Post by mhbruin on May 16, 2022 11:14:03 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 581 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday May 10)
We had some rain up north this week.
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Life Without Music Would b Flat
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Russia is Still Trying to Hack Elections
Pro-Russian hackers attempted to disrupt voting for the Eurovision Song Contest, Italian police have said.
Ukraine won the competition thanks to huge support in the public vote. Russia was banned following its invasion.
Police in Italy, where this year's contest was staged, said the Killnet hacker group targeted the first semi-final - in which Ukraine performed - as well as Saturday's grand final.
But they said their cybersecurity division blocked the attacks.
"Various computer attacks of a DDOS [distributed denial-of-service] nature aimed at network infrastructures during voting operations and singing performances were mitigated," a police statement said.
Ukraine's Kalush Orchestra won the contest with their song Stefania, which was the runaway winner in the public vote.
While We Condemn Russia, We Should Remember
It wasn’t called the secret war for nothing.
The Johnson and Nixon administrations each oversaw U.S. military operations in Laos — technically a neutral country — without informing Congress of the full scale of the American involvement.
U.S. bombers were pummeling communist supply lines on both sides of the Vietnam-Laos border, often with little regard for civilian casualties.
They dropped an estimated 2 million tons of ordnance during the conflict, making Laos, on a per-person basis, the most bombed nation in history.
Plagiarize. Plagiarize. Let No One Else's Work Ever Evade Your Eyes
Inciting Murder and Mayhem. He's the Terrorist Leader Who Sends Out the Suicide Bombers, But Won't Do It Himself.
September 16, 2021
Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, is pushing the notion in Facebooks ads that President Biden and fellow Democrats are seeking a “permanent election insurrection” by expanding pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
The ads from Stefanik come ahead of a rally planned for Saturday in Washington in support of those charged with crimes in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and as House Democrats work to advance a measure that would allow several million immigrants to apply for permanent residency.
“Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” says one version of the ad, paid for by Stefanik’s campaign committee, that appeared Wednesday. “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”
The ad depicts Biden with people who appear to be migrants reflected in the sunglasses he is wearing.
The GOP’s gradual descent into ‘replacement theory’ and ‘nativist dog whistles’
The language in the ads echoes that of far-right commentators, including Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who have advanced a “replacement theory” that says liberals are seeking to replace White citizens with non-White immigrants who are inclined to support the Democratic Party.
For Stefanik, embracing such rhetoric is a departure from earlier in her political career. Before she replaced Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as the House Republican conference chairwoman in May, some in her party had raised concerns that her record on immigration was too liberal.
An anti-immigration group criticized Stefanik’s co-sponsorship of the Farm Workforce Authorization Act, which includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrant farmworkers.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Singing the Eurovision Winning Song While the Bombs Explode
I Guess Fauci Wasn't Going to Say "Hell No!"
Your Barista May Be a Little Happier Today
Starbucks Corp will reimburse U.S. employees if they must travel more than 100 miles from their homes to obtain an abortion, according to a memo sent to employees on Monday.
The global coffee chain joins Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and a small but growing list of other companies to offer the benefit as some U.S. states impose tighter restrictions on abortion..
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Invasions Have Consequences
Day 82
Fighting
Russian forces are targeting civilian and military sites in multiple towns in the Donetsk region including Dovhenke, Ruski Tyshki, Ternova and Petrivka, the Ukrainian military said.
The Russian military continues artillery and air attacks on Mariupol, particularly on the Azovstal plant where Ukrainian fighters are trapped, according to Ukraine’s army.
Russia has likely run out of combat-ready reservists and is bringing in soldiers from private military companies and proxy militias, as well as covertly mobilising units of untrained men – including conscripts from Luhansk and Donetsk, the Institute for the Study of War said.
Refugees from Mariupol reached Ukrainian-controlled Zaporizhzhia in a large convoy of cars and vans after waiting days for the Russian military to allow them leave.
The Ukrainian army still controls about 10 percent of the eastern region of Luhansk despite heavy Russian attacks, its governor said.
Russia is seeking to encircle Ukrainian forces in the battle for Donbas, Ukraine’s defence ministry said.
Four missiles hit military infrastructure in the Yavoriv area of western Ukraine, according to Lviv’s regional governor.
Russian forces hit Ukrainian military command posts, ammunition depots, and other military equipment, killing at least 100 Ukrainian “nationalists”, Moscow’s defence ministry said.
Diplomacy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attacks in Donetsk and said Russian troops are at “a dead end” in Ukraine.
Sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States on Belarus have blocked $16bn-$18bn worth of its annual exports to the West, Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko was quoted as saying.
G7 foreign ministers promised to keep supplying weapons to Ukraine and isolating Russia, as well as working on easing global food shortages caused by the war.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Berlin, Germany, and said “more weapons and other aid is on the way to Ukraine”.
After Ukraine’s win at Eurovision song contest, Ukrainians received a boost seeing a wave of popular support in Europe.
