Month: June 2022

“One of our two parties is … following the rules of authoritarianism”

A column from Tuesday presaged retired Judge J. Michael Luttig’s Thursday testimony that “Donald Trump and his allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy.”

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University who authored “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” spoke with Business Insider:

“The authoritarian playbook has no chapter on failure,” Ben-Ghiat wrote in a November 2020 piece for The Washington Post. “Nothing prepares the ruler to see his propaganda ignored and his charismatic hold weaken until his own people turn against him.”

When, two months later, former President Donald Trump urged his supporters to head over to the US Capitol in a last-ditch effort to overturn the 2020 election, Ben-Ghiat was not altogether surprised. Indeed, she had told people to expect it, arguing: “the rage that will grow in Trump as reality sinks in may make for a rocky transition to Biden’s presidency. Americans would do well to be prepared.”

Had Trump actually arrived outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 as he promised the mob he sent there, things may have been far worse. It is a mistake to see this operation as “amateur.”

One thing that is haunting me, a lot, is if you put the pieces together, which is what these hearings are allowing us to do, is when the temporary Senate president, Chuck Grassley, on January 5th, tweeted that he would be doing the Electoral College count, not Pence, because Pence won’t be with us that day. 

That’s one of these things that got attention and then it kind of went out of the news cycle. Chuck Grassley is third in command. If we think in terms of this being a coup attempt, these are very important details. He was third in command and one of the people above him was Nancy Pelosi. And we just saw, once again, we were reminded that the violent mob that breached the capital was looking for Nancy Pelosi. So if we think of January 6th in the frame of a coup attempt, and coup attempts are violent, this could have had a very different outcome that really resembled something out of a political thriller or a coup attempt that we read about in other countries.

With that in mind, one question the Jan. 6 committee needs to ask is what did Sen. Chuck Grassley know in advance about the coup plot? Why did he send that tweet?

Like Luttig, Ben-Giat sees warning signs she’d rather not see:

 I am absolutely haunted by the fact that people were trying to kill Pence and that Trump said that he deserved to hang. This kind of party, authoritarian discipline, where you follow the leader or you deserve to die, that’s not democracy. That has nothing to do with democracy. So the challenge in the coming time will be that one of our two parties is really exited from democracy and right now it’s following the rules of authoritarianism. I don’t know where this is gonna take us, but it’s not a very good place for a country to be.

If Trump gets prosecuted (successfully), says Ben-Ghiat (and as Luttig emphasized on Thursday), the danger is not over:

When people are prosecuted for corruption or whatever the charge is, and it sticks, that personality cult — it starts to deflate, it starts to shrivel. It’s happened in several countries around the world, only when they are prosecuted. So that’s an argument for doing that.

Now, if that does happen to Trump — DeSantis has already absorbed all the lessons of Trump. He’s clearly readying himself for a national run, whether it’s in 2024 or later. And he’s a very dangerous individual. I’ve written several essays on him already. He’s dangerous because he is equally repressive, but doesn’t have the baggage of Trump. It’s hard to have the baggage of Trump. Trump has a criminal past, in so many areas, that nobody else is really like Trump I would say. All of those things could happen.

Watch for these tee shirts to pop up among DeSantis supporters if he runs and Trump does not.

This is the future that Joey Gibson, Proud Boys, & fascist scum want: the torture, executions, & institutionalized terror of the Pinochet regime. Never mind the centrists, the time to fight these Far Right nightmares is now!! Defend yourself, defend your communities! #DefendPDX pic.twitter.com/HcdXorl6t2

— New York City Antifa (@NYCAntifa) August 4, 2018

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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
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Trump’s GOP has no allegiance to the rule of law

“Trump was told the plan to block the election was illegal but tried it anyway, and the lawyer who suggested it asked for a pardon after the riot.” That headline from CNN’s landing page neatly summarized Thursday’s third hearing of the House Jan. 6 investigating committee.*

Coup architect John Eastman knew that the two options he was recommending to then-president Donald Trump— for Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the electoral votes of several states and unilaterally declare Trump the victor, or to send the slates of electors back to several states for reevaluation — violated several provisions of the Electoral Count Act yet recommended them anyway. He considered the act unconstitutional, testified Greg Jacob, the top White House lawyer to former Vice President Mike Pence.

