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Author: John Hanno
Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.
GOP Senate candidate JD Vance said he doesn’t ‘really care what happens to Ukraine’
Kelsey Vlamis – February 20, 2022
Vance is a venture capitalist and author of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”Jeffrey Dean/AP Photo
JD Vance said he wants Biden to focus on the US border instead of Ukraine and Russia.
Vance, who is running for Senate in Ohio, said he doesn’t care about what happens to Ukraine.
His comments come as the US warns Russia could attack Ukraine at any time.
JD Vance, a Republican running for US Senate in Ohio, said he’s not particularly interested in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” Vance said on an episode of Steve Bannon’s War Room. “I do care about the fact that in my community right now the leading cause of death among 18-45-year-olds is Mexican fentanyl that’s coming across the southern border.”
“I’m sick of Joe Biden focusing on the border of a country I don’t care about while he lets the border of his own country become a total war zone,” Vance said.
Vance, a venture capitalist and author of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” is running in the high-profile Ohio race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman. Vance posted a clip of his comments about Ukraine to Twitter on Saturday.
Vance, who served in the Marines, added that he didn’t enlist “to go and fight Vladmir Putin because he didn’t believe in transgender rights,” suggesting that as the reason the US does not want Russia to invade Ukraine.
Letters to the Editor: If you think NATO is the real threat, you’re falling for Russian propaganda
February 21, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Moscow on Feb. 15. (Sergey Guneev / Associated Press)
To the editor: A letter writer repeats the preposterous Russian lie that North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion to Eastern Europe after the Cold War is a manifestation of Western imperialism and a threat to Russia’s security.
NATO expanded eastward for one reason only: After the fall of the Soviet Union, the countries that were freed from being Soviet republics or satellite states were eager to be protected from the possibility that Russia would one day change its mind and seek to use military force to reinstate Russian control.
NATO is purely a defensive alliance; the member states do not seek one square inch of Russian territory, and they represent no threat to the integrity of Russia.
On the other hand, NATO is an obstacle to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal of regaining dominance of Eastern Europe, and that is why he vilifies it.
Cyril Barnert, Los Angeles
..
To the editor: The letter writer who takes a Russian view of NATO needs to read Putin’s essay on Ukraine from last July (available online). It reads like Adolf Hitler’s distortions regarding the Sudetenland before World War II.
Putin’s history is highly selective; it omits Josef Stalin’s practice of ethnic boxcars to populate all the “nations” of the Soviet Union.
Putin now decries the unfair treatment of “friends” in Ukraine and justifies “reuniting” with them. Paranoid Russia has done that for hundreds of years to maintain buffer states. NATO is preventing some expansion. Countries like Lithuania are integrating their ethnic Russian populations to effect a similar result.
Do not be fooled. I studied Russian language and history at West Point last century. Their technology has changed, not their goals.
George N. Giacoppe, Riverside
..
To the editor: Mass graves of Russians? Chopped up body parts? Babies in tiny coffins?
Russian disinformation says all this is happening in Ukraine. Have you ever met a Ukrainian? Not gonna happen. Putin is a comedian for crying out loud.
But seriously, you can’t really blame the Russian president. He did, after all, learn from the best. I’m sure he was taking notes 20 years ago as another super power justified an invasion based on a bucket of lies.
Mike Reynolds, San Diego
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To the editor: The Gibraltar strategy seems to be in play in the situation involving Russia and Ukraine.
During the Franco dictatorship in Spain, whenever trouble was brewing internally, there was a sudden interest in some controversy related to the conflict over Gibraltar, which sits on the Iberian peninsula but is a British territory.
Redirecting the public’s focus from internal affairs to external events seems to be a common ploy of many governments.
Russian Military Claims Ukrainian Attackers Just Breached Their Border
Barbie Latza Nadeau – February 21, 2022
SERGEY BOBOK
As the lumbering threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine continues unabated, the Russian military claimed that five so-called “saboteurs” were assassinated Monday after crossing into Russia from Ukraine.
The report mirrors almost exactly what the Biden administration warned could be “false flags” or trigger points that Russia will respond to as a pretext to launch its invasion.
“As a result of clashes, five people who violated the Russian border from a group of saboteurs were killed,” the Russian military said in a statement, according to Reuters. No Russians died in the alleged border infraction. Russia also said Ukraine had destroyed a border outpost used by the FSB (Federal Security Service) in early morning shelling.
Russia has also claimed in recent days that Ukrainian forces are staging attacks on the pro-Russian separatist areas of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Ukraine has denied any such incursion or attacks took place. The Minister of Foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, took to Twitter Monday to dismiss the claims with big red ‘X’s denying an attack on Donetsk or Luhansk, or that it sent saboteurs over the Russian border, or that it shelled Russian territory or border crossings.
Monday, Putin also called a special meeting of his security council, after which he said he is “considering a request to recognize separatist-held regions of Ukraine.” In a statement televised on Russian state media, he said, “The purpose of today’s meeting is to listen to colleagues and to determine our further steps in this direction, including the appeal from the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic to Russia seeking recognition of their sovereignty and the resolution of the state Duma on the same subject,” he said, mirroring earlier comments that the West has interpreted as another potential pretext to invade Ukraine in order to protect the newly-recognized regions.
Despite a flurry of last-minute attempts at diplomacy—including talk of a summit between presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin—all hell seems soon to break loose in Ukraine.
Monday, Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan warned that Russia’s imminent attack on Ukraine will be “extremely violent” and that it could begin literally at any moment.
“We believe that any military operation of this size, scope and magnitude of what we believe the Russians are planning will be extremely violent,” he told NBC Today show on a frenzied circuit of morning TV on President’s Day. “It will cost the lives of Ukrainians and Russians, civilians and military personnel alike.”
He told the network that new intelligence garnered in recent days suggest “an even greater form of brutality because this will not simply be some conventional war between two armies.” He went on to say Russia will target the Ukrainian people “to repress them, to crush them, to harm them.”
He then appeared on ABC Good Morning America, telling them that “all signs look like President Putin and the Russians are proceeding with a plan to execute a major military invasion of Ukraine.” That plan was bolstered over the weekend with Russian military hardware painted with an ominous white “Z” lettering rolling toward strategic points along the Ukrainian frontier. “We have seen just in the last 24 hours further moves of Russian units to the border with no other good explanation other than they’re getting in position to attack.”
Over the weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron invited Biden and Putin to a summit, which Biden signaled he would attend on the condition that Russian not invade Ukraine, but the Kremlin called reports of any such meeting “premature.”
As Sullivan reiterated that any attack on Ukraine would be met with the “full force of American and Allied might,” unsubstantiated news reports of ceasefire infractions along the border continue unabated. Video posted on Twitter showed a fuel station burning on the front line in Eastern Ukraine as civilians fled against a backdrop of gunfire.