NATO
Finland and Sweden announced bids to join NATO, reversing their traditional and longstanding policies of military non-alignment.
Russia described the Nordic nations’ NATO bid as a “grave mistake”.
Turkey has set demands for Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership, saying it wanted the two countries to end support for Kurdish armed groups on their territory, and to lift the ban on sales of some arms to Turkey.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going as Moscow had planned, and “Ukraine can win this war”, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
Estonian Foreign Minister Eva-Maria Liimets said Sweden and Finland joining NATO would increase the security of the Baltic region.
Russia is “the only country that threatens European security” and “openly waging a war of aggression”, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said debating NATO bid.
Energy
Germany plans to ban importing Russian oil by the end of the year regardless if the EU agrees on a ban in its next set of sanctions, Bloomberg reported, citing government officials.
Zelenskyy urged European leaders to impose more sanctions on Russia and its energy sector claiming “the time of Europe’s dependence on Russian energy resources is coming to an end”.
Ukraine has resumed operations at two distribution stations in the Kharkiv region and restarted gas supplies to more than 3,000 consumers after stations were shut down because of damage to the main pipeline from hostilities, Ukraine’s gas transit system operator said.
Economy
Russia government nationalises French carmaker Renault assets following its withdrawal from Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
They Can Still Eat at Burger Tsar, Political Prisoner in the Box, In-n-Never-Get-Out, Vlads Jr, and Hyper-Sonic Drive-In
McDonald's has said it will permanently leave Russia after more than 30 years and has started to sell its restaurants.
The move comes after it temporarily closed its 850 outlets in March.
The fast food giant said it made the decision because of the "humanitarian crisis" and "unpredictable operating environment" caused by the Ukraine war.
The opening of McDonald's first restaurant in Moscow in 1990 came to symbolise a thaw in Cold War tensions.
A year later, the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia opened up its economy to companies from the West. More than three decades later, however, it is one of a growing number of corporations pulling out.
"This is a complicated issue that's without precedent and with profound consequences," said McDonald's chief executive Chris Kempczinski in a message to staff and suppliers.
"Some might argue that providing access to food and continuing to employ tens of thousands of ordinary citizens, is surely the right thing to do," he added.
"But it is impossible to ignore the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. And it is impossible to imagine the Golden Arches representing the same hope and promise that led us to enter the Russian market 32 years ago."
Renault Says "Do Svidaniyat"
Renault has announced it is selling its majority stake in Russian carmaker Avtovaz, following pressure over its continued presence in the country.
The French carmaker said it would sell its 68% interest to a Russian science institute, while its shares in Renault Russia will go to the city of Moscow.
Moscow said Renault's Russian assets had now become state property.
It is the first Russian nationalisation of a major foreign business since the invasion of Ukraine.
Sweden and Finland Want to Join the Gang
Sweden confirms NATO membership bid. The announcement comes day after Finland said it intends to join alliance, as Russia threatens to respond to any expansion.
Russians Get a Win. Does It Matter?
Russia is seeing some success in the Lyman-Severodonetsk axis.
It seems fated Russia eventually swallow up Lyman and Severodonetsk, just off the right edge of the map above—they are the last two remaining Ukrainian strongholds north of the Donets River. And given Russia’s severe troubles fording that river, Ukraine will have more defensible territory on the southern bank when and if they’re pushed back.
I have no idea why Ukraine fights so hard for Lyman and Severodonetsk. Neither have any particularly strategic value. They’ve both been mostly emptied of civilians, flattened by Russian artillery. But Russia’s gains in the area (like everywhere else on this front) have come at a frightful cost, so perhaps there’s no reason to abandon meticulously created defensive emplacements until they actually need to abandon them?
Culmination Nation
Russia is running out of troops and heading to the point of culmination, a word you’ll be hearing more and more—the point where an army is so degraded that it can no longer fight. Ukraine went on the counter-offensive around Kharkiv, and Russia had nothing.
Russian private military companies are reportedly forming combined units with airborne elements due to significant losses in manpower. Denaturing elite airborne units with mercenaries is shocking, and would be the clearest indication yet that Russia has exhausted its available combat-ready manpower reserves. The Russian 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade is reportedly receiving personnel from other Black Sea Fleet units, including navy ship crewmembers. Newly formed or regrouped units are unlikely to be effective in combat.
10 Points for Gryffindor if You Can Pronounce "Kyrgyzstan"
Russia Threatens Basically Everyone. With they Threaten "American Idol" Next?
You and Whose Army?
Is Putin Losing the Bloggers?
The Ukrainian destruction of significant elements of a Russian motorized rifle brigade that tried to cross a pontoon bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River on May 11 has shocked prominent Russian milbloggers. Those bloggers have begun commenting on the incompetence of the Russian military to their hundreds of thousands of followers.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 14
It's the Logisitics, Stupid!
No One to Fight Fires
One of These Things is Not Like the Other
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Yemen Gets a Break
A two-month truce has brought some hope to Yemen. The United Nations-brokered deal between a Saudi-led coalition and the Yemeni government on one side, and the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, is a significant step towards ending a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and pushed millions into hunger.