That view would likely lose in court, Jacob argued. Eastman replied that the [Supreme] court would not get involved in such a political dispute, clearing the way for the Trump team to violate the Act with impunity. Asked if he ever admitted in front of then President Trump that his plan would violate the Electoral Count Act, Jacob testified that Eastman did so on January 4, two days before the attack on the Capitol.

In later further testimony, Jacob said Eastman believed, best case, he would lose in the Supreme Court seven to two before conceding it would likely by nine to zero. Who did Eastman think were the two?

Trump went ahead with his pressure campaign against Pence. When on Jan. 6 Pence did not comply, Trump issued a tweet that incensed the angry mob and put Pence’s and others’ lives at risk. Rioters read the tweet aloud and vowed revenge.

A confidential informant told the FBI that had the Proud Boys captured Pence they would have killed him, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told the hearing.

Eastman was so dogged in his pursuit of his plan to keep Donald Trump in office past Jan. 20, 2021 that he called White House attorney Eric Herschmann the day after the riot to pursue it further. Herschmann thought hes was out of his mind and advised, “Get a great f’ing criminal defense lawyer. You’re gonna need it.”

Thursday’s testimony verified the soundness of that advice.

Subsequent to the failed coup, Eastman emailed Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani to ask that he be placed on a list of Trump pardons. He never received one. In testimony before committee investigators, Eastman invoked his 5th Amendment rights one hundred times.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes asked a key quesation that Thursday’s testimony did not answer directly.

Cannot emphasize enough: you don’t just get long meetings in the the White House with the most powerful people on earth! This is all wildly aberrant and deranged.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 16, 2022

“Constitutional mischief,” Judge J. Michael Luttig said of the theory that Pence could reject the electoral vote count in the 2020 election. The respected conservative jurist (retired) testified at the start of the hearing and more pointedly at the end.

“Donald Trump and his allies are a clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig said. “To this very day, the former president, his allies and supporters, pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor … were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election.”

Also Thursday, a court filing in the criminal case against Proud Boys Joseph Biggs and Dominic Pezzola revealed that the Department of Justice sent a letter to the committee on June 15 requesting transcripts of all its witness interviews. The materials are “potentially relevant to our overall criminal investigations” and “likely relevant to relevent to specific prosecutions” underway. The materials are important for defense lawyers as well.

Future hearings will explore Trump’s actions during the riot itself. With any luck, Eastman is not the only White House insider who will need “a great f’ing criminal defense lawyer.”

* Press critic Dan Froomkin found a few others infuriatingly lame as well as a few ledes.

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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.

If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com

When he’s right, he’s right

Bernie Sanders has an op-ed in the Guardian that makes a lot of sense to me and I hope the rest of the Democrats are of similar mind:

At a moment in history when the leadership of the Republican party is undermining democracy, ignoring the climate crisis, trying to overturn Roe v Wade, opposing a minimum wage increase, embracing more tax breaks for the rich and the growth of oligarchy, and stopping us from passing serious gun safety legislation, it would be a disaster for this rightwing extremist party to gain control of the US House and US Senate. Unfortunately, it appears that the current strategy of the Democratic party is allowing that to happen.

According to numerous polls, the Republicans stand an excellent chance of winning this coming November. The main reason: while the Democratic party has, over the years, been hemorrhaging support from the white working class, it is now losing support from Latino, Black and Asian workers as well.

Further, in terms of the 2022 elections, the enthusiasm level within the Democratic base is extremely low. It is not only working-class support that is fading away but it is also that young people, who helped elect Biden and other Democrats in 2020, are becoming increasingly demoralized and are not likely to vote in large numbers in this coming election.

Why is this happening? Can this trajectory be changed?

During his campaign, Biden promised to be the most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And during his first few months in office, with the strong support of Democrats in Congress, he kept that promise. At a time when Covid was wreaking havoc on the health and financial wellbeing of the American people, under President Biden’s leadership we passed the American Rescue Plan, the most consequential piece of legislation in modern history. This $1.9tn bill was effective in providing financial support to tens of millions of American families and businesses, stabilizing the economy and improving our response to Covid.

After the passage of this popular legislation in March 2021, President Biden had a 59% favorability rating, the highest of his presidency, and there was widespread support for what Democrats were doing. There was also a strong understanding that we had to go even further. The American Rescue Plan was an emergency bill that addressed the Covid-related problems facing the country. Now, with a new administration in office, the American people wanted us to address the long-neglected structural crises facing the working families of our country.

