Friday Night Demo
Observing the 2nd anniversary of the
attack on our Capitol
6 Jan 2023
Assembling South of City Hall to commemorate the 2nd annivesary of the
attack on our Capitol.
Heh! Someone claimed that a new revelation concerning Trump's legal
troubles was set to be announced the following morning. Several
commenters complained that Trump had so many legal problems that the annoucement was too vague. Which troubles, exactly, were involved?
When the new, Republican-dominated House was due to take over soon, the
Attorney General appointed a Special Counsel
to oversee both the
January 6th attack on our Capitol and the unauthorized taking of
documents from the White House and their transportation to Trump's
property of Mar-a-Lago.
The initial Special Counsel Robert Mueller felt constrained by legal
decisions that said a sitting president couldn't be criminally charged.
But Trump is an ex-president, so that doesn't apply, even though
Trump's legal teams have tried mightily to convince the courts that
he's still untouchable.
Democracy is doing okay. Republicans won the House, but by a razor-thin
majority. Kevin McCarthy has been promoted from House Minority Leader
to Speaker. It
took 15 votes.
Someone said Representative Jim Jordan would be resistant to a special
investigative committee as he's the Chair of the Judiciary Committee.
Turns out they
found a compromise.
Jordan is also now head of the "new select subcommittee to investigate
the investigators probing Jan. 6." Expect Benghazi-type investigations!
Speaker Pelosi retired
from being Speaker/Minority Leader after 20 years and will be just
a regular Congressperson. Her place was taken by Representative Hakeem Jeffries. Good speech by Jeffres detailing the Republican Congress' first three days.
Senator Warnock won reelection, giving Democrats 51 votes in the
Senate. The 2021-2022 Senate was split 50-50, meaning the
Vice-President was very busy breaking tie votes. Also, Senators Manchin
and Sinema had outsize power to block good things from happening. It
will now be easier to confirm federal judges and it means far fewer deadlocks on getting bills through.
The lit-up signs read "Defend Democracy"
In late October, Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion. "The offer amounts to a 38% premium above where the price stood a day before Musk's investment in Twitter became public."
Musk proceeded to make massive personnel cuts. Granted, some of Twitter's
people were sitting around, twiddling their thumbs and collecting
paychecks anyway. Twitter had a problem with online pedophilia well
before Musk's acquisition of it. But Forbes reported that: "Twitter Has Cut Its Team That Monitors Child Sexual Abuse,"
even though Musk said that stopping pedophilia was a real priority of
his. Problem is, it's hard to detect certain crimes with nothing but
software. You need eyes on screens to determine that certain crimes
have occurred. As Jezebel put it "Elon Musk Guts Twitter Team Handling Child Sexual Abuse After Claiming Child Safety Is ‘Priority #1’."
The Twitter Files were supposed to be a series of "bombshell
revelations," highly damaging stories, but in the view of most media
outlets are being used to "push conspiracy theories." Musk is deeply dismayed that the stories have been met with a yawn.
Songs by the demonstratos
In early November, shortly after our election, the Ukrainian
counter-offensive on the Southern front captured
Kherson. Russians decided they simply
couldn't defend the city as supply routes to it had been severely
degraded. Upon its capture, the city was in poor shape, having
been looted by Russian forces, but Ukrainian citizens were
overjoyed to get their city back.
The cities of Svatove and Bakhmut have been the two big areas of
concentration since then. The Russians are really determined to retain
Svatove, putting their best tank forces in its defense. Kreminna is to
the immediate South of Svatove and has also gotten a lot of attention from
Ukraine's army.
Bakhmut has been the site of continuous Russian assaults, with Russians
losing
around 20k soldiers.
This is a substantial chunk of the over 110k Russian soldiers KIA (Killed in
Action) since last February. By contrast the US lost over 57k troops in
Vietnam, mostly between 1965 and 1973.
The Dutch warfare research group Oryx is
extremely careful
and only reports Russian losses that are confirmed. They estimated
Russia had lost nearly 1,500 tanks as of November. This is out of an
initial invasion force of 3,300 tanks. According to the
Ukrainian army,
Russians have lost 3,080 tanks. We're now in a 1918 situation, where
the Rusians have built up some really deep defenses. Then, the weapon
was simply the tank. Nowadays, the weapon that will do the job is the Main Battle Tank (MBT) and Europe is prepared to send a great many of those.
Pieces on Russian economics
and what it
means for the war in Ukraine. Gemany and the energy
switch-over from Russian-supplied fuels (also a good discussion of
Russian tactics at Bakhmut).
PRAWANWorks.net