The last coordinated cessation of hostilities nationwide was during peace talks in 2016.
Although the bombs have stopped falling, seven years of brutal conflict have taken a devastating toll on an already impoverished country and led to what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Since the start of the war in 2015, the UN Development Programme estimates that more than 370,000 people have died, 60 percent of them from indirect causes such as lack of food, water, and health services.
Two out of three Yemenis require humanitarian aid and protection, and four million are internally displaced, according to the UN refugee agency.
Air raids and shelling have resulted in the breakdown of hospitals and schools, while a shortage of food – which worsened as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine – has affected more than 16.2 million Yemenis, with in excess of 2.25 million children suffering from acute malnutrition.
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Pakistan May Not Be Hotter Than Hell, But It's Close
Jacobabad, in Pakistan’s arid Sindh province, is in the grip of the latest heatwave to hit South Asia – peaking at 51 degrees Celsius (124 Fahrenheit) at the weekend.
Canals in the city – a vital source of irrigation for nearby farms – have run dry, with trickles of stagnant water barely visible around strewn rubbish.
Experts say the searing weather is in line with projections for global warming.
The city is on the “front line of climate change”, said its Deputy Commissioner Abdul Hafeez Siyal. “The overall quality of life here is suffering.”
Most of the one million people in Jacobabad and surrounding villages live in acute poverty, with water shortages and power cuts compromising their ability to beat the heat. It leaves residents facing desperate dilemmas.
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The Chinese Economic Juggernaut Hits an Iceberg
China’s economy slowed sharply in April as Beijing’s ultra-strict “dynamic zero COVID” strategy dragged consumption and industrial production to their lowest levels since early 2020.
The deteriorating economic picture comes as authorities have imposed full or partial lockdowns on dozens of Chinese cities, including the financial capital Shanghai, where more than 25 million residents have been under severe restrictions since late March.
With millions of Chinese confined to their homes, retail sales last month dropped 11.1 percent compared with the previous year, sharply worse than March’s 3.5 percent contraction, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday.
The figure marked the biggest decline since March 2020.
As lockdowns forced factories to suspend operations and disrupted supply chains, industrial production fell 2.9 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 5 percent gain in March, marking the largest decline since February 2020.
China’s job market also took a hit, with the nationwide jobless rate rising to 6.1 percent in April, up from 5.8 percent, marking the highest rate since February 2020.
The poor figures pour doubt on Beijing being able to meet its ambitious target of 5.5 percent growth in 2022 and are likely to fuel fears of the world’s second-largest economy contracting this quarter.
They Have Plenty of Money for Prisons
Nearly one in 25 people in a county in the Uighur heartland of China has been sentenced to prison on terrorism-related charges in what is the highest known imprisonment rate in the world, a review of leaked data by The Associated Press news agency shows.
A list obtained and partially verified by the AP cites the names of more than 10,000 Uighurs sent to prison in just Konasheher county alone, one of the dozens in China’s southern Xinjiang region. In recent years, China has cracked down on the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority which it has described as a “war on terrorism”.
The list is by far the biggest to emerge to date with the names of imprisoned Uighurs, reflecting the sheer size of a Chinese government campaign by which an estimated one million or more people were swept into internment camps and prisons.
It also confirms what families and rights groups have said for years: China is relying on a system of long-term imprisonment to keep the Uighurs in check, wielding the law as a weapon of repression.
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Is a Soft Landing a Fairy Tale? Not Necessarily.
Earlier this month Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell announced a half-percentage-piont increase in interest rates, the largest hike in over two decades. Powell also indicated that he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again — a move straight out of the central bank’s 1994 playbook, when the Fed last tempered the US economy and successfully executed a so-called soft landing.
In the 12 months that followed February 1994, the Fed, under former Chair Alan Greenspan, nearly doubled interest rates to 6% in just seven hikes, including two half-point increases and one three-quarter-point hike.
“Eat your heart out, 1994,” wrote Morgan Stanley analysts in a note following Powell’s comments.
Inflation rates are near 40-year highs and most economists agree that the Fed should raise interest rates in order to reduce economic demand and maintain price stability. They just don’t agree on what that will mean for the economy at large.
The history of central bank rate hikes does appear to support the inevitability of an economic downturn, but there have been rare instances when the Fed has made a soft landing: Once in 1965, and again in 1984 and 1994.
Over the next few months, the Fed will attempt to engineer a cooling of the economy that leads to lower prices but doesn’t spiral into recession. It’s a Goldilocksian task that some, including former New York Federal Reserve Bank president Bill Dudley, believe will be nearly impossible to execute.
Is "Goldilocksian" a Word?
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The Truth About Inflation
Saudi Arabia and Russia fueled inflation, but Biden’s relief plan probably didn’t, and there are hopeful signs even with high prices likely to continue into 2023.
