Robert F. Kennedy is now running for president as an independent, and the Republican National Committee (RNC) is offering 23 different reasons why Republicans shouldn’t support him.
Among those reasons: Kennedy’s an election denier.
“He called the 2000 presidential election stolen ‘under a cloud of dirty tricks’ and said Republicans ‘fix[ed]’ the 2004 presidential election,” reads a memo released by the RNC on Monday. Other reasons include Kennedy’s support for basic aspects of the Democratic Party’s agenda, including combatting climate change and supporting abortion rights…
Thousands of sites running the WordPress content management system have been hacked by a prolific threat actor that exploited a recently patched vulnerability in a widely used plugin.
The vulnerable plugin, known as tagDiv Composer, is a mandatory requirement for using two WordPress themes: Newspaper and Newsmag. The themes are available through the Theme Forest and Envato marketplaces and have more than 155,000 downloads.
Tracked as CVE-2023-3169, the vulnerability is what’s known as a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw that allows hackers to inject malicious code into webpages. Discovered by Vietnamese researcher Truoc Phan, the vulnerability carries a severity rating of 7.1 out of a possible 10. It was partially fixed in tagDiv Composer version 4.1 and fully patched in 4.2…
chrislawsonsays
@3–
chrislawsonsays
@3– SOP for the GOP. Election denial is not the problem, it’s directing it at Republicans.
DLCsays
Han shot first !
kenbakermnsays
@7 – and Deckard was a replicant.
weylguysays
Wars will get harder to do after we’ve wiped ourselves out.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 9
Necromancers: “Not with THAT attitude!”
StevoRsays
In case / hope its of some intrest here :
This weeks Endangered Species of the Week is the critically endangered Morris Squill (Scilla morrisii) also called the Pallid Squill getting its name from Hubert Meredydd Morris.*** Found in just three places in Cyprus – at least according to some sources with others saying it is slightly more widespread and actually found in a 12 spots tho’ still endemic to Cyprus and merge it with a related species. This is a member of the asparagus family, Asparagaceae – although unlike our edible asparagus this one is somewhat toxic.* It is a perennial herb growing to 35 cm tall with straight leaves and star-shaped slightly variable flowers coming in a trio of colours – blue, white and purple.** It prefers to grow between 250–900 metres in altitude amidst old oak tree stands – specifically of Aleppo Oak (Quercus infectoria) – which is where its trouble starts since these are fast disappearing due to logging, destruction for agriculture and road construction. There are also issues to its survival caused by fire frequency changes and predation as well as inbreeding from this rare little plant having only small and isolated populations. In 2006 there were thought to be only 600 individuals of this rare Cypriot flower left although another source argues there are more but, again, merges it with a very close cousin, Scilla cilicica. In either case it is an endangered pecious petal indeed and one that would be sad to lose. Fortunately, it is protected and its seeds are being stored and conservationists are recommending its cultivation as an ornamental plant.
Presumably the bulb in particular although this isn’t clear from my reading here and it could include other parts of the species even the whole plant – whatever the case, I would strongly urge folks NOT to try and eat it! 😉
** At least as we see them. It would be interesting to learn if it looks different in infra-red or ultra-violet light as many flowers do.
*** Who my google fu has failed to turn up more knowledge of sadly.
A couple days, ago, a leak was noticed in a gas pipe connecting Estonia and Finland. Now it’s thought to be sabotage, just like the NordStream incidents last year. Coverage in English is coming up on the Guardian’s Ukraine/Russia live blog. The Finnish article I linked has a map showing the current locations of two Finnish Coast Guard vessels that are presumably inspecting the leak – the exact location of the leak isn’t out to public yet. It’s apparently in international waters between Finland and Estonia, just within Finnish exclusive economic zone.
Many thanks to PZ for granting The Infinite Thread a new lease on life.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous thread:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2023/07/11/infinite-thread-xxviii/comment-page-8/#comment-2197241
In a four day period in September, the cable news stations mentioned Biden’s age 193 times while Trump’s age was mentioned just 56 times. (MediaMatters.org on September 29, 2023.) After this one sided coverage, these same media outlets then polled the voters about Biden’s age and found (surprise!) that voters are more concerned about Biden’s age than Trump’s age. It’s garbage in and garbage out.
The New York Times reported that Trump’s latest pitch to an audience in New Hampshire including recycling his “travel ban” ideas:
While discussing a series of surprise attacks launched over the weekend by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, Mr. Trump promised to “stand strongly with the state of Israel” and said, to cheers, that he had “imposed a strict travel ban to keep radical Islamic terrorists” out of the United States. He called to “reimpose the travel ban on terror-afflicted countries.”
Commentary:
Trump went on to suggest that Hamas militants are entering the United States through Mexico — a claim the former president appears to have simply made up.
It’s worth noting that the idea of a reimposed travel ban isn’t altogether new. In fact, the Republican made related declarations over the course of the summer.
In June, for example, Trump told a far-right audience that his newly envisioned ban would include political and economic ideologies he doesn’t like. “We’re going to keep foreign, Christian-hating communists, Marxists and socialists out of America,” he said during a speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conference.
At a campaign event in July, the former president added, “Look, we have Marxists, fascists, communists — they’re pouring into our country. We are going to deny them access to our country.”
A week later, the Republican assured another far-right audience, “When I return to office, the travel ban is coming back even bigger and much stronger than before.”
So to recap, in a second term, Trump intends to ban Muslims, those he considers communists, those he considers Marxists, those he considers socialists, and those he considers fascists from reaching American soil.
In 2018, after the Republican administration’s travel ban was tweaked, conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices, in a 5-4 ruling, allowed for its implementation. […]
A few times I mentioned the WSJ article which reported a series of secret meetings in Beirut in which Iran and Hamas planned the attack on Israel and Iran authorized it. I noted that there was significant and credible pushback on the article, which appeared to rely on Hamas sources. Since then I’ve seen a pretty lopsided chorus of doubts about the report. The relevant governments seem skeptical, at least publicly. And most people with significant area expertise seem skeptical about the report itself as well as various details within it.
Of course that doesn’t this mean this didn’t happen. But the response been enough to make me essentially discount the the Journal article – like it never happened.
It’s worth noting that the significance of such coordination depends quite a bit on what you’re looking for. The search for links between al Qaeda and Iraq in the year and a half after 9/11 mattered so much because it was pursued by people looking for a rationale for invading Iraq. Anyone looking for a rationale for Israel or the US to declare war on Iran needs to be smacked down hard and ignored. Iran funds and arms Hamas and is cheering on their attack. Hamas also receives training from the network of Iran-backed militias in the region. So it’s not like there’s some big mystery about whose side they’re on or whether they support and supply Hamas.
Such coordination and planning in advance may have happened. But as yet we don’t seem to have any real evidence for it. At the end of the day it’s not even clear how much of a bright line it would even signify.
[map at the link] Last night the Baltic Connector gas line and Elisa optical sea cable between Finland and Estonia west of Helsinki and Tallinn were sabotaged in the middle of the Gulf of Finland, with the Finnish leadership saying it likely was Russia.
The same Russian intel-connected vessel was seen near the breakage as was seen near the Nordstream shortly before it was destroyed.
Two vessels of the Finnish Navy have been dispatched to the site. The flow of gas has been halted in the pipeline. Also Elisa reported the undersea cable outage. The Finnish leadership has consulted with NATO. And NATO is standing by ready to help according to Stoltenberg.
The situation is evolving, with live coverage, but given all attention is on Israel it was important to get this out as timing of this may not be totally accidental also given the Russian situation in Ukraine. It may be that Russia has decided to divert the Western attention to further diminish its support for Ukraine. […] also possible Russia and Iran have influenced timing of the Hamas attack.
Perhaps Finland should capture the Russian survey vessel as part of their “investigation” into this unprovoked attack. If Russia makes any noise about it, Finland could invoke the NATO mutual protection clause. That way Russia can ensure that they lose the majority of their remaining naval fleet.
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[Iran] very clearly has been boosting Hamas for years. Also, Iran and Russia are in tight cooperation in Ukraine Shahed drone strikes.
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Russia is pulling out all the stops. They are behind Hamas attacking Israel, even if it was through Iran. They are behind this attempt to reduce gas supplies and communication between Finland and Estonia. They long ago purchased numerous members of the GQP who are doing Putin’s bidding. The other miseries in Syria and Africa.
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Putin has been grooming Netanyahu as part of his coalition of anti-liberal dictators. To the extent Russia gains anything from the attack, it’s just helping to strengthen its position with Iran [Putin could be doing both, that is: supporting Hamas through Iran and also grooming Netanyahu.]
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I dont think Russia needs Iran or Hamas help to play silly buggers and such speculation I find unhelpful . One set of megalomaniacs at a time please :-)
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I see Putin as an opportunistic bottom feeder. If something happens that he can take advantage of he will. What makes him truly dangerous though is he actively sows chaos to enable those opportunities.
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Yeah.. we did have one of his chaos seeds in the Oval Office.. we have several more still lingering in the Senate and House.
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didn’t Finland just announce a large aid package for Ukraine and other countries feeling the punch of Russian actions in the region? Seems like too much of a coincidence.
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Finland has allocated an additional 92 million euros to support Ukraine and countries affected by Russian aggression, Finland’s Foreign Ministry said on 9 October.
Finland’s support to Ukraine will be used to strengthen basic public services, repair critical infrastructure, promote policy reforms, and lay the foundation for Ukraine’s reconstruction and recovery, according to the statement of the Finnish Foreign Ministry.
The funds will be directed to the Crisis Fund of the International Development Association of the World Bank Group, established in 2023 to expand support for Ukraine, Moldova, and other countries affected by Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Within hours of the horrible attack on Israel by Hamas militants, Republicans began placing the blame on President Joe Biden. […] South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott cited “Biden’s weakness” for inviting the attack. Former vice president and current presidential wannabe Mike Pence was one of many Republicans who immediately tried to draw a connection between the attack and the release of impounded Iranian funds. Despite many attempts by Republicans to imply some of the money might have been funneled from Iran to Hamas, even Fox News admits that this is completely untrue.
Anyone whose first thought on seeing the terrible images out of Israel is, “How can I use this to gain an advantage on my political opponents?” is intrinsically unfit to hold any position of authority. And any willingness to engage with enemies to gain that momentary edge is dangerous to Israel, to Ukraine, and to America.
Also within hours of the attack, Russian war bloggers began posting videos and images that they claimed showed an Israeli Merkava tank being destroyed by Hamas forces. Many of these images included claims that the tank had been destroyed by weapons sold to Hamas by corrupt Ukrainian officials. [Telegram post and image at the link]
None of this is true. The tank in the image is a Russian tank destroyed in eastern Ukraine last week. The video of the destroyed tank was actually part of a series of images showing an attempted Russian advance west of the occupied city of Kreminna in Ukraine.
It’s part of a larger effort to tie funding of Ukraine to events in Israel. That includes Russian state media already making claims that U.S. weapons may have been used by Hamas. [Sputnik post at the link]
Republicans like Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, seeking to create a nonexistent link between Biden and Hamas, pointed to a Wall Street Journal “exclusive report” on Sunday that claimed Iranian officials both helped with the planning of the attack and gave Hamas the “green light” to proceed. Citing “senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah,” the Journal reported that Iran conducted multiple meetings with the leadership of both militant groups.
There is no doubt that Iran has direct involvement with Hamas. It has funded the group, provided it with weapons, helped train militants, provided technical information for designing rockets and bombs, and assisted with smuggling weapons into Gaza.
However, the Journal report [see comment 15] is being used to support a narrative on the right that paints the attack on Israel as a direct action by Iran. This is being widely accepted even though the report includes unlikely details (such as Iran’s foreign minister directly participating in meetings at which a secret attack on Israel was planned), and in spite of the fact that the sources for the article are reportedly anonymous members of Hamas and Hezbollah. The reason for that is simple enough: Blaming the attack on Iran is the first step toward falsely blaming it on Biden. [And the first step in pretending that the USA should go to war against Iran.]
However, The Wall Street Journal article is contradicted by both the State Department, which says it has seen no evidence of any involvement from Tehran, and by Israeli military sources, who say there was no indication of Iranian involvement in the attack launched from Gaza. [Tweet at the link]
And again, when it comes to the $6 billion in released funds:
– These were Iranian funds being held in South Korea. None of it involved “taxpayer money” or a single dime of U.S. funds, by any description.
– The deal requires that the funds be held in an account in Qatar, where a third-party arbiter will oversee any distribution.
– Use of the funds is limited to approved humanitarian expenditures.
– None of the money has been spent.
There is no way to paint this as Biden providing any funds to Iran that might have gone to Hamas. No way except by simply lying—which hasn’t stopped Republicans from making this claim.
Russia wants to use events in Israel as a way to block further U.S. support of Ukraine. Republicans want to use events in Israel to advance false attacks against President Biden. Expect those two efforts to heavily overlap.
Conspiracy-seeding ties are already being spewed by figures like Donald Trump Jr., who insisted that he had seen more footage from the Hamas attack on Israel than the entire Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was an absolutely ludicrous claim, but it’s already being repeated by other Republicans on social media and backed up by Elon Musk. That’s just a continuation of a broader conspiracy theory among the most pro-Russia Republicans that the war in Ukraine is not real and is actually just an excuse to move American money around. [JFC]
Republicans are weaving a narrative that argues support for Ukraine is somehow dangerous to Israel. They’re doing this even though Russia is allied with Iran and has its own ties to Hamas. As Radio Free Europe notes, “Russia’s ties to Hamas are well-documented, as are its ties to Hamas’s main backer, Iran.”
Those who are trying to equate supporting Ukraine with supporting Hamas have their facts completely backward.
In fact, Israel has been supportive of Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders, and earlier this year promised to increase its support. Hamas is tied to both Iran and Russia. Russia is tied to both Iran and Hamas. Expect Ukraine and Israel to grow closer over this shared experience of tragedy and loss, in which both countries have faced ghoulish opponents willing to launch the most gruesome attacks against civilians.
Months after Vladimir Putin’s illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, a pro-Putin Russian politician went on state television to predict that events in the Middle East would make the world forget about Ukraine. “In 2024, there simply won’t be any elections [in Ukraine] because there won’t be a country called Ukraine. You’re not taking into account the situation in the Middle East. Such events will unravel there that everyone will forget what Ukraine is. Things are moving toward World War III.” [Yep. I remember that.]
This isn’t some example of extraordinary prescience, and it’s certainly not evidence that Russia directly pulled the trigger on the Hamas attack to distract from its ongoing attacks on civilians in Ukraine. However, it’s very much an example of what Russia wants to happen. And it fits in snugly with the kind of “End Times” mythology that the right frequently applies to any event in the Middle East.
Some of the most widely followed accounts among MAGA Republicans have already blown way past speculating about Ukrainian weapons being used by Hamas, or even theorizing that some of those weapons may have come from America. They’re just blaming the attack directly on the American government. [Example tweet at the link]
That account with over 350,000 followers on X (formerly known as Twitter) not only blames the Hamas attack on the U.S., but insists that it was all somehow done on orders from Barack Obama. Expect more such conspiracy theories, many more false claims […]
the people now showing corpses of dead children killed at a peace festival in an effort to show that their ideological opponent is weak are only proving that they are despicable.
[…] Netanyahu’s support of the far-right and settlers movement added even more fuel to the fire.
He has so much to answer for — hopefully he and his rotten government is thrown out for this and its catastrophic failure to protect its citizens.
And before anyone labels me anti-Israel — I am anti Netanyahu and the far right in Israel that wants to set up a theocracy free of judical review, and wants to continue to torment the Palestinians and destroy any prospect for peace.
I am for those Israelis who want peace and have been fighting Netanyahu and his bullies.
I am anti the Hamas savages whose acts almost defy belief and who cannot be condemned and opposed too much.
I am pro the Palestinians who want peace, who want their own state and who will now pay a huge price due to the actions of terrorists.
I am anti the cancer that is Russia and Putin and desperately want to see them defeated and Ukrainians left alone to live their lives free of the murderous scum next door.
I am anti the Taliban who continue to oppress women and people in general since those medieval thugs were allowed to take over.
In short I am anti all oppressors.
I am also anti those on the far left who side with those oppressors — the sort who protest in Bernie Sanders’ office and have their pictures proudly taken with MTG. […]
No other major country treats its children this badly. We’re Number One.
In the rest of what we jokingly call the civilized world, to one degree or another, countries make sure their citizens all have access to healthcare at little or no cost to the individual, because healthcare is considered a basic right, a government function as basic as having roads and schools and a taxation system to pay for it all.
In the United States of America, nearly eight million low-income people have been kicked off Medicaid so far this year, following the end of a pandemic policy passed by Congress in 2020 that prohibited states from disenrolling Medicaid recipients during the healthcare state of emergency.
And some states’ GOP leaders are actually proud of that: Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in May that she considered the massive drop in healthcare coverage a real win for the state, explaining on Twitter that
“Those who do not qualify for Medicaid are taking resources from those who need them.
“But the pandemic is over – and we are leading the way back to normalcy.”
Sanders was promoting an op-ed she wrote for the Wall Street Journal in which she denied that Arkansas was “cutting” Medicaid, because really “We’re simply removing ineligible participants from the program to reserve resources for those who need them.” Too many children whooping it up on the taxpayer dime, getting wellness checks and antibiotics for strep throat. Sure, 22 percent of Arkansas kids are living at or below the poverty line, but at least they can get a job to pay for their insulin.
A September analysis by the Arkansas Times determined that Arkansas purged a greater percentage of its Medicaid recipients than any other state, often becoming undeserving poors because they didn’t return a renewal form mailed to what may or may not have been their actual address.
All told, when the state’s six-month purge of the Medicaid rolls came to an end last week, Arkansas had booted 427,000 people from their healthcare coverage because they may have been poor, but not quite poor enough, or due to bureaucratic fuckups […] As Arkansas Times managing editor Benjamin Hardy points out, that’s “an enormous figure for a state with a population of 3 million. Arkansas’s Medicaid enrollment as of April 1 was a little over 1 million.”
As Adam Gaffney pointed out at The Nation last week, “returning to normal” is nothing to brag about when the norm is terrible, and the pandemic’s three-year moratorium on disenrolling people from Medicaid helped illustrate exactly that:
[The] much-needed rise in participation achieved by the continuous coverage provision—enrollment rose from 71 million to 94 million from January 2020 to April 2023—was at the same time a testament to how much “churn,” or movement in-and-out of the program, occurs outside plague years when such protections are not in play. Small increases in family income can render someone ineligible for Medicaid. Moving states can provoke disenrollment. There are sometimes burdensome administrative hurdles to enrollment, which can be particularly challenging for workers with unsteady employment or income or otherwise tenuous life circumstances. Annual eligibility redeterminations can result in disenrollment if forms are not properly completed, or when they are sent by state agencies to the wrong address.
Gaffney follows that with a series of pre-pandemic stories illustrating just how common arbitrary or erroneous disenrollment can be; it’s not a “normal” anyone should find acceptable.
Our piece today was sparked by a press release from Montana Democrats calling attention to a report compiled by the state’s Health and Human Services department — at the request of Democratic legislators, not because the department felt like sharing — which revealed that of the roughly 55,000 Montanans kicked off Medicaid by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte’s administration in the spring, nearly half were children. And like other states, the disenrollment was haphazard and led to some pretty dreadful outcomes. Gianforte’s purge was pursued by
enacting unnecessarily burdensome red tape requirements, including sending 19-page re-enrollment applications by snail mail, resulting in Montanans with life-threatening illnesses unable to get the medical care they need. Under his watch, health care access across Montana has been rolled back, including the shuttering of 20 percent of Montana nursing homes, a crippling shortage of ambulance services, and mental health systems that continue to fail Montanans.
The Biden administration has taken some steps to combat red states gleefully disenrolling their citizens. In September, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ordered the restoration of nearly half a million children and other recipients to Medicaid rolls because states had incorrectly declared them ineligible. And as Politico reports, CMS pledges to wield its funding power to get states to Do It Right:
Sara Lonardo, senior adviser and press secretary at CMS, said the agency is taking its monitoring and oversight role “incredibly seriously” and will continue to act to prevent eligible people from losing coverage. That can include requiring states to pause terminations, reinstate coverage, adopt strategies to help people through the renewal process and address systems issues.
“If states don’t, they will risk losing the enhanced federal funding,” Lonardo said. “Some states are coming forward proactively to CMS to acknowledge and fix renewal issues.”
[…] That approach has led some congressional Democrats to call for the administration to get tougher on states that are arbitrarily tossing people from coverage, and yes please, that would be good. And for Crom’s sake, if states aren’t letting people know their coverage options after they lose Medicaid, CMS needs to both crack down and to blanket those states with public service announcements to get them into Obamacare or other options.
Oh yeah, and how about real universal healthcare? That seems like a good idea to run on, said the eternally disappointed optimist.
We didn’t realize Ruben Gallego is a goddamned saint.
Kari Lake, currently the imaginary governor of Arizona, filed actual paperwork last week to run for US Senate against incumbent Kyrsten Sinema of the Sinema Party. Sinema’s popularity doesn’t extend much further than her own mirror, so Lake would have a good shot at unseating her. Fortunately, Democrat Ruben Gallego — a normal person — is also running and is ahead in most polls.
Lake is set to officially launch her campaign today, and she’s already treating Gallego like he’s the incumbent. She tagged him in an article she shared about President Joe Biden waiving federal law to permit construction of a border wall in south Texas. Although that is presumably what she wants, she accused Gallego of “facilitating an invasion.”
Gallego must’ve noticed they were on the same plane to Phoenix, because he quickly responded, “Hey @KariLake, we’re on the same plane! Just come back from first class to coach and we can chat. Happy to walk you through all my legislative work to deliver key resources to AZ’s border communities.”
Once they’d landed, Lake bum-rushed her future opponent at the airport. She was sort of like the MAGA Michael Moore — fully mic’ed and with a camera crew and everything. [video at the link]
In this video it almost looks as if Lake blocked Gallego on his way to the restroom. If so, he showed her a tremendous amount of civility, though he does cast her some well-deserved shade: “We met once,” he said, “when you were still on TV.”
Lake was a Phoenix TV anchor from 1999 to 2021, when she quit to pursue her career in political demagoguery and nuisance lawsuits. Gallego, meanwhile, has worked in Arizona politics since 2009 and served in the US House since 2015. He is a serious candidate. Lake is a political shock jock, perhaps more telegenic than Rush Limbaugh, and she is still likely to cream any Republican primary challengers.
Gallego politely told Lake he’s looking forward to a “great race,” but she instead predicted a “knock-down, drag out” spectacle, because she’s the same low-class hack who danced on the late John McCain’s grave.
Lake went on about how the “borders are wide open” (they aren’t). Gallego tried to engage this creep on the issues but she preferred to talk over him and rant about how we have “plenty of people here” already (NO NEW IMMIGRANTS!) and fentanyl is running loose in the streets.
“Under President Trump we had a secure border,” she said. That’s just an absurd lie. MAGA cultists insist that Trump magically fixed the border crisis and it all went to hell once Joe Biden took office. This is the partisan “light-switch” view of politics, where everything is either horrible or miserable depending on whether your preferred party is in power.
“I look forward to working together if we can,” Gallego said graciously, “and obviously I look forward to having more conversations about this.”
“Oh, we’re gonna have conversations,” Lake countered, and when Gallego suggested having “civil” conversations, she said, “Absolutely, but you know what’s not civil? People dying on the streets.”
[…] Lake kept trying to bash Gallego’s district, which he repeatedly reminded her was in Arizona, the state they both wish to represent. It’s a good way of turning this back on Republicans who smear “Democrat-run” cities and areas as if they’re famine-wracked, war-torn failed states and not part of the United States.
Perhaps the lowest point of the exchange is when Lake told someone who greeted her that Gallego “wants to destroy our country. He really does.” He really doesn’t, and it’s unfortunate that such low blows are now politics as usual from Republicans.
After ending her filibuster lie-athon, Lake said, “I’m gonna beat you and we’re gonna save Arizona.”
Technically, Lake has to beat Sinema, who’s not yet declared that she’s running but I’m sure she’ll make a big scene of it. I doubt Sinema would’ve stopped to talk with Lake — that’s more time than she’s spent with any of her constituents. However, Lake’s complete disregard for the truth and the way she steamrolls through conversations only further supports Gov. Katie Hobbs’ decision not to publicly debate her. I’m loathe to suggest Gallego model himself in any way after Sinema, but Lake is arguably one constituent Gallego is best off ignoring.
There is functionally no United States Congress right now, because Republicans are no longer a real political party, just a bunch of mediocre white conservative dudes much too busy playing with their own excrement to elect a speaker or govern. They haven’t really earned the right to open their mouths to comment on the Biden administration’s response to Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel or Israel’s response, but here we are.
Fox News is playing its traditional game, where it writes misleading headlines — White House slammed for hosting BBQ with live band as war rages in Israel — which make low-information readers think the White House is actually being slammed by somebody who matters for hosting a barbecue with a live band. (It was just an event for non-political White House residence staff.)
Of course, when you click on the article, you simply find Missouri Republican Senator and pissant seditionist Josh Hawley on Twitter, joined by a couple no-name paid blue check Republican grunts who don’t matter. World’s stupidest senator Tommy Tuberville, who is actively aiding and comforting our enemies with his ongoing attack on the US military, joined in the fun.
Yesterday, the same Republicans all feigned outrage and lied to their voters, who are monumentally stupid, about what it means that Biden called a “lid” early in the day. It simply means not to expect any more public events from the president, a message to journalists that they won’t miss anything if they want to piss off. It very often means back behind the scenes, the White House is harder at work than usual, like maybe because a war has broken out. People in Washington understand this.
But after Fox News’s John Roberts implied that the “lid” meant Biden was calling it a day while the war was raging, here came, oh look, it’s the stupidest one again: [Tweets at the link: “Alabamians don’t work those kind of hours.”]
It’s a shameful example of how Fox News lies to people who are too dumb to understand any better, like former SEC coaches.
We learned last night that one of the many things Joe Biden was doing yesterday afternoon was negotiating a truly impressive joint statement of solidarity from the leaders of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the US, “express[ing] our steadfast and united support to the State of Israel, and our unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and its appalling acts of terrorism.”
It continued:
All of us recognize the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, and support equal measures of justice and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
But make no mistake: Hamas does not represent those aspirations, and it offers nothing for the Palestinian people other than more terror and bloodshed.
Over the coming days, we will remain united and coordinated, together as allies, and as common friends of Israel, to ensure Israel is able to defend itself, and to ultimately set the conditions for a peaceful and integrated Middle East region.
You don’t get a statement like that from five separate nations by going home early or spending the afternoon at a barbecue. You get it by being the fucking American president. Joe Biden did that.
