Crooked Media - What A Day: Hard Zel

 -Vlad Putin, Fox News viewer, apparently

With President Biden in Europe to rally U.S. troops and NATO leaders, Ukraine has a message for the west: Thanks for your help (except you, Hungary) but can we stop slow-walking everything?

• Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky addressed European Union leaders remotely to thank them for uniting and imposing sanctions against Russia, but also to remind them that swifter action might have deterred Vladimir Putin from launching his war in the first place, and implore them not to drag their feet over admitting Ukraine to the Union. “You and I are preparing Ukraine's membership in the European Union,” he said. “Finally. Here I ask you: Do not be late.”
   
• Zelensky also singled out the Trump-endorsed Hungarian premier and aspiring fascist Viktor Orban for trying to have it both ways. After rattling off all the E.U. countries whose leaders have worked constructively with him, Zelensky gave Orban a piece of his mind. “Hungary, I want to stop here and be honest. Once and for all. You have to decide for yourself who you are with…. Listen, Viktor, do you know what's going on in Mariupol? Please, if you can, go to your waterfront. Look at those shoes. And you will see how mass killings can happen again in today's world.” Check out that epic dressing down here. 
   
• Another source of Zelensky’s frustration may ironically be that his army’s impressive performance against Russian invaders place Ukraine in greater need of firepower than they’d need if they were losing. This Wall Street Journal report details how NATO arms flow into Ukraine through small Polish border towns, part of a strategy the alliance devised when it assumed Russian would quickly topple the Ukrainian government, and it would need to arm a diffuse insurgency, rather than an army capable of driving Russian forces into retreat.

Meanwhile the Russian government has been reduced to complaining about western cancel culture and pretending its stunning military failures were part of the plan all along.

• In comments reported by Interfax and Russian media, a chief of the Russian general staff announced that the Russian military will shift gears to focus on the “complete liberation of Donbas” claiming that the full-scale invasion was merely a feint to stretch Ukrainian forces thin so that they couldn’t rally to defend eastern territory. Without pretending to believe it was part of a careful strategy, U.S. defense officials drew the same conclusion: that Russia’s ambition now is to cut off Donbas.
   
• We know that even with more limited ambitions, Russian occupying forces are capable of awful atrocities. Officials in Mariupol say they now believe 900 people were in the city’s theater nine days ago when it suffered a Russian bomb attack, and that about 300 of them died. An aide to the city’s mayor described those figures as “almost official” because they had to be cobbled together from locals, as the city no longer has a functioning police force or emergency-responders network.  

This week on X-Ray Vision, comics writing legend Grant Morrison joins to discuss their time on Batman, X-Men, their origin story with comics, and more. Plus, Jason and Rosie dive deep into the world of video game adaptations, including recapping and discussing the new Halo series on Paramount+, and all the games they’ve been playing. New episodes of X-Ray Vision drop every Friday wherever you get your podcasts.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been released from the hospital just in time to ignore calls for his resignation for trying to cover up his wife’s involvement in an attempt to overthrow the U.S. government. The January 6 committee is in possession of text messages between Ginni Thomas and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in which she repeatedly encouraged Meadows to overturn the results of the election, and, in one case, refers to speaking about coup fantasies with her “best friend”—a term of endearment she is known to use to describe her husband.

The committee obtained the messages directly from Meadows, who turned over thousands of documents before abruptly ceasing cooperation several months ago. They span three weeks between early and late November 2020, then abruptly stop, before resuming again after the Capitol riot, raising obvious questions about whether White House records include further evidence of Ginni Thomas’s involvement in efforts to install Donald Trump in office for an unelected second term. And yet just two months ago, her husband was the lone Supreme Court justice to vote to conceal those very records from the January 6 committee. Thomas also applied similar pressure to Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill. It’s an absolutely insane corruption scandal, one Democrats shouldn’t allow to become lost in the news cycle, starting by subpoenaing Ginni Thomas’s testimony before the committee and calling on her husband to resign.

• Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told a group of climate activists that he’d support a revised version of Build Back Better that would finance clean energy, cut prescription drug costs, and lower the deficit through a corporate tax increase. 
   
• Manchin also announced he intends to vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson when her Supreme Court nomination reaches the full Senate. All in all a good 24 hours for his majesty.
   
• Utah Republicans have overridden their governor's veto of discriminatory legislation banning trans athletes from competing on women's and girls' sports teams. 
   
• You’ll be shocked to learn that the Republicans who pretended to be outraged by Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sentencing decisions in child pornography cases voted to confirm a bunch of Trump judges who did the same thing. 
   
• You’ll be shocked to learn that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who attacked Ketanji Brown Jackson for serving on the board of a private school that professes antiracism, sends his daughters to a private school that professes antiracism.
   
• Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s decision not to charge Donald Trump with numerous felonies has left witnesses who provided evidence against him feeling “used and disillusioned.”
   
• An ice shelf the size of Manhattan has collapsed in East Antarctica, marking the first known ice-shelf collapse in a region scientists previously believed to be resistant to the consequences of climate change. 
   
• The U.S. has canceled scheduled economic-policy meetings with the Taliban after the Taliban reversed its decision to allow girls to continue attending school.
   
• A Maryland judge has thrown out state Democrats’ new congressional map, declaring it an unlawful partisan gerrymander and a violation of the state’s constitution. 
   
• A jury has convicted Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) on three felony counts for obstructing an investigation of illegal contributions to his 2016 re-election campaign. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has called on Fortenberry to resign (presumably because he isn’t a member of the House Freedom Caucus or a notable Trump loyalist). 
   
• The population of Maine continues to grow thanks to pandemic-related in-migration, a trend that should continue so long as, uh, Maine can prevent the pandemic from ending?
   
• One of Rudy Giuliani’s partners in extorting Ukraine to help Donald Trump win re-election will go to prison for wire fraud, which he committed when he was raising money for his scam company [never stops being funny] Fraud Guarantee. 
   
• The Russian Embassy in Paris tweeted a mean image about Europe and the U.S. and France is quite upset about it.

After killing George Floyd, lying about it, throwing the nation into turmoil, then abandoning their city to rioters, Minneapolis police will be rewarded with raises and rapid access to information about citizens who request public records about them thanks to a new union contract that will also not include any major new disciplinary measures. The Minneapolis city council voted 8-5 to approve the contract over the objections of activists who called upon the council to reject the deal unless it was amended to include measures outlining consequences for police abuses. Supporters of the contract insist new disciplinary measures will be added to the police policy manual, through a process over which the union has no say. But opponents note that many of those supporters, including Mayor Jacob Frey, recently opposed the new contract as an obstacle to police reform, raising concerns that those officials will continue avoiding opportunities to rein in police abuses.

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The U.S. will increase transatlantic deliveries of liquified natural gas to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian energy resources. 

NASA has teased a forthcoming announcement about a recent Hubble Space Telescope observation as “one for the record books.” (Aliens or GTFO.) 

Minneapolis educators and the public school district have reached a tentative bargaining agreement for higher wages that, if finalized, will end a week-long teachers’ strike there. 

The Supreme Court has graciously agreed to allow President Biden to command U.S. armed forces.