What about the view, prevalent in some economic circles, that Milton Friedman finally got it right and the current inflation is a case of too much money chasing too few goods? Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is a notable supporter of this explanation, placing much of the blame for “too much money” on the Biden pandemic relief program, passed in early 2021.
That case is doubtful at best. After the pandemic lockdowns, demand began to recover in June 2020, with support from the first tranche of pandemic relief in April 2020. That stimulus may have contributed modestly to an uptick in inflation in early 2021, but that was a small cost to prevent a protracted deep recession. Inflation indeed began to take off in March 2021—along with energy prices—but given the long lag between fiscal policy changes and changes in prices, Biden’s American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021 could not have been responsible for that. That program, along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill and deft vaccine distribution, did fuel the extraordinary job gains of the last 15 months. In that way, the Biden relief may have helped sustain the early 2022 uptick in inflation that, again, was driven much more by energy prices.
Coming to a Road or Bridge Near You.
The White House on Monday said it has released $110 billion in funding from the $1 trillion infrastructure package that seeks to fix crumbling roads, expand broadband internet and improve the electrical grid.
Monday marks the six-month anniversary of President Joe Biden's signing of bipartisan infrastructure legislation. It coincides with the 2022 "Infrastructure Week" that opens Monday unitedforinfrastructure.org. Biden's Republican predecessor Donald Trump touted "Infrastructure week" in 2018, but was unable to pass a bill.
"We're hitting the ground running on the projects that are shovel-ready," White House Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu told reporters.
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I Am Sure the QOP Will Blame This on Biden, Too.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will cause European growth to slow and inflation to rise at a faster than expected rate, according to the latest EU Commission economic forecasts.
It says that the war has caused commodity prices to rise, disrupted supply chains and increased uncertainty.
The EU predicts that eurozone GDP will increase by 2.7% this year and 2.3% in 2023. That compares to previous forecasts of 4% and 2.8%.
The EU Commission also says inflation in the eurozone is projected to increase to 6.1% in 2022. It is then predicting the rate to drop off sharply to 2.7% in 2023.
In its winter forecasts, the EU was forecasting inflation of 3.5% in 2022 and 1.7% in 2023.
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I Can Tell Them What They Will Find. Unidentified Flying Objects are Unidentified
Congress is due to hold its first hearing on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in decades on Tuesday—a sign that defense officials are taking the phenomenon seriously.
Usually reserved for the world of science fiction or dubious conspiracy theories, UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) as the government now refers to them, have remained a pop culture sensation for years and are often linked to some sort of intelligent alien civilization visiting Earth.
Perhaps less far-fetched is the idea that UFOs/UAPs could also be foreign military aircraft—or perhaps particularly secretive domestic military aircraft.
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Somebody's Making Money on Crypto
Securities and Exchange Commission Chariman Gary Gensler said cryptocurrency exchanges are "commingling" services, which could go against their customers' best interests.
The SEC chief warned the lack of separations between services like custody, market-making, and providing a trading platform leaves clients vulnerable.
"Crypto's got a lot of those challenges — of platforms trading ahead of their customers," Gensler told Bloomberg on Tuesday. "In fact, they're trading against their customers often because they're market-marking against their customers."
Some tokens like Binance, USD Coin and Tether, which are all stablecoins tied to fiat currencies like the US dollar, are closely tied with exchanges, he added.
"I don't think that's a coincidence," Gensler said. "Each one of the three big ones were founded by the trading platforms to facilitate trading on those platforms and potentially avoid AML and KYC," or anti-money laundering and know-your-customer protections.
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | New Hospitalizations 7-Day Average | |
| May 15 | 90,337 | 263 | |
| May 14 | 88,187 | 265 | 2,698 |
| May 13 | 87,831 | 266 | 2,798 |
| May 12 | 87,382 | 272 | 2,731 |
| May 11 | 84,778 | 272 | 2,652 |
| May 10 | 78,236 | 326 | 2,629 |
| May 9 | 74,712 | 323 | 2,597 |
| May 8 | 66,564 | 323 | 2,510 |
| May 7 | 67,561 | 335 | 2,310 |
| May 6 | 68,807 | 340 | 2,396 |
| May 5 | 67,263 | 341 | 2.363 |
| May 4 | 64,780 | 334 | 2,267 |
| May 3 | 61,712 | 325 | 2,219 |
| May 2 | 60,410 | 318 | 2.214 |
| May 1 | 57,020 | 307 | 2,072 |
| Apr 30 | 56,581 | 310 | 1,882 |
| Apr 29 | 56,166 | 308 | 1,946 |
| Apr 28 | 54,696 | 311 | 1,955 |
| Apr 27 | 53,133 | 334 | 1,941 |
| Apr 26 | 48,692 | 299 | 1,889 |
| Apr 25 | 47,407 | 330 | 1,840 |
| Apr 24 | 44,416 | 314 | 1,779 |
| Apr 23 | 45,413 | 315 | 1,629 |
| Apr 22 | 44,308 | 311 | 1,642 |
| Apr 21 | 40,744 | 346 | 1,647 |
| Apr 20 | 42,604 | 375 | 1,609 |
| Apr 19 | 40,985 | 385 | 1,582 |
| Apr 18 | 37,132 | 380 | 1,564 |
| Apr 17 | 35,212 | 373 | 1,542 |
| Apr 16 | 34,972 | 379 | 1,532 |