What was Josh Hawley doing during that time?
Oh, just cynically using the terrorist attacks against Israel to slurp on Vladimir Putin’s bathwater: [Tweet at the link: “Israel is facing existential threat. Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately.” [Oh FFS]]
[…] It might be hard to understand why Josh Hawley would be concerned with terrorism and mass murder committed against Israel but be OK with it when Russia is the one doing it. Don’t overthink it. It’s because he’s a piece of shit and a bad person.
But wouldn’t Putin just love that? […]
Expect to see more Republicans like Hawley giving Putin exactly this reach-around in the coming days. They’re not good for much else.
[…] While arguing against the motion by Trump’s lawyers to delay the May 20 trial, special counsel Jack Smith’s lawyers assured they’re ready to go and that such a delay isn’t necessary, unsurprisingly. But they also said they are ready to prove something significant that, to this point, has remained shrouded and the subject of much speculation: why Trump allegedly took and kept the documents.
“That the classified materials at issue in this case were taken from the White House and retained at Mar-a-Lago is not in dispute,” Smith’s office said.
It then added that “what is in dispute is how that occurred, why it occurred, what Trump knew, and what Trump intended in retaining them — all issues that the Government will prove at trial primarily with unclassified evidence.”
The government apparently thinks it knows “what Trump intended” with the documents. And it’s signaling that it plans to prove that intent.
This would seem important, not only from a general-interest standpoint but also from a legal one.
Smith’s team might not necessarily need to prove Trump’s intention or his motive in the case. You have documents, you fail to return them when the government comes calling and that’s a crime regardless of why you did it, the argument goes. Trump’s indictment in the case made no direct claims about a potential motive.
But that doesn’t mean proving Trump’s motive wouldn’t be helpful. Indeed, establishing a motive would seem to drive home the intention of Trump’s actions and combat any arguments that this was all a misunderstanding — or that Trump somehow didn’t know what he had (which the government has taken care to undermine). […]
Former MLB All-Star Steve Garvey is running for the U.S. Senate in the 2024 election, bidding to win the California seat previously held by the late Dianne Feinstein.
Garvey, a 74-year-old Republican…
That’s all I need to know. If he is willing to associate himself with today’s Republican Party, he must be a horrible person, and would make a horrible senator.
On Monday, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody (R) submitted a court filing to the state Supreme Court claiming a proposed ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state “does not satisfy the legal requirements for ballot placement.” The proposed amendment in question, led by Floridians Protecting Freedom, would prohibit state restrictions on abortion viability. Currently, abortion is banned at around 15 weeks in the state; Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a six-week ban earlier this year which is currently blocked in court.
Florida abortion rights advocates began working to collect the 891,523 required signatures to get this proposed measure on the Nov. 2024 ballot in May, shortly after DeSantis signed the six-week abortion ban into law. Floridians Protecting Freedom has until Feb. 1 to collect the signatures, and Moody’s court filing comes as the group has hit nearly the halfway point, submitting 402,082 validated signatures as of Monday afternoon.
As the Orlando Sentinel notes, the state Supreme Court plays a “gatekeeper role”: Its job is to review proposed ballot measures and determine if their language is clear and whether the proposal sticks to a single issue. Moody, who’s a close ally to DeSantis and vocal about her anti-abortion stance, is arguing to the court that the proposed abortion measure doesn’t meet the legal standards. In Monday’s court filing, she wrote that she’ll submit a brief further explaining her opposition at a later time, but for now, she wrote in an op-ed in Florida’s Voice over the weekend that she takes particular issue with the proposed measure’s use of the term “viability.” …
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Members of the group known as QAnon are warning that the Independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will siphon off votes from the highly anticipated 2024 bid of John F. Kennedy, Jr.
Harland Dorrinson, a QAnon spokesman, called R.F.K., Jr.,’s decision to run as an Independent “a blatant attempt to confuse voters” who were planning to support his celebrated cousin.
“Maybe this is what R.F.K., Jr., was planning from the very beginning,” he said. “I’m not a paranoid person, but it almost seems like a conspiracy.”
“We at QAnon need to spread the word that there is only one real Kennedy running in 2024, and that’s J.F.K., Jr.,” he said. “Accept no substitutes.”
For his part, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., appeared undeterred by QAnon’s criticism, as he announced that he had already received several major endorsements from voices inside his head.
In February, ahead of Sen. Tim Scott’s formal presidential campaign launch, Politico published a memorable report on the South Carolina Republican’s candidacy. Scott was known, the article said, “for his affability and easy smile.”
Politico quoted a confidant close to the senator who insisted that Scott has been “repulsed by the downward spiral of bullying and bomb-throwing that has become the hallmark of politics of late,” and he “feels motivated to do something about it.”
[…] hoping that “other Americans are similarly disgusted with the tenor of today’s politics, and want a candidate who will restore civility.”
This certainly helped summarize Scott’s political brand. The political world somehow settled on a consensus that he’s the genial contender in the GOP’s presidential field. Others might throw mud or aim for the gutter, but the senator, we’d been told, preferred the high road. He’d bring a sunny disposition and a refreshing above-the-fray optimism to politics at the national level.
[…] all of this came to mind when Scott responded to Hamas’ attack in Israel over the weekend.
The problem began on Saturday morning, when Tim Scott pushed this line via social media:
“Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel today is an assault on Western Civilization. The truth is though, Joe Biden funded these attacks on Israel. America’s weakness is blood in the water for bad actors, but this is worse than that. We didn’t just invite this aggression, we paid for it.”
A day later, Scott kept the offensive going.
“Biden’s weakness invited the attack. Biden’s negotiation funded the attack. … At this point, Biden is complicit.”
Roughly 24 hours after publishing that message, the senator was still at it, insisting, “Biden’s weakness attracted the terrorist attacks in Israel.”
[JFC, could Republican doofus Time Scott be more wrong?]
As a factual matter, Scott’s rhetorical offensive was, and is, demonstrably wrong. The United States did not “pay for” or “fund” a terrorist attack on Israel, and the details the senator really ought to understand are widely available.
As a political matter, it’s also worth appreciating the impropriety of an American politician scrambling to blame his own country’s leadership, without cause, in the midst of a deadly conflict abroad.
[…] His partisan response to the crisis in Israel was factually wrong, but it was also cheap and classless. His ugly tweets seemed like desperate pandering from a candidate who’s polling just below 3% in his national campaign. [True!]
[…] Maybe he now sees value in embracing “the downward spiral of bullying.” Maybe he came to see “civility” and “optimism” as electoral losers.
Or maybe the hype about Scott being the “nice” Republican candidate was never real in the first place.
The last nice Republican presidential candidate was Bob Dole, the late politician who ran against Bill Clinton 96. Today’s Republicans would loathe him as a rino.
I do not count McCain, he elevated Sarah Palin to stardom.
A few excerpts from coverage of President Biden’s remarks on war in Israel and Gaza:
[…] The news from the remarks is confirmation that the number of dead Americans in the attack is 14.
“There is no place for hate in America. Not against Jews. Not against Muslims. Not against anybody”
“When Congress returns, we are going to ask them to take urgent action” to continue aid to “our partners.” Discusses the assets the U.S. has moved into place and has offered Israel, including hostage negotiators. He’s spoken with “partners across the region” and European allies. The WH is also working with local law enforcement in the U.S. to prepare for potential targeted attacks against the Jewish community at home.
[…] Says Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people—they are using the Palestinians as “human shields.”
[…] Biden stridently condemns the “pure unadulterated evil” of the Hamas attack, describing the “slaughter,” the “massacre.”
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is now providing a briefing, says WH is working with Israelis to find ~20 missing Americans.
Misinformation about the conflict in Israel is spreading across X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, with users sharing misleading information about the attacks.
The spread of viral misinformation during a conflict isn’t new, but changes made to the platform under Elon Musk’s leadership appear to be exacerbating concerns among experts around accessing reliable information online.
[…] False claims have spread across X since the Saturday launch of Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, including posts of prior Israeli airstrikes being misrepresented as recent, and false claims of the U.S. sending a multi-billion dollar aid package to Israel.
Other false claims have spread from accounts posing as official news outlets, according to a compilation of examples cited in a report published by the left-leaning watchdog Media Matters for America.
X’s trust and safety team said in a post late Monday it is “laser focused and dedicated to protecting the conversation on X and enforcing our rule as we continue to assess the situation on the platform.”
The team said they took action to remove newly created Hamas-affiliated accounts, along with “tens of thousands of posts” including graphic media, violent speech and hateful conduct.
[…] Despite those efforts, experts and advocates said X has become a minefield of misinformation.
The company rolled back content moderation measures — and cut staffers tasked with those responsibilities. X also changed the verification process to strip public figures of blue check marks to denote their authenticity and instead allow users to pay for the symbols.
Most recently, X stopped showing headlines on posts containing links to articles. Posts now only display the lead image of a story and link to it through that image.
Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at Free Press, said Musk has created a “perfect storm” on X for the proliferation of misinformation about Israel.
“It’s a sobering but unsurprising moment that brings further clarity to how important content moderation and commitments to platform integrity are,” Benavidez said.
“They can present themselves as such. There’s no easy way to check their claims. They can combine a mix of truth and falsehood and editorial causation and they can command incredible view counts and shares and in some cases, even get endorsed by Elon Musk himself,” Brooking said.
[…] Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a group that tracks online misinformation, said X has been “unusable in this crisis.”
[…] “It is basically a playground for disinformation actors,” he added. […]
Well dadgummit, it was bound to happen. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decided he’s not going to sit around here and wait to lose the Democratic primary to Joe Biden, not when he can lose the general election to everyone. So he decided he’d run as an independent. And Republicans and right-wing media, who so recently were pushing RFK’s candidacy like he’s the second coming of Vladimir Putin, suddenly don’t like him anymore!
It’s like they correctly are assuming that Kennedy is most likely to steal some of the lunatic vote, as opposed to depressing the Biden vote and helping Trump get elected, which is why they were boosting him in the first place. […]
A bunch of the Kennedy family weighed in:
Four of his siblings released a statement Monday denouncing his independent bid as “dangerous for the country.”
“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” wrote Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy II and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. “Today’s announcement is deeply saddening for us.”
[…] Polls consistently show Kennedy is more popular with Republicans than Democrats, a phenomenon that emerged during Kennedy’s ill-fated primary against Biden, as the campaign put the activist’s longtime skepticism about vaccines in the spotlight, and Kennedy made a host of appearances on Fox News.
[…] Politico even suggests that it’s possible Kennedy himself is cognizant of who his real audience is (complete fucking lunatics), which might be why he’s speaking at CPAC next month on the same bill as Vivek Ramaswamy and Kari Lake. […]
Doctors Without Borders was unable to reach its teams in Gaza on Tuesday morning, the organization said. This comes after the Israeli government shut off water and electricity, and the phone network has been badly damaged.
“This all makes it extremely difficult to coordinate rescue operations and access the injured,” said Léo Cans, the group’s head of mission in the Palestinian territories.
Just a heads-up on “what’s on deck” at God Awful Movies next week.
Exsorcist; Believer, a 2023 film that only got 5 out of 10 at IMDB.
Their Patreon version just provided The Unwanted Guest, a crap film that is literally a long ad for a specific ghost hunting outfit (I am not giving away the name of the company), preying on the gullible.
wzrd1says
You know, I am still trying to figure out how shutting off water, food, electricity and destroying the telephone network stops missiles from being launched.
But then, I’m still trying to figure out how thousands of missiles attached to hundreds of large trucks slipped through the most heavily surveilled landscape on the surface of the planet, with a missile reloading system that takes up 12 meters of space – plus working room and the trucks can only fire four missiles.
Not to mention how many missiles slipped through the impenetrable Iron Dome ABM system.
But then, I’m still also mystified as to why so many US conservative politicians are so fixated upon nations that aren’t our own – to the point of exclusive attention and loyalty to said foreign nations.
With some wanting our military to become involved, albeit, without its leadership that they refuse to appoint, because of hand wave.
But, I do disagree with President Biden, there most certainly is room for hate in the US. After a two mile each way walk to the stupidmarket today, I really hate gravity, as well as that singular prick that turned it up during the walk back, as well as the miserable bastard that keeps stretching the road farther and farther each trip.
Should’ve picked up some chili con carne with nukes.*
Repeal gravity! It’s an unfair and oppressive lawAWawAWaw… {gasp}
Dumb bastards did it…**
*Trust me, inside of my gullet, they’re like a vulcan cannon upsized to howitzer caliber, firing nuclear projectiles that instantly induces shock and all to all on the same continental land mass.
**No, I’m not going to replace either your keyboard or monitor, it’s not my responsibility for what you spew upon either.
whheydtsays
Re: wzrd1 @ #38…
I’m not up on all the really recent methods, but there used to be a lot tunnels under the Gaza/Egypt border used to smuggle all manner of goods into Gaza, including the materials used to build missiles (used to be most of the Hamas missiles were “home brew” and of extremely low accuracy…e.g. a CEP of about a medium sized city). They also used to dig tunnels under the Gaza/Israeli border to use for making attacks inside Israel.
I suppose it’s possible that they’re now running tunnels big enough to handle trucks and re-loadable missile launchers. Again–used to be–that the Hamas missiles were mostly one missile, one–very minimal–launcher. During active hostilities, the Israelis would run attacks on launch sites, but usually only after a missile had been launched and at that point, there was nothing of value there to destroy.
Much of the Hamas missile production was done in underground “factories”, often built under residential areas. This goes a long way to explain much of the Israeli targetting. It’s also why the very tight restrictions on Gazans importing construction materials–especially cement and the like. The quite real fear was Hamas either using fronts supposedly doing legit construction, simple diversion, or just outright theft for Hamas military uses.
The US justice department has charged embattled Rep George Santos on 23 criminal charges, including defrauding campaign donors and wire fraud.
Investigators accused the Republican of running up multiple charges on the credit cards of campaign donors.
The charges, which build on an earlier indictment, also accused him of lying to the Federal Election Commission and House oversight committees.
Mr Santos has yet to comment on the charges announced on Tuesday evening.
“Santos allegedly led multiple additional fraudulent criminal schemes, lying to the American public in the process,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge James Smith said in a statement.
“Anyone who attempts to violate the law as part of a political campaign will face punishment in the criminal justice system,” he added.
The charges, filed on Tuesday, build on 13 counts the New York congressman pleaded not guilty to in May. He was accused of laundering campaign funds to pay for his personal expenses and illegally claiming unemployment benefits while he was employed.
Speaking at the time, Mr Santos accused prosecutors of mounting a political “witch hunt” against him.
The new indictment alleges that he charged more than $44,000 to his campaign over a period of months using credit cards belonging to contributors who were unaware they were being defrauded.
On one occasion he charged $12,000 to a contributor’s credit card, ultimately transferring the vast majority of that money into his personal bank account, the charging document says.
“Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with non-existent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen,” Breon Peace, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
“This Office will relentlessly pursue criminal charges against anyone who uses the electoral process as an opportunity to defraud the public and our government institutions.”
wzrd1says
@ 36, much to my delight, at the dentist, after I had a molar extracted that had shattered into a razor sharp hook that literally cored a quarter inch wide and deep hole into my tongue, I found at the supermarket next door two delights. Both, I’ve spent two years looking all about for locally.
A fine pie pumpkin (figure around 6 – 8 inches diameter) and some frozen fresh pork hocks.
The latter, a critical ingredient for my best pasta sauce, the former, well, you can use that frequently adulterated canned shit, I prefer a fresh pie pumpkin – which is enough to make between two and three pies.
Irritatingly, today I realized, I had absolutely no shortening to make a pie crust. Had to run out today for shortening. While at that store, I found to my shock, two more fresh pork hocks. The shortening is happily on the shelf now, the hocks, comfortably resting inside of my freezer, awaiting my usage of my last couple of quarts of pasta sauce.
I do a kosher/halal version as well, largely of lamb and goat meat, substituting olive oil for the necessary fats to help meld flavors. Lamb is annoying to find within walking distance, goat, not so much, given Caribbean diets in our local markets and I first tried goat in Somaliland region of Africa. Sort of an unwilling guest, we had built a school as volunteers during our off duty hours and dropped off food supplies, a local family insisted upon slaughtering their only remaining goat for a meal on our behalf and well, refusing would be an insult in most cultures.
Erm, there was a conspiracy after that, a few cases of food supplies fell off of the back of the truck as it passed their home, which was oddly not quite on the truck’s normal route.
We all agreed, sharing what little you have and going hungry afterward isn’t cool, less cool is letting one’s family go hungry to thank someone just doing what’s fucking right.
Can’t stand American beef after having real beef abroad, it’s like cardboard to me. Australian beef, like American beef in fat content, more flavorful, Pakistani, Egyptian and regional beef, even more flavorful and lower in fat.
Lamb and goat, cool, foul, wonderful but harder to make a good sauce from, but got recipes from around the planet for all.
For the record, there is absolutely no fucking problem feeding every single person on this planet and never has been in the modern era. The problem is a scarcity economics driven distribution system and lack of a desire to create a proper distribution system that doesn’t waste, rather than distribute food.
Which would eliminate the scarcity driven supporters system anyway, as one won’t be able to supply warlords with food if they’re overwhelmed with it flooding in.
And a lot of ships returning from the US are empty or far from capacity anyway, containers rusting empty and only supplying preppers here.
As videos of Hamas’ wave of terror against Israeli civilians continue to emerge, deepening the horror of the past few days’ events, there are reports that Hamas is executing kidnapped civilians and vowing not to stop until Israel stops its attacks on Gaza. Given that Israel isn’t about to stop and, in fact, will intensify those attacks in the coming days and weeks, it looks like the terrorist organization will continue making the same mistake I discussed Monday: thinking that murdering (and even decapitating) civilians will help accomplish, rather than hinder, their goals. [Tweet at the link]
There will obviously be efforts to create moral equivalence between civilians killed by Israeli air raids and those murdered by Hamas. But my careful use of language very purposely delineates the difference between the two situations.
In war, civilians are often collateral damage. It isn’t good and it isn’t right, but it’s a consequence of military action. There is a clear difference between military action and deliberately targeting and killing civilians without regard to military value or strategy.
If Ukraine targets the Kerch Bridge in occupied Crimea and civilians die, that is a tragic consequence of a military operation. In fact, in past strikes, Ukraine has intentionally struck the bridge at night, when civilian traffic was lowest, to minimize that collateral damage.
Same with American military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. A frightful number of civilians were killed, but the vast majority died as a result of military action. That’s why we opposed those wars: Because we knew civilians would suffer. And we were exponentially more horrified by Donald Trump’s pardon of four Blackwater mercenaries who massacred Iraqi civilians, or the Navy SEAL who did the same, because war might be hell, but there is a special place in it for those who directly target the innocent.
War casualties aren’t a math equation or a simple tally of the dead on a ledger. There is a clear moral distinction between civilians dying as collateral damage, and explicitly being targeted. Civilians die as a result of Russian military action all the time, but it has particular resonance when they are intentionally targeted, like at this funeral last week [Tweet and images at the link]
For all the horrors it has visited upon Ukraine, Russia isn’t accused of war crimes when it strikes military targets, but when it explicitly doesn’t.
Hamas lost the moral high ground when it murdered hundreds of Israeli and other civilians. Now threatening to murder civilian hostages, Hamas is merely doubling down.
It should be no surprise, for a people suffering so much, that Hamas might be the worst thing inflicted on the Palestinian people. For all the attempts to blame Gaza’s plight on Israel, the reality is that Egypt itself has blockaded its border with Gaza, while the (corrupt) Palestinian Authority in the West Bank refuses to allow entry to Gaza residents. Hamas is an authoritarian terrorist organization. It took power in Gaza after the 2006 elections, then made sure no elections have been held ever since.
Polling by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that just 31% of Palestinians (and just 38% of those in Gaza) thought that Hamas was “deserving of representing the Palestinian people.” Does that mean that the Palestinian people are just as much anti-Hamas as most of the rest of the world (including the Arab world)?
It might not be that simple. Only 28% of respondents supported a two-state solution, with 70% opposing. Support for a one-state solution, in which Palestinians would enjoy equal rights inside Israel, is at just 21%, with 76% opposing. So if they don’t support either the one- or two-state solution, what is left? (Destruction of Israel wasn’t polled.) Disenchantment with Hamas may be less about its extremism and more about its corruption and lack of results.
As noted Monday, the Arab world is moving toward diplomatic normalization with Israel. Egypt and Jordan were already there. Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and United Arab Emirates joined them in 2020. Saudi Arabia is well along that path. Hamas’ stated goal to destroy Israel is increasingly a fringe ideology within the Muslim world itself. That is why Hamas is currently lashing out in a murderous rampage. Its supposed friends and most of the world are moving on, and the only ones who remain sympathetic to Hamas’ cause are Iran, Russia, and naive, idealistic Western leftists.
And the sooner Hamas’ friends in the Western world realize that Palestine’s future is not with Hamas, the sooner we might get some semblance of a peace process back on track.
In the meantime, the cost, both militarily and in innocent lives, will be horrific on both sides, but Israel will successfully cleanse Gaza of Hamas’ leadership. If we’re lucky, maybe Trumpian Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be a casualty of his own severe security and intelligence failures.
With Hamas and Bibi gone, maybe there would be a chance for some semblance of a peace process to restart. Probably not, but just maybe.
——————————–
Germany may be receiving flak for refusing to send long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, but it just announced a massive air defense package worth over $1 billion. [Good news!] Ukraine will receive:
– A Patriot air defense system. This is the world’s most advanced air defense system, with a proven ability to shoot down Russia’s most advanced hypersonic cruise missiles. The package includes a command center, radar array, eight launchers, and 60 missiles.
– An IRIS-T SLM system. The IRIS is a medium-range system which Ukraine claims has a perfect shoot-down record.
– Three Gepard air defense vehicles. Gerards (“cheetah,” in German) are formerly decommissioned air defense machine-gun-like systems that have proven absolutely brilliant for taking down drones. These add to 46 already sent, many of them scoured from foreign owners (like Jordan) that had also decommissioned the systems. Indeed, the Gepard’s success must have NATO weapons planners wondering about restarting the entire Gepard manufacturing line, as missiles are inefficient and expensive ways to shoot down cheap drones.
Germany’s announcement also included 10 more Leopard 1 tanks, 15 armored personnel carriers, 20 armored medical vehicles, and 155mm artillery rounds. [More good news.] But the air defenses are a huge upgrade to Ukraine’s growing air shield and should prove invaluable in defending its infrastructure from this winter’s inevitable missile and drone barrages. Indeed, it might be helpful to park those new systems around Odesa, which is currently under-defended and under constant attack. And unlike last winter, Ukraine will have the means to strike back this winter. It won’t be one-way misery.
They did the right thing, but only after trying very hard to do the wrong thing.
⚽️UEFA has canceled the decision to allow youth national teams from Russia to participate in international competitions after a number of national football associations reacted negatively.
The USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group has arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean to support Israel, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command.
[former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg] just acknowledged [in court in New York] that from 2011 until Trump became president, he would give Trump the statements of financial condition before they were finalized. Trump had an opportunity to review the statements and Weisselberg said he “periodically” received comments on them.
Elon Musk blew up the old verification system, replacing a hand-picked group of journalists whose identities were confirmed by the company with a hodgepodge of culture warriors paying $8 a month to float to the top of replies. He began paying the culture warriors based on the views they got. He blocked and threatened reporters. He sued activists. He began charging eye-watering rates to access the platform’s API, driving away academic researchers. He stripped headlines off the previews of articles. He promoted the accounts of conspiracy theories and right-wing extremists. This is a system designed to cause chaos in the information environment, and it is working by design.
wzrd1says
@ 45, the most useless thing ever, but, in the region.|
Can’t launch an offensive, can only launch defensive, but “expresses our interest”.
whheydtsays
Re: USS Ford off the coast of Israel…better hope nobody is paying attention to what Ukraine has been doing with low profile, sea surface drones. Or as the old submarine joke goes…there are two kinds of ships: Submarines and targets.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Corporate Profits Soar At the End of the World”
Disney’s animatronic “Dinosaurs” predicted the future. https://youtu.be/WhQG54QvTTc
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Ukraine’s security service on Wednesday said it had identified two suspected informers who allegedly helped Russia strike at a wake last week, killing more than 50 people….
Two brothers, 23 and 30, who’ve fled to Russia.
The rights activist Oleg Orlov told a Moscow court on Wednesday that Russia had descended into a totalitarian state resembling George Orwell’s 1984 as he asked a judge to acquit him of discrediting the armed forces by condemning the war in Ukraine.
Reuters reports Orlov, 70, said it was “obvious” that Russians were living in the world of the dystopian novelist, as their country waged war on its neighbour while claiming to support freedom, peace and security.
“There is still no concept of ‘thought crime’ in the Russian criminal code; citizens are not yet punished for doubting the correctness of state policy if it was expressed in a whisper in their own apartment; they are not punished for an incorrect facial expression. Yet,” he said.
“But if someone expresses such doubt outside his apartment, denunciation and punishment may follow.”
Orlov was defending himself in a case based on a November 2022 article in which he wrote that Russia under President Vladimir Putin had descended into fascism.
Update:
The veteran rights activist, Oleg Orlov, has been found guilty of discrediting Russia’s armed forces in an article in which he said the country had descended into fascism.
He has been ordered to pay a fine of 150,000 roubles ($1,500), Reuters reports.
Orlov, 70, had faced a possible three-year jail term, but the prosecution said earlier it would seek to have him fined instead because of his age and state of health….
Western countries are “very close” to finalising a ban on Russian diamonds from retail markets in countries that are already sanctioning Kremlin assets, the Belgian prime minister has said.
In a move that will cut off another vital source of revenue for Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine, Alexander de Croo said a year-long attempt by the European Union and G7 countries to reliably trace diamonds coming from Russia was almost complete.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who made a surprise visit to the Nato headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, De Croo said the aim was for the ban on “blood diamonds” to come into force on 1 January 2024.
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Israel-Gaza liveblog. From there:
Gaza’s only power plant ran out of fuel Wednesday afternoon, forcing it to shut down after Israel cut off supplies, the energy ministry said.
That leaves only generators to power the territory – but they also run on fuel that is in short supply within Gaza.
The US has discussed brokering an aid corridor for civilians in Gaza as Israel’s air force continued to pound the territory.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Tuesday that talks on safe passage for civilians in Gaza were being held with Israel and Egypt. “We are focused on this question. There are consultations going on. But the details of that are something that are being discussed among the operational agencies and I don’t want to share too much of that publicly at this time,” he said.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was due to arrive in Israel on Thursday to discuss support in the war.
There have been pleas from humanitarian groups and EU officials for the creation of corridors to allow aid into Gaza and warnings that hospitals overwhelmed with wounded people were running out of supplies.
