Tracker

I am ecstatic (I think) to announce that I received a call from the orthopod surgeon's office this morning to advise me that I am booked for my knee replacement sometime in May- date to be announced. Even though I have worked in the healthcare field for some 40 years, I am experiencing some trepidation. I have never had the end of my femur and tibia sawed off before, Gotta be better than 33 months of chronic pain, though.

They are doing that already. Trump and DeSantis are at each other's throats, as are Taylor-Green and Boebert as they jockey for position to become Trump's footstool, and the Republican PAC is suing Trump for siphoning off money. This is just the beginning- as the GOP sinks further and further in the polls and donations dry up, it will be down to axes in a trench warfare as each seeks to save their own skins and find someone else to blame. Besides the usual suspects- socialists, Jews, Muslims, gays, Asians and so forth.

Russian media report that schoolchildren in the equivalent of grade 6 are being trained on how to handle, maintain and use assault weapons.

Credit Suisse worth over $750Bn USD could go down and become Debit Suisse. Lehman Brothers in 2008 was $600Bn. Silicon Valley Bank was $200Bn.

Now I feel really, really ancient.

Looks like a Pizza Pocket on steroids.

And it isn't Mel Gibson.

The Peter Principle at work.

We’re One Step Closer to Putin’s Crimea Nightmare Since the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Western leaders have privately been warning Kyiv against kicking Russia out of Crimea, the peninsula Russian President Vladimir Putin seized from Ukraine in 2014, out of a fear of triggering a nuclear flashpoint. But now, over one year into the invasion, the tide appears to be turning—at least from Kyiv’s perspective. Western leaders have started warming to the idea that Ukraine can take back Crimea in spite of Russian nuclear threats, Tamila Tasheva, the Ukrainian government official in charge of Crimea, told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview. “We heard from Western leaders that… if we come back to Crimea, that there would be an unavoidable escalation, that might even provoke a nuclear conflict,” Tasheva said, noting that those warnings have faded in recent weeks. “The rhetoric has been changing since we explain more and more what Crimea is, what it means for Russia, and how things are connected around Crimea,” she said referring to the way Russia has been using Crimea as a launchpad and key supply route for the war. In the fall, The Daily Beast reported that Western officials were privately urging Ukraine’s government to back away from the idea of taking back Crimea. At the time, they expressed concerns to Tasheva that Putin, who had derived huge domestic support from seizing the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014, would view a Ukrainian campaign to take it back as an attack on Russia proper and respond with massive escalation. Tasheva believes that concern has started melting away now that Ukraine is arguing that Crimea is key to a victory against Putin both because Russia continues to use it as a launchpad for the war, and because Putin views it as key to his political legitimacy in Russia. Ukraine hopes its plan to kick Russia out of Crimea—as well as the other territory it has stolen—is finally gaining momentum. It’s a dramatic shift from the early days of the war, when Ukraine’s goals were focused on defending against Russia’s invasion and forcing Russia out of Ukrainian land captured in 2022. As Ukraine’s forces have staged successful counteroffensives, though, Kyiv has gained confidence it might be able to push Russia out of territory it stole in 2014, including Crimea. Now, with a Ukrainian counteroffensive likely targeted at southern Ukraine looming, the path to Crimea is becoming clearer. https://www.thedailybeast.com/were-one-step-closer-to-putins-crimea-nightmare?ref=home

The Sellinger NDP government imploded due to Sellinger's autocratic leadership style which caused all manner of internal conflict. There were viable candidates to replace him but he would not go, even when the majority of MLAs and NDP supporters wanted him to. Internal polling indicated that with a new leader, the NDP would have stood a chance to retain power, but Sellinger's ego would not allow that. It is said that governments are not defeated by the oppositions, but by internal collapse.