Amid grotesque and widening income and wealth inequality and decades of wage stagnation, the existential threat of the climate crisis, a rigged tax system and crises in healthcare, childcare and housing, the American people wanted Congress to finally stand up and represent their interests, not just the greed of wealthy campaign contributors. And that’s what the Build Back Better Act was about. Poll after poll showed overwhelming support for virtually every provision in that legislation.

Yes. The American people want the rich to pay their fair share of taxes. They want to lower the outrageous cost of prescription drugs, expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing aids and vision, address the crisis in home and healthcare, make childcare, pre-K and higher education affordable, establish a paid family and medical leave program and build the millions of units of affordable housing we need. Yes. The American people want us to invest heavily in combating global heating by transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, despite strong support from the American people, despite the support of the president, despite passage in the House of Representatives, despite the support of 48 members of the Senate, two corporate Democrats – Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema – both of whom received millions of dollars in campaign contributions from billionaires and corporate interests – decided to sabotage that legislation. We needed 50 votes to pass Build Back Better. We had 48.

And it has been downhill ever since for the Democrats. After nine months of fruitless “negotiations” with Manchin and Sinema, the time is long overdue to realize that this is a path that leads to nowhere except defeat at the ballot box and the growing perception that the Democrats have turned their backs on working families. We need a new strategy. We need to take on Republicans. We need to fight back.

In an extremely difficult and unsettling time – inflation, the pandemic, the heating of the planet, gun violence, attacks on abortion rights, the war in Ukraine – the American people want their elected officials to stand up to powerful special interests and fight for them. Well. The Democrats control the White House, the Senate and the House – and yet that is not happening. They are being held accountable for their inaction, and they’re losing.

Is the situation hopeless? I don’t think so. But in order to turn the situation around, Democrats need a significant course correction. And, in doing that, they can learn a lesson from the 1948 campaign of Harry Truman. In 1948, nobody believed Truman had a chance to win that election. Strom Thurmond and the segregationists had bolted the party and Henry Wallace, a third-party candidate, was taking progressive votes away from Truman. Truman responded with a simple and straightforward strategy. Unlike today’s Democrats, he took the fight to the Republicans. He didn’t let them hide behind their whining and “do-nothingism.” He exposed them for what they were – tools of special interests. He made them vote on critical issues. And, time and again, they voted against the interests of working families. Truman showed the very clear difference between the parties – and he won.

What the Democrats need to do, right now, is to make it clear: they may have 50 votes in the Senate, but they do not have 50 votes to pass the legislation that the American people want and need. They have no Republican support and there are two Democrats who will vote with Republicans on important issues.

Unfortunately, his solution is to put all these issues to a vote so that the American people can “see where everyone stands.” That’s fine. But is it really a mystery where they stand? It’s not like they’re trying to hide it. But I do hope they take an aggressive tactic against the Republicans in this campaign, not try to be mealy mouthed and talked about their 10 point plans and “kitchen table issues.” I guarantee nobody’s going to hear that.

After what we’ve been seeing in these hearings, there is just no doubt that they have to run against these enemies of democracy. I am watching carefully to see if they will do it. So far, I’m not seeing much of anything.

Sort of

Today’s hearing made it clear that Pence was in serious danger on January 6th and the fact that he resisted the bullying and stayed in the Capitol complex so he could be there to fulfill the peaceful transfer of power speaks well of him. The pressure was immense.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I understand why he needed to be convinced that Eastman and Giuliani’s ridiculous plans weren’t legal. Does that mean he believed that the election was illegitimate? That the vote was fraudulent? I get that he realized that he didn’t have the power to do what they were asking of him but did he think the cause was just? I think someone should ask him.

If Pence were a real hero he would be testifying. But he thinks he can be president so he doesn’t want to upset the Trump voters. There’s not a lot of heroism in that.

Still, we have to be grateful he didn’t follow Dear Leader’s orders this one time. Good for him.

And it has many tentacles all over the country

Judge Luttig’s statement this morning and his final comment at the hearing made it clear that the coup is ongoing. Here’s some data to back that up:

One consequence of former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie,” or the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, is that many states have changed voting laws in their states, making it harder to cast a ballot. In total, we found in our analysis of data from the Brennan Center for Justice, the Voting Rights Lab, the National Conference of State Legislatures and FiveThirtyEight’s own database that since the 2020 election, 24 states have passed 56 new laws that restrict voting, in some cases affecting nearly every step of the process.