There are reports in Israeli media that parts of the opposition will join the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in an emergency “unity government”.
A British Airways flight from London to Tel Aviv has turned back and will return to Heathrow.
“Safety is always our highest priority and we’ve taken the decision to return our Tel Aviv flight to Heathrow,” a spokesperson for the airline said.
A spokesperson for Israel’s airports authority said the decision was made by the pilot.
They said rockets were flying around Tel Aviv at the time but were not an immediate threat to the flight or to Ben Gurion Airport. [!]
Israel continues its bombardment of the Gaza Strip in retaliation at Hamas’s deadly incursion over the weekend in which more than 1,000 Israelis were killed.
Similar numbers have since been killed in Gaza and more than 260,000 people have been forced to flee their homes as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion of the besieged territory.
Why is Benjamin Netanyahu still prime minister of Israel? More than any other single political leader, on either side of the Israel-Palestine divide, he is responsible for the spiralling tensions, divisions and anger that preceded this horrific catastrophe….
British Airways has suspended flights to and from Israel due to safety concerns, the airlines has announced.
A BA spokesperson said:
Safety is always our highest priority and following the latest assessment of the situation, we’re suspending our flights to and from Tel Aviv.
We’re contacting customers booked to travel to or from Tel Aviv to apologise for the inconvenience and offer options including a full refund and rebooking with another airline or with British Airways at a later date.
We continue to monitor the situation in the region closely.
Flight BA165 is returning to Heathrow after nearly reaching Tel Aviv this afternoon.
Officials with the UN’s relief and works agency (UNRWA) confirmed 11 colleagues have been killed since Saturday in the Gaza Strip.
Among those killed were five teachers, one gynecologist, one engineer, one psychological counselor and three support staff, the agency said in a statement.
UN staff and civilians must be protected at all times during conflict.
We call for the fighting to come to an end to spare more civilian lives lost.
Selected from 49,957 entries from 95 countries, the winners of the Natural History Museum’s prestigious wildlife photographer of the year competition were revealed at an awards ceremony in South Kensington on Tuesday. The flagship wildlife photographer of the year exhibition featuring the awarded images will open on Friday 13 October 2023 at the Natural History Museum in London…
Healthcare professionals, from advanced sports dieticians to general practitioners, are increasingly trading a focus on weight for other, more robust health measures…
But, “for individuals, these definitions may not apply and may have little relationship to healthiness,” he says.
That is complete bullshit. Being (significantly) overweight is as big of a risk factor for premature death as smoking. It is perhaps the single most important indicator of general health. The only reason why I’m not for a culture of fat shaming is that I believe that fat shaming doesn’t work to help people lose weight who are fat. I am particularly annoyed by a very small cadre of doctors and influencers who are spreading this ridiculous lie that there is not an extremely strong causal link between overweight and severe health risks.
Four of the former Ohio State University wrestlers who have accused Rep. Jim Jordan of failing to protect them from a sexual predator when he was the team’s assistant coach in the 1980s and ‘90s said Tuesday he has no business being the next speaker of the House.
Additional details:
NBC News quoted former OSU wrestler Mike Schyck, one of the hundreds of former athletes and students who say they were sexually abused, saying, “Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys? Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”
[…] Starting in 2018, Ohio State University confronted a controversy surrounding the late Dr. Richard Strauss, a former physician for student athletes from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, who’s been accused of molesting students during his tenure. Independent investigators ultimately concluded that the doctor sexually abused 177 male students.
Jordan, an assistant wrestling coach at the university from 1986 to 1994, denied knowing anything about the abuse, though NBC News reported that the Ohio Republican’s denials, were “met with skepticism and anger from some former members of the wrestling team.”
A year later, NBC News published a related report on a referee having filed a lawsuit claiming he reported an incident directly to Jordan, who allegedly shrugged it off.
“It was common knowledge what Strauss was doing so the attitude was it is what it is,” the referee said, adding that he wished Jordan, among others, “would stand up and do the right thing and admit they knew what Strauss was doing, because everybody knew what he was doing to the wrestlers.”
The congressman has repeatedly said he was in the dark about the abuses, despite others’ claims to the contrary. The degree to which the allegations might affect Jordan’s bid for the speaker’s gavel remains to be seen.
Re: #59
I visited my cousin in a retirement home, and he said, “You know the one thing you don’t see here? Fat people.” That was enough to convince me.
News just broke that Benny Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu have formed an emergency national unity government in Israel. This has been expected for the last day or so. What’s not clear yet is the precise details of that government. Gantz had demanded a war cabinet made up of Netanyahu and his Defense Minister joined to Gantz and his deputy, Gadi Eizenkot. Both of the latter two are former IDF Chiefs of Staff. That would essentially sidestep the entire existing cabinet structure and run the management of the war through those four men.
The initial reports suggest that what they actually ended up with was a three man war cabinet of Netanyahu, Gallant (the Defense Minister) and Gantz. Eisenkot and Ron Dermer, who is essentially Netanyahu’s longtime hype man, will be observers in the war cabinet. There’s a freeze on all legislation not tied to the conduct of the war for the duration of the war. So that means all the judicial coup stuff is frozen in place. [Temporary good news concerning the judicial coup stuff.]
Apparently a position in the war cabinet has been left open for Yair Lapid, the other opposition leader. But he’s said he won’t join any government that still has the two extremist parties in it. So this is like an incentive to bring him in. The reports I’m seeing leave it unclear to me whether that slot is an actual member of the war cabinet along with those three or another “observer” position.
I suspect we’ll get more information shortly on the precise details, which are pretty important.
It is not just Tommy Tuberville that is holding up confirmations of officials nominated by President Joe Biden . Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are doing something similar. So, naturally, Fox News is blaming Biden for all the empty slots. This is so ridiculous and frustrating.
If you watch only Fox News, you might believe that President Joe Biden is responsible for “a lack of response” to the crisis in Israel because he is also responsible for “lack of Senate-confirmed elected [sic] officials.” What the talking head reading from what appears to be a Foreign Policy article meant was Senate-confirmed embassy officials in the Middle East. [video at the link]
[…] “At the time of the deadly Hamas attack on Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East, the United States had no confirmed ambassadors to Israel, Egypt, Oman, or Kuwait.” The story goes on to point out that the counterterrorism envoy position and human rights envoy position as well as the top job at the U.S. Agency for International Development are unfilled. What the article also points out, and the Fox News talker ignores, is that these vacancies are “due to a nearly broken Senate confirmation process, where nominees have languished in limbo for months or even years due to the ‘new normal’ practice of Republican senators placing sweeping holds on all nominees for different agencies over policy disputes with the administration.”
In fact, Biden has nominated ambassador candidates for Israel, Egypt, Oman, and Kuwait. He has also named candidates for the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism and the assistant administrator for the Middle East at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Some of these nominations date back to July 2021, and have been held in limbo all these months thanks to Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, J.D. Vance of Ohio, and Rand Paul of Kentucky. All three have each placed sweeping and overlapping holds on State Department nominees.
Cruz has been holding up Elizabeth Richard’s counterterrorism confirmation, as well as threatening the nomination of Jack Lew to the Israel post. “Sen. Cruz has said since the summer that it was becoming impossible to expeditiously advance Biden administration nominees because those nominees keep lying to Congress and the American people, testifying publicly that they are committed to countering Iran and deepening the U.S.-Israel relationship then implementing the opposite policies in secret once confirmed,” a Cruz spokesperson told Politico [Cruz spouting bullshit]. “He will evaluate Lew’s nomination against the backdrop of those concerns.” In other words: Even after the Hamas attack on Israel, Cruz is still reserving the right to delay Lew’s confirmation.
Vance has been obnoxiously placing holds on a number of nominations because he believes the State Department is too “woke,” and over the summer sent out a “wokeness” questionnaire to nominees to determine who he might lift his holds from. Vance has also been holding Justice Department nominees since the summer. Meanwhile, Paul had a two-year blanket hold on all State nominees until he got all the documents the department had on the origins of COVID-19. He was finally mollified this summer, and a number of nominees were confirmed.
In fact, in July, Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote to the Senate stressing exactly what the Fox News gabber talked about Tuesday, calling for the senators with holds to “reconsider or work with the Department to find a reasonable and expedited path forward.” He asked the rest of the senators who weren’t putting holds on nominees to “talk to your colleagues who are.”
A State Department official told CNN at the time of Blinken’s letter how dangerous these holds are, pointing out that “for the first time ever, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon” simultaneously “have no confirmed U.S. ambassadors.”
That’s on top of the ongoing hold Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, has on almost all Department of Defense nominees and promotions. He’s showing no inclination to end his tantrum—begun over the Pentagon’s policy of allowing paid leave for military personnel to travel out of state for abortion care—even in light of the heightened state of international crisis in Israel.
The hundreds of holds from Tuberville alone, combined with dozens from Cruz, Paul, and Vance, would take weeks (if not months) to work through on an individual nominee basis. The Senate would be able to do little other work if they had to consider the nominations and promotions one at a time. The affected agencies and departments are having to work both under acting heads who don’t have the full weight of authority a confirmation brings, and under a cloud of uncertainty. It’s a situation our adversaries relish.
“People abroad see it as a sign of dysfunction, ineffectiveness, inability to put national interests over political ones,” Blinken said in his letter to the Senate. That means these few Republican nihilists are undermining our nation’s ability to respond to this crisis. It is further proof that Republicans pose a danger to our national security and that of our allies.
I agree with that last sentence.
beholdersays
@43 Lynna
There will obviously be efforts to create moral equivalence between civilians killed by Israeli air raids and those murdered by Hamas.
Yeah, no shit. They’re both war crimes.
But my careful use of language very purposely delineates the difference between the two situations.
Your attempts to excuse the more powerful actor for their genocidal ambitions are just that, terrible excuses. Everything Israel hits magically turns into a military target, who would have guessed? I’m surprised by their impeccable accuracy.
Or at least I would be if the U.S. and Israel didn’t have a history of making shit up about their civilian targets.
beholder @64, yes, I agree that it is not right to say that one kind of killing civilians is correct while another kind of killing civilians is not correct. That argument bothered me too. (I don’t think it is that simple. Nor do I think that the author of the article presented it as that simple. That’s not, however, my main point in replying to you now. See below.)
To go on to say “Your attempts to excuse the more powerful actor for this genocidal ambitions …” is misleading and not fair. It was not me that made the argument to which you are referring. Please stick to disagreeing with the author of the article, and do not equate me with that author.
Furthermore, even the author of the article did not excuse genocidal ambitions. By overly simplifying the presentation, you weaken your own objections.
Points made in that article are worth discussion, worth taking note. And, yes, I am glad to see someone disagreeing with the concept of trying to parse the rights and wrongs of killing civilians as if there were any “right.”
If you read all of my posts about the war in Israel/Gaza, both in this thread and in the previous chapter of this thread, you will see that I have made an effort to present coverage that is nuanced and that includes context.
The Republican goal is to break the government. The media should call this out
———————
Republicans only interest in governing is stopping Democrats from doing so.
———————
learly the Senate has needed for years to go nuclear on revising the “hold” rules — because the right wing’s political terrorists are using it to severely damage the Biden administration and the ability of the United States to be militarily and politically prepared the way it should be.
———————
The change is minorly simple. Just change the rule so that the cloture clock can overlap on multiple nominees by running simultaneously rather than consecutively. Then the wingnuts would have to find 40/50 votes to continue to block a nominee.
————————-
single-person blanket holds on nominees has crippled our government
———————–
A “hold” is a denial of unanimous consent to suspend the rules. Otherwise the Senate has to vote to invoke cloture thus starting a 30 hour clock where other business cannot be conducted. The simple rule change is to allow other business to be conducted when unanimous consent is denied so those cloture clocks could overlap.
————————
The entire “hold” process needs to be eliminated. Not revised, but eliminated. It’s as undemocratic a process as one could imagine, having any one person in a legislative body prevent something from coming to a vote indefinitely, with no recourse by even a supermajority. It is much worse than the filibuster.
——————-
Faux is not a broadcast journalism outlet, it is a propaganda outlet. The fact is that Cruz, Paul, Hawley and Tuberville have held up hundreds of civilian and military appointments.
———————-
Biden is to blame for his stubborn insistence on nominating Democrats for these posts when only MAGA Republicans are suitable. [/sarcasm]
beholdersays
@66 Lynna
It was not me that made the argument to which you are referring.
I think I can be forgiven for assuming your tendency for one-way reposts has the strong implication of endorsement, without a clear editorial line at the top or bottom that says anything to the effect of, “Wow, this is some strong bullshit.”. I appreciate the clarification.
I disagree about the author’s intent, however. It was a clear attempt to muddy the waters and give Israel’s indefensible actions a defense.
A group of New York state Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives will introduce a motion to expel indicted fellow Republican George Santos from the chamber, two of the members said on Wednesday.
The move comes a day after federal prosecutors filed 23 fresh criminal counts against the first-term U.S. representative, accusing him of inflating his campaign’s fundraising numbers and charging campaign contributors’ credit cards without their consent…
whheydtsays
Re: beholder @ #66…
Would you care to comment on Hamas apparent policy of putting military assets in (or under) civilian structures?
[…] this morning House Foreign Relations Chair Mike McCaul (R-TX) said this: “We know that Egypt had warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen…I don’t want to get too much in the classified but a warning was given. I think the question was at what level.”
It’s not immediately clear just what McCaul is referring to or where he’s getting the information. His reference to classification certainly makes it seem like this is information from US government sources. That could conceivably be direct surveillance of communications between Israel and Egypt. But I would think it would be more likely one or the other country telling the US what warnings were given.
The devil is always in the details about what kind of warning we’re talking about. McCaul talks about a warning three days in advance. The initial claim out of Egypt was ten days in advance. So there’s some fuzziness there. McCaul also says that it was a warning about “an event like this”. That makes it sound much more specific than a general warning about something big.
[…] We don’t know if there was an escalating series of warnings inclusive of one at ten days and another at three. McCaul says he wasn’t sure what level the warning came through. That’s quite different from the initial reports of a direct conversation between the head of Egyptian intelligence and Netanyahu himself.
[…] What’s more clear is that it now seems likely there was some meaningful warning from Egypt that the Israelis did not take heed of. The fact that McCaul is making this comment suggests people in the US, Egypt and Israel have at least some information about it. […]
House Republicans on Wednesday nominated Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) to be the next Speaker, sending his candidacy to the House floor following Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) stunning ouster last week, multiple lawmakers told The Hill.
Scalise secured the nomination 113-99 in a closed-door GOP conference meeting, defeating House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in a close race that did not have a clear front-runner heading into the internal vote.
Scalise will now take his candidacy to the House floor, where he will be up against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who Democrats nominated for Speaker on Tuesday night.
The floor fight could get messy. Candidates need the support of a majority of the chamber to take control of the gavel and Republicans hold a razor-thin majority. […]
Early in the pandemic, weight was named a risk factor for severe covid-19. But what if the greater risk is poor medical treatment for fat people? This week, On the Media dives into the fictions, feelings, and fraught history of fat. Including how sugar and the slave trade laid the groundwork for American beauty standards….
A naïve researcher published a scientific article in a respectable journal. She thought her article was straightforward and defensible. It used only publicly available data, and her findings were consistent with much of the literature on the topic. Her coauthors included two distinguished statisticians. To her surprise her publication was met with unusual attacks from some unexpected sources within the research community. These attacks were by and large not pursued through normal channels of scientific discussion. Her research became the target of an aggressive campaign that included insults, errors, misinformation, social media posts, behind-the-scenes gossip and maneuvers, and complaints to her employer. The goal appeared to be to undermine and discredit her work. The controversy was something deliberately manufactured, and the attacks primarily consisted of repeated assertions of preconceived opinions. She learned first-hand the antagonism that could be provoked by inconvenient scientific findings. Guidelines and recommendations should be based on objective and unbiased data. Development of public health policy and clinical recommendations is complex and needs to be evidence-based rather than belief-based. This can be challenging when a hot-button topic is involved….
GOTS:
The only reason why I’m not for a culture of fat shaming is that I believe that fat shaming doesn’t work to help people lose weight who are fat.
Well, that’s pretty shitty! (Also, given that you recognize this harmful and cruel practice is ineffective at its purported goals and given that it’s moreover extremely harmful rather than helpful to people’s health, you should actively oppose it.)
tomh @ #61:
I visited my cousin in a retirement home, and he said, “You know the one thing you don’t see here? Fat people.” That was enough to convince me.
This is staying pinned up top until I’m not mad anymore. Good luck to us all.
I’m not really that Jewish. I could give two shits about Israel. Everybody knows Netanyahu’s an asshole.
And from that not-very-Jewish, non-zionist perspective […]
Some time ago, a longtime Wonkette reader canceled his subscription. I never want to put people on the spot, but I did want to make sure he was fine. Oh, he was fine, he told me, but his son had redpilled him or blackpilled him, or whichever is the one annoying people use, into seeing that the Left was an antisemitic horror show. I wished him well and couldn’t argue.
There will no longer be any comments on any posts about Israel and Palestine. Because you — you in particular? just maybe, could be! — have decided it’s more important to “what about” than to just say “IT IS WRONG TO CHOP BABIES’ HEADS OFF.”
There doesn’t need to be a second part to that sentence. It is a full stop.
I guess it could be the second part of the sentence: “I am really sympathetic toward Palestine and have been angry at Israel a long time, BUT IT IS WRONG TO CHOP BABIES’ HEADS OFF.” That could work too.
Charlie Sykes at The Bulwark has a roundup of a whole bunch of college kids acting atrociously — sickeningly — as is their American right.
And yet there is no American right to shit in my comments. Saying later that “it goes without saying” that you don’t support raping people to death when you say you support “the right to resist” does not in fact go without saying, because a whole bunch of ghouls are celebrating it right now.
Raping people to death and chopping babies’ heads off is not “resisting.” It amazes me that this needs to be said. And in no universe do I want to hear your acerbic asides about what Israel’s done to deserve it. Listen to your fucking self.
I will ban the fuck out of you if you even look at me funny, if you manage to sneak in some pro-Hamas comments in a post on which I didn’t already disallow comments.
You can take your donations and flounce; plenty of you did this week already, many of you who have been here for years and years. You’re outraged that you don’t have the right to blithely opine on the moral certitude of people actually decapitating babies, on purpose, rather than shutting your fucking mouth for a minute and not opining on the righteousness of that.
STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT. Have some fucking shame. Take a minute to ask whether your right to vent your smug opinion is in fact the most important thing about this moment. Take a look at your moral compass, because your moral compass is fucked. And then you can shake your head in disappointment at what has become of hawkish neoliberal Wonkette, which is so reactionary and anti-decolonialist in insisting chopping babies’ heads off is bad.
If you want to cancel your donation to Wonkette because I won’t let you spew that in my comments, I sit ready to help.
beholdersays
@61 tomh
I visited my cousin in a retirement home, and he said, “You know the one thing you don’t see here? Fat people.” That was enough to convince me.
Doesn’t sound like an accurate description of any of the nursing homes I’ve seen. You sure it was a retirement home and not a concentration camp?
GerrardOfTitanServersays
Well, that’s pretty shitty! (Also, given that you recognize this harmful and cruel practice is ineffective at its purported goals and given that it’s moreover extremely harmful rather than helpful to people’s health, you should actively oppose it.)
I fail to see a meaningful difference between shaming people for smoking, vs shaming people for being fat. In the vast majority of cases, people who are fat are fat because of lifestyle choices that they could change, e.g. bad eating habits and bad exercise habits. If shaming people helped them quit their tobacco addictions, then we should do it. It would make them better off. Rather than being a shitty thing to do, it would be a moral good and a moral requirement. Ditto for fat people. I simply don’t shame fat people because I don’t think that shaming actually helps them lose weight, and I only rare shame smokers by saying more or less “you know smoking is bad for you? You should quit”.
Do you know what’s shitty? Lying to people by telling them that it’s ok to be overweight and that the health risks of being overweight are exaggerated or simply fake. That’s the shitty thing to do. That’s what you did by linking to that garbage article.
You want to know how much Fox News and other conservatives truly don’t give a shit about what just happened in Israel, or only care about it inasmuch as they can use it to score points against their ideological enemies?
Laura Ingraham — who used to be the scoffing, eye-rolling joke that came on after “Hannity” until she got demoted to the “Wheel Of Fortune” hour, when even half-dead Fox News viewers switch over to “Wheel Of Fortune” — used her time on TV last night to complain about Joe Biden’s excellent speech yesterday, and to compare Hamas’s attack on Israel to the Department of Justice holding Donald Trump accountable for his many crimes against America, the world, and humanity itself.
Mediaite has the full clip, but here’s a snippet that starts with Biden, via Acyn: [video at the link]
INGRAHAM: Joe Biden emerged on 90 minutes late to speak about, well, the evil attacks by Hamas against the Israeli people. Now, although he was unequivocal about America’s support for Israel and the depravity of these incursions, there was no mention of Iran’s role in the planning and the funding of these attacks. Nor did he announce any reconsideration of the $6 billion payment to Iran for that prisoner swap. Mostly, it was generalities.
[Ingraham plays a clip of Biden’s excellent speech]
BIDEN: This is a moment for the United States to come together to grieve with those who are mourning. Let’s be real clear. There is no place for hate in America.
INGRAHAM: Okay. Well, if he’s really against hate, then he should call a prosecutorial ceasefire against his political adversaries like the former president, and direct his DOJ and DHS to stop making conservative Americans feel like they are the enemy or like they’re the violent extremists out there.
[…] When she talks about a “prosecutorial ceasefire,” she’s [disrespecting] the people who actually lost their lives, who lost family members and friends, and using the same imagery to defend the traitor Donald Trump, who is indicted 91 times for among other things stealing America’s secrets and concealing them, and scheming to overthrow the Republic in order to overturn the results of an election he lost.
As for “Iran’s role in the planning and the funding,” that is far from confirmed […] The Wall Street Journal seems to think it has the story, but so far they’re the only ones, and we’re going to need to hear it from several sources before we go trusting the same people who sign Ingraham’s checks.
The thing about the $6 billion “payment” to Iran has been debunked as babbling bullshit by no less than the news side of Fox News.
Ingraham is lying to her viewers, stoking baseless conspiracy theories that Joe Biden is the one directing these prosecutions, when the truth is that jurisdictions and juries all over the place are coming to the conclusion all by themselves that Trump deserves to be locked away and forgotten at one of America’s finest penal establishments.
When she bellyaches about the DOJ and DHS “making conservative Americans feel like they are the enemy or like they’re the violent extremists here,” we imagine she’s talking about people like the January 6 terrorists, who are indeed violent extremists. (They come in many flavors!) And we imagine she’s stoking conservative lies about Biden’s Justice Department going after, perhaps, traditional Catholics, or people who just want the freedom to do anti-LGBTQ+ book-burnings at their children’s school libraries or make threats against school officials. […]
The United Nations’ humanitarian agency painted a bleak picture of conditions in the Gaza as Israel lays siege to the narrow strip.
In an update Wednesday, the agency said more than 263,000 Palestinians have been displaced across Gaza as more than 1,000 homes have been destroyed, with an additional 560 so damaged they are uninhabitable. About 12,630 other homes were also damaged.
All of Gaza’s 13 hospitals were “only partly operational” because of supply shortages and fuel rationing, the agency said.
More than 650,000 people were without drinking water, the agency said, after Israel cut off water supplies to Gaza.
Seven water and sanitation facilities were damaged by Israeli airstrikes, the agency said, adding that “sewage and solid waste” were building up in the streets in some areas, creating a health hazard.
whheydtsays
Re: beholder @ #73…
So you agree that Hamas is building military infrastructure in or under civilian structures. You are arguing that there is no where else to build. It is a defensible proposition that the actual Hamas goal is to use civilians as human shields to protect the military assets. Either way, since the Israelis want to eliminate as much Hamas military capability as they can (especially since Hamas primary medium to long range weapons are wildly inaccurate rockets, which can only be used to “target” areas of purely civilian use), just how do you propose that the IDF degrade Hamas militarily without causing large scale collateral civilian damage, injury and death? Note that Israel does broadcast warning for civilians to get away from areas the IDF targets, so they are at least making some effort to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas, on the other hand does nothing to try to limit it’s attacks to military targets.
Please note that I am not defending attacks that hit civilian targets….by either side. And, indeed, I can’t see any way that those attacks are going to do anything whatsoever to create a long term solution, but merely extend the tit-for-tat attacks into the indefinite future.
My own prediction is that, when Hamas either exhausts its supply of rockets or reduces its supply to some level of reserve, they will be amenable to a cease-fire brokered by some third party…most likely Egypt. When the IDF runs out of any possible targets that they think represents a Hamas military asset, they will be amenable to a cease-fire brokered by some third party…most likely Egypt. Once a cease-fire is in place, everything will return to the status quo ante while Hamas rebuilds its supply crappy rockets. No one, not Israel, not Hamas, not Egypt will do anything to move the needle toward a permanent resolution. The whole ugly mess will repeat in a few years.
Excerpts from a longer opinion published by The New York Times:
[…] how can America best help Israel now, besides standing behind its right to protect itself, as President Biden so forcefully did in his speech today? I think the U.S. needs to do three things.
First, I hope the president is asking Israel to ask itself this question as it considers what to do next in Gaza: What do my worst enemies want me to do — and how can I do just the opposite?
What Israel’s worst enemies — Hamas and Iran — want is for Israel to invade Gaza […] We are talking house-to-house fighting that would undermine whatever sympathy Israel has garnered on the world stage […]
Hamas and Iran absolutely do not want Israel to refrain from going into Gaza […]
Nor does Hamas want the U.S. and Israel to proceed instead as fast as possible with negotiations to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia as part of a deal that would also require Israel to make real concessions to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which has accepted Israel as part of the Oslo peace accords.
But for Israel to do what is most in its interests, not those of Hamas and Iran, will likely require some very tough love between Biden and Netanyahu. One must never forget that Netanyahu always seemed to prefer to deal with a Hamas that was unremittingly hostile to Israel than with its rival, the more moderate Palestinian Authority — which Netanyahu did everything he could to discredit, even though the Palestinian Authority has long worked closely with Israeli security services to keep the West Bank quiet, and Netanyahu knows it.
Netanyahu has never wanted the world to believe that there are “good Palestinians” ready to live side by side with Israel in peace and try to nurture them. For years now he’s always wanted to tell U.S. presidents: What do you want from me? I have no one to talk to on the Palestinian side.
That’s how Israel reached a stage where the increasingly costly — morally and financially — Israeli occupation of the West Bank has not even been an issue in the last five Israeli elections.
Or as Chuck Freilich, a former deputy Israeli national security adviser, wrote in an essay in Haaretz on Sunday: “For a decade and a half Prime Minister Netanyahu has sought to institutionalize the divide between the West Bank and Gaza, undermine the Palestinian Authority, the P.A., and conduct de facto cooperation with Hamas, all designed to demonstrate the absence of a Palestinian partner and to ensure that there could be no peace process that might have required territorial compromise in the West Bank.”