| Apr 15 | 34,778 | 399 | 1,510 |
| Apr 14 | 35,475 | 446 | 1,490 |
| Apr 13 | 31,391 | 409 | 1,477 |
| Apr 12 | 29,401 | 452 | 1,463 |
| Apr 11 | 30,208 | 483 | 1.447 |
| Apr 10 | 28,927 | 500 | 1,443 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 77.7% | 66.3% | 45.9% |
| % of Population 5+ | 82.6% | 70.4% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 87.4% | 74.7% | 47.7% |
| % of Population 18+ | 89.1% | 76.2% | 49.5% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 90.4% | 68.8% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday May 10)
We had some rain up north this week.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks Ago | 4 Weeks Ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 80% (75%) | 80% (74%) | 81% (74%) | 73% (63% of full season average) |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 65% (61%) | 66% (61%) | 67% (61%) | 65% (57%) |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 61% (57%) | 61% (57%) | 62% (57%) | 61% (53%) |
| Snow Water Content - North | 29% | |||
| Snow Water Content - Central | 26% | |||
| Snow Water Content - South | 9% |
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Life Without Music Would b Flat
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Russia is Still Trying to Hack Elections
Pro-Russian hackers attempted to disrupt voting for the Eurovision Song Contest, Italian police have said.
Ukraine won the competition thanks to huge support in the public vote. Russia was banned following its invasion.
Police in Italy, where this year's contest was staged, said the Killnet hacker group targeted the first semi-final - in which Ukraine performed - as well as Saturday's grand final.
But they said their cybersecurity division blocked the attacks.
"Various computer attacks of a DDOS [distributed denial-of-service] nature aimed at network infrastructures during voting operations and singing performances were mitigated," a police statement said.
Ukraine's Kalush Orchestra won the contest with their song Stefania, which was the runaway winner in the public vote.
While We Condemn Russia, We Should Remember
It wasn’t called the secret war for nothing.
The Johnson and Nixon administrations each oversaw U.S. military operations in Laos — technically a neutral country — without informing Congress of the full scale of the American involvement.
U.S. bombers were pummeling communist supply lines on both sides of the Vietnam-Laos border, often with little regard for civilian casualties.
They dropped an estimated 2 million tons of ordnance during the conflict, making Laos, on a per-person basis, the most bombed nation in history.
Plagiarize. Plagiarize. Let No One Else's Work Ever Evade Your Eyes
Inciting Murder and Mayhem. He's the Terrorist Leader Who Sends Out the Suicide Bombers, But Won't Do It Himself.
September 16, 2021
Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), the No. 3 House Republican, is pushing the notion in Facebooks ads that President Biden and fellow Democrats are seeking a “permanent election insurrection” by expanding pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
The ads from Stefanik come ahead of a rally planned for Saturday in Washington in support of those charged with crimes in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and as House Democrats work to advance a measure that would allow several million immigrants to apply for permanent residency.
“Radical Democrats are planning their most aggressive move yet: a PERMANENT ELECTION INSURRECTION,” says one version of the ad, paid for by Stefanik’s campaign committee, that appeared Wednesday. “Their plan to grant amnesty to 11 MILLION illegal immigrants will overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.”
The ad depicts Biden with people who appear to be migrants reflected in the sunglasses he is wearing.
The GOP’s gradual descent into ‘replacement theory’ and ‘nativist dog whistles’
The language in the ads echoes that of far-right commentators, including Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who have advanced a “replacement theory” that says liberals are seeking to replace White citizens with non-White immigrants who are inclined to support the Democratic Party.
For Stefanik, embracing such rhetoric is a departure from earlier in her political career. Before she replaced Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as the House Republican conference chairwoman in May, some in her party had raised concerns that her record on immigration was too liberal.
An anti-immigration group criticized Stefanik’s co-sponsorship of the Farm Workforce Authorization Act, which includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrant farmworkers.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Singing the Eurovision Winning Song While the Bombs Explode
I Guess Fauci Wasn't Going to Say "Hell No!"
Your Barista May Be a Little Happier Today
Starbucks Corp will reimburse U.S. employees if they must travel more than 100 miles from their homes to obtain an abortion, according to a memo sent to employees on Monday.
The global coffee chain joins Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and a small but growing list of other companies to offer the benefit as some U.S. states impose tighter restrictions on abortion..
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Invasions Have Consequences
Day 82
Fighting
Russian forces are targeting civilian and military sites in multiple towns in the Donetsk region including Dovhenke, Ruski Tyshki, Ternova and Petrivka, the Ukrainian military said.
The Russian military continues artillery and air attacks on Mariupol, particularly on the Azovstal plant where Ukrainian fighters are trapped, according to Ukraine’s army.