You will notice that a few of the battleground states run by Republicans are especially hard at it, especially Arizona and Georgia. We know there are others getting ready to take the “independent legislature doctrine” out for a spin as well. All those Trump cultists running for office around the country will certainly make sure that Republicans have the advantage in 2024.

It doesn’t get any clearer

“He said absolutely. Al Gore didn’t have a basis to do it 2000. Kamala Harris shouldn’t be able to do it in 2024 but I think you should do it today” pic.twitter.com/A3ZbSZPtWs

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 16, 2022

I’m just going to leave that there in case anyone doubts exactly what these people are all about. It’s more than Trump. It’s the new Republican party. The old guard that testified today is no longer relevant.

There was a meandering discussion in today’s hearing of a tweet Luttig posted describing his analytical framework. Here is that thread:

I was honored to advise Vice President Pence that he had no choice on January 6, 2021, but to accept and count the Electoral College votes as they had been cast and properly certified by the states.

I believe(d) that Professor Eastman was incorrect at every turn of the analysis in his January 2 memorandum, beginning with his claim that there were legitimate, competing slates of electors presented from seven states;

continuing to his conclusion that the VP could unilaterally decide not to count the votes from the seven states from which competing slates were allegedly presented;

to his determination that the VP himself could decide that the Electoral Count Act of 1887 is unconstitutional and accordingly submit the 2020 Presidential Election for decision only to the House of Representatives, instead of to both Houses of Congress, as provided in the Electoral Count Act;

to his recommendation that the VP not consult with the Joint Session of Congress as to whether the election should be submitted to both Houses or only to one;

to his urging that the VP not seek decision from the federal courts, including from the Supreme Court;

and finally, to his belief that the federal courts and the Supreme Court would decline to decide every one of these fundamental constitutional questions on the grounds that they were non-justiciable political questions;

I believe(d) the Supreme Court would have decided each of these issues had they been presented to the Court, which they undoubtedly would have been had the VP proceeded as outlined in the January 2 memorandum.

Originally tweeted by @judgeluttig (@judgeluttig) on September 22, 2021.

This is a very interesting in light of the fact that Eastman apparently had reason to believe that the court would not take up the case. Maybe from his friend Ginni?

I’ve been writing about J. Michael Luttig’s position on the Big Lie and the attempted coup for a while. Today’s he’s testifying. For those of you at work or otherwise engaged, here are excerpts of Judge Luttig’s statement today. It’s amazing. I don’t know if it will make a difference to anyone but you cannot find conservative jurist in America more revered on the legal right than Luttig.

A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife’s edge.

America was at war on that fateful day, but not against a foreign power. She was at war against herself. We Americans were at war with each other — over our democracy.

January 6 was but the next, foreseeable battle in a war that had been raging in America for years, though that day was the most consequential battle of that war even to date.

These senseless wars are of our own making, and they are now being waged throughout the land, in our city centers and town squares, in our streets and in our schools, where we work and where we play, in our houses of worship — even within our own families. These wars were conceived and instigated from our Nation’s Capital by our own political leaders collectively and they have been cynically prosecuted by them to fever pitch, now to the point that they have recklessly put America herself at stake.

The war on democracy instigated by the former president and his political party allies on January 6 was the natural and foreseeable culmination of the war for America. It was the final fateful day for the execution of a well-developed plan by the former president to overturn the 2020 presidential election at any cost, so that he could cling to power that the American People had decided to confer upon his successor, the next president of the United States instead. Knowing full well that he had lost the 2020 presidential election, the former president and his allies and supporters falsely claimed and proclaimed to the nation that he had won the election, and then he and they set about to overturn the election that he and they knew the former president had lost.

Over a year and a half later, in continued defiance of our democracy, both the former president and his political party allies still maintain that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him, despite all evidence — all evidence now –that that is simply false. All the while, this false and reckless insistence that the former president won the 2020 presidential election has laid waste to Americans’ confidence in their national elections. More alarming still is that the former president pledges that his reelection will not be “stolen” from him next time around, and his Republican Party allies and supporters obeisantly pledge the same.