The European Union, which will feel the impact of an eventual war first-hand, approved an emergency package with $1.36 billion to support Ukraine through loans, according to a statement by the European Union Council released Monday. “It intends to provide swift support in a situation of acute crisis and to strengthen Ukraine’s resilience.”
Ukraine-Russia crisis: What to know in the escalating crisis
By Venessa Gera – February 21, 2022
Ukraine Russian Tensions
Ukrainian border guard officers patrol the Ukrainian-Belarusian state border at a checkpoint in Novi Yarylovychi, Ukraine, Monday, Feb.21, 2022.(AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak)
A woman and her child from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the territory controlled by pro-Russia separatist governments in eastern Ukraine, waves from a train on their way to temporary shelter in another region of Russia, at the railway station in Taganrog, Russia, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. World leaders are making another diplomatic push in hopes of preventing a Russian invasion of Ukraine, even as heavy shelling continues in Ukraine’s east. (AP Photo)
Displaced civilians from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the territory controlled by pro-Russia separatist governments in eastern Ukraine, rest in a sport hall in Taganrog, Russia, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. World leaders are making another diplomatic push in hopes of preventing a Russian invasion of Ukraine, even as heavy shelling continues in Ukraine’s east. (AP Photo)
Anastasia Manha, 23, lulls her 2 month-old son Mykyta, where she lives with her family members, after alleged shelling by separatists forces in Novognativka, eastern Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 20, 2022. Russia is extending military drills near Ukraine’s northern borders after two days of sustained shelling along the contact line between Ukrainian soldiers and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The exercises in Belarus, which borders Ukraine to the north, originally were set to end on Sunday. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A Ukrainian serviceman pauses while walking to a frontline position outside Popasna, in the Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 20, 2022. Russia extended military drills near Ukraine’s northern borders Sunday amid increased fears that two days of sustained shelling along the contact line between soldiers and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine could spark an invasion. Ukraine’s president appealed for a cease-fire. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
A schoolgirl runs in Ukraine’s village of Dobryanka close to the Belarus border, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak)
Sofia, 4, looks at a photographer inside a house where she lives with her parents and family members, after alleged shelling by separatists forces in Novognativka, eastern Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 20, 2022. Russia is extending military drills near Ukraine’s northern borders after two days of sustained shelling along the contact line between Ukrainian soldiers and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. The exercises in Belarus, which borders Ukraine to the north, originally were set to end on Sunday. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Russian President Vladimir Putin talks via videoconference with members of the Russian Paralympic Committee team on the eve of the XIII Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing, in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. (Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
People line up to withdraw money from an ATM in Donetsk, the territory controlled by pro-Russian militants, eastern Ukraine, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. World leaders are making another diplomatic push in hopes of preventing a Russian invasion of Ukraine, even as heavy shelling continues in Ukraine’s east. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov)More
Demonstrators holding a huge Ukrainian flag march along the street in Odessa, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 20, 2022. Thousands of people in Odessa marched through the streets of the city in a show of unity on Sunday, marking the date on which, eight years ago, more than a hundred people were killed during Ukraine’s Maidan revolution. Waving national flags and placards with slogans such as, ‘No Putin, No Cry’, people said they had come out to demonstrate against a potential Russian invasion, and said that they were prepared to defend their city if needed. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Demonstrators march along the street in Odessa, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 20, 2022. Thousands of people in Odessa marched through the streets of the city in a show of unity on Sunday, marking the date on which, eight years ago, more than a hundred people were killed during Ukraine’s Maidan revolution. Waving national flags and placards with slogans such as, ‘No Putin, No Cry’, people said they had come out to demonstrate against a potential Russian invasion, and said that they were prepared to defend their city if needed. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
People gather for a vigil in solidarity with Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 20, 2022, at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
A boy plays with a weapon as an instructor shows a Kalashnikov assault rifle while training members of a Ukrainian far-right group train, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 20, 2022. Russia extended military drills near Ukraine’s northern borders Sunday amid increased fears that two days of sustained shelling along the contact line between soldiers and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine could spark an invasion. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
A woman adjusts her sari as she walks past as students of an art school display their art works calling for peace amid fears of a Russian offensive on Ukraine on a pavement in Mumbai, India, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Russia’s security council secretary Nikolai Patrushev delivers his speech at the IX Moscow conference on international security in Moscow, Russia, on June 24, 2021. With all eyes on a possible Russia invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin is sending his top security envoy to the Balkans where Moscow has been trying to maintain influence mainly through its ally Serbia. Serbia’s pro-government media said Monday Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful secretary of the Kremlin’s Security Council, is due to arrive in Belgrade next week for talks with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, Pool)
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba speaks during a media conference on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. The European Union’s top diplomat, foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, welcomed the prospect of a summit but said that should diplomacy fail the 27-nation has finalized its package of sanctions for use if Putin orders an invasion. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba speaks during a media conference on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. The European Union’s top diplomat, foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, welcomed the prospect of a summit but said that should diplomacy fail the 27-nation has finalized its package of sanctions for use if Putin orders an invasion. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
European Council President Charles Michel, right, walks with Montenegro’s President Milo Dukanovic prior to a meeting at the European Council building in Brussels, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer speaks during a news conference about the current situation in the Ukraine in Vienna, Austria, Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Lisa Leutner)
A Ukrainian soldier trains during military drills close to Kharkiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. Britain’s top diplomat has urged Russia to take the path of diplomacy even as thousands of Russian troops engaged in sweeping maneuvers in Belarus as part of a military buildup near Ukraine. (AP Photo/Andrew Marienko)
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Global efforts to head off a Russian invasion of Ukraine were dealt a serious blow Monday when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees recognizing the independence of two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine and ordered his military to “maintain peace” in the disputed areas.
But Putin’s moves, made as shelling continued in those areas, could be a precursor to the Kremlin sending in troops and weapons to support Russian-backed separatists. Doing so is sure to deepen already inflamed tensions between Russia and the West.
The White House said President Joe Biden had agreed “in principle” to meeting Putin only if the Kremlin refrains from launching an assault on Ukraine. Even in advance of any invasion, however, both Biden and the European Union said they would move ahead with targeted sanctions in response to Putin’s decrees.
U.S. officials said Biden would soon issue an executive order prohibiting Americans from investing and doing business in rebel-held areas. The order would also allow the U.S. to impose sanctions on anyone in the area, a move to exact economic pain on key supporters of the breakaway incursion.
In a joint statement, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel called Russia’s recognition of the disputed territories “a blatant violation of international law” and also vowed economic repercussions.
A Biden-Putin meeting would offer some new hope of averting a Russian invasion that U.S. officials said appeared imminent, as an estimated 150,000 Russian troops await Putin’s orders to strike. It was uncertain when — or if — troops massing at the border would enter Ukraine.