“They’re still doing his bidding”: GOP caught working with Trump lawyer to kill tax probe, Dems say. GOP and Trump's team "appear to have acted in coordination to bury evidence," Rep. Jamie Raskin says The House Oversight Committee quietly dropped an investigation into whether former President Donald Trump improperly profited while in the White House. House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told The New York Times on Tuesday that the committee won't enforce a court-supervised settlement that required Trump's former accounting firm Mazars USA to turn over his financial records to Congress. "I honestly didn't even know who or what Mazars was," Comer, who spent years in the minority on the committee as it investigated Trump's finances, claimed in a statement to the outlet. "What exactly are they looking for? They've been 'investigating' Trump for six years. I know exactly what I'm investigating: money the Bidens received from China." Documents produced by Mazars while the House was controlled by Democrats indicated that foreign governments spent large sums on visits to Trump's Washington hotel in efforts to sway the former president's foreign policy dealings, Forbes reported. Comer's statement came after Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the committee, in a letter to Comer sounded the alarm over the move and accused the Republicans of acting "in league with attorneys for former President Donald Trump to block the committee from receiving documents subpoenaed in its investigation of unauthorized, unreported and unlawful payments by foreign governments and others to then-President Trump." Raskin added that he had reviewed correspondence between a lawyer for Mazars and Patrick Strawbridge, a Trump attorney, detailing how Strawbridge was aware that House GOP members were to cease procuring further document production. "In the face of mounting evidence that foreign governments sought to influence the Trump administration by playing to President Trump's financial interests, you and President Trump's representatives appear to have acted in coordination to bury evidence of such misconduct," Raskin wrote. https://www.salon.com/2023/03/14/theyre-still-doing-his-bidding-caught-working-with-lawyer-to-probe-dems-say/

Russia Is Turning to Women Prisoners to Boost Forces After Massive Losses, Ukraine Claims -REUTERS Russian prisoners have been thrown into the meat-grinder battlefields of Ukraine since the invasion began last year. But as massive numbers of casualties have made the situation increasingly desperate for the Kremlin, reports have emerged that female convicts are now also being sent to the frontline. In an update on Monday, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russia has turned to “alternative sources of replenishment of manpower” against a background of “large losses of personnel in the war.” “So, last week, the movement of a train with first-class carriages for the transportation of prisoners towards the Donetsk region was noted,” the ministry wrote on Telegram. “One of the wagons contained female prisoners.” The allegation was bolstered by human rights activist and Russia Behind Bars founder Olga Romanova, who said she heard reports of women prisoners being sent to Ukraine late last year. “They were taken from the colonies of southern Russia,” Romanova told Important Stories. “I don’t know the exact zone, but they worked in Kushchevskaya [in Russia’s Krasnodar Territory]. For about two months they were kept in agriculture, greenhouses and cowsheds.” Romanova said the estimated 100 women were then sent to Ukraine, though it’s unclear how they were deployed. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine made similar allegations on Feb. 4, alleging that Russia was “trying to attract convicted women to participate in hostilities.” “Over the course of a week, the occupiers recruited about 50 people from the women’s correctional colony of the city of Snizhne in the temporarily occupied territory of the Donetsk region,” the General Staff said. “It is also known that they were sent to the territory of the Russian Federation for training.” Even Russian sources have given credence to the idea of using female prisoners in bolstering Vladimir Putin’s war effort. In December Vyacheslav Wegner, Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the west-central Sverdlovsk Region, wrote to Yevgeny Prigozhin—the founder of the mercenary Wagner Group—saying he had been “approached by a team of women serving sentences” asking to serve in the “special military operation.

In this case, there is money involved rather than a criminal prosecution, so a different set of standards. I really hope the civil courts will restore some semblance of consequences to such abhorrent actions.