Lastly, I hope Biden is telling Netanyahu that America will do everything it can to help democratic Israel defend itself from the theocratic fascists of Hamas — and their soul brothers of Hezbollah in Lebanon, should they enter the fight.
But Netanyahu’s side of the bargain is that he has to reconnect himself with liberal democratic Israel, so the world and the region sees this not as a religious war but as a war between the frontline of democracy and the frontline of theocracy. That means Netanyahu has to change his cabinet, expel the religious zealots and create a national unity government with Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu is still prioritizing his coalition of zealots, whom he needs to protect him from his corruption trial and to complete his judicial coup that would neuter the Supreme Court of Israel. That’s really messed up.
And it is a very important reason Israel was caught off guard in the first place. Netanyahu was so wedded to this personal agenda that he was ready to divide Israeli society like never before — and splinter his own army and air force in the process — to get control of the courts.
[…] America cannot protect Israel in the long run from the very real threats it faces unless Israel has a government that reflects the best, not the worst, of its society, and unless that government is ready to try to forge compromises with the best, not the worst, of Palestinian society.
Here’s a link to the Al Jazeera Israel-Gaza liveblog.
From the Guardian liveblog:
Israel’s energy minister, Israel Katz, confirmed the country is blocking water, electricity and fuel from entering Gaza, warning that Israel will “continue to tighten the siege until the Hamas threat…is removed”.
In a post to X, Katz wrote:
For years we supplied Gaza with electricity, water and fuel. Instead of saying thank you, they sent thousands of human animals to slaughter, murder, rape and kidnap babies, women and the elderly.
That’s why we decided to stop the flow of water, electricity and fuel and now their local power station has collapsed and there is no electricity in Gaza.
As Gaza’s sole power station ran out of fuel amid a tightening siege, hundreds of terrified people sought shelter in the entry of the enclave’s largest hospital, huddling together as bombardments rained down.
“The hospital is completely full and things have started to run low. And this is only day four,” said Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon at Gaza City’s main hospital, Al-Shifa.
The situation continues to deteriorate, the number of patients, especially kids, that are coming in with horrendous injuries …” he said, his voice trailing off.
This morning there was a child, a young girl, with indescribable facial injuries whose mother is a doctor at Al-Shifa who was killed when their home was targeted. Last night, another 10-year-old boy with also devastating facial injuries who was taken out from the rubble of his home in Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood.
A few hours after the Palestinian minister for energy said Gaza’s only power station had enough fuel to last another 12 hours at most, Gaza’s energy authority said the fuel had run out. The generators that many across Gaza have struggled to keep running in order to power homes and hospitals appeared set to sputter out without fuel, with no deliveries available due to the closure of Gaza’s southern border crossing with Egypt.
Gaza’s Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights warned:
Soon all services vital for the survival of the population, including hospitals, will no longer function.
The White House is now beginning its press briefing and in about 2.5 hours Joe Biden is meeting with Jewish-American community leaders, accompanied by Doug Emhoff, the US vice president Kamala Harris’s husband.
The Biden administration is preparing to submit a supplemental funding request to Congress seeking money for Israel (also for Ukraine, Taiwan and the US southern border), NBC News reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed officials, and Reuters posted.
US national security spokesman John Kirby has just said during the briefing that the death toll of 22 US citizens killed during Hamas attacks on Israel was likely to rise again.
The figure of 22 was a big jump on the toll of 14 announced yesterday, with many Americans in addition unaccounted for and some known to have been kidnapped by militants and taken to Gaza.
To someone unfamiliar with the country’s recent redistricting history, Wednesday’s Supreme Court oral arguments must have sounded bizarre.
The justices and attorneys alike all candidly acknowledged that South Carolina legislators had manipulated their maps to artificially maximize Republican vote power and minimize Democrats’. They made no attempt to obfuscate that state Republicans were determined to pick their own voters, to rig elections until it became virtually impossible for their party to lose.
It’s a reflection of how grotesque redistricting cases have become ever since the conservatives on the Supreme Court, in 2019, decided that partisan gerrymandering cases were no longer justiciable in federal court. The only danger for South Carolina legislators, then, would come from the Supreme Court agreeing with the district judge panel that they’d used voters’ race — rather than party — to try to achieve that partisan end. It paints another layer of farce onto the case that, particularly in the South, race and partisan lean are often inextricably linked.
The right-wing justices, almost all of whom sounded firmly on the side of the South Carolina lawmakers, were dismissive of the plaintiffs’ case, which they said rested on circumstantial evidence.
“You’re trying to carry [your burden] without any direct evidence, with no alternative map, with no odd-shaped districts which we often get in gerrymandering cases and with a wealth of political data you’re suggesting your friends on other side would ignore in favor of racial data,” Chief Justice John Roberts said to the plaintiffs’ lawyer. “Have we ever had a case before where all it is is circumstantial evidence?”
Despite Roberts’ dismissal, the circumstantial evidence — which was enough for a panel of three federal judges to decide against the South Carolina lawmakers — is fairly compelling.
The state had to address uneven population distribution after the 2020 census: district one was too large, and district six too small. Rather than just shifting some district one surplus to district six, the legislators first shifted large swaths of Republican-leaning areas from district six into the overstuffed district one, only to then pluck out significant numbers of Black voters until district one’s Black voting age population fell back to 17 percent — the benchmark where the white Republican vote is enough to overcome it.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, trying to convey the impossibility of the task for plaintiffs if such glaring reshuffling of Black voters isn’t enough, asked incredulously whether they’d needed a “smoking gun” to prove the case.
Much of the arguments broke down into granular quibbles over the credibility, or lack thereof, of the various experts who testified during the district court’s trial — even while the liberal justices consistently tried to remind their colleagues that all the Supreme Court is deciding is whether there was clear error by the district panel. That standard means that the appellate court must be deferential to the district court’s finding — even if it would have decided the case differently — as long as its conclusion is a plausible one in light of the record.
“The clear error standard — if that’s the standard that we are required to apply — is a very demanding standard,” Justice Samuel Alito said grudgingly. “But it is not an impossible standard. And it doesn’t mean that we simply rubber stamp findings by a district court.”
And, after Wednesday’s arguments, the Supreme Court seems unlikely to do so. If South Carolina triumphs on its central argument that it is all but impossible to prove that racial gerrymandering can be disentangled from partisan gerrymandering, it’ll again have swung close the federal courthouse doors to many cases trying to remedy these undemocratic exercises.
To date, greenlighting this distortion of democracy is one of the Roberts’ Court’s greatest legacies. […]
Looks like Republicans may finally expel George Santo.
Today, I’ll be introducing an expulsion resolution to rid the People’s House of fraudster, George Santos. The resolution will be co-sponsored by fellow #NewYork freshman @RepLaLota @RepMikeLawler @RepMolinaroNY19 @RepLangworthy @RepWilliams
Posted by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito.
GerrardOfTitanServersays
#85
Amendment for shortest splitline districting please.
GOTS @ #78, as I said, I don’t have time for your nonsense or your non-engagement with evidence. You’ve confirmed that you’re full of it and a lousy person to boot.
Do you know what’s shitty? Lying to people by telling them that it’s ok to be overweight and that the health risks of being overweight are exaggerated or simply fake.
As described at my links above (and their citations and links), the evidence does not support the claims you regurgitate here. What the evidence does show, overwhelmingly and entirely unsurprisingly, is that anti-fat stigma/bias/fat-shaming are extremely detrimental to people’s health, in the same way racism, sexism, and anti-LGBT bias are. If you genuinely cared about people’s health, which you don’t, you would work to oppose practices that are clearly shown to harm it.
…Weight stigma has serious adverse impacts on the lives, health and treatment seeking of people with higher weight. Weight stigma is pervasive, with people with higher weight experiencing stigma from health professionals, educators, employers, the media, and even friends and family.
Research demonstrates that some forms of weight stigma may even be equally or more prevalent than other forms of discrimination such as sexism, racism, homophobia, and religious intolerance [2, 3].
Healthcare is a setting in which weight stigma is particularly pervasive. Health professionals, as humans who are part of society and because of their socialisation as health professionals, are likely to hold both implicit and explicit bias towards people with higher weight.
As a result of weight stigma and discrimination, people with higher weight are more likely to:
• avoid seeking and engaging in medical care, leading to delays in diagnosis and treatment
• engage in disordered eating, contributing to the onset of eating disorders and increasing disordered eating in people experiencing eating disorders
• experience higher levels of body dissatisfaction
• experience higher levels of psychological distress, including stress, anxiety, depression, feelings of worthlessness and loneliness, and suicidal ideation
• experience poorer quality of life
• face discrimination in healthcare, affecting the quality of care they receive, leading to poorer health outcomes and increasing risk of mortality
• face discrimination in employment and education
• avoid physical activity and leisure pursuits
Weight stigma and discrimination has been shown to be associated with weight gain over the longer term, independent of the person’s baseline weight [4-6].
The impacts of weight stigma and discrimination may be particularly damaging for people holding other marginalised identities, such as women, individuals experiencing socioeconomic vulnerabilities, racial/ethnic minorities, and sexual and gender minorities, thereby potentially exacerbating health disparities experienced by these populations [7] Thus, weight stigma is a critical social justice and public health issue [8, 9]….
The space rock is “an astrobiologist’s dream,” as preliminary analysis has found carbon and water in it, which could help explain Earth’s oceans and more.
NASA revealed Wednesday that newly returned samples from a 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid contain traces of carbon and water — molecules that are thought to make up the building blocks of life.
The findings could help scientists understand how the solar system formed and how life started on Earth.
In a much-anticipated public event, the agency provided the first glimpse of the rocky samples, detailing how early studies have already yielded exciting results. The pieces of space rock contain water molecules locked up in clay minerals and are rich in carbon, according to NASA researchers.
Astrobiologist Daniel Glavin, co-investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission that retrieved the asteroid sample, said scientists were immediately excited by the initial results.
“We picked the right asteroid. And not only that, we brought back the right sample,” Glavin said. “This stuff is an astrobiologist’s dream.”
The samples were retrieved from the surface of a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu, which is estimated to have formed in the first 10 million years of the solar system’s existence.
More research is needed to understand the samples from Bennu, but the preliminary results are promising because the space rock’s water and carbon content may explain how water was originally delivered to Earth.
As such, the asteroid may have played a key role in how life emerged on our planet, said Dante Lauretta, leader of the OSIRIS-REx mission and a professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona.
“The reason that Earth is a habitable world, that we have oceans and lakes and rivers and rain, is because these clay minerals — minerals like the ones we’re seeing from Bennu — landed on Earth 4 billion years ago to four-and-a-half billion years ago, making our world habitable,” Lauretta said.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launched in 2016, traveling 4 billion miles over the past seven years to gather samples from Bennu and return them to Earth. As the probe flew by the planet last month, it jettisoned a capsule containing the precious samples, depositing it over a landing zone in the Utah desert.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is now en route to another asteroid known as Apophis, which is projected to come within 20,000 miles of Earth in 2029. As part of an extended mission, the probe will study the space rock up close and make careful measurements of its orbit.
More than 50 current and former workers said they were misled by firms that supply labor to Amazon in Saudi Arabia and by recruiting agencies in Nepal.
This story was reported in collaboration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and The Guardian.
Momtaj Mansur flew to Saudi Arabia in September 2021, excited to work at one of the world’s biggest companies, Amazon. He was promised a well-paying job and planned to use the money to help his family back in Nepal.
Less than a year later, he said he was living in a crowded room with seven other men, jammed with bunk beds infested with bed bugs. The water was often salty and undrinkable. His hopes were shattered, and he was deep in debt.
Momtaj Mansur is one of more than 50 current and former workers who said they were misled and exploited by firms that supply labor to Amazon in Saudi Arabia and by their network of recruiting agencies in Nepal.
All the workers said they had to pay fees to recruiters to get hired, ranging from the equivalent of $830 to $2,040, even though fees that large are illegal, according to the Nepali government. To pay those fees, many workers needed to take out loans at high interest rates. They also all said they were duped by recruiters into working for labor supply companies rather than directly for Amazon.
[…] About a dozen workers like Mansur agreed to speak on the record. Others, fearful that speaking out would hurt their chances for other employment, were interviewed with the agreement that their names would not be published. To substantiate their accounts, the journalists reviewed photographs, emails, receipts, messages and other documentation from their time working at Amazon.
After being presented with the findings, Amazon told NBC News it had conducted its own investigation and found labor violations. The company promised measures to fix the problems, including compensating workers who paid recruiting fees to the companies supplying labor.
“We are deeply concerned that some of our contract workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia … were not treated with the standards we set forth, and the dignity and respect they deserve,” John Felton, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, said in a written statement.
[…] A key player for Amazon is a labor supply company that gets workers from other countries — the Saudi-based Abdullah Fahad Al-Mutairi Co. Amazon is among several large corporations that has contracted Al-Mutairi, which has billed itself as “a leading provider of human resource solutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” Forty-nine of the 54 workers interviewed were hired through Al-Mutairi.
Amazon said it considered “suspending” the company “when these allegations came to light.” Instead, it decided to work with Al-Mutairi to make “significant changes to their operations.”
[…] To get workers, Al-Mutairi has worked with recruiting companies in Nepal and elsewhere to attract laborers.
Momtaj Mansur in Nepal was one of them.
When he came to Saudi Arabia, he worked at Amazon’s vast two-story warehouse called RUH 6, in the capital city, Riyadh. He spent his nights as a “picker,” hustling up and down aisles grabbing iPhones, packs of Red Bull and other items ordered by Amazon’s customers across the Arabian Peninsula. He recalled that Amazon managers berated him for being slow, even as he exceeded company targets to pick 70 to 80 items an hour from shelves and boxes.
Then things got worse. In May 2022, Mansur said, he was among a group of workers who were let go without warning or explanation — without work, wages or enough food.
Mansur said he pleaded with Al-Mutairi: If there was no more work at Amazon, let them return to Nepal.
“I told them: Either kill us or send us home, but don’t give us so much pain.”
He said the labor supply firm told him that the only way he could return home was to pay the company an exit fee of more than $1,300 as a penalty for leaving before the end of his two-year contract. It was an enormous sum for his family, which subsisted on about $300 a month, along with rice, wheat and peas grown on a fifth of an acre shared with relatives.
[…] In the end, his family sunk itself even deeper in debt by taking out a loan — at 36% interest — to pay the exit fee.
Twenty workers interviewed for this story said labor supply firms told workers they could not go home to Nepal unless they paid exit fees that often equaled several months’ wages.
[…] Amazon told NBC News that Mansur had a good work record, and would be welcome to return to employment with the company.
The interviews with workers describe practices that are considered by experts to be markers for potential labor trafficking under U.S. law and U.N. standards. These include subjecting workers to abusive working and living conditions; restricting their movement; and making false statements about the identity of the employer. U.N. standards say any recruitment fees should be paid by the employer, not the worker.
[…] “We’re implementing stronger controls for all our vendors to ensure similar incidents do not occur and to raise overall standards for workers in the region, including providing enhanced trainings for our third-party vendors on labor rights standards with a specific focus on recruitment, wages and deception,” said Felton in his written statement to NBC News.
[…] Amazon entered the Saudi Arabian market in 2017, when it purchased the Middle Eastern online retail giant Souq.com, which had started in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. It rebranded Souq under the Amazon name and boosted its labor force by bringing in workers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nepal. In 2023, Amazon reported employing nearly 1,500 permanent and seasonal workers in Saudi Arabia.
[…] In a survey published in 2017 in the prestigious British medical journal BMJ, most Nepali men who have worked outside the country indicated that they had “experienced exploitation at all stages of the migration process.” Half reported being targets of deceptive recruiting practices.
Like many Nepali workers, Mansur knew it is better to seek direct employment rather than working for a labor supply company.
When an agent with Rove International, a recruiting firm based in Kathmandu, offered him work at Amazon, Mansur did research. He decided a big American corporation like Amazon might differ from other companies that had abused fellow Nepali workers.
Knowing that “agents tell lies,” he said, he asked repeatedly whether he would be an employee of Amazon or a labor supply company. The agent “confirmed to me that it was direct employment from Amazon,” Mansur said, “and it would change my life.”
He was surprised, he said, when Rove International told him that he must pay a recruiting fee of over $2,300 — especially since he knew Nepal’s government caps the fees that employment firms can charge workers heading to Saudi Arabia at less than $85. Six other Nepalis confirm that Rove International charged them recruiting fees of more than $1,000 each.
Like other Nepali workers, Mansur said he paid the fee. He saw it as the cost for an opportunity to work for Amazon.
[…] A few days into his job at an Amazon warehouse, Mansur noticed that his green ID badge differed from the blue badges worn by many other workers. The workers with blue badges were employed directly by Amazon, a co-worker explained. Those wearing green badges weren’t direct Amazon employees — they were temporary workers from a labor supply provider.
[…] During their time in Saudi Arabia, the workers said, they were paid less than those who work directly for Amazon.
“We worked more and harder, but the salary we received was much less,” Mansur said.
[…] During a normal shift, Mansur covered as many as 9 miles across warehouse floors. “I would feel extremely weak. My legs would hurt,” he said. “When I returned home, I would feel like I was being pierced with needles or walking barefoot on stones. My whole body would ache.”
[…] “Amazon makes people work like cattle,” said one current worker who said he had to pay a substantial recruiting fee and now lives in squalid housing. […]
After a long day at Amazon’s warehouses, workers come home to living accommodations provided by Al-Mutairi. Many said the housing units are cramped and squalid, with cockroaches scuttling across the floor and a briny water supply that caused rashes. Often, workers said, sleeping mattresses were infested with bed bugs and at times air conditioners — much needed for living in the hot desert country — were not functioning.
[…] When they reported the water issue to Amazon, said one former worker, “Al-Mutairi threatened us: ‘Who complained about this? We will make him jobless!’” Other workers reported similar threats.
Al-Mutairi was strict about requests for time off for family emergencies back home in Nepal, according to 23 current and former workers.
The labor supply firm, they said, will give a worker two choices: He can pay a large fine upfront. Or he can persuade co-workers to sign a “guarantor” contract agreeing that they will pay a fine on his behalf if he doesn’t return to Saudi Arabia to complete his labor contract.
[…] One afternoon in May 2022, a few hours before his next shift began, a message popped up on Mansur’s mobile phone: “Don’t go to duty,” it said, and listed dozens of names as “people stopped from Amazon.” He found his own name on the list. He’d been laid off.
[…] Once laid off, workers said, a new ordeal begins. They lose housing reserved for those working at Amazon, they said, and are shunted to worse housing set aside for those without jobs. They get no wages or money for food. Many languish for weeks or months waiting for Al-Mutairi to place them back with Amazon or some other business.
During Mansur’s stay, he survived by eating kuboos — Arab flatbread — once a day and borrowing money from former co-workers. Some days, he said, he didn’t eat at all. When his friends could no longer support him and Al-Mutairi did not find him another job, he decided to pay the exit penalty and go back to Nepal. “It was better going home than dying of hunger,” he said.
[…] Saudi Arabia announced reforms of its labor regulations in 2021 that authorities claim make it easier for workers to change jobs and leave the country. But human rights advocates said migrant workers in the region remain vulnerable because these limited protections have yet to be widely implemented or enforced. […] “Workers are still unable to change jobs easily without the permission of their old employer.”
[…] “I lost time and money working at Amazon. I lost everything,” he said. “I lost my body and my strength. … My family’s financial situation is devastated now.” […]
GerrardOfTitanServersays
@SC
I’m an awful person because I don’t support fat-shaming? I think I missed a memo. Again, I don’t fat-shame, and I don’t support fat-shaming.
It seems likely you’re just strawmanning me because I am speaking inconvenient truths, which is that being overweight is as bad for your health as smoking, and that nearly all fat people are fat because of fixable lifestyle choices, e.g. diet and exercise.
And I don’t see the need to post the overwhelming evidence from Lancet and elsewhere that shows an extremely strong causal relationship between being overweight and a plethora of severe health risks and severe reduction in life expectancy. You’re being quite unreasonable to deny this. Shall I also post evidence that the Earth is not flat?
The former Trump Org CFO, Allen Weisselberg, deflected or claimed not to recall dozens of times. But he both helped and hurt Trump in the initial hours of his testimony.
Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg took the witness stand on Tuesday in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against Donald Trump and others, including Weisselberg himself.
And while this isn’t the first case in which Weisselberg has testified against Trump’s interests, the stakes are higher now for everyone except maybe Weisselberg himself, who served roughly three months at New York’s infamous Rikers Island jail earlier this year.
Weisselberg, you might recall, pleaded guilty to a tax fraud scheme unrelated to the claims advanced by Attorney General Leticia James, but involving the Trump Organization, which was convicted after a trial at which Weisselberg testified. At sentencing in that case, the company was ordered to pay a $1.6 million fine. But in James’ case, the attorney general is seeking disgorgement of “at least $250 million,” and that’s before the judge determines whether other equitable remedies, including dissolution of Trump companies, is warranted.
With his prison sentence now behind him, Weisselberg’s loyalty to the Boss, as they called Trump, still seems to be intact. Now retired, he is not only represented by Trump lawyer Alina Habba, as opposed to independent counsel, but he also showed palpable pride in the Trump portfolio of real estate assets. Further, his testimony was showered with what felt like a disproportionate share of “not that I can recall” or “I don’t recall.”
Did he have conversations with Trump and former Trump fixer Michael Cohen about Trump’s net worth? Those didn’t happen, Weisselberg testified on Tuesday, even initially stating he simply did not recall any.
[…] For the most part, Weisselberg seemed confident, calm, even upbeat, not chastened by his stint at Rikers. But at other times, Weisselberg’s failure to remember and unresponsive narratives gave way to important, if not damning admissions.
Confronted with emails and news clippings he sent to Trump employee Patrick Birney to influence Birney’s valuation of Mar-a-Lago, for instance, Weisselberg readily admitted the selling price, and not the asking price, of real estate is an appropriate metric of its value. That concession probably meant little to him, but it was huge for the AG’s office, which has shown evidence that McConney used the asking price of certain New York residences to inflate the estimated value of Trump’s Trump Tower triplex apartment. [Hmmm. That seems to be important.]
At other times, on the other hand, Weisselberg appeared to realize exactly what he stepped into. Asked whether his 2017 representation to accounting firm Mazars that the statements of financial condition were presented in compliance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) was accurate, Weisselberg said slowly, “We relied on Mazars to know GAAP.”
[…] Weisselberg admitted that prior to Trump becoming president in 2017, he gave Trump the statements of financial condition before they were finalized and that Trump had an opportunity to review them. Weisselberg said he “periodically” received comments from Trump about the statements.
[…] To what extent did Weisselberg knowingly mislead insurers, insurance brokers, or sureties in order to obtain or maintain the Trump Organization’s insurance policies? […]
Weisselberg tried to distance himself from the Trump Organization’s insurance program, […] But ultimately, he was forced to acknowledge he was a member of what one insurance employee referred to as the Trump “team of four” with whom they interacted and that insurers visited their offices to review statements of financial condition.
Because of another witness’s schedule, Weisselberg’s testimony is not expected to resume on Wednesday. But when it does, will it be another day of diamonds hidden in the mud? Watch this space.
Russia failed in its bid to return to the United Nations’ top human rights body on Tuesday, with rivals winning considerably more votes at the General Assembly in an election seen as a key test of Western efforts to keep Moscow isolated.
In the secret ballot, Russia won 83 votes versus 160 for Bulgaria and 123 for Albania, which had competed against it in the same eastern Europe grouping for two seats on the Geneva-based Human Rights Council for a three-year term beginning on Jan. 1…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the opposition formed an emergency government and war management cabinet, officials said today. As long as fighting continues, no bills or government decisions will be promoted that do not concern the conduct of the war, under terms of this agreement.
NBC News:
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing today that 17 Americans remain unaccounted for in the Israel-Hamas war. The number of Americans killed is now at 22.
NBC News:
U.S. intelligence agencies still do not have evidence that Iran was directly involved in Hamas’ surprise attack, Adm. John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, said today.
Politico: Sen. Bernie Sanders slammed the Israeli government Wednesday, accusing the country of violating international law after Israeli leaders said they would cut electricity and deny food to Gaza in response to the devastating Hamas-led incursion over the weekend that left hundreds of Israeli civilians dead.
“The targeting of civilians is a war crime, no matter who does it. Israel’s blanket denial of food, water, and other necessities to Gaza is a serious violation of international law and will do nothing but harm innocent civilians,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement Wednesday.
(snip)
“The United States has rightly offered solidarity and support to Israel in responding to Hamas’ attack. But we must also insist on restraint from Israeli forces attacking Gaza and work to secure UN humanitarian access,” Sanders said. “Let us not forget that half of the 2 million people in Gaza are children. Children and innocent people do not deserve to be punished for the acts of Hamas.”
——————-
Business Insider: “For many, it is no secret that Gaza has been an open-air prison, with millions of people struggling to secure basic necessities,” Sanders said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
(snip)
Targeting civilians, even during a time of war, violates Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
Sanders also reiterated his prior condemnation of the Hamas attack, calling it a “major setback for any hope of peace and reconciliation in the region – and justice for the Palestinian people.”
—————————–
The Hill: Palestinian health authorities are warning that hospitals will run out of fuel by Thursday, and the group Doctors Without Borders says hospitals are already “overwhelmed” with a huge influx of wounded civilians. More than 1,000 people in Gaza have died.
Sanders condemned Hamas’s brutal surprise attacks on Israeli civilians who were murdered at a music festival, while driving on the roads, waiting at a bus stop or while enjoying a typical Saturday morning at home as “horrific.”
“The gunning down of young Israelis at a music festival is an image the world will not soon forget,” he said.
[…] Instead of tackling the dangerous disinformation problem on his platform, Musk instead spent yeterday night into this morning continuing to spread disinformation about the conflict, conversing with a known QAnon promoter, boosting anti-Muslim conspiracy theories, and laughing at a video detailing how transphobic content on X can get you new followers.
Musk also promoted a new feature that allows X Premium subscribers to see only replies from other people willing to pay $8 a month […]
Meanwhile, disinformation about the conflict in the Middle East continues to rage on the platform, driven primarily by verified accounts.
Yesterday evening, X’s Trust and Safety team, which is currently leaderless after Ella Irwin resigned in June, wrote on X that it had “removed newly created Hamas-affiliated accounts” and was working with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), an industry body that helps coordinate content moderation across social media platforms, to “try and prevent terrorist content from being distributed online.”