Here is a look at the latest developments in the security crisis in Eastern Europe:
PUTIN DECREES INDEPENDENCE FOR SEPARATIST REGIONS
In a long, ranting speech during a meeting of the Russian presidential Security Council, Putin charged that Ukraine had inherited Russia’s historic lands and after the Soviet collapse was used by the West to contain Russia.
His decision to recognize the independence of separatist regions in eastern Ukraine severely ratcheted up the volatility. Western officials fear that Russia could invade Ukraine any moment, using skirmishes in eastern Ukraine as a pretext for an attack.
The decree allows Russia to sign treaties with rebel territories in eastern Ukraine and openly send troops and weapons there.
Putin’s decree tasked his foreign minister with establishing formal diplomatic relations with the separatist regions and offer mutual assistance when requested by rebel leaders to “maintain peace” in the two regions.
The decision came Monday after the Russian Security Council meeting, and it effectively shatters the 2015 Minsk peace agreements, which ended large-scale fighting. Violence has nevertheless simmered — and has seen a spike in recent weeks in the wider crisis.
A U.S. official said that a recognition of the two regions would be “condemnable.”
“If carried out, this would again result in the upending of the rules-based international order, under the threat of force,” Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, told a special session of the organization in Vienna.
The meeting of Putin’s presidential Security Council followed televised statements by separatist leaders, who pleaded with Putin to recognize them as independent states and sign friendship treaties envisaging military aid to protect them from what they described as the ongoing Ukrainian military offensive. Russia’s lower house made the same plea last week.
Ukrainian authorities deny launching an offensive and accuse Russia of provocation as shelling intensifies along the line of contact.
WILL BIDEN AND PUTIN MEET?
The U.S. and Russian presidents have tentatively agreed to meet in a last-ditch diplomatic effort to stave off Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, its first since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
Yet both seem cautious about a possible meeting.
The White House says the meeting will only happen if Russia does not invade Ukraine, noting that heavy shelling is continuing in eastern Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, for his part, said Monday “it’s premature to talk about specific plans for a summit.”
French President Emmanuel Macron sought to broker the possible meeting between Biden and Putin in a series of phone calls that dragged deep into Sunday night. Macron’s office said both leaders had “accepted the principle of such a summit,” to be followed by a broader meeting involving other leaders too.
The White House said Biden on Monday conferred with Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a 30-minute call.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were to lay the groundwork for the summit at a meeting Thursday, according to Macron’s office.
WHAT’S THE SITUATION ON UKRAINE’S EASTERN FRONT?
Heavy shelling has increased in recent days along the tense line of contact between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatist rebels in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland of Donbas.
The conflict there began after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The fighting has claimed at least 14,000 lives but had been largely quiet for a while.
Ukrainian military spokesman Pavlo Kovalchyuk said Ukrainian positions were shelled 80 times Sunday and eight times early Monday, noting that the separatists were “cynically firing from residential areas using civilians as shields.” He said Ukrainian forces weren’t returning fire.
In the village of Novognativka on the government-controlled side, 60-year-old Ekaterina Evseeva, said the shelling was worse than at the height of fighting.
“It’s worse than 2014,” she said, her voice trembling. “We are on the edge of nervous breakdowns. And there is nowhere to run.”
RUSSIAN TROOPS STAY IN BELARUS, ADDING TO FEARS
Russian troops who have been carrying out military exercises in Belarus, which is located on Ukraine’s northern border, were supposed to go home when those war games ended Sunday. But now Moscow and Minsk say that the Russian troops are staying indefinitely.
The continued deployment of the Russian forces in Belarus raised concerns that Russia could send those troops to sweep down on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, a city of 3 million less than a three-hour drive away from the Belarus border.
UKRAINE PROJECTS CALM
Despite Biden’s assertion that Putin has made the decision to roll Russian forces into Ukraine, Ukrainian officials sought to project calm, saying that they weren’t seeing an invasion as imminent.
Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said Monday that Russia has amassed 147,000 troops around Ukraine, including 9,000 in Belarus, arguing that the number is insufficient for an offensive on the Ukrainian capital.
“The talk about an attack on Kyiv from the Belarusian side sounds ridiculous,” he said, charging that Russia is using the troops there to create fear.
Over the weekend at the Polish border, many Ukrainians were also returning home from shopping or working in the neighboring EU country. Some said they were not afraid and vowed to take up arms against Russia in case of an assault.
EU OFFERS TO ADVISE UKRAINE
For all the posturing and vows of reprisal from Western leaders, direct military intervention has thus far been ruled out.
However, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Monday the European Union has agreed to set up a military education advisory mission in his country.
Kuleba told reporters in Brussels after meeting with the bloc’s foreign ministers that an agreement had been reached in principle to roll out the advisory training military mission.
“This is not combat forces,” he said. “This is a new element in the cooperation between Ukraine and the European Union.”
The move could involve sending European officers to Ukraine’s military schools to help educate its armed forces. It’s likely to take several months to set up.
Russia has sought promises from NATO that it would never offer membership to Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, a condition that the West has rejected.
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, spoke Monday with the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Lt. Gen. Valery Zaluzhny.
Milley called Ukraine a key partner to NATO, according to the Pentagon’s summary of the phone call.
THE LATEST BRITISH WARNINGS
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was preparing to speak to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and “offer him the support of the United Kingdom.”
Earlier, Britain’s defense secretary, Ben Wallace, urged Putin to turn away from military action and pursue diplomacy not just for the sake of Ukrainians but to prevent Russian deaths.
Russians know the consequences of the past actions, including the invasion of Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Chechnya, he said.
“These are just two examples when too many young men returned home in zinc-lined coffins, and the government therefore urges President Putin for the sake of his own people, and even at this 11th hour, to rule out the invasion of Ukraine,” he said.
Wallace told the House of Commons that Putin had continued to build up forces in the region. Russia has now massed 65% of its land combat power on the Ukrainian border, he said.
U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the West was preparing “for the worst-case scenario,” adding: “We must make the cost for Russia intolerably high.”
Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow; Yuras Karmanau and Lori Hinnant in Kyiv, Ukraine; Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka in London; Lorne Cook in Brussels, Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Angela Charlton in Paris and Bobby Caina Calvan in New York contributed to this report.
‘This should terrify the nation’: the Trump ally seeking to run Arizona’s elections
Ed Pilkington – February 21,2022
Photograph: Rachel Mummey/Reuters
Last September, Donald Trump released a statement through his Save America website. “It is my great honor to endorse a true warrior,” he proclaimed, “a patriot who has fought for our country, who was willing to say what few others had the courage to say, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement.”
Former US presidents usually reserve their most gushing praise – replete with Capital Letters – for global allies or people they are promoting for high office. A candidate for the US Senate, perhaps, or someone vying to become governor of one of the biggest states.