Russia has likely run out of combat-ready reservists and is bringing in soldiers from private military companies and proxy militias, as well as covertly mobilising units of untrained men – including conscripts from Luhansk and Donetsk, the Institute for the Study of War said.
Refugees from Mariupol reached Ukrainian-controlled Zaporizhzhia in a large convoy of cars and vans after waiting days for the Russian military to allow them leave.
The Ukrainian army still controls about 10 percent of the eastern region of Luhansk despite heavy Russian attacks, its governor said.
Russia is seeking to encircle Ukrainian forces in the battle for Donbas, Ukraine’s defence ministry said.
Four missiles hit military infrastructure in the Yavoriv area of western Ukraine, according to Lviv’s regional governor.
Russian forces hit Ukrainian military command posts, ammunition depots, and other military equipment, killing at least 100 Ukrainian “nationalists”, Moscow’s defence ministry said.
Diplomacy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attacks in Donetsk and said Russian troops are at “a dead end” in Ukraine.
Sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States on Belarus have blocked $16bn-$18bn worth of its annual exports to the West, Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko was quoted as saying.
G7 foreign ministers promised to keep supplying weapons to Ukraine and isolating Russia, as well as working on easing global food shortages caused by the war.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Berlin, Germany, and said “more weapons and other aid is on the way to Ukraine”.
After Ukraine’s win at Eurovision song contest, Ukrainians received a boost seeing a wave of popular support in Europe.
NATO
Finland and Sweden announced bids to join NATO, reversing their traditional and longstanding policies of military non-alignment.
Russia described the Nordic nations’ NATO bid as a “grave mistake”.
Turkey has set demands for Finland and Sweden’s NATO membership, saying it wanted the two countries to end support for Kurdish armed groups on their territory, and to lift the ban on sales of some arms to Turkey.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is not going as Moscow had planned, and “Ukraine can win this war”, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
Estonian Foreign Minister Eva-Maria Liimets said Sweden and Finland joining NATO would increase the security of the Baltic region.
Russia is “the only country that threatens European security” and “openly waging a war of aggression”, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said debating NATO bid.
Energy
Germany plans to ban importing Russian oil by the end of the year regardless if the EU agrees on a ban in its next set of sanctions, Bloomberg reported, citing government officials.
Zelenskyy urged European leaders to impose more sanctions on Russia and its energy sector claiming “the time of Europe’s dependence on Russian energy resources is coming to an end”.
Ukraine has resumed operations at two distribution stations in the Kharkiv region and restarted gas supplies to more than 3,000 consumers after stations were shut down because of damage to the main pipeline from hostilities, Ukraine’s gas transit system operator said.
Economy
Russia government nationalises French carmaker Renault assets following its withdrawal from Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
They Can Still Eat at Burger Tsar, Political Prisoner in the Box, In-n-Never-Get-Out, Vlads Jr, and Hyper-Sonic Drive-In
McDonald's has said it will permanently leave Russia after more than 30 years and has started to sell its restaurants.
The move comes after it temporarily closed its 850 outlets in March.
The fast food giant said it made the decision because of the "humanitarian crisis" and "unpredictable operating environment" caused by the Ukraine war.
The opening of McDonald's first restaurant in Moscow in 1990 came to symbolise a thaw in Cold War tensions.
A year later, the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia opened up its economy to companies from the West. More than three decades later, however, it is one of a growing number of corporations pulling out.
"This is a complicated issue that's without precedent and with profound consequences," said McDonald's chief executive Chris Kempczinski in a message to staff and suppliers.
"Some might argue that providing access to food and continuing to employ tens of thousands of ordinary citizens, is surely the right thing to do," he added.
"But it is impossible to ignore the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. And it is impossible to imagine the Golden Arches representing the same hope and promise that led us to enter the Russian market 32 years ago."
Renault Says "Do Svidaniyat"
Renault has announced it is selling its majority stake in Russian carmaker Avtovaz, following pressure over its continued presence in the country.
The French carmaker said it would sell its 68% interest to a Russian science institute, while its shares in Renault Russia will go to the city of Moscow.
Moscow said Renault's Russian assets had now become state property.
It is the first Russian nationalisation of a major foreign business since the invasion of Ukraine.
Sweden and Finland Want to Join the Gang
Sweden confirms NATO membership bid. The announcement comes day after Finland said it intends to join alliance, as Russia threatens to respond to any expansion.
Russians Get a Win. Does It Matter?
Russia is seeing some success in the Lyman-Severodonetsk axis.
It seems fated Russia eventually swallow up Lyman and Severodonetsk, just off the right edge of the map above—they are the last two remaining Ukrainian strongholds north of the Donets River. And given Russia’s severe troubles fording that river, Ukraine will have more defensible territory on the southern bank when and if they’re pushed back.
I have no idea why Ukraine fights so hard for Lyman and Severodonetsk. Neither have any particularly strategic value. They’ve both been mostly emptied of civilians, flattened by Russian artillery. But Russia’s gains in the area (like everywhere else on this front) have come at a frightful cost, so perhaps there’s no reason to abandon meticulously created defensive emplacements until they actually need to abandon them?