The Safety team’s statement also lauded the user-generated Community Notes system and said new accounts were being enrolled to address the flood of disinformation on the platform. The Safety team also revealed that it had removed “several hundreds accounts for attempting to manipulate trending topics.”
Since Musk took control of the platform just under a year ago, he has restructured it to encourage engagement over everything else. As a result, accounts that subscribe to X Premium now have a monetary incentive to post content that is engaging regardless of how truthful it is. This was highlighted clearly on yesterday night when, at the same time as the Safety team posted its update, a new viral piece of disinformation was spreading unchecked on X.
Sulaiman Ahmed, a self-described investigative journalist, posted the false claim that the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City, one of the oldest churches in the world, was destroyed by an Israeli bomb. The post received over 1 million views in the span of three hours.
Ahmed is a subscriber to X Premium, which means his posts are given priority in search results and newsfeeds over other users, and he also allows followers to subscribe to his content directly through X, allowing him to profit from increased engagement with his content.
Yesterday evening, the church posted an update on Facebook dismissing the claim, adding that it was taking in refugees left homeless following Israel’s bombing campaign in retaliation to the Hamas attack that began on Saturday morning.
Despite the church’s rebuttal—and Ahmed himself subsequently admitting that the church was untouched—the disinformation spread far and wide on X. […] Multiple other posts from verified users all repeating the lie were also promoted at the top of the results, none of which had Community Notes attached to them.
Eliot Higgins, founder of investigative journalist outlet Bellingcat, pointed out that the false information was being shared by a wide variety of accounts, all of which had one thing in common: a subscription to X Premium.
“If Musk hadn’t made it so hard to research disinformation on his website, this case would be a good way to show the growing overlap of the pro-Assad, the pro-Putin, and the US alt-right griftospheres,” Higgins wrote on X, adding: “Musk hasn’t given the voiceless a voice, he’s just dragged us all down into the swamp, and the only people who truly benefit are shameless grifters.”
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, a challenge to South Carolina’s congressional map based on the contention that it was an impermissible racial gerrymander. The case should have been easy for the groups that challenged the map, given the applicable law and the arguments advanced by the state’s lawmakers in defense of their map—which was found to be unconstitutional by the lower court.
Unfortunately for the challengers of that map, Justice Samuel Alito had other ideas. After more than two hours of Alito-centered arguments, the question for his other conservative colleagues will be whether they side with him, change the law, and have the Supreme Court serve as a super-trial court in such cases—allowing the high court to reject trial court findings when they come out a way the conservative majority doesn’t like.
This would be a dramatic shift to current precedent, something that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson kept raising throughout the arguments, with an uncertain degree of success for the purposes of convincing Alito’s fellow conservatives.
A three-judge district court had, after an extensive trial, decided that South Carolina engaged in an impermissible racial gerrymander to one of its congressional districts in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
According to past precedent, overturning the factual findings of that panel—including its weighing of the voluminous evidence and testimony of expert witnesses—would require the Supreme Court to find “clear error” in the district court’s findings. According to that old standard, there is no such clear error in this case, as was clear from Wednesday’s arguments.
[…]
As Jackson explained, under the clear error standard, “A finding [from the district court] that is plausible in light of the full record, even if another is equally or more so, must govern.”
Ultimately, that won’t really matter if Alito has his way. Alito was driven on Wednesday, seeking to undermine—and change—how deferential the “clear error” standard is in gerrymandering cases. Pushing back on the questions that had been posed to [South Carolina lawmakers’ lawyer John] Gore by several of his colleagues, especially the three Democratic appointees, Alito stopped to tell everyone that the clear error standard “is not an impossible standard” for South Carolina to meet.
“It doesn’t mean that we simply rubber-stamp findings by a district court, particularly in a case like this, where we are the only court that is going to be reviewing those findings,” he said, a reference to the fact that three-judge district court rulings are heard directly on appeal by the Supreme Court. Further still, Alito argued that it matters here that the decision below “relies very heavily, if not entirely, on expert reports.” From there, Alito segued into a question about a specific issue regarding the analysis of one of the plaintiffs’ experts and a question that South Carolina raised in its final brief at the Supreme Court about “an alleged flaw” in that expert’s analysis.
If Alito was worked up during Gore’s questioning, that was just a warm-up round for the respondents’ argument, when Alito effectively took over for Gore, posing no fewer than 37 questions to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund’s Leah Aden—including a marathon 19-question session taking up 11 pages of the transcript during his final chance to question her.
[…]
In comparison to Alito’s 37 questions, the rest of the court—all eight justices combined—asked a total of 28 questions.
If Alito wants to be a district court judge, he’s more than welcome to retire from the Supreme Court and start sitting on district court cases. When it comes to the Supreme Court’s current standard of review, though, the sort of questions Alito was asking are questions that the justices generally aren’t asking—and shouldn’t be asking—in such a case.
A few weeks ago, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, eagerly joined in a campaign, originating on the far right, to demonize the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a century-old Jewish civil rights organization whose leaders have criticized Musk for allowing anti-semitic and white supremacist hate speech to proliferate on Twitter/X. To many progressives, it could sound like a simple story of good vs. evil — the righteous vs. the hateful — especially for those who’ve experienced the palpable flourishing of Nazi and Nazi-adjacent sentiment on Twitter/X since Musk purchased the platform.
But for our guests — Mari Cohen, Alex Kane, and Peter Beinart of Jewish Currents — the story is more complicated. Over the past five years, Jewish Currents has been perhaps the only outlet on the left aggressively reporting on the ADL, exposing its complicity with the Trump presidency, its attacks on pro-Palestinian activism, and its fraying relationships with Muslim and black-led civil rights groups. In this episode, we explore the central tension animating the ADL’s erratic politics: can an organization officially dedicated to securing “justice and fair treatment to all” simultaneously forbid criticism of a state — the state of Israel — whose ethnonationalist social order is an inspiration to right-wing movements the world over? And if that contradiction can’t be reconciled, how should we respond to Musk’s attacks on the organization? Is the ADL salvageable? And does it deserve to be saved? Listen to find out!
This year, 2023, marks the hundredth anniversary of the invention of leaded gasoline. Of all the many harms that the automobile has imposed on the environment and humanity over the last century, the effects of leaded gasoline have to be pretty close to the top of the list.
Science and industry were well aware of the dangers of lead in the 1920s. But adding small amounts of tetraethyl lead to motor fuel made internal combustion engines work better, and that made it possible to turn the automobile into a viable mass market product. As a result, pretty much every American born between 1960 and 1980 was, to some extent, poisoned by lead.
Back in March, bestselling author Steven Johnson wrote a somewhat mind-blowing essay in the New York Times Magazine titled, “The Man Who Broke the World.” In it, Steven told the story of Thomas Midgley, Jr., the chemical engineer who not only invented leaded gasoline — he also invented the chemical compound that made modern refrigeration possible. As with lead (branded as Ethyl to sound innocuous), Midgley’s miraculous chlorofluorocarbons unleashed an almost unbelievably destructive set of unintended consequences. Four decades after their invention, scientists discovered that CFCs were burning holes in the ozone layer of Earth’s upper atmosphere and quite literally threatening human life on Planet Earth.
We’ve been wanting to do an episode on leaded gasoline for a while now. This conversation with Steven accomplishes that and goes so much further, weaving together so many different threads. It was a lot fun and we hope you enjoy it.
The Republic Will Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression (University of Illinois Press, 2023) by Dr. Tariq D. Khan examines the long relationship between America’s colonising wars and virulent anticommunism.
The colonising wars against Native Americans created the template for anticommunist repression in the United States. Dr. Khan’s analysis reveals bloodshed and class war as foundational aspects of capitalist domination and vital elements of the nation’s long history of internal repression and social control. Dr. Khan shows how the state wielded the tactics, weapons, myths, and ideology refined in America’s colonising wars to repress anarchists, labour unions, and a host of others labelled as alien, multi-racial, multi-ethnic urban rabble. The ruling classes considered radicals of all stripes to be anticolonial insurgents. As Dr. Khan charts the decades of red scares that began in the 1840s, he reveals how capitalists and government used much-practised counterinsurgency rhetoric and tactics against the movements they perceived and vilified as “anarchist.”
(Miranda Melcher is the best interviewer there by a stretch.)
Robert sits down with Andrew Ti for a very special episode about the craziest American political thinker, Watergate mastermind G. Gordon Liddy.
(5 part series)
GerrardOfTitanServersays
Are you this dense or is this bad-faith trolling?
I’d like to think neither, but I guess I’ll pick option #1: dense. I still don’t understand what possible complaint you could have regarding me that isn’t strawmanning or denying wildly accepted scientific facts.
Reginald Selkirksays
@101: Higgins wrote on X, adding: “Musk hasn’t given the voiceless a voice, he’s just dragged us all down into the swamp…
Not me, because I am not on that Nazi site. Why is anyone still there?
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #106….
As regards your–I presume rhetorical–question… Beats me. I was never on it. Nor Facebork, for that matter.
Every day, Ukraine releases a list of claimed Russian kills. Recently, we’ve marvelled at the large number of claimed artillery kills, seemingly confirmed by a large number of drone videos of targeted Russian artillery guns and by Russian sources themselves, lamenting the “artillery genocide” they face.
But the latest update was so ridiculous, it seemed way to good to be true:
– 34 tanks.
– 91 armored personnel vehicles.
– And just 18 artillery guns, when 30-40 had been the norm.
There was no way that Ukraine actually destroyed 125 armored vehicles (plus artillery), could it be? Had Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense succumbed to the same unrealistic propaganda claims that we see daily from the Russian side?
And then the videos began to emerge.
Over the past two weeks, Russian forces launched two massive attacks in the east. One attack was directed toward Avdiivka, on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk in an area where Russia has been unable to meaningfully move the front line since 2014, despite really really trying. The other attack happened outside of Kreminna.
Given Russia’s efforts to use the war in Israel to its own dastardly benefit, perhaps they wanted to couple their propaganda efforts with a tangible victory on the ground. Instead, given the videos that are now emerging, we are seeing the worst Russian disaster since the Battle of Vuhledar, when Russia lost over 100 pieces of armor over several months of fruitless charges over open, mined terrain.
Avdiivka
Yesterday, Ukrainian open-source intelligence reported on Telegram on the Russian operation:
Today was one of the most difficult days at the Avdiivka direction
The enemy went on the attack with several columns, filled with infantry. The attack was accompanied by artillery, aviation and missile strikes. Columns advanced from Krasnohorivka, Novoselivka Druha, Vodyane, Pisky and Vesele. Russians managed to capture certain positions, but considering the number of personnel and equipment that was involved, the results are simply deplorable for the enemy.
Russians hoped for a blitzkrieg. Losses of equipment are colossal, analysts will soon be counting. Hundreds of Russian infantrymen were engaged and they are still roaming the no man’s land. The fighting continues. Indeed, everything could have been much worse, but the coordinated work of the Defense Forces of Ukraine produced results. Of course, it was not without losses.
The emerging video evidence backs up this assessment. This video shows over two dozen armored vehicles approaching down a road as they begin to take incoming Ukrainian fire. [Tweet and video at the link]
Another column; could be the same one. I can’t tell. Ukrainian sources claim there were three separate ones. [Tweet and video at the link]
The lead vehicle in that column literally falls into a lake before the whole column ends up in a kill zone: [Tweet and video at the link]
There are more photos and videos of destroyed vehicles here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, [embedded links available within the article at the main link] and there are likely more I’ve missed. We may not have explicit video evidence of 125 destroyed armored vehicles, but new videos are being released regularly, and the numbers are certainly significant. Ukraine’s claims no longer seem so ludicrous.
Russian Telegram war blogger Murz claimed the whole operation was designed to relieve pressure around Bakhmut, where Ukraine is slowly and methodically advancing, and reminded his readers that Russia is attempting to regain positions it lost in recent weeks. And even at that, Russia has failed. [Tweet at the link]
For all the destruction, Russia did manage to retake, er, a trash dump. I’m not kidding. This is a pro-Russian source that has proven itself trustworthy: [Tweet and map at the link] There’s something fitting about “garbage hill” being the extent of Russia’s accomplishments on such a disastrous day for them.
Kreminna
Further north, around Kreminna and Lyman, Russians decided to throw away more lives and equipment: [Tweet and video at the link]
Note, not all those destroyed vehicles are necessary from the last two days. One OSINT tally of today’s videos has verified the following (with official Ukrainian claims in parenthesis):
– 16 tanks (34 claimed).
– 26 armored infantry vehicles (91 claimed).
More videos are emerging even as I write this, so I’m really hoping that Ukraine’s claims are eventually substantiated by the visual evidence.
Ukraine’s summer offensive appears spent, with Ukraine happy to use its new artillery advantages to degrade Russian forces and defenses from afar, making small tactical advances when it is relatively safe to do so. And rather than continue its effective defense, working to freeze the conflict in place while hoping and waiting for Donald Trump to regain the White House, Russia is amping up its offensive operations, helping Ukraine better degrade its enemy’s manpower and equipment. At least one Ukrainian soldier on Telegram is happy at the turn of events. [Link at the main link]
————————-
Tweet and images at the link: [#Palestine / #Israel 🇵🇸🇮🇱: ISF released photos of captured weapons from Al-Qassam Brigades (#HAMAS) fighters.
A noteable F-7 HE-Frag rocket (made by #NorthKorea/#DPRK 🇰🇵), YM-2 anti-tank landmines (made by #Iran 🇮🇷), RPG-7 Launchers, PG-7V rockets, PG-7VR Tandem rockets, Chinese Type 80 machine guns, Type 56-1 rifles and HAMAS-made M26A2 pattern hand grenades can be seen.]
I’m not seeing any NATO equipment sourced from Ukraine…
Interesting seeing North Korea among the sources. There is definitely a Russia-Iran-North Korea axis of evil emerging. […]
United Auto Workers expanded its ongoing strikes against major automobile manufacturers Wednesday after a Ford truck plant in Kentucky joined the strike, the union announced.
About 8,700 workers from the company’s Truck Assembly Plant in Louisville, Kentucky — where F-250 and F-550 trucks are built as well as some SUVs — walked off the job in a surprise strike Wednesday. The facility is Ford’s largest and most profitable.
The union said that Ford has refused to negotiate further bargaining demands, resulting in the expanded strike. […]
@GerrardOfTitanServer 93
Your first sentence at least is a lie. I see you being shamed for specific things and opposing fat-shaming is not one of them.
I see you being shamed for insisting on a point while ignoring claims to the contrary at the least.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@GerrardOfTitanServer #93:
you’re just strawmanning me because I am speaking inconvenient truths
Talking like this does not help you, in any situation, unless seeking negative attention is the goal.
#105:
I still don’t understand what possible complaint you could have […] wildly accepted scientific facts.
#93:
overwhelming evidence from Lancet
Here’s a more convenient source for that podcast in SC’s #75.
Plus a teaser excerpt. Lots of trivia about misreading correlations in the episode.
(49:28): in our phone call, [Katherine Flegal] would correct me. […] “Well, I don’t know about that. My study is about mortality rates. All I’m talking about is mortality rates. I don’t really know what the implication of that is. I don’t know what the policy should be.” […] extremely temperate about everything she says. I’ve seen other interviews with her, you cannot get her to go beyond the data.
And then we have Walter Willett who’s written four diet books. He has told reporters from every outlet in America that he thinks that it is dangerous to be fat and he thinks that it is irresponsible to publish scientific research that even hints at the idea that it might not be as bad to be fat as he thinks. Who’s acting ideological here?
(1:04:35): Walter […] put together […] 500 researchers […] just to debunk Katherine’s work. He publishes in 2016, this massive [Lancet] study that he says is to settle the debate. Her meta-analysis had 3 million people in it. His meta-analysis has 10 million people in it. […] and wouldn’t you know it, normal weight people have the lowest mortality and then overweight people have more.
[…]
even [with] all of the manipulations that will get into, thin people are still more likely to die. *chuckle* He wasn’t able to get rid of that.
[…]
he wants to remove everyone with a preexisting illness, everyone who’s ever smoked, etc. The problem is […] there’s 239 studies […] only 28 of them even have data on people with preexisting diseases. He’s like, “How dare Katherine Flegal not remove these people?” And she’s like, “Only a tiny bit of your data allows you to remove those people, so functionally you’re leaving them in too.” My favorite shit is that in all of their analyses of North America, it’s a global study, 94% of the deaths came from studies with self-reported weight
[…]
For the vast majority of people who are in, either the overweight category or Class 1 obesity—low grade fat people, that’s the majority of the people […] in America—the relative risk mortality ratios, they’re so fucking small. Even in the Walter Willett ‘p-hacked within an inch of its life’ study it’s 40% higher for grade 1 obesity. Again, unmarried people have a 230% increased mortality rate.
[…]
Class 1 […] rates are so weird, and tiny and conditional on these weird statistical methods […] that it’s bullshit to tell somebody in those categories that they must lose weight. The data does not support that
[…]
Once you get into BMIs above 35 or 40, it’s somewhere between 2% and 5% of Americans. Very consistent correlations […] very elevated mortality rates, […] heart disease, I’m not going to deny […] extremely consistent. But then the question […] what is causing them? Second of all, what do we do about it?
[…]
If we go to those people, […] those statistics, it’s dire. They’re half as likely to be college graduates, one quarter of them are earning less than $20,000 per year, they’re twice as likely to be on Medicaid, the group with the highest prevalence of grade three obesity is black women who didn’t complete high school.
[…]
Is this a group that we’re confident in saying? if the weight that’s doing this and what they need is to lose weight?
.. OSIRIS-REx, delivered pieces of the 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) Bennu to Earth late last month. NASA gave the world its first look at the sample today (Oct. 11) during a live webcast event, which also provided a rundown of the first analyses performed on the off-Earth material.
Those very early scientific returns are promising, showing that Bennu is rich in both water and carbon-containing compounds, mission team members said.
UPDATE: We are standing down from the Oct. 12 launch of the Psyche mission due to unfavorable weather conditions. Launch is now targeted for 10:19 am EDT on Friday, Oct. 13 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
So no launch there today – USA time or tomorrow morning – my Aussie time.
Oh and in other more Aussie news albeit a state often thought of as our “Deep North” :
Publicly displaying hate symbols — like Nazi flags and tattoos — will become illegal in Queensland, under new laws passed by state parliament.
Those who display, distribute or publish a banned symbol — and cause others to feel harassed or offended — could face up to six months’ jail.
The laws also increase punishment by creating a circumstance of aggravation for people who commit crimes motivated by hatred or contempt based on characteristics like race, gender, religion or sexuality.
That could capture performing a Nazi salute in public.
The government says there’s “no room for racism and hatred in society”, but it’s also aimed to strike a balance between the right to freedom of expression and the need to protect communities from hateful ideologies by including exemptions like genuine artistic, religious, educational and historical reasons.
About 20 groups came together in 2020 to push for Queensland politicians to do more to tackle hate crime amid a wave of racist incidents.
Japan’s government on Thursday said it will ask a court to strip the Unification Church of its legal status as a religion, removing tax exemptions and making it more difficult for the group to operate in Japan.
The Unification Church faced a public backlash in Japan after former prime minister Shinzo Abe was gunned down in July last year by a man angry at his alleged links to the church.
Subsequent revelations that 179 ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers had dealings with the church, including using its members as election campaign volunteers, triggered a slump in Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s public support…
StevoRsays
As often the case these nights, I’m tired. So,so tired. Yet I cannot sleep.
Australia’s car crash, grimly woeful performance – Starc &Labuschagne aside in the ODI (50 over) Cricket World Cup.. Not helping. The Voice referendum in two days..
Addled brain … Trump speaks about the Israel/Hamas war:
[…] The former American president claimed, for example, that Netanyahu “let us down” and did “a very terrible thing” when the prime minister — according to Trump’s version of events — decided that Israel would not participate in a mission that targeted Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in 2020.
Trump also criticized Israeli intelligence, and in the same appearance, described Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, as “very smart” — a label Trump usually reserves for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, and China’s Xi Jinping.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates added soon after, “Statements like this are dangerous and unhinged. It’s completely lost on us why any American would ever praise an Iran-backed terrorist organization as ‘smart.’”
Trump went on to tell Fox News, in reference to Netanyahu, “He has been hurt very badly because of what’s happened here. He was not prepared. He was not prepared, and Israel was not prepared.”
As for why the former president is making comments such as these, there’s a larger context to keep in mind. MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire reported a few hours ago, for example, that Netanyahu has offered public praise for Biden, “and Trump simply couldn’t stand for that.”
What’s more, let’s not forget what triggered the Republican’s broader animosity against the Israeli prime minister. Remember this Axios report from December 2021?
Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu were the closest of political allies during the four years they overlapped in office, at least in public. Not anymore. “I haven’t spoken to him since,” Trump said of the former Israeli prime minister. “F**k him.”
Reflecting on Netanyahu congratulating then-President-elect Biden in 2020, while Trump was still trying to overturn his defeat, the former president added, “The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. … Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.
“I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty. The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape.”
To the extent that reality matters, Netanyahu wasn’t even close to being “the first” foreign leader to congratulate Biden, though such details apparently weren’t important to Trump.
It’s against this backdrop that Trump, still overwhelmed with an apparent sense of grievance, thought it’d be appropriate to publicly criticize Netanyahu and Israel, while praising Hezbollah’s intelligence.
A few weeks back we laughed and laughed at a new Big Man on the block, a Little Man Syndrome on the move, an unaccomplished white Republican who erroneously believes he’s entitled to deference and respect simply because he clears his throat. Bless the heart of GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin.
Van Orden, a man who once verbally abused a teenage worker at a library because he was upset about a book about Mike Pence’s bunny rabbit being gay, was in the news because he had verbally abused teenagers in the congressional page program. He was apparently very upset they were taking pictures of the rotunda while lying down and looking up at it.
It was their last week.
This dude has very obvious anger and masculinity issues.
So he just started screaming and cussing and throwing blocks of cheese or whatever Republican Wisconsin guys do when they are BIG MAD. “Wake the fuck up, you little shits!” Alcohol was reportedly possibly involved.
Anyway, it’s pretty clear from that incident that everybody hates this loser, including the people on his side of the aisle, so when he struck again yesterday in an Israel briefing provided to Congress by the Biden administration, Politico had the story in record time.
Ohhhhhh, it sounds like he really acted out and showed everybody his tailfeathers.
Big man was cussin’ again. He was belligerent.
Several people said Van Orden cursed directly at the briefers, prompting loud boos in the room. […]
Dang, was it five o’clock somewhere, or was it just mid-morning? Just asking.
Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota reportedly tried to get Van Orden to put his Little Man Syndrome back in his pants, shouting “Shame on you.” Van Orden cussed Phillips, who is Jewish, with the F-word. Afterward, Rep. Jason Crow apologized to the briefers for the behavior of the little petulant shit.
“He was rude and attacked the presenters. I thought they had very substantive things to say. But he just had this blanket attack saying that ‘this is the worst information I’ve ever had,’” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). “And basically attacking them for being incompetent.”
[…]
GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin was at the Capitol on January 6th, though he claims he never went inside. He has not been prosecuted. He is up for reelection next year. Let’s hope he gets voted out of Congress. He seems to be a true MAGA dude who thinks it is a virtue to bully others.
If we were one of the people pulling Donald Trump’s strings, we think this would be the point we’d just yank him all the way off the stage, put him in the back of the dementia wagon, and never let him appear in public again. It’s obvious his cognitive decline is accelerating much more quickly these days, and there’s just no way to stop him from attacking our friends and cuddling with our enemies in public.
(LMAO, like that’s new. Russia if you’re listening!)
Last night, Trump was speaking to one of his gatherings of [followers], and he launched an attack on Israel and its leader, less than one week after the Hamas terrorist attack. He also called the terrorists “very smart.” It’s difficult to overstate how deranged this was. [video at the link]
Everything at all times is about his grievances.
Slurring his speech and talking more slowly than usual, Trump whined that he’ll “never forget that Bibi let us down, that was a terrible thing.” He was [complaining] about the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t help him enough when he was assassinating Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. (A fairly stupid decision based on flimsy evidence that Trump likely only made because he’s a thin-skinned, easily manipulated moron.)
Dive into the tossed salad of Trump’s brain with us:
TRUMP: So when I see sometimes the intelligence, you talk about the intelligence, or you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week, they’ve gotta straighten it out, because they’re fighting potentially a very big force, they’re fighting potentially Iran. And when they have people saying the wrong things, everything they say is being digested by these people because they’re vicious and they’re smart, and boy are they vicious, because nobody’s ever seen the kind of sight that we’ve seen, nobody’s ever seen it. But they cannot play games. So we were disappointed by that, very disappointed, but we did the job ourself, and it was absolute precision, magnificent, beautiful job, and then, uh, Bibi tried to take credit for it, that wasn’t good, THAT DIDN’T MAKE ME FEEL TOO GOOD, but that’s all right …
OK.
So it’s difficult to figure out what on earth Trump is saying, what’s swirling around the inside of his cranium, but we note that he is attacking Israel and specifically its leader, the very week after that nation was attacked. Also he called the terrorists “smart” and also “vicious” and “boy are they vicious” and “nobody’s ever seen the kind of sight that we’ve seen.”
[…] Here’s a bonus video of Trump repeatedly calling Hezbollah “very smart,” and then, his voice slurring even more strangely, re-enacting the ways he gets in trouble when he calls tyrants, terrorists and other American enemies smart: [video at the link]
So what’s all this about? What in Trump’s diseased brain is causing him to attack Benjamin Netanyahu right now? (Who is obviously a godawful leader and corrupt and an authoritarian, that’s not what this post is about.) What’s making him call Hezbollah and Hamas smart […]
Could it be that Trump is still wounded and upset three years later that Netanyahu called and congratulated Joe Biden on beating the shit out of Trump?
[…] At that point, Trump said he hadn’t spoken to Bibi since he left office, and “Fuck him.” […]
Also:
“I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi. But I also like loyalty. The first person to congratulate Biden was Bibi. And not only did he congratulate him, he did it on tape.”
[…] You think there is any chance Trump is not still injured by that, like it happened yesterday? […]
And of course, right this second, Israel is grateful for Joe Biden and there are billboards in Israel thanking him, and Netanyahu is publicly praising him. (He did it again this morning, in a press conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.) […]
So yes, Trump is attacking Israel and calling the terrorists “very smart.” It’s because Trump’s feelings are hurt.
Trump also said that nobody would have attacked Israel if the 2020 election hadn’t been rigged against him: [video at the link]
Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with at least 2.8 million people dying each year as a result of being overweight or obese. Once associated with high-income countries, obesity is now also prevalent in low- and middle-income countries.
Cherrypicking studies and cherrypicking quotes regarding the small adverse health effects of those who are only slightly overweight, and doing whataboutism regarding the health risks of those whoa are underweight, is very poor form. Being overweight is one of the leading causes of death in the world today. The number of premature deaths per year is almost as big as the number from air pollution, which frankly astounds me.