Trump by contrast was heaping plaudits on an individual running for an elected post that a year ago most people had never heard of, let alone cared about. He was endorsing Mark Finchem, a Republican lawmaker from Tucson, in his bid to become Arizona’s secretary of state.
Until Trump’s endorsement, Finchem, like the relatively obscure position for which he is now standing, was scarcely known outside politically informed Arizona circles. Today he is a celebrity on the “Save America” circuit, one of a coterie of local politicians who have been thrown into the national spotlight by Trump as he lays the foundations for a possible ground attack on democracy in the 2024 presidential election.
The role of secretary of state is critical to the smooth workings and integrity of elections in many states, Arizona included. The post holder is the chief election officer, with powers to certify election results, vet the legal status of candidates and approve infrastructure such as voting machines.
What’s so insidious about the Trump plan is that it is focusing on state-level races
Jake Dean
In short, they are in charge of conducting and counting the vote.
About three weeks after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election – and on the same day that Joe Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in Arizona was certified – Finchem hosted Rudy Giuliani at a downtown Phoenix hotel. Giuliani, then Trump’s personal lawyer, announced a new theory for why the result should be overturned: that Biden had relied on fraudulent votes from among the 5 million undocumented immigrants living in the state – a striking number given that Arizona only has a total of 7 million residents.
Two weeks after that, Finchem was among 30 Republican lawmakers in Arizona who signed a joint resolution. It called on Congress to block the state’s 11 electoral college votes for Biden and instead accept “the alternate 11 electoral votes for Donald J Trump”.
Finchem was present in Washington on 6 January 2021, the day that hundreds of angry Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people with 140 police officers injured. He had come to speak at a planned “Stop the Steal” rally, later cancelled, to spread the “big lie” that the election had been rigged.
Communications between Finchem and the organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally earned the lawmaker a knock on the door from the January 6 committee this week. The powerful congressional investigation into the insurrection issued a subpoena for him to appear before the panel and to hand over documents relating to the effort to subvert democracy.
Finchem will have to answer to the committee for what he did in the wake of the 2020 election, or face legal consequences. But there’s a more disconcerting question thrown up by his candidacy for secretary of state: were he to win the position, would he be willing and able to overturn the result of the 2024 presidential election in Arizona, potentially paving the way for a political coup?
“Someone who wants to dismantle, disrupt and completely destroy democracy is running to be our state’s top election officer,” said Reginald Bolding, the Democratic minority leader in the Arizona House who is running against Finchem in the secretary of state race. “That should terrify not just Arizona, but the entire nation.”
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Trump has so far endorsed three secretary of state candidates in this year’s election cycle, and Finchem is arguably the most controversial of the bunch. (The other two are Jody Hice in Georgia and Kristina Karamo in Michigan.)
Originally from Kalamazoo in Michigan, he spent 21 years as a public safety officer before retiring to Tucson and setting up his own small business. In 2014 he was elected to the Arizona legislature, representing Oro Valley.
Even before Finchem was inaugurated as a lawmaker, he was stirring up controversy. On the campaign trail in 2014, he announced that he was “an Oath Keeper committed to the exercise of limited, constitutional governance”.
The Oath Keepers are a militia group with a list of 25,000 current or past members, many from military or law enforcement backgrounds. They have been heavily implicated in the January 6 insurrection.
The founder of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, and nine co-defendants are facing trial for seditious conspiracy based on allegations that they meticulously planned an armed attack on the heart of American democracy.
Finchem entered the Arizona legislature in January 2015 and soon was carving out a colourful reputation. With his bushy moustache, cowboy hat and boots, and offbeat political views, his hometown news outlet Tucson Weekly dubbed him “one of the nuttier lawmakers” in the state.
Bolding, who entered the legislature at the same time as Finchem, remembers being called into his office soon after they both started. “He wanted to show me a map of how Isis and other terrorist groups were pouring over the border with Mexico to invade the United States,” Bolding told the Guardian.
One of the first measures sponsored by Finchem reduced state taxes on gold coins on the basis that they were “legal tender”. He then introduced legislation that would have imposed a “code of ethics” on teachers – a “gag law” as some decried it – that would have restricted learning in class.
The nine-point code was later revealed to have been cut and pasted from a campaign calling itself “Stop K-12 Indoctrination” backed by the far-right Muslim-bashing David Horowitz Freedom Center.
“In essence he wanted a pledge of fealty from teachers that they wouldn’t discuss ‘anti-American’ subjects,” said Jake Dean, who has reported on Finchem for the Tucson Weekly.
It was not until Trump began to fire up his supporters with his big lie about the 2020 election that Finchem truly found his political voice. The state lawmaker was a key advocate of the self-proclaimed “audit” of votes in Maricopa county carried out by Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based company that spent six months scavenging for proof of election fraud and failed to produce any.
To this day no credible evidence of major fraud in the 2020 election has been presented, yet Finchem continues to beat that drum. Last month he told a Trump rally in Florence, Arizona: “We know it, and they know it. Donald Trump won.”
In his latest ruse, Finchem this month introduced a new bill, HCR2033, which seeks to decertify the 2020 election results in Arizona’s three largest counties. There is no legal mechanism for decertifying election results after the event.
As the August primary election to choose the Republican and Democratic candidates for secretary of state draws closer, attention is likely to fall increasingly on Finchem’s appearance in Washington on the day of the insurrection. Allegations that he played a role in inciting the Capitol attacks led to an unsuccessful attempt to have him recalled from the legislature, as well as a motion by Arizona Democrats to have him expelled from the chamber.
“The consensus in our caucus was that individuals who participated in the January 6 insurrection do not belong serving as members of the legislature,” Bolding said.
Finchem has responded to claims that he helped organize the insurrection by threatening to sue. Through lawyers he has denied that he played any role in the violent assault on the Capitol building, saying that he “never directly witnessed the Capitol breach, and that he was in fact warned away from the Capitol when the breach began”.
In his telling of events, he was in Washington that day to deliver to Mike Pence an “evidence book” of purported fraud in the Arizona election and to ask the then vice-president to delay certification of Biden’s victory. For Finchem, January 6 remains a “patriotic event” dedicated to the exercise of free speech; if there were any criminality it was all the responsibility of anti-fascist and Black Lives Matter activists.
The Guardian reached out to Finchem to invite him to explain his presence and actions in Washington on January 6, but he did not respond.
Finchem at Arizona’s capitol in Phoenix in 2018. Photograph: Bob Christie/AP
He has repeatedly insisted that he never came within 500 yards of the Capitol building. But photos and video footage captured by Getty Images and examined by the Arizona Mirror show him walking through the crowd of Trump supporters in front of the east steps of the Capitol after the insurrection was already under way.