The former president’s accountability under the law for the riot on the United States Capitol on January 6 is incidental to his responsibility and accountability for his attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election from the American People and thereby steal America’s democracy from America herself.

This said, willful ignorance of law and fact is neither excuse nor defense in law. Willful ignorance, thus, is neither political nor legal excuse or defense available to the former President of the United States, his allies, and his supporters.

On January 6, 2021, revolutionaries, not patriots, assaulted America and American democracy. The walls of all three of our institutions of democracy were scaled and breached on that appalling day. And almost two years thence, one of America’s two political parties cannot even agree whether that day was good or bad, right or wrong. Worse, it cannot agree over whether January 6 was needed, or not. Needed or not.

Pause for a moment and reflect on that. The former president and his party cannot decide whether the revolt at the United States Capitol to disrupt and prevent the constitutional counting of the votes for the presidency was needed, and therefore whether another revolt might be needed at a future date to accomplish that which the previous revolt failed to accomplish.

The former president’s party cynically and embarrassingly rationalizes January 6 as having been something between hallowed, legitimate public discourse and a visitors tour of the Capitol that got out of hand. January 6, of course, was neither, and the former president and his party know that. It was not legitimate public discourse by any definition. Nor was it a civics tour of the Capitol Building — though that day proved to be an eye-opening civics lesson for all Americans.

Thus, for the rest of us Americans, the time has come for us to decide whether we allow this war over our democracy to be prosecuted to its catastrophic end or whether we ourselves demand the immediate suspension of this war and insist on peace instead.

We must make this decision because our political leaders are unwilling and unable, even as they recklessly prosecute this war in our name. We Americans begin to make this consequential decision this week, when Congress, rightly if painfully, takes us back to that day in January we want so much to forget but mustn’t, and reminds us of what was at stake that day and still, in what is this most unholy of wars.

America’s democracy was almost stolen from us on January 6.

Our democracy has never been tested like it was on that day and it will never be tested again as it was then if we learn the lessons of that fateful day. On the other hand, if we fail to learn the lessons that are there to be learned, or worse, deny even that there are lessons there to be learned, we will consign ourselves to another January 6 in the not-too-distant future, and another after that, and another after that. While for some, that is their wish, that cannot be our wish for America.

We cannot hobble along much longer, politically paralyzed and hopelessly divided, directionless and undecided as to which revival it will be — if any at all.

Where do we begin? This is the easier question. Who has the patriotic and political courage to go first? This is the harder question.

In order to end these wars that are draining the lifeblood from our country, a critical mass of our two parties’ political leaders is needed, to whom the remainder would be willing to listen, at least without immediate partisan recrimination. The logic for reconciliation of these wars being waged in America today dictates that this number needs to include a critical mass of leaders from the former president’s political party and that those leaders need to go first. All of these leaders then need to summon first the moral courage and then the political courage, the strength, and the patriotic will to extend their hands, and ask of the others — and of all Americans — “Can we talk? America needs us.”

Then we need to get back to work, and quickly. We need to get back to the solemn business of preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States and the United States of America.

The hour is late. God is watching us.

Full statement here: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22061497/jml-final.pdf

I know it’s a cliche to say this, but I want you to imagine what the Republicans would do with information like this if Democrats were involved:

A fugitive Chinese mogul who has worked closely with Steve Bannon—and who is under federal investigation for fraud—spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Through a series of opaque financial transactions, a company controlled by the exiled businessman Guo Wengui spent more than $400,000 for hundreds of his supporters to take part in a November 14, 2020, rally in Washington promoting Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud. The company also gave $100,000 to an organization run by prominent pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood—apparently to finance litigation that was aimed at reversing Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia. These payments are detailed in receipts, wire transfer records, and WhatsApp messages obtained by Mother Jones.

Wood said in interviews that the $100,000 donation to his nonprofit, the Fightback Foundation, was arranged by Bannon, the former Trump adviser and influential right-wing media figure. According to Wood, Bannon claimed the money came from a donor in Illinois. Documentation obtained by Mother Jones indicates that the funds came originally from Guo. Bannon did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Guo and his attorney.

Guo’s backers distributed fliers that read, “Jesus is king; Trump is President.”

Guo is a former Chinese real estate developer—once ranked as the 74th richest person in China—who fled that country in 2014 ahead of corruption and other charges there. After arriving in New York, he set up shop in a lavish Manhattan apartment and gained attention by launching a torrent of unsubstantiated accusations of corruption and sexual misconduct by Chinese Communist Party elites.