Go ahead and lie to yourselves if you want, but please stop spreading this ridiculous nonsense to others. You’re doing real harm here. What you are doing is morally comparable to spreading the misinformation that smoking doesn’t cause (lung) cancer.
And if all you can do is post the word cherry-picking I don’t see how your continued posting will be useful. You haven’t acknowledged the earlier lie and now you accuse others of lying.
GerrardOfTitanServersays
Brony.
Along with John Morales, you are one of the two regulars on FTB that I believe are absolute scum. I don’t give a flying fuck what you think.
[…] GOP members held a closed-door, secret-ballot election to choose the party’s official nominee for speaker. The Trump-backed House Judiciary Committee chairman lost, finishing with roughly 45% of the vote from the Republican conference.
Or put another way, House Republicans heard Trump, knew exactly what he expected them to do, and most of them decided to go in a different direction.
[…] Trump intervened in the fight over government spending and directed House Republicans to shut down the government. Most GOP members ignored the advice and kept the government’s lights on.
Trump intervened in the fight over debt ceiling negotiations, and soon after, Republicans ignored his stated wishes.
Trump has told Senate Republicans to replace Mitch McConnell as the Senate minority leader, and they haven’t. Trump told the GOP majority in the Texas House not to impeach state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and they did.
In the last Congress, Trump told Republicans to reject a bipartisan infrastructure and a proposed overhaul of the Electoral Count Act. That reflected the wishes of many GOP lawmakers, but enough Republicans ignored the former president on these measures, too, and they passed into law.
The point is not that Trump is irrelevant in Republican politics. Obviously, he’s the party’s most dominant voice and the party’s leading presidential candidate by a wide margin. But there’s a myth in some circles that the former president can simply bark orders and watch GOP officials obediently follow his instructions.
In several notable instances, that’s just not the case.
[…] National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at least 27 Americans had been killed in the cross-border assault by Hamas militants. Israel is massing troops near the Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground assault into the territory. In Gaza, authorities warned of dire water and electricity shortages, and hospitals at full capacity running out of supplies and fuel after Israel ordered a “full siege” of the Palestinian enclave. One international aid organization warned that without electricity, “hospitals risk turning into morgues.” Meanwhile, U.S. officials and the Qatari government have agreed to block Iran from accessing $6 billion of funds for humanitarian assistance in light of Hamas’s attack on Israel, The Washington Post reported. […]
The Hamas attack has killed at least 1,300 people in Israel and wounded about 3,300, authorities said. Palestinian officials said more than 1,417 people in Gaza were killed and some 6,268 were injured as a result of Israeli strikes. […]
I have been begging people to get standard Medicare. Medicare Part C, aka Medicare Advantage, is a fraud on the patient and the American taxpayer. I have explained this ad nauseam in several blogs. [video at the link]
[…]
Excerpt from a previous blog post:
Rick got a severe case of altitude sickness in Colorado. His oxygen level fell to 82%, a dangerously low level. He went to the nearest emergency room. He did not have to waste valuable time trying to get permission or authorization for healthcare. He paid zero dollars for his care. Many Advantage plans require all kinds of headaches. After all, Advantage plans ARE NOT the real thing. It is simply private insurance that the government pays for on your behalf. And, of course, the private health insurance companies maximize their profits by overcharging the government, the taxpayers, as well as limiting your care.
Another blog excerpt:
Recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren exposed an insurance industry ploy to scam millions of dollars from seniors. #Medigap is federally regulated supplemental health insurance offered by for-profit companies such as UnitedHealthcare, Humana, and Aetna.
The Medigap marketplace is polluted with incentive trips and other perks for brokers and agents who, in pursuit of such bribes, could be motivated to forcefully encourage seniors into the most expensive Medigap plans, regardless of whether those plans meet their needs.”
Warren found that the estimated 32 private companies that entice agents with vacations and other incentives to boost Medigap sales provided supplemental insurance to around 6.6 million people in the U.S. in 2021 and raked in nearly $16 billion in premiums from beneficiaries that year.
The fiduciary responsibility of any private corporation is to maximize its profits, shareholder value, and their bonuses. There is only one way to do that; they must extract as much as they can from their customers. […] That is not possible in healthcare, energy, and other basic needs. [Might be “possible” but morally wrong, and a drag on the welfare of the entire country.]
Many real Progressives often speak about removing services and products essential for our well-being from the for-profit domain of the private sector. The pushback from Republicans […] is always fierce. It is time to remove healthcare, energy, and other services critical to our existence from the for-profit sector.
There is an urgent need to develop a mucosal SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that can induce broad, durable protection. MMR has been one of the safest and most successful vaccines in human history. By expressing the six-proline-stabilized prefusion spikes from three diverse SARS-CoV-2 strains in the MeV, MuV-JL1, and MuV-JL2 vaccine strains from MMR, we generated a MMS trivalent vaccine candidate. Intranasally delivered MMS induced strong SARS-CoV-2-specific neutralizing antibody, mucosal IgA, and systemic and lung resident T cell immune responses that provide broad protection against challenge with each of these three strains. Therefore, MMS is a highly promising next-generation vaccine candidate against COVID-19. Furthermore, any of the three component vaccine viruses can be quickly modified when a new important SARS-CoV-2 variant appears…
Weisselberg’s severance agreement with the Trump Org highlights serious constraints on Weisselberg’s ability to talk voluntarily about what he did and saw as CFO.
On Tuesday, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg began his testimony with what some considered a blockbuster admission: Under a severance agreement signed shortly after he left the company, he is entitled to $2 million, paid in eight equal installments.
As of now, the Trump Organization hasn’t even paid him half of that amount, according to the agreement’s payment schedule — and he must fully comply with the agreement to be paid in full.
While prosecutors used the agreement to attempt to show that Weisselberg remains entangled with Trump and financially motivated to please him, their brief discussion of Weisselberg’s severance agreement — which has now been admitted into evidence and is part of the trial record — only skimmed the surface of that agreement. Read as a whole, the agreement requires much from Weisselberg, and given the history between the parties, which includes convictions on multiple felony tax fraud counts for both Weisselberg and the Trump Organization last year, certain provisions seem sketchy, at best.
To be clear, I’m not faulting the Trump Organization or Weisselberg for including a non-disparagement clause, which obligates Weisselberg not to bad mouth the company or its people, or even for requiring Weisselberg to cooperate with the company in any litigation or investigation that relates to his employment there. Those provisions are relatively standard in severance or settlement agreements.
But even language that’s not entirely atypical can take on a different gloss when the parties are Trump and his company, on one hand, and Weisselberg, on the other.
The best example appears in Paragraph 3(d), which reflects Weisselberg’s promise to not talk to or otherwise help those who might have claims or lawsuits against the Trump Organization and its executives, former and current, among others. [Screenshot at the link]
Specifically, that provision states that:
except for acts or testimony directly compelled by subpoena or other lawful process issued by a court of competent jurisdiction, he will not (1) communicate with, provide information to, or otherwise cooperate in any way with any other person or entity, including his counsel or other agents, having or claiming to have any adverse claims against the Company or any person or entity released by this Agreement, with regard to the adverse claim; or (2) take any action to induce, encourage, instigate, aid, abet or otherwise cause any other person or entity to bring or file a complaint, charge, lawsuit or other proceeding of any kind against the Company or any person or entity released by this Agreement.
And while the agreement makes clear that Weisselberg is not precluded from “filing a charge or complaint with or participating in any investigation or proceeding conducted by, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), or a comparable state or local agency,” there is no carve out for his voluntarily speaking to or supplying information, even through his counsel, to, say, any prosecutorial entity, like the Manhattan district attorney’s office or any unit of the federal Justice Department, or any tax or finance enforcement agency, including the IRS, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or New York’s Department of Financial Services. [Screenshot at the link]
Put simply, the agreement seems to preclude Weisselberg from voluntarily speaking with any law enforcement or prosecutorial agency as to other crimes for which he, the Trump Organization, or its leadership could be under investigation and/or ultimately charged. And without Weisselberg’s ability to have at least some initial, voluntary conversations, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for him to reach any plea deal and/or cooperation agreement.
[…] When I shared the agreement with a former prosecutor-turned-corporate-litigator friend, he told me that not only did he read the provision similarly, but that contractually preventing an employee from whistleblowing — as this agreement seems to do — is itself likely unenforceable.
The problem is who might have the motivation, let alone the standing, to challenge that provision. It’s not Weisselberg. Note that under the payment schedule appended to the agreement, Weisselberg was not owed even the first payment until March 31, 2023, when he was well into his jail sentence and nearly two months after public reports the Manhattan DA’s office was still investigating him for insurance fraud. [Screenshot at the link]
And Weisselberg’s incentive structure hasn’t changed much since he was released last April. He’s still owed $1.25 million from the severance agreement, which is payable to his estate even if he dies, and he’s now retired. Ask yourself: What incentive would you have to test the enforceability of a promise to keep your mouth shut when $2 million depends on it, especially if, without your cooperation, it could be hard to prove a crime was committed? […]
As of today, the Israel-Hamas conflict has led to more than 2,700 fatalities.
NBC News:
The U.S. and Qatari governments have agreed to block Iran from accessing any of the $6 billion it gained access to as part of a prisoner swap deal between the Biden administration and Tehran last month, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told House Democrats on Thursday, according to three sources familiar with his remarks, two of whom were in the room.
NBC News:
There is no ‘direct evidence’ that Iran was involved in Hamas’ brutal assault on Israel last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday.
NBC News:
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin plans to travel to Israel tomorrow, according to a senior Defense official. He will meet with Netanyahu, Israel’s minister of defense and the Israeli War Cabinet.
NBC News:
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters today that Egypt had warned Israel of a possible attack from Hamas before the assault.
Claudia Goldin is only the third woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and the first to do so solo — that is, not sharing with a male colleague. But her achievement is a milestone primarily because of why she won: for providing ‘the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labour market participation through the centuries.’ The award represents formal (and overdue) recognition that gender equity is key to understanding how economies can flourish.
On Wednesday, with images of missiles and countermeasures playing in the background, Sen. Lindsey Graham went on CNN to talk with host Abby Phillip about U.S. foreign policy. Phillip asked Graham about statements he’s made connecting Iran to Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel, and the need to threaten Iran’s oil infrastructure in retaliation. There has been no evidence that Iran had direct (or prior) knowledge of the Hamas attack.
That doesn’t matter to Graham, who wanted to make sure everybody understands what he wants to do.
Here’s what I’m saying. I want to be very clear. If you kill the hostages—the Hamas has hostages, Americans and Israeli hostages. They start killing those hostages. If there’s an attack by Hezbollah in the north, creating two fronts for Israel, what I would do is I would bomb Iran’s oil infrastructure. The money financing terrorism comes from Iran. It’s time for this terrorist state to pay a price for financing and supporting all this chaos. Yes, if you’re the Iranians, if it were up to me—this war escalates, I’m coming after you.
Phillip tried to slow Graham down by asking, “Just let me just understand, you. Just to be clear: You’re saying that you would want the United States and Israel to bomb Iran, even in the absence of direct evidence of their involvement in this attack?” Graham responded that if there’s an “escalation,” then yes, he wants to bomb Iran.
“This is a terrorist state that has American blood on its hands,” Graham continued. “It is now time to dismantle the financing system of terrorism if this war escalates. Yes, I would do a joint military operation. I’d tell the Iranians today: If the war escalates, you will pay a price. You will be out of the oil business. I want to be crystal clear on that.”
Graham finished by suggesting that Iran did this to thwart normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and doubled down on his hawkish stance: “The Iranians, I don’t want to reward them. I want to punish them.”
CNN reported that according to unnamed U.S. intelligence sources, the latest reports indicate that Iranian leaders had no direct involvement in Hamas’ attack, and even seem to have been surprised by it.
The Washington Post report on the number of hostages:
Palestinian fighters took at least 64 captives into the Gaza Strip during the unprecedented incursion into Israel that began Saturday morning, a review of visual evidence by The Washington Post indicates.
Among them were 49 people who appeared to be civilians — nine of them children — and 11 who appeared to be members of the Israeli military, according to The Post’s review. In four cases, it was not possible to determine whether the captive was a civilian or soldier.
Neither the Israeli government nor Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza and launched Saturday’s attack, has said exactly how many people are being held in Gaza, but the issue has wracked families in Israel and abroad, and looms large as Israel prepares for a possible invasion.
In total, The Post found visual evidence that Palestinian fighters took at least 106 people captive during the incursion. Beside those who appeared to be taken to Gaza, 26 captives were seen being held in locations that could not be verified, and 16 were seen only in Israel. Hamas has said that it holds “tens” of people. Israeli authorities have said they estimate that Palestinian fighters took between 100 and 150 people hostage.
[…] The actual number of people taken hostage and soldiers taken prisoner in Gaza by Palestinian fighters is almost certainly higher than those seen in the videos and pictures reviewed by The Post.
[…] Hamas itself has lost contact with some of its fighters holding captives […]
Palestinian fighters also brought at least eight bodies back into Gaza, including what appeared to be at least six slain soldiers, according to The Post’s analysis. In the past, the bodies of Israeli soldiers have been part of prisoner exchange negotiations between the two sides. […]
Whoever looted FTX on the day of its bankruptcy has now moved the stolen money through a long string of intermediaries—and eventually some that look Russian in origin.
AS THE CRIMINAL trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried unfolds in a Manhattan courtroom, some observers in the cryptocurrency world have been watching a different FTX-related crime in progress: The still-unidentified thieves who stole more than $400 million out of FTX on the same day that the exchange declared bankruptcy have, after nine months of silence, been busy moving those funds across blockchains in an apparent attempt to cash out their loot while covering their tracks. Blockchain watchers still hope that money trail might help to identify the perpetrator of the heist—and according to one crypto-tracing firm, some clues now suggest that those thieves may have ties to Russia.
Today, cryptocurrency tracing firm Elliptic released a new report on the complex path those stolen funds have taken over the 11 months since they were pulled out of FTX on November 11 of last year. Elliptic’s tracing shows how that nine-figure sum, which FTX puts at between $415 million and $432 million, has since moved through a long list of crypto services as the thieves attempt to prepare it for laundering and liquidation, and even through one service owned by FTX itself. But those hundreds of millions also sat idle for all of 2023—only to begin to move again this month, in some cases as Bankman-Fried himself sat in court.
Most tellingly, Elliptic’s analysis is the first to note that whoever is laundering the stolen FTX funds appears to have ties to Russian cybercrime. One $8 million tranche of the money ended up in a pool of funds that also includes cryptocurrency from Russia-linked ransomware hackers and dark web markets. That commingling of funds suggests that, whether or not the actual thieves are Russian, the money launderers who received the stolen FTX’s funds are likely Russian, or work with Russian cybercriminals.
[…] From the first days of its money laundering process following the theft, Elliptic says the FTX thieves have largely taken steps typical for the perpetrators of large-scale crypto heists as the culprits sought to secure the funds, swap them for more easily laundered coins, and then funnel them through cryptocurrency “mixing” services to achieve that laundering. The majority of the stolen funds, Elliptic says, were stablecoins that, unlike other forms of cryptocurrency, can be frozen by their issuer in the case of theft. In fact, the stablecoin issuer Tether moved quickly to freeze $31 million of the stolen money in response to the FTX heist. So the thieves immediately began exchanging the rest of those stablecoins for other crypto tokens on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and PancakeSwap—which don’t have the know-your-customer requirements that centralized exchanges do, in part because they don’t allow exchanges for fiat currency.
In the days that followed, Elliptic says, the thieves began a multi-step process to convert the tokens they’d traded the stablecoins for into cryptocurrencies that would be easier to launder. They used “cross-chain bridge” services that allow cryptocurrencies to be exchanged from one blockchain to another, trading their tokens on the bridges Multichain and Wormhole to convert them to Ethereum. By the third day after the theft, the thieves held a single Ethereum account worth $306 million, down about $100 million from their initial total due to the Tether seizure and the cost of their trades.
From there, the thieves appear to have focused on exchanging their Ethereum for Bitcoin, which is often easier to feed into “mixing” services that offer to blend a user’s bitcoins with those of other users to prevent blockchain-based tracing. On November 20, nine days after the theft, they traded about a quarter of their Ethereum holdings for Bitcoin on a bridge service called RenBridge—a service that was, ironically, itself owned by FTX. “Yes, it is quite amazing, really, that the proceeds of a hack were basically being laundered through a service owned by the victim of the hack,” […]
More details at the link, including use of mixing services popular with North Korean hackers. There’s also some cryptic text that hints as more to the story: “Elliptic has other intelligence pointing to the money launderers’ Russian ties, but doesn’t yet have permission from the source to make it public.”
Jeansays
Re #140
Good to see that “cryptocurrencies” are not that much “crypto” and it should be evident to everyone by now that they’re not “currencies” at all either. I’d also like to see how much energy was wasted to do all those transactions.
whheydtsays
Re: Jean @ #141…
How much energy was wasted do all those transactions? All of it.
Yesterday, gleeful news emerged of massive Russian losses in two attempted advances outside of Kreminna and Donetsk on the eastern front. Ukrainian general staff claimed 125 destroyed pieces of equipment, while one open source intelligence analyst, or OSINT, confirmed 42. Later in the day, another OSINT analyst counted 34, though he subsequently posted a list with an additional 16 armored vehicles destroyed, pushing the total to 52 (and still counting).
More information about Russia’s disaster continues to emerge.
Avdiivka is a particularly sore spot for Russia, as it is literally located on the outskirts of Donetsk, the regional capital of Donetsk oblast. [map at the link]
Russia has been pushing on this front since 2014 to no avail, and in recent days, Ukraine actually advanced along these lines. There is no river or other natural barrier, other than wide open fields defoliated from eight years of constant war, to protect Ukrainian defensive positions, yet they’ve held. This attack was clearly Russia’s attempt to finally deal with that open sore.
Tatarigami_UA claims to be a reserve military intelligence officer in the Ukrainian army, and has a well-established history of providing solid analysis of ongoing events. His thread on Russia’s Avdiivka advance is excellent. I’ll reproduce here, omitting hard-to-read satellite imagery you can see for yourself in his thread:
On October 10th, Russian forces launched a ground offensive from Krasnohorivka and Vodiane, aiming to encircle Avdiivka. This assault featured an unusual use of armored vehicles, departing from their prior reluctance in large-scale armored attacks.
The significant number of tanks and APCs highlights the Russian forces’ intention for swift and overwhelming offensives on the flank and rear. They used artillery, air support, and their armored units to suppress, overrun, and at times, capture Ukrainian positions.
Yet, Russian forces’ advance decelerated. Despite reaching the northeast of Stepove, a rear area of Avdiivka, they faced minefields, anti-tank resistance, and artillery fire, resulting in significant losses and hindering their ability to exploit their initial success.
Our most conservative estimate suggests that the Russian side suffered a minimum of 36 vehicle losses, which include abandoned, damaged, or destroyed vehicles. These losses predominantly consist of APCs, tanks of various configurations, and transportation vehicles.
It is premature to say whether Russian forces will achieve substantial advances in the upcoming days, given the challenging situation for both sides. However, it is already clear that the assault has proven to be highly costly for the attacker.
A rarity these days, Russia has enjoyed heavy artillery superiority during this attack. But if it hasn’t happened already, Ukraine will soon counter it. Its interior lines of communication means that it can quickly shift resources from one direction to another in a matter of hours. [map at the link]
For context, the distance from Orikhiv, north of the big Ukrainian advance around Robotyne, to Prokovsk, 60 kilometers (37 miles) west of Avdiivka, is 120 kilometers (75 miles).
In other words, we’re talking a two- to three-hour drive, depending on road conditions. Once at Prokovsk, those artillery guns are just one to two hours from their firing positions. And once deployed, Ukraine’s superior artillery advantages can eliminate Russia’s supporting guns, just like they have decimated Russian artillery elsewhere along the front. And if moving equipment isn’t already hard enough for Russia, Ukraine just severed one of the main highways supplying their Avdiivka advance.
Russian war blogger Romanov essentially confirmed what Tatarigami reported, saying that Russian forces advanced north of town but were then unable to hold those positions. “During the breakthrough to Berdychi-Petrovsky [next-door to Stepove], it was not possible to fully gain a foothold; the fighting continues, including with the approaching reserves of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” he wrote. “The enemy’s reserves arrived, and a breakthrough was made only on the northern flank, but on the southern flank there are no changes … The frontal attack on Avdeevka yielded only slight progress.”
If Russia’s goal was to take some pressure off the southern Zaporizhzhia front or the Bakhmut approach, then mission accomplished. But that relief would be temporary at best, and their loss of life and equipment hardly seems worth the brief respite. As such, this feels like more than a diversion. Given the amount of manpower and equipment deployed, it’s clear that Russia is making a serious effort to advance before mud season, betting that Ukraine is no longer able to advance in Zaporizhzhia. Otherwise, these forces would be held in reserve.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian general staff just dropped a new count claiming an additional 42 tanks and 44 armored infantry vehicles destroyed today. Additionally, they claim 32 artillery kills, which could very well be Ukrainian counter-battery efforts around Avdiivka. OSINT sources confirmed about half of yesterday’s claims. Hopefully, these numbers are accurate and visually confirmed. For starters, here are five tanks and three infantry vehicles: [Tweet and video at the link]
Also, we have several videos of Russian forces getting hit by Ukraine while retreating back to friendly positions. [Tweet and video at the link]
The two videos above prove once again that Ukraine does have air support. You don’t need F-16s to provide close-air support. Drones do the job better these days. (F-16s will be good for standoff capabilities—fielding long-range anti-air and anti-ship missiles, pushing Russian air and naval assets further back.)
How about one more video: [Tweet and video at the link]
Meanwhile, 32,000 people once lived in Avdiivka. Can you believe that several hundred civilians still live there, despite nine years of constant bombardment? [Tweet and video at the link]
——————————-
Russia’s Olympic Committee has been suspended for trying to annex Ukrainian sporting federations in occupied Ukraine. While they and Belarus won’t be allowed to compete in the upcoming 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, there is still no decision on whether Russian and Belarussian athletes will be allowed to compete under a neutral flag. […]
——————————-
This was hilarious: [Tweet and image at the link: “According to initial reports, the large Russian patrol vessel “Pavel Derzhavin” was destroyed today near the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea after accidentally running into one of Russia’s own mines.”]
————————–
This video of Israeli Iron Dome air defenses intercepting Hamas rockets is mesmerizing: [Tweet and video at the link]
There’s a reason that Ukraine fantasizes about fielding this system. It would render Russia’s drone attacks obsolete around key population centers. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of these expensive systems around, and their range is limited (70 kilometers), so they could never provide full-country coverage for Ukraine.
————————
Someone is starting to realize they f’d up terribly. [Tweet at the link: “Very interesting. In an interview to Al-Jazeera Saleh Al-Arouri, Hamas high ranking official (in charge of ops in the West Bank) says that all of #Hamas attacks were directed at military sites and that the other attacks were conducted by other Gazans, trying to deflect blame”]
In a conference meeting this evening, Scalise dropped out of the race for speaker. “I just shared with my colleagues that I’m withdrawing my name as a candidate for the speaker designate,” he told reporters. He says he will remain as Majority Leader.
Sheesh. Republicans are now even further away from electing a Speaker for the House of Representatives than they were a few days ago!
Now there’s even more chaos. And the work of governing, including approving funds for Israel and Ukraine, cannot be done.
[…] it seems Judge Cannon got angry at Jack Smith’s prosecutors and opted to end the Garcia hearing, for Walt Nauta’s portion of the case, because she didn’t like that the prosecutors didn’t bring any case law to back up their case. Except….it’s called a GARCIA hearing because it *IS* its own case law: United States vs Garcia
I think she thought she was being sneaky by not making a ruling that can be overturned. She’s just exhibiting bad behavior. It proves she is incapable of being impartial and she is indeed going to bat for Trump. If I were Jack Smith, now is the time to appeal to the 11th Circuit to have her removed from the case. It’s now no longer a case of general inexperience and mild incompetence. Now it’s misconduct and malpractice.
Unless, of course, there was indeed fault with the Prosecutor’s case. However, how can that be, considering they were never given the opportunity to present it? The Judge had more or less chosen which side of the argument she wanted before the case was even heard.
More on the same subject, from The Washington Post:
The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump’s pending trial for allegedly mishandling classified documents chided prosecutors Thursday for “wasting the court’s time” with what she said was a vague and last-minute argument about a legal issue.
Judge Aileen Cannon said she was postponing one of a pair of hearings on the question of whether lawyers for Trump’s two co-defendants were able to represent their clients adequately because they have also represented witnesses in the case.
Her concern, she said, was that prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith made a somewhat new argument at the hearing that had not been raised in their court filings ahead of the hearing.
“I do want to admonish the government for frankly wasting the court’s time,” Cannon said, adding she was “disappointed.”
The complication emerged at the second of two hearings scheduled for Carlos De Oliveira and Waltine “Walt” Nauta — Trump employees charged with allegedly helping the former president obstruct government attempts to retrieve classified materials that he had in his possession.
The special counsel’s office had raised concerns that lawyers for De Oliveira and Nauta previously represented potential witnesses in the case. The government requested a type of proceeding known as a Garcia hearing, in which the judge would make sure the two co-defendants understood the potential conflict and explicitly waived any concerns about it.
Prosecutors often seek such a hearing largely to ensure defendants don’t later try to use the issue to appeal a conviction.
[…] In the documents case, Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward, has represented at least seven other people whom prosecutors interviewed during their investigation, the government said in a court filing ahead of Thursday’s hearing. Two of those people could be called as government witnesses in the trial.
Prosecutors told Woodward earlier that at least one of his former clients had incriminating information against Nauta. While lawyers have been careful not to name that witness in court, referring to him only as “Trump Employee 4,” The Washington Post has previously reported that the witness is Yuscil Taveras, an IT worker at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club and Florida residence where hundreds of classified documents were kept.
After retaining a new lawyer to replace Woodward on July 5, Taveras offered prosecutors information implicating Trump, Nauta and De Oliveira in alleged efforts to delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage as the government was trying to retrieve the classified documents […]
At Thursday’s hearing, assistant special counsel David Harbach suggested Woodward owed his former client not just confidentiality, but loyalty, and said the situation called into question whether Woodward could effectively or fairly question that witness at trial, particularly when it came to the witness’s credibility.
“We don’t understand how Mr. Woodward could think he could cross-examine Trump Employee 4 at trial,” Harbach said. “We’re at a loss.”
Woodward, for his part, suggested he might nevertheless cross-examine that witness, and said it was unclear what prosecutors were asking for, or what was expected of him as Nauta’s lawyer. The judge appeared to share that concern and postponed the Nauta hearing.