At 3.14pm on January 6, more than two hours after the outer police barrier protecting the Capitol was overcome by insurrectionists, Finchem posted a photograph on Twitter that he has since taken down. It is not known who took the photo, but it shows rioters close to the east steps of the building above the words: “What happens when the People feel they have been ignored, and Congress refuses to acknowledge rampant fraud. #stopthesteal.”
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Finchem’s campaign to become the next secretary of state of Arizona is going well. Last year his campaign raised $660,000, Politico reported – more than three times Bolding’s haul.
Bolding sees that as indicative of a fundamental problem. On the right, individuals and groups have spotted an opportunity in the secretary of state positions and are avidly targeting them; on the left there is little sign of equivalent energy or awareness.
“The public in general may not understand what’s at stake here. All Democrats, all Americans, should be concerned about this and what it could do to the 2024 presidential election,” he said.
Dean agrees that there is a perilous void in public knowledge. “What’s so insidious about the Trump plan is that it is focusing on state-level races where voters know very little about what the secretary of state does. That’s a danger, as it gives Finchem a realistic path in which he could win – and Finchem will do what Trump wants.”
Putin’s Baseless Claims of Genocide Hint at More Than War
Max Fisher – February 20, 2022
A protester throws a Molotov cocktail at riot police near Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Feb. 20, 2014. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)
Moscow, in another escalation toward a possible invasion of Ukraine, is issuing a growing drumbeat of accusations, all without evidence, that center on a single word.
“What is happening in the Donbas today is genocide,” President Vladimir Putin of Russia said Tuesday, referring to Ukraine’s east.
Senior Russian officials and state media have since echoed Putin’s use of “genocide.” Russian diplomats circulated a document to the United Nations Security Council accusing Ukraine of “exterminating the civilian population” in its east.
On Friday, Russia-backed separatists, who control parts of Ukraine’s east, claimed that Ukraine’s military was about to attack, and ordered women and children to evacuate. Extensive coverage on Russian state media portrayed Russian minorities as fleeing a tyrannical Ukrainian military, and President Joe Biden called such incidents ploys fabricated as pretext for a Russian invasion.
The Kremlin has long asserted that Ukraine’s government persecutes ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking citizens. The charge, backed by lurid and false tales of anti-Russian violence, served as justification in 2014 for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its invasion of eastern Ukraine.
The recent resurgence of such language, now voiced directly by Putin, indicates what analysts and Western governments say may again be a prelude to invasion.
But invocations of genocide represent more than just a superficial casus belli. They reflect Moscow’s sincere belief that, in a world dominated by a hostile West, it is the rightful protector of Russian populations throughout the former Soviet republics.
In that worldview, any break from Moscow’s influence within its sphere constitutes an attack on the Russian people as a whole — particularly in Ukraine, which Putin considers effectively Russian.
Claims of genocide, then, are a way to assert Russia’s sovereignty throughout an ethnic Russian empire that extends well beyond its formal borders — and a right to control that empire with force.
Clashes of Civilizations
“There’s a long history of use and abuse of genocide rhetoric in post-Soviet countries,” said Matthew Kupfer, an analyst based in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, who has studied Moscow’s use of such claims.
Since the Soviet Union fell, and with it the ideological basis of its constituent states, those countries have reorganized their identities around the memory of World War II.
Genocide, as a symbol of the Nazis, became shorthand for anything deemed “absolute evil,” Kupfer said, making opposition to that evil a national imperative.
In the turmoil of 1990s Russia, nationalist writers like Sergei Glazyev won large audiences by calling Western policies an “economic genocide” against the Russian race.
And when relations between Moscow and some of its former satellites broke down in the mid-2000s, charges of genocide became the language of confrontation.
Pro-democracy uprisings in several former Soviet republics installed new governments, which championed their newly dominant non-Russian majorities.
Ukraine’s leaders, for instance, moved to elevate the Ukrainian language’s official status starting in 2004 and to label a devastating famine in the 1930s as a deliberate Soviet campaign of genocide.
Some Russian nationalists returned the charge, accusing those new governments of plotting to marginalize or even exterminate the Russian minorities within their borders.
As Russian nationalists rose in influence — in 2012, Putin appointed Glazyev as a senior adviser on regional matters — a view took hold in Moscow that any threat to its influence over former Soviet republics imperiled the Russian race as a whole.
In 2014, Ukrainians again revolted, initially over their president’s decision to reject a trade deal with the European Union, in favor of one with Russia.
The protests snowballed into demands to turn away from Russia and embrace a fully separate Ukrainian identity, which confirmed Moscow’s worst fears of a threat to Russian influence. Kremlin allies again leveled accusations of genocide, at first mostly as a generic expression of condemnation.
This became more than rhetorical as Moscow exploited Ukraine’s demographic divisions, in which Russian speakers were, at first, wary of Kyiv’s moves toward Europe.
Russia invaded the mostly Russian region of Crimea and backed militants in Ukraine’s mostly Russophone east, presenting itself as protecting populations to which it held a special responsibility.
Sectarian division served Moscow’s agenda, which meant that so did the specter of Ukrainian atrocities against the Russian minority.
State media saturated Russian homes with false stories, including ones about mass graves filled with Russian minority civilians and a 3-year-old boy crucified by Ukrainian forces that had retaken a separatist-held town. Russian citizens’ support for Moscow’s incursions surged.
The Russian World
Putin, seizing on Moscow’s successes acting as protector of Russians in Ukraine, began energetically championing what he termed the “Russian world.” In his telling, it is a sphere of influence rooted in ethnicity — an ethnicity that faces continuing threats of genocide.
This new mission solves several problems for Putin. It presents Russia’s interventions in neighboring states, typically to weaken unfriendly governments or prop up friendly ones, as defensive.
It tells Russian citizens, who have suffered under eight years of Western-led sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine, that they are sacrificing for a heroic struggle akin to World War II. It gives them a great empire to once more feel pride in.
And, maybe most important, it provides an ideological justification for a government, otherwise associated with corruption, that offers citizens fewer rights or opportunities.
As Moscow’s challenges have grown, so have its claims of a great struggle to protect the Russian race, often centered on Ukraine.
In 2015, as Russia’s economy cratered, Putin criticized Ukraine’s efforts to isolate Russia-backed separatists: “It smells of genocide,” he said. His government pledged to investigate the “genocide of the Russian-speaking population” in Ukraine.
And, in 2018, amid diplomatic crises that left Russia internationally isolated, a Kremlin-allied lawmaker accused Ukraine of seeking “a genocide against Russian people in the Donbas” while Russia’s foreign minister warned of “genocide through sanctions.”
The claims were hardly bluster alone. Many coincided with a military escalation in Ukraine, either by Russian armed forces or pro-Moscow separatists.
But each round also revealed a Kremlin growing steadily more paranoid and confrontational as its sphere of influence has come under greater pressure from crisis in Belarus, an uprising in Kazakhstan and an increasingly hard-line stance toward Moscow in Ukraine.
