Carolina served as her fourth straight loss in 2024 – including one to “none of these candidates” in the Nevada primary, where Trump wasn’t competing and there were no delegates at stake. (He opted to participate instead in the party-run caucuses, which awarded delegates.)

Haley had little hope of keeping pace with the former president with the race shifting into a new gear, moving from early-state contests in which retail politics take center stage to a national race with 56% of the party’s delegates due to be awarded by March 12 — most of them in winner-take-all contests.

Still, in her campaign, Haley became the first Republican woman to win two primary contests: Vermont and the District of Columbia. The wins prevented Trump from being able to say that he shut out Haley in every state, but the victories were not enough to award her with a significant delegate count.

What Trump would do to the economy

I don't think it's a stretch to say that the Party of "Go Back to When America Was Great" is also pro-measles...

and pro-polio too.

More Than 4 in 10 Republicans and a Third of Parents Now Oppose Schools Requiring Children to Get Vaccinated for Measles and Other Illness, Up Since the COVID-19 Pandemic Began

Florida GOP senators defend DeSantis’ surgeon general amid measles outbreak

Trump vows to cut federal funds for schools with vaccine mandates