[…] Prosecutors said De Oliveira’s lawyer, John Irving, previously represented three people the government may call as witnesses at trial, which is scheduled to begin in late May. At least one of the witnesses has potentially incriminating information that shows De Oliveira lied to government officials during the investigation, prosecutors said.
Cannon pressed De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago, to make sure he understood the implications of his lawyer having previously represented potential witnesses in the case.
De Oliveira, an immigrant from Portugal, said in imperfect English that he understood the conflict-of-interest concerns raised by prosecutors but nevertheless wanted to proceed with Irving as his lawyer — even if that decision meant he couldn’t later appeal based on that issue. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
‘Twist And Shout’
Robert Isley of The Isley Brothers has died at 84. He must have been very young during their breakthrough , there are very few pre-Beatles Pre-Rolling Stones artists left.
StevoRsays
The Pysche mission to, erm, Pysche asteroid launch is scheduled for 3 hours time – or, at least, the start of the live launch video coverage is here :
StevoR @ 148
-getting a look at an exposed planetary metal core, if on a smaller scale. It will be interesting if they find osmium and other rare elements.
StevoRsays
@ ^ birgerjohansson : Avsolsultely. There’s more info on the NASA blog here too :
A Colorado judge has rejected an attempt by former President Donald Trump to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to keep him off the state ballot, ruling that his objections on free-speech grounds did not apply.
Trump’s attorneys argued that a Colorado law protecting people from being sued over exercising their free speech rights shielded him from the lawsuit, but Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace said that law doesn’t apply in this case.
The law also conflicted with a state requirement to get the question about Trump’s eligibility resolved quickly — before a Jan. 5 deadline for presidential candidates’ names to certified for the Colorado primary, Wallace wrote.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington claims in its lawsuit that putting Trump on the ballot in Colorado would violate a provision of the 14th Amendment that bars people who have “engaged in insurrection” against the Constitution from holding office…
With so many “originalists” in the judiciary, why does it seem so few are taking the 14th amendment seriously?
Ukrainska Pravda sources in the Security Service of Ukraine confirmed that the 13 October attack on the Russian Buyan missile carrier and the blowing up of the Pavel Derzhavin on 11 October were the work of the SSU in cooperation with the Ukrainian Navy.
The Security Service has not disclosed any details yet but added that both vessels were hit by Sea Baby drones with experimental weapons…
Hours after the release of Ubuntu 23.10, Canonical has pulled the ISOs and is re-spinning them after user-submitted translations for the Ubuntu installer turned out to contain hate speech.
Crowd-sourced user translations from a third-party tool that made their way into Ubuntu packages turned out to contain some (unspecified) hate speech. As a result, Ubuntu 23.10 images have been removed and Canonical is working to re-spin the ISOs with the translations corrected…
StevoRsays
T minus three minute still till Pysche launch to Pysche now..
StevoRsays
Lift off!
So far so good.. Pysche (spacecarft -and well asteroid too) is in space still on its Falcon rocket.* 2nd stage. Boosters have landed back on Earth.
The asteroid o’course has never been on a rocket and still isn’t.
The Special Operations Forces (SOF) of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have reported that they blew up a train belonging to the Russian occupiers in Melitopol on the morning of 13 October, cutting them off from ammunition and petrol supplies on the Zaporizhzhia front…
KGsays
Researchers use AI to read word on ancient scroll burned by Vesuvius. The scroll is one of many carbonised by pyroclastic flows from the famous eruption of 79 CE and discovered in Herculaneum from 1752 onwards (others were apparently destroyed, and more may remain buried). It is hoped that the scrolls, which cannot be unrolled without destroying them, contain lost works of Greek and Latin literature and philosophy. High-definition X-rays and new machine learning techniques have now enabled the reading of the scrolls to begin, although how much can be read remains to be seen. The first word deciphered is the Greek for “purple”.
The Army has inked a contract with defense giant Lockheed Martin for a platoon’s worth of what would be the U.S. military’s most powerful laser weapon system to date, the company announced Tuesday.
Developed under the Army’s Indirect Fire Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) prototype program and dubbed “Valkyrie,” the system can generate lasers at up to 300 kW of power and was designed to offer protection for U.S. troops against incoming unmanned aerial systems, munitions and, most importantly, cruise missiles, according to the service’s fiscal 2024 budget request.
The Valkyrie’s 300 kW power capacity is a major increase over other laser weapons in the Defense Department’s arsenal. For comparison, the Army’s Stryker vehicle-mounted Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) system, dubbed “Guardian,” only reaches 50 kW of power. That’s still enough to counter incoming drones, rotary-wing aircraft, and rockets, artillery and mortars (RAM)…
According to several Ukrainian sources, Russia began a large-scale assault on both flanks of the Avdiivka front yesterday with armor, artillery, and aviation. [map at the link]
Russians are using barrier troops in Avdiivka to push forward those who flee due to losses, says Ukrainian soldier.
After getting shelled with cluster munitions, a group of 40 men in the Storm Z penal battalion started to flee. A Russian BMP arrived and started firing at them to return to the battlefield.
[map at the link]
Russian forces have not secured any major breakthroughs near Avdiivka as of October 12 and are unlikely to immediately cut off Ukrainian forces in the city. ISW estimates that Russian forces have captured 4.52 square kilometers of territory from different directions around Avdiivka since October 10 and that Russian forces are 3.32km away from a Ukrainian ground line of communication (GLOC) along the O0562 highway from the south and 5.25km from the north of Avdiivka, and Russian claims of advances beyond these distances are likely overstated. Russian sources claimed that Russian forces are attempting to create a cauldron around Ukrainian forces in Avdiivka, but quickly acknowledged that current advances are slow. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin claimed that it is too early to discuss a “full-scale [Ukrainian] exodus from the city” despite some Russian advances in the area…. Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces destroyed the Ocheretyne railway station (13km northwest of Avdiivka), which they claimed supports Ukrainian logistics to Avdiivka.
Geolocated footage indicates that Russian forces have likely lost at least a battalion tactical group’s (BTG’s) worth of armored vehicles in offensive operations around Avdiivka. A reliable X (Twitter) user observed on October 12 that Ukrainian forces destroyed 33 Russian armored vehicles and 15 tanks since October 10 near Avdiivka. A Ukrainian reserve officer stated that conservative estimates suggest Ukrainian forces have destroyed a minimum of 36 Russian armored vehicles including tanks, armored personnel carriers, and transport vehicles. … Footage published on October 11 purportedly shows a Russian armored vehicle in a column near Avdiivka falling into a body of water, and geolocated footage published on October 11 and 12 shows Ukrainian forces striking Russian vehicle columns around Avdiivka.
This footage indicates that Russian armored forces may not be applying lessons learned from previous offensive operations near Vuhledar in February 2023 or around Kyiv in March 2022, when Ukrainian forces destroyed a disorderly advancing column of Russian armored vehicles. … While Russian implementation of lessons learned will vary and Russian forces have achieved some advances in the Avdiivka area which were likely enabled by more effective units, ISW’s October 11 assessment was likely overstated.
Defending Ukrainian forces are inflicting relatively heavy losses and suppressing Russian logistics near Avdiivka, likely slowing down the Russian pace of advance…. Geolocated footage published on October 12 shows that Ukrainian forces destroyed a bridge northeast of Avdiivka between Yasynuvata and Horlivka. [map at the link] […]
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise hardly had time to withdraw his bid to be speaker before Rep. Jim Jordan was on the phone trying to drum up support. That leaves Republicans to make a dire choice: continue in chaos or be browbeaten into accepting a MAGA overlord who will turn the House into Trump 2024 headquarters. They are deciding that in a conference meeting [today].
Just how toxic would Jordan be in the top job? That has been demonstrated in his efforts to undermine Scalise’s bid. Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri, a McCarthy ally, spilled the tea on Jordan Thursday night: “Yesterday in conference, he gave the most disgraceful, ungracious — I can’t call it a concession speech — of all time. There were gasps in the room.”
[…] cowering to power is what Jordan can capitalize on, and he seems intent on bulldozing his way to a vote as soon as possible. On Friday morning, he succeeded in removing one obstacle already. The conference was to consider four amendments to the nominating process to require a certain threshold of votes before going to the floor. All of the amendments were withdrawn or tabled. […]
Several democrats told us if republicans rush a vote today with a few hundred members present and elect a speaker without 24-hour notice, Dems will offer a motion to vacate the speaker next week and force a real vote of the full house.
It’s a risky proposition trying to remove Jordan if he gets voted in, even by a fraction of Congress. Everything now seems to depend on the strength of moderate Republican spines in opposing Jordan. That’s a pretty dire prospect.
[…] there’s been another sign of caving from the establishment GOP: Idaho’s Mike Simpson says he’ll go with Jordan if he has to. This is the concerning thing—a conference grasping at straws to the extent they’ll just give in and let Jordan have it.
McCarthy is backing Jordan. FWIW.
Representative Austin Scott was the 2010 freshman class president and has been a “never Jordan” guy. Scott is more or less a test for the Jordan opponents to see how strong the opposition is. Remember, Jordan got just 99 votes against Scalise.
[…] Jordan appears intent on trying to ram this through today, but he’s got a bit of an attendance problem. There are just 209 Republicans there today. If they’re outnumbered by Democrats, then he can’t risk trying to take it to the floor and ending up with Speaker Hakeem Jeffries.
Readers posted about Austin Scott:
Scott opposes abortion and believes that human life begins at conception.
Scott is in favor of a balanced budget amendment. He voted for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
Scott is in favor of capital punishment.
Scott opposes same-sex marriage and is in favor of a Federal Marriage Amendment.
He opposes gun control.
Scott voted against the 2013 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act.
In December 2020, Scott was one of 126 Republican members of the House of Representatives to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed at the United States Supreme Court contesting the results of the 2020 presidential election […] The Supreme Court declined to hear the case […]
And Scott’s being offered as an improvement over Jim Jordan. On January 7, 2021, Scott did not object to the Electoral College certification in the House of Representatives, so is that moment of sanity.
The GOP is supposed to be meeting now, but there’s a wrinkle—a White House meeting with top lawmakers on Israel, that has acting speaker pro tempore McHenry and a few committee chairs busy.
A few days before 2022 midterm elections, The New York Times’ Ezra Klein wrote a column about the cycle’s stakes. As 2023 has unfolded, I’ve occasionally found myself thinking about the column’s opening paragraph:
What Republicans are offering, if they win the 2022 elections, is not conservatism. It is crisis. More accurately, it is crises. A debt-ceiling crisis. An election crisis. And a body blow to the government’s efforts to prepare for a slew of other crises we know are coming.
[Accurate!]
In fact, around this time a year ago, with time running out before Election Day 2022, there was some national polling suggesting Americans expected a GOP majority Congress, should it exist, to focus on concerns such as gas prices and street crime.
[…] Democrats expanded their Senate majority, and House Republicans fell far short of expectations and historical models — but when the dust settled on the election cycle, the GOP nevertheless ended up with a majority in the lower chamber.
And it was at that point that the party began keeping its promises: […] the public has spent the year watching the GOP’s House majority careen from one crisis to another.
[…] this is the same party that launched a debt ceiling crisis in the spring, threatened to shut down the government a few weeks ago, might yet cause a government shutdown in the near future, and launched a presidential impeachment inquiry despite not having any evidence whatsoever of wrongdoing.
[…] at issue is a Republican conference filled with members who’ve been told they don’t have to accept compromises. Or election results. Or concessions. Or those who tell them to respect norms, traditions, or the institution in which they serve.
It’s difficult to watch these chaotic conditions unfold on Capitol Hill, but let no one say we didn’t see this coming. Republicans offered voters crises, and now the party is keeping its promises.
Not as bad as X/Twitter … correct, but is that a low bar.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said Friday it stepping up efforts to enforce policies on violence and misinformation amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The tech giant said it has established a “special operations center” with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers, to monitor the situation and remove content that violates Meta policies more quickly.
In the first three days of the conflict, Meta said it removed or flagged more than 795,000 pieces of content in Hebrew and Arabic for violating its policies on dangerous organizations and individuals, violent and graphic content, and hate speech, among others.
The company emphasized that Hamas is banned from Facebook and Instagram under its dangerous organizations and individuals policy.
“We want to reiterate that our policies are designed to give everyone a voice while keeping people safe on our apps,” Meta said. “We apply these policies regardless of who is posting or their personal beliefs, and it is never our intention to suppress a particular community or point of view.”
Amid a deluge of misinformation related to the conflict on social media, Meta also said it is working with AFP, Reuters and Fatabyyano to fact check claims and moving false claims lower in users’ feeds. […]
[…] Know who really didn’t like hearing about how Bibi Netanyahu personally betrayed Trump by failing to help him assassinate an Iranian general based on flimsy-as-fuck evidence? Know who didn’t feel like listening to Trump babble about how “very smart” Hezbollah is? Know who really doesn’t have time for Trump to work out his hurt feelings over the fact that Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden on winning the presidency?
Israel.
[T]he Israeli communications minister, Shlomo Karhi, told Israel’s Channel 13 that it was “shameful that a man like that, a former U.S. president, abets propaganda and disseminates things that wound the spirit of Israel’s fighters and its citizens.”
Karhi also said, “We don’t have to bother with him and the nonsense he spouts.”
Israel’s military ordered the evacuation Friday of more than 1 million Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip, a move that the United Nations described as potentially “calamitous” amid heavy airstrikes and a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation.
As Israeli troops massed along the enclave’s border, the 24-hour warning provoked a scramble. Families piled into cars, scooters and donkey carts, and headed south in search of what, if any, safety remained. Doctors risked the consequences to stay with their thousands of patients.
Israel has indicated that it is readying a ground invasion of the besieged territory, a move aimed at ending the rule of Hamas […]
But, with exits to Israel and Egypt shut, the retaliatory military operations have effectively turned the narrow 25-mile long Gaza Strip into a death trap. […]
“In the following days, the IDF will continue to operate significantly in Gaza City,” the Israel Defense Forces said, adding that Hamas militants were hiding in tunnels beneath civilian homes and in heavily populated areas. “Civilians of Gaza City, evacuate south for your own safety and the safety of your families and distance yourself from Hamas terrorists who are using you as human shields.”
[…] The United Nations said that the evacuation that Israel was urging was not only unfeasible, but risked worsening an already dire situation. “The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation,” it said in a statement. [map at the link]
U.S. officials declined to criticize the Israeli order, but said Washington is seeking to work with Israel, the International Committee of the Red Cross and U.N. relief agencies to establish the safe zones, said a State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.
“Everything about being in Gaza is dangerous,” the official said. “We think the best option is to establish a safe area.” No further details were offered and it was not clear how such a plan could be implemented in reality. In a statement, the ICRC said it would not be able to assist “in such a massive displacement of people in Gaza.”
The Norwegian Refugee Council, an international aid agency operating in the territory, said that Israel’s evacuation order, which came without clear guarantees of safety and return, “would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer.”
In conversations with his staff in Gaza on Friday morning, James Elder, spokesman for UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency, said the word “impossible” came up time and again, “in terms of, ‘It’s impossible for us to do this; they are asking the impossible.’ I was talking to people through tears,” he said. “These are resilient people who have been through a lot but are absolutely out of options.”
Children are “lying waiting in hospitals to get attention and now being told to move within the city,” he said. “It’s not logical. It’s not doable. Doctors will have to make decisions on who lives and who dies. When you’re talking about moving children with wounds of war or in the ICU — they can’t be moved, and that’s the demand.”
[…] The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Friday that the Ministry of Health had decided not to evacuate the area’s hospitals.
Decisions over whether to stay or go have divided families. One woman, a U.S. citizen who asked that her name not be shared, fearing for her security, said that her brother had refused to leave, and so she had packed his five children into the car and driven them to a friends’ already packed home in a safer neighborhood, on her way out of Gaza City.
The roads were busy, but not packed, she said. People moved by donkey cart, tuk-tuk (motorized rickshaw) and car, all loaded with bags of clothing, mattresses, even a pair of cows. “A tuk-tuk would be carrying 15 people,” she said. “People are running red lights. No one is stopping.”
[…] in a separate statement, Jordan’s king warned Israel against “any attempt to forcibly displace the Palestinians from all the Palestinian Territories or to cause their internal displacement, calling for preventing a spillover of the crisis into neighbouring countries and the exacerbation of the refugee issue.”
He also stressed the need to open humanitarian corridors to allow for the provision of food and medicine. […]
I was in Austin, Texas, for work on Saturday when I received a call from my commander in the Israel Defense Forces to return to Israel and head to the front line. I didn’t hesitate. I knew that the citizens of my country were in real danger. My duty first and foremost is to join the fight against those who unleashed a massacre on my people. I boarded the first flight I found out of Austin to head home to join the I.D.F. reserves, where I serve as a brigade operations command officer.
During my long flight to Israel, my mind couldn’t rest. I was trying to write down my feelings and thoughts about everything happening — and everything that’s about to happen — in my beloved country.
Little by little, the dimensions of the horrors of the most brutal attack that Israelis have experienced since the establishment of the state were being revealed. Hundreds of Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,200 people, including women, children and older people. About 150 citizens and soldiers have been taken captive. There’s nothing in the world that can justify the murder of hundreds of innocent people.
But I’d like to say one thing clearly, before I go to battle: There’s no such thing as “unavoidable.” This war could have been avoided, and no one did enough to prevent it. Israel did not do enough to make peace; we just conquered the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, expanded the illegal settlements and imposed a long-term siege on the Gaza Strip.
For 56 years Israel has been subjecting Palestinians to oppressive military rule. In my book “Love Israel, Support Palestine,” I wrote: “Israeli society has to ask itself very important questions about where and why the blood of its sons and daughters was spilled. A Messianic religious minority has dragged us into a muddy swamp, and we are following them as if it were the Piper from Hamelin.” When I wrote these words last year, I didn’t realize how deep in the mud we were, and how much more blood could be shed in so little time.
I am now going to defend my country against enemies who want to kill my people. Our enemies are the deadly terrorist organizations that are being controlled by Islamic extremists.
Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are not our enemy. Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Israelis and Palestinians alike have been in the grip of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group have dragged us into violence. It doesn’t matter who is more cruel, or more ruthless. The ideology of both have fueled this conflict, leading to the death of too many innocent civilians.
As a major in the reserves, it is important to me to make it clear that in this already unstoppable new war, we cannot allow the massacre of innocent Israelis to result in the massacre of innocent Palestinians. Israel must remember that there are more than two million people living in the Gaza Strip. The vast majority of them are innocent. Israel must do everything in its power to avoid killing innocent people, and focus on destroying the militant army of Hamas.
This war, like others before it, will end sooner or later. I am not sure I will come back from it alive, but I do know that a minute after the war is over, both Israelis and Palestinians will have to reckon with the leaders who led them to this moment. We must wake up and not let the extremists rule. Palestinians and Israelis must denounce the extremists who are driven by religious fanaticism. The Israelis will have to oust National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and their far-right circle from power, and the Palestinians will have to oust the leadership of Hamas.
[…] Israelis must realize that there is no greater security asset than peace. The strongest army cannot protect the country the way peace does. This current war proves it once again. Israel has followed the path of war for too long.
At the end, after all of the dead Israelis and Palestinians are buried, after we have finished washing away the rivers of blood, the people who share a home in this land will have to understand that there is no other choice but to follow the path of peace. That is where true victory lies.
Russian authorities on Friday detained three lawyers representing the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny in what his supporters said was a government-led attempt to continue to isolate him and further limit his ability to influence the country’s political life.
In a series of statements, Mr. Navalny’s team members said that the lawyers, Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin, and Aleksei Liptser, were being investigated on suspicion of belonging to an extremist group and that their homes had been searched before the men were detained.
Speaking during a court hearing on Friday, Mr. Navalny, 47, who had been sentenced by Russian courts to 19 years in prison overall on charges of fraud, embezzlement, contempt of court, and extremism, said that the fact that his lawyers were being investigated “characterizes well the state of justice in Russia.”
“As during the Soviet times, they persecute not only political activists and turn them into political prisoners, but also their lawyers,” said Mr. Navalny, a fervent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, according to a recording posted by his team on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
[…] Despite being imprisoned under increasingly harsh conditions, Mr. Navalny has been able to maintain a significant presence in the Russian social and political life by filing lawsuits against government establishments, speaking up during court hearings and publishing statements on social media.
That activity was largely possible with the help of his lawyers, who had also provided him with legal support in his judicial pursuits against the Russian government. […]
Cenk Uygur, founder and outspoken host of the progressive Young Turks TV show, said he could win the Democratic nomination for president despite obstacles including his own overseas birth in Istanbul seemingly rendering him unqualified under the US constitution…
[…] Early on Friday, Rep. Jamie Raskin, himself a cancer survivor, tweeted out a reminder of the kind of character and integrity the people on the other side of the aisle have. “When I came down with cancer, my Caucus colleagues rallied around to support me as Ranking Dem on Oversight. I’m dumbfounded that GOP Members (& Trump!) used Steve Scalise’s cancer as a reason to abandon him on the House floor—after nominating him for the job!”
It is an important reminder of who we’re dealing with: Republicans who will use any excuse and climb over anyone without looking down in a shameless pursuit of power.
When Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Jim Jordan for speaker of the House, Republicans selected Scalise to be their nominee for speaker. Any political scientist would say that this was an easy layup for the extremists of the Republican Party. Having booted Rep. Kevin McCarthy from his seat, they could now take a win by voting in Scalise, who would have the McCarthy supporters while also giving the illusion that the extremists had accomplished something. But this is MAGA, and MAGA consists of a lot of people who seem to want to watch the world burn.
Donald Trump has sought to have a lawsuit filed against him in the state of Colorado dismissed, by arguing that, as president, he was not required to “support” the US Constitution.
The bizarre legal defence, put forward by the former president’s attorneys, comes in response to a suit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which seeks to have him disqualified from the ballot in the state under the 14th Amendment.
A clause of the amendment, which passed into the Constitution in 1868, bans those who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States from holding any civil, military, or elected office without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate.
Mr Trump’s lawyers are arguing that the phrasing of the clause – section three – does not apply to all officers of the United States, “but only those who take an oath ‘to support the US Constitution’”.
“The Presidential oath, which the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment surely knew, requires the President to swear to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution — not to ‘support’ the Constitution,” said the filing, obtained by news outlet Law and Crime…
Racism in AI https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/10/racism-in-ai
“So they decided to be more specific. They entered phrases that mentioned Black African doctors providing food, vaccines or medicine to white children who were poor or suffering. They also asked for images depicting different health scenarios like “HIV patient receiving care.”
Try as they might, the team was unable to get Black doctors and white patients in one image. Out of 150 images of HIV patients, 148 were Black and two were white. Some results put African wildlife like giraffes and elephants next to Black physicians.”
Sure, to ‘keep out migrants,’ definitely not to keep women in.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has launched a new stage of his campaign to make himself look like a credible future presidential candidate by subverting the Constitution just a little bit, sending units of the Texas National Guard to lay concertina wire along the Texas-New Mexico state line.
Abbott tweeted out photos of Texas Guard members deploying the wire along the state border near Sunland Park, New Mexico, which is adjacent to to El Paso in Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico and is, despite your American education, a US state. The new razor wire barrier stretches north where the Texas and New Mexico border lines intersect the Rio Grande, which forms the US-Mexico boundary.
Abbott claimed the new murderwire was needed to keep migrants from crossing the river into New Mexico — US America — and heading east into Texas. [Tweet and image at the link]
Now don’t you ladies get all worried; there’s no conceivable way (Ha! Ha!) that this could turn into an effort to prevent Texas women from sneaking into the free state of New Mexico to get a legal abortion. Why, that’s every bit as paranoid as the idea that the Supreme Court would just arbitrarily ignore decades of “settled law” by overturning Roe v. Wade. […] you might even start worrying about the Court tossing out the very well-established right of folks to travel freely from one state to another.
In any case, that right only applies to good people, so obviously it shouldn’t get in the way of Abbott’s new Bobwire Wall, or the machine-gun nests and minefields that might follow. […]
The Corpus Christi Caller Times reports that the move
makes good on Abbott’s promise during a trip to New York City late last month when he told a conservative audience that migrants were bypassing the miles of razor wire and fencing along the Texas side of the Rio Grande near El Paso by moving to the west.
Sunland Park, you may recall, was briefly famous a few years ago when the loony grifters who wanted to build a privately funded fraud wall put a section of barrier up in the desert without a permit, and with no connection to any other barriers. Genius.
[…] It’s all part of Abbott’s ongoing campaign to stir up panic about asylum seekers by putting them in danger, and to try to make his very own laws on the border. But a serious moral and democratic principle is at stake: Maybe if Republicans get tired of Donald Trump and the current crop of lousy presidential candidates, maybe a new tough-on-immigration candidate could win the 2024 nomination. Or maybe he’s just an asshole that way.
And while the federal government is the only authority charged with enforcing immigration laws — a principle the Supreme Court upheld yet again just this year — Abbott wants to win votes and influence federal law by pursuing his very own anti-immigrant actions, like laying razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande and putting floating death buoys right in the middle of the river. He’s hoping to win court approval for a cockamamie constitutional “theory” that governors can use their states’ National Guard units to repel an “invasion” of undocumented migrants. No court has yet actually taken up the loony idea, but maybe provoking a fight with another state might do the job.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham hasn’t yet commented on the latest Abbott provocation, possibly because it’s fucking stupid.
[…] This all started when some busybody sent a video of class president Kaylee Timonet dancing at a homecoming party, next to another girl who was twerking, to the school principal, Jason St. Pierre. St. Pierre called her down to the office and told her that he was deeply concerned about her afterlife situation, as her dancing at the party failed to live up to “God’s ideals.” He then removed her from the class presidency and student government and revoked his previous endorsement of her for a college scholarship she was applying for.
Because dancing.
To be clear, Jason St. Pierre is the principal of a public school and therefore has no business bringing any deity’s personal preferences into things there.
Kaylee Timonet was understandably horrified, and says she sobbed after hearing this news, worried that all of her plans for her future were going to fall apart because she danced for a minute at a homecoming party. A homecoming party not even held at a fellow student’s house, but at a local country club … with her mother and other parents in attendance.
St. Pierre, however, was no John Lithgow. He could not get the townsfolk of Walker, Louisiana, on Team No Dancing Because God for even a moment. After Timonet posted a video about the incident on TikTok, the town of 6,400 rallied behind her.
Timonet’s mother publicly stood up for her, calling the punishment a clear violation of the separation of church and state. Students staged a walkout. Parents changed their profile pictures in support. At least one school board member called the punishment “ridiculous.”
Following all this pressure, St. Pierre issued a statement saying that he had personally apologized to the Timonets, reinstated Kaylee as class president, and re-endorsed her scholarship application. Though perhaps she should now aim a little higher for her endorsement.