An Uncertain Escalation
In December, with Russia’s military beginning to build up on Ukraine’s borders, Putin repeated a familiar justification, saying the situation in Ukraine’s east “looks like genocide.”
“Claims of ‘genocide’ of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine have been a constant background hum on Russian state propaganda channels” ever since, said Alexey Kovalev, a Russian journalist who heads a fact-checking organization.
But, unlike in 2014, Kovalev has written, Russians do not appear to be responding. There has been little of the past groundswell of outrage or sympathy.
Russian views of Ukraine, once fiercely hostile, are 45% favorable and 43% negative, a recent poll found. Although Russians widely backed the 2014 invasions of Ukraine, they express little enthusiasm for another.
“People are kind of burned out from Ukraine being on TV all the time,” Kupfer said. Although state media has pushed some tales similar to those in 2014, it has done so more sparingly.
“It may simply be that they recognize war will not be popular with the public,” Kupfer added of the Kremlin.
Tellingly, Russian claims of genocide during this crisis have often been aimed abroad, rather than at home, and come from figures with diplomatic weight.
In a Facebook post Thursday, Russia’s ambassador to the United States cited long-debunked “atrocities” in Ukraine to accuse the United States of abetting “a policy to force the Russian-speaking population out of their current places of residence.”
Thomas de Waal, a Russia expert for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called such high-level comments “worrying” and said they indicated an “official rhetorical escalation.”
As with so many of Russia’s recent provocations, de Waal said, it is difficult to say whether such statements are intended to telegraph, or merely feint at, a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In either case, the escalation may reflect the national mission increasingly central to Putin’s Russia: a strong, defiant protector of Russians abroad who will never be safe without it.
Ray Buursma: Short-sighted GOP moves against teachers created a mass exodus
Ray Buursma – February 18, 2022
Michigan’s Teacher Shortage
This could easily be the new mantra directed at today’s teachers, hurled not by students, but by former politicians and certain segments of today’s society.
Michigan is witnessing the effects of a decade-old set of legislation initiated by former Gov. Snyder and GOP legislators intent on hammering educators. Their efforts produced the conditions for today’s teacher shortage, a situation any reasonable person could have foreseen.
The teacher shortage is so severe that Gov. Whitmer is dangling a couple thousand bucks as bonus money to entice college students to enter the profession and retain teachers currently serving but considering leaving.
The teacher shortage is so severe that substitute teachers need have only two years of college education, which took the place of needing three years, which took the place of needing four years, which took the place of needing a teaching certificate.
The shortage is so severe that bus drivers and support staff without college education may serve as substitute teachers. Today, a person needs more training to transport students in a bus than to teach students in a school.
The shortage of teachers is so severe that Michigan’ legislators are considering allowing college education students without a degree or teaching certificate to teach classes of their own, as if they were already degreed and certified.
If the state of Michigan’s teacher pool is not empty enough now, wait and see what it will look like in five years. The pool is drying, and Snyder and GOP legislators are responsible for the evaporation.
This downward trend began when a businessman-turned-politician and GOP lawmakers threatened to cut $350 per student from any district not adopting Snyder’s “best practices” — a set of actions Snyder demanded districts implement. That was the first salvo against educators.
Others followed.
Teachers, who had taken meager pay increases to retain favorable insurance benefits, learned they were required to “contribute” 20 percent of their insurance premiums. Of course, no salary increases were offered to offset the raises they had previously foregone to keep their insurance policies strong.
Teachers entered the profession receiving low salaries but counted on yearly step increases. Then they watched Michigan’s Republican government pass legislation that gave school districts power to withhold step increases. School districts did just that.
Teachers, who had continued working while their union hashed out contracts, found themselves unable to receive retroactive pay hikes after contracts were settled. New state laws forbade such increases. Superintendents and board members had little motivation to settle contracts. The longer they waited to sign new contracts, the less they needed to pay teachers cost of living increases.
Teachers, whose unions once could bargain until contracts were reached, learned school boards had been given power to impose contracts upon teachers. Board members could simply declare negotiations at an impasse and force teachers to accept the district’s most recent offer.
Teachers, whose unions had been able to collaborate with districts to develop evaluation processes and standards, lost that ability and learned they had no say in developing professional evaluations.
Teachers once knew they would receive a pension upon retirement, but new teachers no longer have that benefit. GOP legislator Arlan Meekhof orchestrated that fiasco.
All these short-sighted actions have reaped what any level headed person could have predicted — practicing teachers are happy to retire as soon as they can, and college students are reluctant to enter the profession. The teacher shortage is beginning, and its severity will only increase.
If these disincentives were not enough to demotivate educators, add the hardships of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and the frustrations of serving as whipping boys for parents who dislike COVID regulations. Many teachers have had enough, and college students are reluctant to enter the profession. Enrollments in Michigan teacher preparation programs have dropped substantially.
If parents are not yet frustrated with the inability of their children’s schools to hire enough competent educators, they will be soon.
The wave of shortages is coming. It has already hit lower socioeconomic districts (poor people always bear the brunt of society’s problems first) like Detroit and Grand Rapids. Eventually it will make its way throughout the state. Current legislators are trying to stop the flood with sponges and mops, but those efforts will be futile.
As frustrations mount, remember who bears responsibility. The anti-teacher initiatives were launched by Snyder and GOP legislators. They are the culprits, and the citizens who elected them also bear responsibility.
It has required multiple levels of diplomacy, from the leader-to-leader exchanges like the one between President Joe Biden and key allies on Friday to the active roles played by Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, senior State Department officials, top officials from the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the intelligence community. It has taken weeks to orchestrate a unified, forceful response to Russia’s menacing of its neighbor, and also to work on a constructive dialogue with Moscow.
It is not to be minimized. Indeed, in and of itself, it has been a remarkable display of statecraft. But what comes next will be even more challenging.
Right now, Vladimir Putin seems to have boxed himself in. In the view of senior U.S. government officials as of Friday, the Russian leader—perhaps fearful of looking weak after being faced down by Western leadership he clearly underestimated—is committed to a massive invasion of Ukraine.
In the event an invasion is launched, sweeping sanctions against Russia will be triggered that very instant. Significant civilian casualties will likely cast Putin as a war criminal in the eyes of most of the planet. And he will need to quickly withdraw or risk being bogged down in a protracted and costly guerilla war—as he undoubtedly remembers the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan was both horribly unpopular and hastened the USSR’s demise.
That’s why many analysts expect Putin to seek a path that limits its downside while delivering enough upside so that he can claim “victory.”
