Puzzled about the buzz over the Ukraine? Bryce Greene at FAIR explains the relevant issues, as well as our "liberal" media's failure to cover them. You won't be surprised to learn that "(t)he backdrop to the 2014 coup (in the Ukraine) and annexation (by Russia, of Crimea) cannot be understood without looking at the U.S. strategy to open Ukrainian markets to foreign investors and give control of its economy to giant multinational corporations." And, guess what, we backed that coup in 2014, and when has doing such a thing ever backfired on us? (Spoiler alert: it's still backfiring on us in Iran!) So, yeah, we helped bollocks all that up, too, and in such a way that our "assistance" would be needed later; couple that with Vladimir Putin's (admittedly quite deserved) unpopularity, and you not only have a "justification" for war, but a stick right-wingers can use to beat Mr. Biden with if he doesn't take us to war. Admittedly the right's love of Mr. Putin is actually getting in the way of them using that stick at present, but in the end, consistency isn't that important to the right.
Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court strikes down state's mail-in voting law as "unconstitutional," though the law will stay in place until the state Supreme Court can hear an appeal. So no, this doesn't mean Donald Trump will be reinstated as President, not just because if he somehow got 20 more electoral votes he still wouldn't have enough to have won the 2020 election, but also because (as our state Supreme Court has already noted) nobody sued and won about this when it would have made a difference. Hilariously, more than a few state legislators who voted for the mail-in law are now suing against its constitutionality! It's like something happened over the last year and a half or so to change their minds so dramatically. (And I do mean "dramatically.")
When I hear that TikTok is a "Time Bomb" "Feeding Us Junk News Non-Stop," I'm reminded that "junk news" is a phrase I've been hearing for at least two decades (and describes a phenomenon that's existed twice as long as that), and that a lot of local newscasts have just given up and paraded a collection of viral videos for years now. I agree that TikTok has so, so much more potential for good, but then again YouTube used to be a lot better for us than it is now, and Twitter certainly never fulfilled its potential. Even Tiktok's algorithms don't seem to be substantially different from other harmful social media (or mainstream media) organs. I guess I was hoping for some new insight, and probably that's my fault.
The headline "Kyrsten Sinema Would Lose 2024 Primary in a Landslide: Poll" actually understates the case a bit. You remember Scott Walker being down five to 10 points in polls to various Democratic challengers less than a year before he won his 2012 recall election? Well, this sure ain't that -- a Data for Progress poll finds her down 58 points, by 74-16, in a hypothetical primary match-up against Rep. Ruben Gallego. Granted, her numbers ain't down that far from just a few months ago, and Ms. Sinema has over a year to recover in the eyes of Arizona Democrats -- if Democrats lose the Senate in 2022, she can make a more compelling case for sticking with her, think that's the plan? -- but a 58-point deficit in a poll like this suggests she'll far more likely be the Joe Lieberman of 2022. She'd appreciate that.
Finally, some good news: our Interior Department has cancelled two mining leases near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, on the grounds that the previous Administration (and stop me if you've heard this one before) didn't do the environmental review required by law and cut our Forest Service out of the decision-making process entirely, also in contravention of the law. The phrase "law and order" leap to mind? It should, or else my life's work has been for nothing. None of this guarantees that the Biden Administration will protect the Boundary Waters on a more permanent basis, but it gives us more of a fighting chance, which is all I ever want. (Only read the whole thing if you're prepared for a mining corporation spokeshack to sound even more moronic than usual.)
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