'Another crisis is building' at Fox News as second defamation lawsuit gets green light for trial A defamation lawsuit against Fox News by voting machine company Smartmatic appears to be headed to trial after the New York Supreme Court gave the green light last week. An analysis by The Guardian found that the $2.7 billion lawsuit could be "more dangerous" than the $1.6 billion lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems. In both cases, Fox News personalities are accused of falsely claiming President Joe Biden won the election because of a voting machine conspiracy. "The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four," Smartmatic's 2021 complaint began. "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable." The complaint also noted: "Defendants did not want Biden to win the election. They wanted President Trump to win re-election … They also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump’s popularity by inventing a story.” Over 100 false claims were made about Smartmatic on Fox News, the complaint said. In its Friday ruling, New York's high court declined to dismiss defendants Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo, and former host Lou Dobbs. Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and attorney Sidney Powell were dismissed from the lawsuit. https://www.alternet.org/fox-news-lawsuit/

Why Putin may be trying to 'weaken' a 'paramilitary mercenary' group he hired to fight in Ukraine: report Russia's invasion of Ukraine has turned out to be much more difficult than President Vladimir Putin anticipated. But over a year after Russian forces launched their invasion, Putin is not giving up. And he has been taking desperate measures. One is recruiting prisoners and convicts to fight in Ukraine. Another is using the Wagner Group, a paramilitary mercenary outfit that operatives outside of Russian law. Technically, private military contractors are illegal in Russia, but Putin has gotten around that with the Wagner Group because the fighting is not taking place within Russian borders. According to Business Insider's Sinéad Baker, however, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has "become highly critical of Russia's military leadership." And the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington D.C.-based think tank, believes that Putin is now using fighting in Bakhmut in Eastern Ukraine to weaken Wagner. “The battle for the eastern Ukrainian city has become one of the bloodiest of Russia's invasion," Baker explains in an article published on March 13. "And the Wagner Group, which has tens of thousands of mercenaries and former prisoners deployed in Ukraine, is heavily involved in the fighting. In an update on Sunday, (March 12), the ISW said that Russia's defense ministry is likely using the battle to significantly reduce the Wagner Group, as a feud between them escalates." According to Baker, the ISW believes that Russian officials are "likely seizing the opportunity to deliberately expend both elite and convict Wagner forces in Bakhmut in an effort to weaken Prigozhin and derail his ambitions for greater influence in the Kremlin." Putin, Baker reports, has "started to distance himself from Prigozhin." And ISW believes that Prigozhin is carrying out "a relentless defamation campaign" against the Russian military. https://www.alternet.org/Bank/putin-weaken-paramilitary-mercenary-ukraine/

Some people need a head start.

It seems to me that the last and only credible presidential candidate the GOP has would be Mitt Romney, but his self-preservation instinct is strong enough to keep him out of that roiling disaster that is unfolding within that party.

'It's bigger than money': Key witness teases explosive revelations in Manhattan's Donald Trump probe Jennifer Weisselberg, a key witness in the Manhattan District Attorney’s "hush money" case against Donald Trump, says there's something different about the investigation that's "bigger than any taxes, paper, insurance, banks…it's bigger than money." In an exclusive, The Daily Beast reports it spoke with Weisselberg, who is "a one-time Trump family confidant embroiled in a bitter divorce," and currently the wife of longtime Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg. Asked about the investigation outside the DA's office at 12:30 p.m., [Jennifer] Weisselberg told The Daily Beast that 'something has changed and it's up-leveled. It's bigger than any taxes, paper, insurance, banks, insurance… it's bigger than money," she told The Daily Beast. Jennifer Weisselberg is testifying before the grand jury today, as is former and longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen. Calling them "problematic" witnesses, The Daily Beast drops a second bombshell, reporting that Trump could be indicted in "days. The decision by prosecutors to put them on the stand behind closed doors—something they've avoided doing for years in previous iterations of this investigation—indicates that Trump could be criminally indicted in the coming days, according to two people close to the investigation." Prosecutors giving Trump the opportunity to testify, which he has now declined, is another indication the investigation is coming to a close. "Typically, an indictment comes just days later." In the summer of 2021, before the current District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, had shuttered the case against Trump, Jennifer Wiesselberg told journalist Charles M. Blow that the case was wide-reaching, and even included the Wollman Rink in Manhattan's Central Park, which Trump rebuilt. https://www.alternet.org/its-bigger-than-money-manhattan/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/vern-white-nsicop-china-poilievre-1.6774671

Yet another example of the implosion and decline of the the American would-be empire.

Soooo....we won't need to hold fund-raising raffles for him for a while longer.