In the event of a full invasion, that means getting out as swiftly as possible. One way that could play out is he invades, seizes the two regions for which “separatists” have been fighting for the past eight years, and perhaps also the “land bridge” that would connect Crimea to Russia. If he can destroy or severely weaken Ukraine’s army during this rapidly unfolding scenario, all the better for the Kremlin. Similarly, if he’s able to trigger a change in the Ukrainian government that was seen as more pro-Russian, it would be a clean sweep of his core objectives.
If Putin could move tidily in and out of Ukraine very quickly, in just a few days, it would put a strain on the Western alliance. That’s because key European countries, like Germany, do not want to endure the protracted economic costs to their own countries that would be directly tied to sanctions against Russia.
Then there are other paths available to Putin that might well produce even lower-cost gains for him, options that would be very difficult for the Western alliance to manage. To borrow a phrase often used with regard to China’s activities in the South China Sea, many of these paths lead into what can be called “The Grey Zone.”
China’s Grey Zone involves extending its claimed boundaries in coastal waters, using everything from extended naval patrols to fishing fleets to building artificial islands. As cited by the Lowy Institute, Australia’s 2020 Defense Strategic Update described the activities as “military and non-military forms of assertiveness and coercion aimed at achieving strategic goals without provoking military conflict.”
This is not a new concept to the Russians, of course. Their initial invasion of Ukraine involved so-called “active measures” and “hybrid warfare” including deploying troops without insignias on their uniforms—“little green men,” who could fight Russia’s fight without being directly associated with the Kremlin. Brookings Institution scholar Thomas Wright has said Russia’s already using “all measures short of war,” including cyberattacks, disinformation, and murdering dissidents on both domestic and foreign soil.
The price of modern warfare has grown so great that few want to incur it, making the thresholds by which opponents can be provoked into conflict pushed higher and higher. Even a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine was seen as insufficient to provoke a military response from NATO for just these reasons. That’s why our counter-measures also fall into the category of measures short of war.
Putin is a master of the Grey Zone, his comfort zone. Were he to stop short of invasion, or only conduct a very limited one, he might be able to forestall the worst of the West’s countermeasures while still being able to make additional gains.
He and Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko have indicated they will collaborate more closely in the future. That could include positioning not just Russian troops in Belarus but perhaps Russian nukes. Putin could also launch cyberattacks or increase hybrid warfare or other covert measures in Ukraine without actually crossing the West’s “red lines” that will trigger the big sanctions. He could further stick his thumb in the eye of the U.S. with new efforts to cooperate in our hemisphere, perhaps, for example, with Venezuela.
Similarly, Putin could withdraw a number of the troops he has positioned around Ukraine but still keep a substantial force there and explain it is a counterpoint to NATO redeployments.
Senior American officials with whom I have spoken say they’ve considered these scenarios. They recognize them as particularly thorny. While they are confident they can maintain the cohesiveness of the Western alliance in the face of them, they also acknowledge it won’t be easy. It will be difficult to maintain sanctions or instability that produces rising energy prices—or any economic hardship—in Europe or the U.S.
In almost every imaginable scenario—a massive invasion, or something smaller, or a withdrawal accompanied by substantial activities in the Grey Zone—the diplomacy required of the U.S. and other leaders within the Western alliance will only become more difficult in the weeks and months ahead.
The active, high-level interaction with allies that the State Department has practiced will have to remain a top priority. After three decades adrift, NATO is once again clear about its purpose. And following a period of missteps, hesitation, and worse, the U.S. has once again established itself as the leader within the alliance.
But the challenges posed by Putin are unlikely to end with whatever military action he does or does not launch in the days ahead. The alliance is going to have to be better prepared to deal with not just traditional threats and provocations, but those that will likely escalate in the Grey Zone—where most future global rivalries will present themselves.
Joel Mathis, Contributing Writer – February 21, 2022
Josh Mandel speaks during a January debate AP Photo/Jay LaPrete
So how did Josh Mandel get to be Josh Mandel?
It’s a reasonable question. Mandel leads the pack of Republicans seeking the party’s nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat from Ohio, and he’s achieved that rank with a series of ever-more-outrageous stances apparently designed to ensure no human being alive can flank him from the right. He’s suggested closing public schools and leaving public education to churches and synagogues. He’s declared that the “separation of church and state is a myth.” And, of course, he’s embraced the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. It’s not been so long since a politician with Mandel’s profile would’ve been consigned to the party’s fringes. Now he’s the man to beat.
Naturally, journalists are trying to figure the guy out. “Josh Mandel could be Ohio’s next senator. So what does he believe?” Politico asked last week in a profile. The New York Times offered a similar take: “The Senate candidate was a rising Republican when he abandoned his moderate roots. Now, those who have watched his transformation wonder if his rhetoric reflects who he really is.” Both stories echoed last November’s conclusions from The Atlantic, which examined the question and labeled Mandel a “genuine phony.”
“He doesn’t act the way he used to act, and he doesn’t talk the way he used to talk, say so many Democrats and Republicans alike,” Politico reported. “And they’re right.”
Maybe. But Mandel doesn’t really seem like much of a mystery, does he? He’s an ambitious guy who has decided that becoming fully Trumpist is his best route to power. That’s it. End of story. Everything else is just commentary.
Still, the recent round of Josh Mandel profiles is interesting, if only because the stories represent a minor genre of journalism birthed by the Trump Era. Reports of this type look at an up-and-coming white guy conservative who used to be perceived as smart and thoughtful, or moderate, or perhaps simply decent — guys like Mandel, his Ohio rival J.D. Vance, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) — and ask: What’s up with this dude? He can’t possibly be for real, can he? How did he get like this?
Conservatives have long joked about the “strange new respect” that some Republicans receive if they’re perceived to have shifted left. So call these stories the “strange new disrespect” genre.
In these pieces, the candidates or their proxies often strain for some reasonable ideological explanation for their journey to the dark side. The recent Washington Post profile explaining the “radicalization” of Vance, for example, quotes writer Rod Dreher on why the Hillbilly Elegy author went from being a Never-Trump conservative to lobbing Twitter bombs at retired generals: “Trump remained Trump — but the Left went berserk.” And the stories are often filled with a sense of betrayal from old colleagues and friends. “I absolutely could not have predicted that the bright, idealistic, clear-thinking young student that I knew would follow this path,” a former mentor to Josh Hawley lamented after the senator helped fist-pump the Jan. 6 insurrection into being.
Hey, maybe these candidates really do have complicated stories and they genuinely have taken an honest intellectual journey toward Trumpism, simply because it makes the most sense to them. It’s possible, right? But the simpler Occam’s razor explanation here is that Hawley, Mandel, and Vance are just really ambitious and doing whatever it takes — no matter how ugly — to get the power they crave. Seems obvious, but it can get buried under all the other ideas.
The Founders knew a little something about ambitious men. While they drafted the Constitution — and as they explained themselves in The Federalist Papers — they obsessed over how to contain those ambitions and make sure the new nation’s institutions could withstand demagoguery and corruption. Thus the whole checks-and-balances thing. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” they wrote. For more than 200 years it worked, more or less.