Partnering with Bannon, Guo launched Chinese-language media companies and developed a sprawling network of zealous backers from the Chinese diaspora, including club-like organizations in the United States and cities around the world. Guo uses that network to raise capital for various business ventures—a fashion company, crypto currency—and to advance often bizarre conspiracy theories about China, Covid, and US politics. The New Federal State of China, launched in 2020 by Guo and Bannon, purports to be a government-in-waiting, ready to replace the Chinese Communist Party, which Guo claims is poised to collapse. As Mother Jones has reported, Guo and his backers aggressively supported Trump in 2020, promoting false claims about Chinese influence over Hunter Biden and publishing sexually explicit material from Hunter’s laptop. In 2021 Guo promoted the unfounded conspiracy theory that Chinese hackers had switched votes from Trump to Biden.

Stay tuned for more on this. Bannon will be going to trial in his contempt trial next month and he’s promising that it will be a circus.

Meanwhile in Mariupol

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is counting on Europe and the U.S. to have short attention spans regarding his imperial designs on Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. He is fighting a war of attrition.

Mariupol fell after Russian forces reduced the city to rubble. There are about 90,000 Ukrainians trying to live in that rubble under Russian occupation (The Guardian):

“It was worse than hell there. There are no words to describe it,” said 55-year-old Vladimir Korchma, who had lived all of his life in Mariupol where he worked as a machinist at a local factory.

“We had no gas or electricity. Only the lucky ones had water,” said Korchma, who left the city at the end of May.

Korchma, a sturdy man with piercing blue eyes, spoke outside the help centre in Kyiv for people fleeing Mariupol. The centre, which provides food and organises housing, is the first port of call for many who had left the city.

Korchma proceeded to open his phone to show images of a destroyed apartment block, as did many of his fellow ex-Mariupol residents, all desperate to show the impact of Russia’s invasion on their lives.

“This was our home,” said Korchma, pointing to the screen. “Now it is in ruins. I would never have believed that I would be homeless at 55.”

Russian propagandists are still peddling the fixtion that the invasion’s goal was “de-Nazification.” The results are dire.

“Residents of the destroyed Mariupol are cooking broth from pigeons on bonfires in their courtyard,” Russia’s state-owned NTV reported from the city late in May. 

One man suffering with intense tooth pain from an infection found the dentists had run out of anaesthetics.

“His tooth infection was spreading so they had to do something. They took his tooth out without anaesthesia. He screamed and screamed,” Oleh said.

There are now fears that cholera and other deadly diseases could kill many more people, as corpses lie uncollected and the summer brings warmer weather. “The smell in the city was just so intense wherever you went,” said Katerina.

Videos posted on the Telegram сhannel “Mariupol Now” – which was set up by a Ukrainian volunteer to get information out of the city – show disturbing scenes. In one particularly gruesome picture, which the channel said was taken a few days ago, dozens of bodies are seen lying in a parking lot.

European leaders from Germany, France and Italy met with Ukraininan President Volodomyr Zelensky today and pledged continued support while Dmitri A. Medvedev of Putin’s Security Council disparaged them as “European connoisseurs of frogs, liverwurst and pasta” (New York Times):

Ukraine’s plea for more weapons has grown more urgent in recent weeks as Russian forces extend their grip over the eastern Donbas region. But the war has raised far broader questions for the European Union as it debates how best to support a nation facing the biggest invasion on the continent since World War II.

[…]

At the same time, European leaders have been forced to deal with the far-ranging consequences of the invasion — rising energy prices and inflation, a brewing global food crisis tied to Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s grain exports and the exodus of millions of Ukrainian refugees to neighboring nations.

U.S. President Joe Biden pledged another $1 billion in military aid, to include “18 howitzers, 36,000 rounds of howitzer ammunition and two Harpoon coastal defense systems.” But that aid may take months to arrive.

With gas and food prices spiking in the U.S., Americans’ low tolerance for spending on Ukraine while they feel the pinch is the stuff of Putin’s dreams. Too many, with a push from Putin, have already shown themselves unwilling to defend democracy at home.

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Request a copy of For The Win, 4th Edition, my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us.
If in a position to Play to win in 2022 (see post first), contact tpostsully at gmail dot com