Culmination Nation
Russia is running out of troops and heading to the point of culmination, a word you’ll be hearing more and more—the point where an army is so degraded that it can no longer fight. Ukraine went on the counter-offensive around Kharkiv, and Russia had nothing.
Russian private military companies are reportedly forming combined units with airborne elements due to significant losses in manpower. Denaturing elite airborne units with mercenaries is shocking, and would be the clearest indication yet that Russia has exhausted its available combat-ready manpower reserves. The Russian 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade is reportedly receiving personnel from other Black Sea Fleet units, including navy ship crewmembers. Newly formed or regrouped units are unlikely to be effective in combat.
10 Points for Gryffindor if You Can Pronounce "Kyrgyzstan"
Russia Threatens Basically Everyone. With they Threaten "American Idol" Next?
You and Whose Army?
Is Putin Losing the Bloggers?
The Ukrainian destruction of significant elements of a Russian motorized rifle brigade that tried to cross a pontoon bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River on May 11 has shocked prominent Russian milbloggers. Those bloggers have begun commenting on the incompetence of the Russian military to their hundreds of thousands of followers.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 14
It's the Logisitics, Stupid!
No One to Fight Fires
One of These Things is Not Like the Other
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Yemen Gets a Break
A two-month truce has brought some hope to Yemen. The United Nations-brokered deal between a Saudi-led coalition and the Yemeni government on one side, and the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, is a significant step towards ending a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and pushed millions into hunger.
The last coordinated cessation of hostilities nationwide was during peace talks in 2016.
Although the bombs have stopped falling, seven years of brutal conflict have taken a devastating toll on an already impoverished country and led to what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Since the start of the war in 2015, the UN Development Programme estimates that more than 370,000 people have died, 60 percent of them from indirect causes such as lack of food, water, and health services.
Two out of three Yemenis require humanitarian aid and protection, and four million are internally displaced, according to the UN refugee agency.
Air raids and shelling have resulted in the breakdown of hospitals and schools, while a shortage of food – which worsened as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine – has affected more than 16.2 million Yemenis, with in excess of 2.25 million children suffering from acute malnutrition.
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Pakistan May Not Be Hotter Than Hell, But It's Close
Jacobabad, in Pakistan’s arid Sindh province, is in the grip of the latest heatwave to hit South Asia – peaking at 51 degrees Celsius (124 Fahrenheit) at the weekend.
Canals in the city – a vital source of irrigation for nearby farms – have run dry, with trickles of stagnant water barely visible around strewn rubbish.
Experts say the searing weather is in line with projections for global warming.
The city is on the “front line of climate change”, said its Deputy Commissioner Abdul Hafeez Siyal. “The overall quality of life here is suffering.”
Most of the one million people in Jacobabad and surrounding villages live in acute poverty, with water shortages and power cuts compromising their ability to beat the heat. It leaves residents facing desperate dilemmas.
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The Chinese Economic Juggernaut Hits an Iceberg
China’s economy slowed sharply in April as Beijing’s ultra-strict “dynamic zero COVID” strategy dragged consumption and industrial production to their lowest levels since early 2020.
The deteriorating economic picture comes as authorities have imposed full or partial lockdowns on dozens of Chinese cities, including the financial capital Shanghai, where more than 25 million residents have been under severe restrictions since late March.
With millions of Chinese confined to their homes, retail sales last month dropped 11.1 percent compared with the previous year, sharply worse than March’s 3.5 percent contraction, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday.
The figure marked the biggest decline since March 2020.
As lockdowns forced factories to suspend operations and disrupted supply chains, industrial production fell 2.9 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 5 percent gain in March, marking the largest decline since February 2020.
China’s job market also took a hit, with the nationwide jobless rate rising to 6.1 percent in April, up from 5.8 percent, marking the highest rate since February 2020.
The poor figures pour doubt on Beijing being able to meet its ambitious target of 5.5 percent growth in 2022 and are likely to fuel fears of the world’s second-largest economy contracting this quarter.
They Have Plenty of Money for Prisons
Nearly one in 25 people in a county in the Uighur heartland of China has been sentenced to prison on terrorism-related charges in what is the highest known imprisonment rate in the world, a review of leaked data by The Associated Press news agency shows.
A list obtained and partially verified by the AP cites the names of more than 10,000 Uighurs sent to prison in just Konasheher county alone, one of the dozens in China’s southern Xinjiang region. In recent years, China has cracked down on the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority which it has described as a “war on terrorism”.
The list is by far the biggest to emerge to date with the names of imprisoned Uighurs, reflecting the sheer size of a Chinese government campaign by which an estimated one million or more people were swept into internment camps and prisons.
It also confirms what families and rights groups have said for years: China is relying on a system of long-term imprisonment to keep the Uighurs in check, wielding the law as a weapon of repression.
