Author: Jim

NYTimes: How Are We Still Debating Interracial Marriage in 2022?

How Are We Still Debating Interracial Marriage in 2022? www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/opinion/mike-braun-loving-virginia.html

“As it stands, as Ron Brownstein wrote in The Atlantic last year, there is already a “great divergence” between “the liberties of Americans in blue states and those in red states.” And as Republican-led states ban abortion, ban books, restrict the teaching of America’s racial history in schools and trample on the rights of transgender people, this will only get worse.

Senator Braun’s mistake was not that he misunderstood the question; it’s that he understood it all too well. The world he and his colleagues are working toward is one in which the national government defers the question of civil and political rights to the states. And it is in the states, free from federal oversight, where people like Braun can exercise real control over what you might do, how you might live and who you might love. It’s freedom for some and obedience for the rest.”
Sent from my U.S.Cellular© Smartphone

*** NYTimes: Putin Only Cares About One Thing, and It’s Not Oligarchs ^

Putin Only Cares About One Thing, and It’s Not Oligarchs nyti.ms/3ur3LD0

“The only people who can truly sway Mr. Putin are ideologues who share his views, the so-called siloviki. The word literally means people with force — the power that comes from being in the security forces or military. These insiders have been with Mr. Putin since his days in the K.G.B. or in the St. Petersburg municipal government, and they see themselves as protectors of Russia’s power and prestige. They have kept their money mostly inside Russia and out of reach of sanctions. And like Mr. Putin, they see the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, and believe this fight is for Russia’s “sovereignty and the future of our children.”

To influence them, the West must prioritize the things that they believe give Russia its superpower status: its oil and its military.”