Новости за 10.01.2022

As we begin this election year, the most maddening question in American politics is this: How is it that we’re on the precipice of an authoritarian takeover of democracy by one political party and the electorate doesn’t seem to care?

As Covid-19 cases in the United States soar to record highs, many are pinning their hopes on the omicron variant, however contagious, being less severe than the delta variant that came before it. Perhaps, some health care experts hope, surviving omicron could even provide some immunity against other variants. It’s a glimmer of hope in a dark time.

It’s been three weeks since Joe Manchin effectively disemboweled the Democrats’ Build Back Better bill. A great deal has happened since then—a new Covid wave crippled the country, Christmas came and went, the anniversary of January 6 was commemorated, Kanye West and Julia Fox started dating and immediately got very weird—but fundamentally, the Democrats enter a new year more or less exactly where they were before Congress shut down for the holidays. Their legislative agenda is completely stalled out... Читать дальше...

On a stretch of verdant land just north of Sycamore Canyon Road in Montecito, California, the homes of the merely rich give way to the homes of the truly rich. There, within shouting distance of the 18,000-square-foot home that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle purchased from a villainous Russian oligarch, you will find the residence of Joan Lindsey and her husband, James B. Lindsey, an heir to a Pepsi fortune. “It’s part private park, part sanctuary,” a write-up in Forbes pants. “Altogether, it’s... Читать дальше...

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, then–Vice President Joe Biden had some guidance for his boss. Make Russia “pay in blood and money,” he advised, suggesting that the United States deliver anti-tank missiles to Kyiv. President Barack Obama rejected the instruction, later explaining to a journalist, “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.”

On a still, dew-damp morning in November, Karen Washington, 65, moved fluidly from the greenhouse to a wooden picnic table at the Garden of Happiness in the Bronx, plastic bucket in hand. The bucket was half-full of sage, lavender, thyme—herbs grown in what used to be the rubble of a burned-out apartment building. Stooping at a planter’s box of mint, she snipped an armful of lush stalks, laden with rich, green leaves, and wrapped them with a rubber band. A few garden plots, as big as queen-size beds... Читать дальше...