These days, not so much. American democracy is fragile at the moment, thanks largely to Trump, an ambitious man who cannot tolerate being counteracted — not by other ambitious people, and certainly not by a majority of voters. Now other Republicans are taking his cue. Ambition is amplifying ambition, not counteracting it. We’re all worse off as a result.
Of all the “strange new disrespect” pieces I’ve read over the last year, I think my favorite was a story about Vance, written last summer by Molly Ball of Time magazine. In a possibly-unguarded moment, Vance indicated to Ball that his decision to evolve from his earlier anti-Trump conservatism was born of a desire to win support from Republican voters. Trump is “the leader of this movement, and if I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about, I need to just suck it up and support him,” he said.
That’s a false choice — and a grudging one at that — but it makes more sense than the idea that those awful Democrats goaded him into a reversal of his previously stated principles. He’s ambitious. It’s not that complicated.
Putin Orders Troops Into Ukraine After Shocking Declaration
Barbie Latza Nadeau, Allison Quinn, Noor Ibrahim – February 21, 2022
SERGEY BOBOK
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russian “peacekeeping” troops to the pro-Kremlin regions of Luhansk and Donetsk after unilaterally declaring that the two chunks of Eastern Ukraine should be considered independent states.
The dramatic escalation, which many fear could lead to all-out war, followed an address to his nation on Monday, in which the Russian president formally announced “the immediate recognition” of the pro-Kremlin regions of Luhansk and Donetsk—which stretch over 6,500 miles—as independent of Ukraine.
In a decree released shortly after his speech, the president ordered Russia’s defense ministry to “ensure ….. implementation by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation of functions to maintain peace on the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic.” Reuters later reported that Putin had prepared treaties with leaders of the so-called independent states, granting Russia the right to build military bases therein.
Before his formal recognition of the break-away states, Putin had spent the better part of his address lambasting Ukraine, NATO, and the U.S. for failing to address “security threats” raised by the Kremlin in recent months. He baselessly accused Ukrainian forces of perpetuating “genocide” and blamed Kyiv for any future “continuation of bloodshed” in those regions.
“If Ukraine was to join NATO it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia,” the Russian leader said. He undermined Ukraine as a country that has “never had a tradition of genuine statehood,” accused the U.S. of “blackmailing” Russia with threats of sanctions, and warned of Western efforts “to try to convince us over and over again that NATO is a peace-loving and purely defensive alliance,” adding, “we know the real value of such words.”
Though Putin did not directly address growing fears that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine, he appeared to be laying the groundwork for war by characterizing a potential Russian military offensive as an act of self-defense. Moscow “has every right to take retaliatory measures to ensure its own security,” he said. That is exactly what we will do.”
The move follows a spectacularly bizarre meeting by Russia’s Security Council, where Putin appeared like a mob boss testing his underlings, as officials, one after another, spoke out in favor of recognizing the self-proclaimed republics.
It was another grotesque spectacle on a day when the drum beats of war grew deafening. The aggressive and totally unjustified territorial claim followed a series of apparent false-flag operations where the Russians tried to blame Ukrainian forces for a number of attacks.
The Russian military claimed that five so-called “saboteurs” were assassinated early Monday after crossing into Russia from Ukraine.
The report mirrors almost exactly what the Biden administration warned could be “false flags” or trigger points that Russia will respond to as a pretext to launch its invasion.
“As a result of clashes, five people who violated the Russian border from a group of saboteurs were killed,” the Russian military said in a statement, according to Reuters. No Russians died in the alleged border infraction. Russia also said Ukraine had destroyed a border outpost used by the FSB (Federal Security Service) in early morning shelling.
Russia has also claimed in recent days that Ukrainian forces are staging attacks on Luhansk and Donetsk.
Ukraine has denied any such incursion or attacks took place. The Minister of Foreign affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, took to Twitter Monday to dismiss the claims with big red ‘X’s denying an attack on Donetsk or Luhansk, or that it sent saboteurs over the Russian border, or that it shelled Russian territory or border crossings.
After the latest round of supposed Ukrainian aggression, the leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics published video appeals pleading with Putin to recognize their independence, as they claimed Ukrainian forces were preparing to attack.
Despite a flurry of last-minute attempts at diplomacy—including talk of a summit between presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin—all hell seems soon to break loose in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address to the nation that the country was prepared for any outcome.
“We are committed to the peaceful and diplomatic path, we will follow it and only it,” he said. “But we are on our own land, we are not afraid of anything and anybody, we owe nothing to no one, and we will give nothing to no one.”
Referring not to Moscow but to the prospect of assistance from the West, he added, “It’s important right now to see who our true friends are.”
The U.N. Security Council met for an emergency session on Monday evening, with Ukraine’s envoy to the world body expressing frustration that no action would be taken. Russia, after all, has veto power on the Council.
“The United Nations is sick. That’s a matter of fact. It’s been hit by the virus spread by Kremlin,” Sergiy Kyslytsya said.
Monday, Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan warned that Russia’s imminent attack on Ukraine will be “extremely violent” and that it could begin literally at any moment.
“We believe that any military operation of this size, scope and magnitude of what we believe the Russians are planning will be extremely violent,” he told NBC Today show on a frenzied circuit of morning TV on President’s Day. “It will cost the lives of Ukrainians and Russians, civilians and military personnel alike.”
He told the network that new intelligence garnered in recent days suggest “an even greater form of brutality because this will not simply be some conventional war between two armies.” He went on to say Russia will target the Ukrainian people “to repress them, to crush them, to harm them.”
He then appeared on ABC Good Morning America, telling them that “all signs look like President Putin and the Russians are proceeding with a plan to execute a major military invasion of Ukraine.” That plan was bolstered over the weekend with Russian military hardware painted with an ominous white “Z” lettering rolling toward strategic points along the Ukrainian frontier. “We have seen just in the last 24 hours further moves of Russian units to the border with no other good explanation other than they’re getting in position to attack.”
Over the weekend, French President Emmanuel Macron invited Biden and Putin to a summit, which Biden signaled he would attend on the condition that Russian not invade Ukraine, but the Kremlin called reports of any such meeting “premature.”
As Sullivan reiterated that any attack on Ukraine would be met with the “full force of American and Allied might,” unsubstantiated news reports of ceasefire infractions along the border continue unabated. Video posted on Twitter showed a fuel station burning on the front line in Eastern Ukraine as civilians fled against a backdrop of gunfire.
The European Union, which will feel the impact of an eventual war first-hand, approved an emergency package with $1.36 billion to support Ukraine through loans, according to a statement by the European Union Council released Monday. “It intends to provide swift support in a situation of acute crisis and to strengthen Ukraine’s resilience.”