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Is a Soft Landing a Fairy Tale? Not Necessarily.
Earlier this month Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell announced a half-percentage-piont increase in interest rates, the largest hike in over two decades. Powell also indicated that he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again — a move straight out of the central bank’s 1994 playbook, when the Fed last tempered the US economy and successfully executed a so-called soft landing.
In the 12 months that followed February 1994, the Fed, under former Chair Alan Greenspan, nearly doubled interest rates to 6% in just seven hikes, including two half-point increases and one three-quarter-point hike.
“Eat your heart out, 1994,” wrote Morgan Stanley analysts in a note following Powell’s comments.
Inflation rates are near 40-year highs and most economists agree that the Fed should raise interest rates in order to reduce economic demand and maintain price stability. They just don’t agree on what that will mean for the economy at large.
The history of central bank rate hikes does appear to support the inevitability of an economic downturn, but there have been rare instances when the Fed has made a soft landing: Once in 1965, and again in 1984 and 1994.
Over the next few months, the Fed will attempt to engineer a cooling of the economy that leads to lower prices but doesn’t spiral into recession. It’s a Goldilocksian task that some, including former New York Federal Reserve Bank president Bill Dudley, believe will be nearly impossible to execute.
Is "Goldilocksian" a Word?
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The Truth About Inflation
Saudi Arabia and Russia fueled inflation, but Biden’s relief plan probably didn’t, and there are hopeful signs even with high prices likely to continue into 2023.
What about the view, prevalent in some economic circles, that Milton Friedman finally got it right and the current inflation is a case of too much money chasing too few goods? Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is a notable supporter of this explanation, placing much of the blame for “too much money” on the Biden pandemic relief program, passed in early 2021.
That case is doubtful at best. After the pandemic lockdowns, demand began to recover in June 2020, with support from the first tranche of pandemic relief in April 2020. That stimulus may have contributed modestly to an uptick in inflation in early 2021, but that was a small cost to prevent a protracted deep recession. Inflation indeed began to take off in March 2021—along with energy prices—but given the long lag between fiscal policy changes and changes in prices, Biden’s American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021 could not have been responsible for that. That program, along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill and deft vaccine distribution, did fuel the extraordinary job gains of the last 15 months. In that way, the Biden relief may have helped sustain the early 2022 uptick in inflation that, again, was driven much more by energy prices.
Coming to a Road or Bridge Near You.
The White House on Monday said it has released $110 billion in funding from the $1 trillion infrastructure package that seeks to fix crumbling roads, expand broadband internet and improve the electrical grid.
Monday marks the six-month anniversary of President Joe Biden's signing of bipartisan infrastructure legislation. It coincides with the 2022 "Infrastructure Week" that opens Monday unitedforinfrastructure.org. Biden's Republican predecessor Donald Trump touted "Infrastructure week" in 2018, but was unable to pass a bill.
"We're hitting the ground running on the projects that are shovel-ready," White House Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator Mitch Landrieu told reporters.
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I Am Sure the QOP Will Blame This on Biden, Too.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will cause European growth to slow and inflation to rise at a faster than expected rate, according to the latest EU Commission economic forecasts.
It says that the war has caused commodity prices to rise, disrupted supply chains and increased uncertainty.
The EU predicts that eurozone GDP will increase by 2.7% this year and 2.3% in 2023. That compares to previous forecasts of 4% and 2.8%.
The EU Commission also says inflation in the eurozone is projected to increase to 6.1% in 2022. It is then predicting the rate to drop off sharply to 2.7% in 2023.
In its winter forecasts, the EU was forecasting inflation of 3.5% in 2022 and 1.7% in 2023.
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I Can Tell Them What They Will Find. Unidentified Flying Objects are Unidentified
Congress is due to hold its first hearing on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in decades on Tuesday—a sign that defense officials are taking the phenomenon seriously.
Usually reserved for the world of science fiction or dubious conspiracy theories, UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) as the government now refers to them, have remained a pop culture sensation for years and are often linked to some sort of intelligent alien civilization visiting Earth.
Perhaps less far-fetched is the idea that UFOs/UAPs could also be foreign military aircraft—or perhaps particularly secretive domestic military aircraft.
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Somebody's Making Money on Crypto
Securities and Exchange Commission Chariman Gary Gensler said cryptocurrency exchanges are "commingling" services, which could go against their customers' best interests.
The SEC chief warned the lack of separations between services like custody, market-making, and providing a trading platform leaves clients vulnerable.
"Crypto's got a lot of those challenges — of platforms trading ahead of their customers," Gensler told Bloomberg on Tuesday. "In fact, they're trading against their customers often because they're market-marking against their customers."
Some tokens like Binance, USD Coin and Tether, which are all stablecoins tied to fiat currencies like the US dollar, are closely tied with exchanges, he added.
"I don't think that's a coincidence," Gensler said. "Each one of the three big ones were founded by the trading platforms to facilitate trading on those platforms and potentially avoid AML and KYC," or anti-money laundering and know-your-customer protections.
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