With DeSantis on board, it might be This is going to be interesting in this presidential campaign. It’s not because I take Mike Pence seriously but because it does represent the GOP giving up a pillar of its appeal with both Trump and DeSantis adopting isolationist rhetoric. As I’ve written before, this is not unprecedented — they did this with Clinton and the Balkans too. But Trump has made this rhetoric standard and it’s leading to some real disorientation among Republicans: Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday rebuked fellow Republicans who have given less-than-robust support for America’s defense of Ukraine — a group that includes potential presidential campaign rivals like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “I would say anyone that thinks that Vladimir Putin will stop at Ukraine is wrong,” Pence said in an exclusive interview with NBC News when asked about DeSantis’ position on U.S. efforts to help repel Russia in Europe. The interview came moments after a Pence speech at the University of Texas on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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A shit ton of caveats We’re not done yet. Digby referenced on Friday a tweet thread critiquing the recent Cochrane study on masking that has the right wing huffing and puffing even louder, “Masks don’t work!” Brett Stephens in the New York Times brought eye-popping attention this week to Cochrane’s overstated findings by quoting multiple masks-don’t-work and make-no-difference statements. Then, buried down in paragraph 10, we find “the analysis does not prove that proper masks, properly worn, had no benefit at an individual level.” Whoa! What? Kelsey Piper at Vox points out in the meta-analysis that most of the “randomised controlled studies” among Cochrane’s 78 are not about Covid, were not performed during the Covid-19 pandemic (or other epidemics), and only two were “about Covid and masking in particular.” They are examining the effect of mask mandates on community-level spread, not individual protection, as Stephens thoughtfully dropped into paragraph 10.
Better her than me A cabal of Muslim, communist, socialist refugees is coming for you. But you knew that. During most of my Hullabaloo tenure, I worked in a cubicle. Posting during work hours being frowned upon, my social media engagement until recently was more limited. And I wasn’t about to waste limited down-time watching Fox. The staff at Media Matters does that for a living. Presumably, they get an alcohol allowance. Kat Abughazaleh is building her online audience commenting on the slime from your video| Oozin’ along on your livin’ room floor. She sits in her cubicle in Washington, D.C. collecting clips to post to TikTok and Twitter (Clare Malone ofThe New Yorker): “There’s that stupid voice,” Kat Abughazaleh, a twenty-three-year-old senior video producer for the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America, said. She and I were watching Carlson’s show in side-by-side cubicles at her organization’s offices, in Washington, D.C. Abughazaleh, a pair of sunglasses perched on her head and a vape pen always within reach, was flagging moments from the episode to post online.
DeSantis’ latest attempt to win back the suburbs It seems he’s had a change of heart: A NEW BILL was introduced in Florida this week that would give Gov. Ron Desantis more power over state schools, and allow the Republican politician to ban gender studies and critical race theory, along with diversity and inclusion initiatives, at Florida colleges, CNN reports. The legislation, which follows through with DeSantis’ promise to ban universities from spending money on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, was filed by Rep. Alex Andrade from Pensacola on Tuesday. If passed, Florida state colleges would be barred from offering major and minor programs in intersectionality, critical race theory, and gender studies. Core classes would also be prohibited from touching on these teachings or presenting history of the U.S. as “contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence,” the bill reads.
Laws don’t work well when many people openly defy them. Prohibition in the US is a good example of that. In Iran, it took massive protests against the hijab laws to dismantle the morality police. But what may cement this new tolerance of women showing their hair in public is the simple, casual defiance by many women in their day to day lives: [S]ince the death last year of Mahsa Amini, 22, while in the custody of the country’s morality police, women and girls have been at the center of a nationwide uprising, demanding an end not only to hijab requirements but to the Islamic Republic itself. Women are suddenly flaunting their hair: left long and flowing in the malls; tied in a bun on the streets; styled into bobs on public transportation; and pulled into ponytails at schools and on university campuses, according to interviews with women in Iran as well as photographs and videos online. While these acts of defiance are rarer in more conservative areas, they are increasingly being seen in towns and cities.
According to Rep. Scott Perry the speech and debate clause in the constitution protects members of congress who are plotting a coup with the president of the United States. One judge doesn’t think so. It remains to be seen if others do: The chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., secretly rejected Rep. Scott Perry’s bid to shield more than 2,000 messages relevant to Justice Department investigators probing efforts by Donald Trump to subvert the 2020 election, according to newly unsealed court filings. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell unsealed her extraordinary Dec. 28 decision on Friday evening, determining that the “powerful public interest” in seeing the previously secret opinion outweighed the need for continued secrecy. Perry, a Republican lawmaker from Pennsylvania, had urged Howell to block the Justice Department from accessing 2,219 documents stored on his phone, which was seized and imaged by the FBI last August as part of the 2020 election investigation.
Unexpectedly, the election for leader of the SNP has become a true hinge moment in the entire history of the Scottish nation. Sure of their control of the party, the devolutionists in the SNP have openly come out with the proposal that Independence is merely an “aspiration” – Humza Yousaf’s exact word. Stewart McDonald and […]
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A baby Pangolin A Chinese pangolin has been born in the Prague zoo, the first birth of the critically endangered animal in captivity in Europe, and is doing well after initial troubles, the park said on Thursday. For the first few days after the baby female was born on Feb. 2, park keepers were worried because it was losing weight. The reason was found to be that the mother, Run Hou Tang, didn’t have enough milk. Following consultations with experts from Taiwan, a program of artificial feeding with milk from a cat was introduced and the mother was stimulated to produce more of her own. That turned things around, with the zoo now expressing cautious optimism about the pup, which still has no name but has been nicknamed “Little Cone” because it resembles a spruce cone. “We have only overcome the first hurdle and others are still waiting for us,” zoo director Miroslav Bobek said. The baby’s birth weight was just 135 grams (4.76 ounces). Adults can reach up to 15 pounds. The Chinese pangolin is native to southern China and southeastern Asia and is one of the four pangolin species living in Asia, while another four can be found in Africa.
And Marjorie Taylor Greene is on it Here’s something to read while you savor your Friday afternoon cocktail. You’d better be prepared to have another: Earlier this month, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican, addressed the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, whose purview runs from this small resort city up along the Washington state border. Before she spoke, a local pastor and onetime Idaho state representative named Tim Remington, wearing an American flag-themed tie, revved up the crowd: “If we put God back in Idaho, then God will always protect Idaho.” Greene’s remarks lasted nearly an hour, touching on a range of topics dear to her far-right fans: claims about the 2020 election being “stolen,” sympathy for those arrested for taking part in attacking the U.S. Capitol and her opposition to vaccine mandates.