[…] In the letter, St. Pierre also said that he now understands that “it is not [his] responsibility to determine what students’ or others’ religious beliefs may be.” That’s a big step!
Since then, he has told district officials that he will be taking a leave of absence until the end of the school year. Hopefully he decides to stay gone.
Doctors Without Borders said Israel gave Al-Awda Hospital in Gaza City just two hours to evacuate.
“We unequivocally condemn this action, the continued indiscriminate bloodshed and attacks on health care in Gaza,” Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) wrote on its X account. “We are trying to protect our staff and patients.”
In an update posted an hour later, the group said Israel extended the evacuation order until 6 a.m. local time.
Videos from Al-Shifa Hospital, also in Gaza City, showed an overwhelmed hospital system with bloodied patients, including children, on the floor after convoys transporting evacuees were hit by airstrikes.
In one video, an ambulance driver can be seen exiting the vehicle before falling to the ground, overwhelmed with emotion.
Jordan got “around” 124 votes, according to early report, Scott got 81. That’s a lot of minds to change.
[…] Some of the Dem “Problem Solvers” have extended an offer to interim Speaker Pro Tem McHenry to give him more, but still limited, powers to deal with the critical stuff. If Republicans remain at a total impasse, that offer might turn into something real. […]
Donald Trump is arguably the biggest American presidential loser of all time. Though he eked out one election in 2016 with a lot of foreign help, he’s never won the popular vote. He was impeached twice. He didn’t win a second term and wasn’t man enough to face up to it. He lost more than 60 times in court while trying to prove he wasn’t a loser.
In 2022, his election-denying endorsed candidates running for statewide executive offices lost in every 2020 battleground. Likewise, every one of his three handpicked U.S. Senate candidates seeking to flip a battleground seat came up short.
In 2023, he has been criminally indicted on 91 counts in four separate cases relating to defrauding voters, taxpayers, and putting highly sensitive U.S. intelligence at risk.
In fact, Trump is such an unimaginably big loser that The Washington Post sought to ask his fan base—not all of whom are MAGA diehards—why they’re supporting him all over again in the 2024 Republican primary.
Trump supporter David Alexander, 61, offered the insight that Trump’s victimhood schtick is like catnip, even for those who might not otherwise be that into him.
“The people that don’t like him. … When they dislike him, it helps me like him more,” Alexander explained at last month’s Iowa Faith and Freedom dinner, which Trump skipped. “If they ignored him, I probably wouldn’t like him as much. Does that make sense?”
Not exactly.
The Post summed up the appeal this way:
Many of the voters echoed his long-running attacks on the law enforcement system that he has sharply ratcheted up in recent months. In many cases, Republicans who said they were initially interested in another candidate more than Trump were dismissive of the seriousness of the charges. Some said they believed Trump had made mistakes, but they contend there was an unfair double standard against him.
Let’s be real, there’s nothing more unfair than justice. Ya know what I mean? […]
Reginald Selkirksays
@170 GOP Members (& Trump!) used Steve Scalise’s cancer as a reason to abandon him on the House floor…
Are you sure it was because Scalise has cancer, and not because Mr. “David Duke without the baggage” is a cancer on humanity?
birgerjohanssonsays
A reminder of how brittle power can be.
I just found this at Youtube. 1989; East Germany celebrates 40 years.
Gorbachev stands next to Honecker, Yassir Arafat and other dignitaries. I assume Ceaucescu is somewhere in there. He died first, Gorbachev lasted until Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
(Regarding parades -GDR was really the last iteration of Prussia) https://youtu.be/7wK3k1kd7fY
The cooties is right there in the result. It can’t let the black person care for the white children. But it will displace to African wildlife.
birgerjohanssonsays
Bloody hell. Huffpost:
‘U S Diplomats advised not to call for “de-escalation” in Gaza’
Biden is not going to try to moderate Netanyahu ‘s response!
The old guy cannot be bothered to make a difference. But we knew that during the primaries – his argument to businesses was that nothing would change.
While witnessing a solar eclipse is an awe-inspiring experience, it’s essential to remember that looking directly at the Sun, even during an eclipse, can cause severe eye damage or blindness.
Anyone gazing skyward should only do so with the aid of protective viewing equipment, such as approved eclipse glasses or a pinhole projector…
Akira MacKenziesays
@190
Well, the Palestinian lobby didn’t pay as much as others for Brandon’s support.
Pierce R. Butlersays
A certain FreeThought Blogger is in (morally good, politically risky) trouble again.
Progressive writers and advocates around the world on Tuesday rallied behind acclaimed Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy after a top New Delhi official reportedly approved her prosecution for allegedly advocating for the secession of the disputed and brutally occupied Kashmir region during a “provocative” 2010 speech. …
Roy, who is 61 years old, has been an outspoken critic of what she calls India’s “descent… into full-blown fascism” under the ruling right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its “Hindu supremacism.”
Earlier this month, Roy spoke at a Delhi protest following coordinated police raids on the homes of prominent reporters, condemning what she and other human rights activists called government abuse of anti-terrorism laws to oppress critical writers, journalists, and activists.
Pierce R. Butlersays
Ooops! My bad @ # 193 – no idea how I got Arundhati Roy mixed up in my mind with Taslima Nasreen, except that they’re both eloquent, controversial South Asian women writers I greatly respect.
More video is emerging from Russia’s disastrous assault on the city of Avdiivka, and Russian sources are starting to blab about the results of their attacks.
So far, Ukraine claims to have destroyed nearly 300 armored vehicles the last three days. We’ve discussed those claims in the last two Ukraine Updates […] and here is the Ukraine Defense Ministry’s latest update, which says that the country claimed another 26 tanks, 49 armored infantry vehicles, and 44 artillery guns.
While open-source intelligence sources haven’t visually confirmed all those losses, there has been a torrid stream of battle videos proving massive Russian losses. You can find some of them here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. [embedded links are available at the main link]
In one of the more gruesome crowdfunding efforts I’ve ever see, one Russian volunteer is raising money for food and … body bags: [Tweet and video at the link: Russian volunteer urgently needs help with purchasing corpse bags for soldiers currently assaulting in Avdiivka. They also need food, but this must only come in closed packages, because “you don’t know if someone’s going to add something to it”.]
And in this one, a friend of the now-imprisoned (but for the wrong reasons) war criminal Igor Girkin is begging for doctors.
Our troops are trying to take Avdeevka. It is from there that most of the shelling of Gorlovka and Donetsk comes, it is there that the most powerful fortified area of the creatures [Ukrainians] is located. They are the most responsible for the killed civilians, including children from the “Alley of Angels”. If Avdeevka is not taken, the shelling will continue, children will continue to be killed. Our guys are suffering losses; there is a catastrophic shortage of surgeons in Gorlovka and Donetsk. We ask all doctors (primarily surgeons and resuscitators) who have a conscience and remember their medical oath to find the opportunity to take a vacation and go to Gorlovka Hospital No. 2 for at least a couple of weeks and help with the treatment of the wounded. We will help you resolve logistical issues.
It goes without saying, but Ukraine does not target civilians in Donetsk. All you have to do is see how the city, at the edge of the frontlines, is left standing, unlike Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and so many other cities in Russia’s warpath. But propagandists have to justify their criminal invasion somehow. “We are critically low on surgeons for our war of imperial conquest” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Here’s another Avdiivka update from a Russian source:
About the situation near Avdeevka.
It didn’t work out quickly to surround it. If the northern wing powerfully moved forward and by the end of the day occupied a strategically important height – the waste heap at Coke factory, then the south ran into the Ukrainian defense, began to act in a stereotypical manner, suffered losses and, in the end, failed to cope with the task. The command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces almost immediately assessed the scale of the threat and began to transfer human reserves and artillery here, even using expensive Himars to strike our advancing infantry and stabilized the situation by morning.
By this morning, the operation had taken on, already familiar in this war, character of a “battle for the forester’s hut” – heavy battles for each strong point. Berdychi, Stepove and Opytne act as the “forester’s hut”. There is a continuous exchange of artillery strikes. Despite having a significant superiority in the number of artillery, our counter-battery fire still cannot effectively suppress long-range Ukrainian self-propelled guns, which are constantly changing their positions, delivering their attacks from distances where our artillery practically does not reach, covering our attacking formations and pinning the infantry to the ground. Although the work of the Lancets [suicide drones] is effective, their response speed does not allow them to quickly “shut up” the Ukrainian artillery. “Lancets” are more “hunters” than “response”. When the front will finally see systems capable of effectively and efficiently fighting Ukrainian artillery, one can only guess.
In the next 24 hours, we can expect powerful counterattacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which will try to recapture lost positions. The command will decide to what extent it is now necessary to continue the assault on Avdeevka, or to transfer active operations to another direction, but it is obvious that a “return” to offensive tactics after almost a year of defense is not easy for the troops. The units have grown into trenches, into trench warfare, and are not yet attacking very confidently. The problem has been well known since the First World War. And this once again confirms the need to form special assault units «focused” on offensive tactics, which are capable of decisively moving forward and breaking through the enemy’s defenses. The same units that have stood on the defensive for a year need to be “swinged up” and accustomed to attacking actions, taking them to the rear for training and training them to attack the enemy correctly and effectively…
🇷🇺It is obvious that such local offensive operations are a “test of strength” of our groups before a serious offensive. But it is possible to move into it only when the army is fully ready for such tasks. So far, the experience of the assault on Avdeevka does not allow us to be considered ready for such work.
And here is the latest about Avdiivka from prominent Russian war blogger Murz:
My pessimism regarding the assault on Avdeevka is based on my knowledge of fairly simple things from the field of military affairs and in practice similar operations that have already happened during the SMO.
The main caliber of our brigade and corps artillery is now 152 mm. And its main projectile is an ordinary high-explosive fragmentation projectile. Normal concrete fortifications can withstand even a direct hit, but a direct hit still needs to be achieved – the barrels of our artillery are pretty worn out. Again, I wrote about the weight difference of 152 mm charges produced this year. [He’s talking about previous reports that Russian artillery forces are receiving 152 mm shells weighing entire kilos outside of spec, which means it is impossible to fire them accurately.]
So counting the hours of artillery preparation or, in general, “artillery activity”, and from this measuring the possibility of success is not a good idea. Just firing and plowing all the surrounding fields won’t help much, it’s been tested. The 29th checkpoint, which was taken by the 4th Brigade at the beginning of the SMO, is an excellent confirmation of this. The fields around it were all dug up. Aaaand?
Ukrops were filling everything there with concrete during the Minsk agreements right before our eyes; shooting at these fortworks was prohibited then. And ukrops are skilled in fort work and have dug in very well. …
Therefore, the main possible positive result in this direction, in addition to simply drawing back the ukrop reserves, is to “compress the perimeter” in those places where the ukrops could not conduct large-scale fortification works.
And the saddest thing that is possible is that this deceptively successful “squeeze” will spur the desire of the comrade generals to quickly take Avdeevka. And the troops will “beat on concrete with their heads” until they run out. Because we have an excellent approach. Just remember the anecdote about a Soviet young specialist who is not allowed to go abroad, “What do you need to start a family? One woman and nine months? There is not that much time! We give 9 women and 1 month!” Attempts to compensate for the impossibility of targeted firing with large calibers by piling shells “somewhere there” using everything that is available is precisely that. And it doesn’t work.
So it’s not hard to understand why the “red arrow trade” … pisses me off. [He’s talking about war bloggers who mark up maps with red arrows of glorious Russian advances that simply don’t exist.] Because the promotion by media of the theme “Now we’re about to take everything, ura-ura”, it leads to the fact that under the pressure of the media, which in turn generates pressure from top to bottom, in the army people are forced to take “all of this” in a situation when it is necessary to gain a foothold, repel counterattacks and build a mechanism for exploiting the modest successes achieved – a mechanism for increasing the very “price of staying in Avdeevka” [for Ukrainians].
Russian sources continuously confirm our coverage of Ukraine’s artillery superiority. And as I wrote yesterday, even if Ukrainian defenders at Avdiivka were caught by surprise, Ukraine’s short interior lines of communication mean that Ukraine can quickly shift forces from one front to another, in a matter of hours. […]
Meanwhile, Russia’s big victory thus far has been the capture of a garbage dump northwest of Avdiivka. You’ll be happy to hear that this meager consolation prize is no longer in Russia’s hands. [Tweet and video at the link]
As the tweet above makes clear, what had been translated as “waste heap” is actually a coal spoil tip—waste removed during mining. Not as funny as Russians capturing a garbage dump, but accuracy is important!
————————-
Longer-range MLRS rocket artillery will soon be in Ukraine, according to Boeing. These GLSDB missiles have a stated range of 150 kilometers, or 94 miles. That compares to 70 kilometers (43 miles) for standard GMLRS rockets. In effect, this doubles the range of Ukraine’s most effective artillery weapon.
Importantly, this provides Ukraine with a new manufacturing line of rockets since GMLRS are in extremely short supply. Lockheed manufactures only 6,000 GMLRS per year, or 500 per month, and has existing contracts with other customers to fulfill. The company is working to raise production to 14,000 per year.
From all indications, Ukraine has that new GLSDB manufacturing line all to itself. Taiwan had an order and delayed it so Ukraine could get the missiles more quickly. […] There is no word on how many Boeing can manufacture, nor how quickly they’ll be delivered to Ukraine. But the first rounds should be arriving soon.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne declared a terrorist alert and mobilized the country’s security forces after a teacher was fatally stabbed and two other people were wounded in the northern city of Arras. … French President Emmanuel Macron has condemned the attack as a ‘barbaric Islamic terrorism.’
Kaiser Permanente and labor unions reached a tentative deal Friday morning, a little more than a week after workers at the nation’s largest health care nonprofit organization went on strike. The three-day walkout was the largest work stoppage of health care workers in U.S. history, according to the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions.
The White House on Wednesday announced new initiatives to rein in tens of billions worth of surcharges tied to goods and services, or ‘junk’ fees, in partnership with two of the nation’s leading consumer-protection agencies.
New College of Florida lost more than twice the normal number of students it usually does between fall semesters this year, according to a report sent to faculty from the college’s provost Wednesday. … The drop in retention rate and the spike in the departure rate followed the dramatic overhaul launched by Gov. Ron DeSantis early this year with the appointment of six new members to the board of trustees, who fired the sitting president and appointed former DeSantis education commissioner Richard Corcoran as president.
In the runup to the 2020 election, a small news organization saw an opportunity.
The Epoch Times directed millions of dollars in advertising toward supporting President Donald Trump’s campaign and published dozens of articles parroting his lies about the election — resulting in huge growth to its audience and its coffers.
The strategy garnered criticism from fact-checking groups and got it banned from advertising on Facebook, but it ultimately paid off — putting the once-fringe newspaper on a path that perhaps only its leader, who claims to have supernatural powers, could have foreseen.
Today, The Epoch Times is one of the country’s most successful and influential conservative news organizations. It’s powered by Falun Gong, a religious group persecuted in China, which launched The Epoch Times as a free propaganda newsletter more than two decades ago to oppose the Chinese Communist Party.
Funded through aggressive online and real-world marketing campaigns and big-money conservative donors, The Epoch Times now boasts to be the country’s fourth-largest newspaper by subscriber count. (Unlike most major newspapers, The Epoch Times isn’t audited by the two major independent collectors of circulation data.) The nonprofit has amassed a fortune, growing its revenue by a staggering 685% in two years, to $122 million in 2021, according to the group’s most recent tax records.
Its editorial vision — fueled by a right-wing slant and conspiracy theories — is on display in recent reports on how “Jan. 6 Capitol Hill Security Footage Challenges Key Narratives” and “Meteorologists, Scientists Explain Why There Is ‘No Climate Emergency.’” Its video series include a documentary-style film alleging widespread vaccine injury and death and an exposé of an alleged world government agenda to harm farmers, cull the population and force survivors to eat bugs. [JFC!]
What The Epoch Times lacks in standards, it makes up for in style and form, mirroring the aesthetics of journalism — a feature that’s attracted subscribers and big-name supporters.
Anti-vaccine activist and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls The Epoch Times a daily read [of course he does! Dunderhead], among his most trusted news sources. “They have a real bias against China, but on other reporting, they’re very courageous and it’s real journalism,” Kennedy said in an interview with NBC News this summer.
[…] The Epoch Times was a “supporting sponsor” for this year’s conference. [Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC] […]
As a nonprofit, The Epoch Times is exempt from most federal taxes. Its mission, according to tax filings, is independent journalism, “outside of political interests and the pursuit of profit, for the public benefit and to be truly responsible to society.” [Blatant bullshit]
[…] Epoch Times representatives also deny an affiliation with Falun Gong, despite the two groups’ clear financial and organizational ties: The Epoch Times board members and most staff are Falun Gong practitioners. The nonprofits behind The Epoch Times and Friends of Falun Gong, the movement’s advocacy organization, share executives and provide grants and services to each other, according to tax filings. And the newspaper, along with a digital production company and the heavily advertised dance troupe Shen Yun, make up a nonprofit network that the leader of the religious movement calls “our media.”
In 2009, Li Hongzhi came to speak to his followers, volunteers who worked at The Epoch Times’ offices in Manhattan. Li’s instructions for the group were simple. They needed to reach people outside of the Falun Gong religious community. And they needed to make money. A lot of it.
[…] To his followers, Li is a God-like figure who can levitate, walk through walls and see into the future. His ultra-conservative and controversial teachings include a rejection of modern science, art and medicine, and a denunciation of homosexuality, feminism and general worldliness.
[…] By 2019, it had gone mostly digital and was spending millions of dollars on creating a network of Facebook pages and groups and running aggressive pro-Trump ad campaigns. The move toward explicit support of Republicans, despite Li’s teachings to stay away from U.S. politics, was foreshadowed by Li’s comments at a Falun Gong conference a year before.
Li said that Falun Gong’s media ought to put a “constructive” spin on the news, to advance the group’s aims. It wasn’t wrong, he said, to favorably cover a politician who shared Falun Gong’s conservative values and whose goals aligned with their own.
[…] The Epoch Times also employed a tactic more often associated with fake news content farms and scammers than news organizations, creating a network of inspiring and cute-content pages and fake accounts to inflate The Epoch Times’ reach.
In 2019, following reporting by NBC News, Facebook found that The Epoch Times had “leveraged foreign actors posing as Americans to push political content” […]
The aggressive online and real-life marketing campaigns paid off. The group reported $76 million in subscription revenue in 2021, compared to nearly $7 million in 2019. A former employee of a regional Epoch Times operation who asked not to be identified because he feared retribution said that in order to send the papers to the most likely customers, they bought lists of addresses from data brokers, specifically for conservatives aged 60 and over. And many of the new subscribers are seniors […]
As The Epoch Times’ marketing strategy shifted, so did the content — and by 2020, it became a megaphone for the U.S.’s most extreme right-wing stories.
[…] The Epoch Times’ subscription page began hosting glowing testimonials from Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck and the far-right Arizona congressman Paul Gosar. The organization became a reliable source for misinformation around Covid, its treatments and the vaccines.
[…] Months after the election, The Epoch Times refused to acknowledge the results. […] in 2020 the group started to receive gifts and grants from big money conservative donors.
[…] In the first half of this year, The Epoch Times spent 65% more on ads than in the first six months of 2022, with about half of its budget going to the X platform, formerly Twitter […] Other recent ad buys were made on the right-wing sites Drudge Report, Breitbart and Rumble.
[snipped details about The Epoch Times shelling out money to hire previously reputable journalists, and the way in which a lot of balderdash articles written by others are mixed in]
[…] “The Epoch Times is a comment on how much credibility is put in things with the right look and feel. Things like naming, branding and headlines,” said Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University. “The forms and formats of news are there. But the actual goods are not.”
Rosen called The Epoch Times a sign of the times — one in which the public sphere is fractured and conservative media is ready to offer alternate realities. […] “When there is the demand for something to be true, these media properties go out and meet it.”
[…] The Epoch Times generally outperformed its conservative peers, including Newsmax and The Daily Caller.
[…] Internationally, the media outlet also continues to grow, hiring in Canada, Sweden, Norway and other European countries where it is cementing itself as a trusted source among the global far-right.
[…] Today was the day for Jim Jordan’s one day Speakership. Jordan hasn’t thrown in the towel, as Scalise did. But if I’m reading things right it’s as over him as it was for Scalise.
Today, with Scalise out, Jordan scrambled to pull together 217 votes. He failed. At mid-day Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, who I’d literally never heard of before, decided that he might as well run. So in the afternoon the GOP caucus held another vote and it was Jordan 124 to Scott’s 81. (Needless to say, Scott was functioning as a stand-in for opposition to Jordan.) Jordan then asked for another vote with just him where the question was not whether members supported him but whether they would vote him on the floor of the House since he was the GOP nominee. He got 152 votes – 55 votes short. The House eventually decided they’d put in a hard day’s work and recessed until Monday.
The upshot of the last ten days of nonsense appears to be that McCarthy, Scalise and Jordan each have a significant group of members now committed to never, ever voting for them for Speaker under any circumstances. […]
after today I’m for the first time thinking that this may end in some kind of cross-party agreement with the Democrats to elect a new Speaker. It’s difficult to convey the sheer weight of factors arrayed against such an outcome. But the first time it seems like there may literally be no way to elect a Speaker with Republican votes alone. And that leaves only one alternative.
That would leave the question of what Republicans could possibly offer and what Democrats could plausibly accept to effect such a compromise. […] perhaps the key power of the Speakership is what gets a vote and what doesn’t. There’s overwhelming support in the House for Ukraine aide. But a relatively small number of hardliners are preventing such a vote from even happening. That is despite the fact that between 2/3rds and 3/4s of the House would vote for it. The various debt ceiling and government shutdown standoffs can only happen because the GOP Speaker can’t risk accepting a compromise that passes with Democratic votes. Of course, McCarthy ended up doing that twice, at the very, very, very last moment. And that’s why he’s gone.
In other words, what I’m talking about is a way that the minority could force votes in these cases when a majority or in many cases an overwhelming majority supports a bill. How you actually make such a concession operative in parliamentary rule-making I really don’t know. But in principle something like that seems like a concession that would be worth Democrats lending their votes to elect a Republican Speaker.
[…] there’s been no Speaker for going on two weeks.
[…] There’s a possibility of speaker votes on Monday evening, but that assumes Jordan can actually overcome a big deficit over the weekend. He’s such a divisive figure, even within his own conference, it’s hard to imagine he can do it. […]
I suspect there will be a lot of Republicans who won’t have their phones with them this weekend, trying to stay out of his and his team’s reach.
It’s great to see the unity among Dems, but also to see how many of them stuck around late on a Friday to guard against any GOP shenanigans on the floor, any attempt for Jordan to sneak by them.
Too bad this had to come late on a Friday, but it really is a great display of unity on the part of Democrats. Aguilar speaking about Jordan as a “threat to our democracy…our national security…. He has one objective: hurt President Biden and help Trump.”
“Every Republican who casts their vote for him is siding with an insurrectionist against our democracy,” Clark says.
[…] This is going to be a main talking point for Dems: Jordan “has not passed a single bill” in his congressional career, because he’s been too committed to partisan politics. [Jordan has had a long career in the House, going back to Boehner’s days as Speaker.]
[Liz Cheny posted]
Jim Jordan was involved in Trump’s conspiracy to steal the election and seize power; he urged that Pence refuse to count lawful electoral votes. If Rs nominate Jordan to be Speaker, they will be abandoning the Constitution. They’ll lose the House majority and they’ll deserve to.
Australia’s referendum on giving our Indigenous First Nations Peoples a Voice to Parliament is on today. See :
The nation is bound for the ballot box today to cast their vote in a historic referendum that could shape the country for generations to come, but the path to this poll has been a rocky one.
Today all Australians will have to decide if they support changing the constitution to “recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice”.
If the majority of Australians in the majority of states vote Yes to this referendum, a new chapter will be inserted into the constitution.
The government of the day will then have the power to bring into law an Indigenous committee to advise the parliament and executive on issues that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
One possible conclusion from the clusterfuck in the House is that having the proceedings of an elected assembly controlled by an explicitly partisan officer isn’t such a great idea.
KGsays
The right has won the election in New Zealand, but the main party of the right, National, will (if I interpret the linked article correctly – it’s not entirely clear) need the support of two others (the bonkers “libertarian” ACT and the politically incoherent New Zealand First) for a majority (just – National+ACT would be one seat short). The Greens, who are to the left of Labour, increased their vote-share and seats.
Quinn Mitchell, a 15-year-old political enthusiast, was kicked out of an event put on by the New Hampshire State Republican Party that featured appearances by a number of Republican presidential hopefuls, the Boston Globe reported. Mitchell has met dozens of presidential candidates over the past four years, and he made headlines for a testy exchange with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis after which Mitchell said he was physically intimidated by DeSantis security. A month later, Mitchell found himself being escorted out of another GOP event by five police officers after filming videos of Republican Perry Johnson. “They told me I was being a disruption, I was taking a video like anybody else,” Mitchell told the Globe. Mitchell, who was later spotted back at the event less than an hour after his removal, addressed the situation on X: “Believe me if I disrupted a event my mom would never ever take me to another one – not my style.”
StevoR @205, thank you for keeping us up to date on the vote to “recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice”.
Brony @204, I think DeSantis is just trying to sound like he has a really big plan when he really is just supporting sending a charter plane to Israel to help evacuate Americans.
A judge presiding over Rudy Giuliani’s damages trial penalized the lawyer Friday for his “continued and flagrant” disregard of court order.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the decision means jurors will be told that Giuliani intentionally hid financial documents and other records in defiance of court orders.
“Giuliani’s continued and flagrant disregard of this Court’s August 30 Order that he produce financial-related documents concerning his personal and his businesses’ past and present assets, revenues, income, viewership metrics, and social media, all of which information is potentially pertinent at the upcoming damages trial,” Howell wrote…
It finally happened. The political media class has figured out a way to fault Democrats for the Republicans’ self-created Speaker of the House mess.
The morning after House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s announcement that he was dropping out of the speaker’s race, CNN political analyst David Gregory wondered on Friday how long Democrats would “stand by in the world of identity politics” before becoming “part of the solution.” …
Boy, we really covered ourselves in glory this week, didn’t we? As a species? Hey evolution, if you’re listening, next time ‘round, let the sense of right and wrong simmer a little longer, before you start distributing opposable thumbs.
Not since she swapped her family name for a fleeting sniff of power has RNC Chairdolt Ronna Definitelynotromney seen such a “great opportunity” as the one presented by Hamas’ barbaric terrorist incursion into Israel. I suppose that’s just the sort of thing one says once the moral decay finally rots out the last remaining corner of one’s soul.
Republicans certainly seized the “opportunity,” giddily spreading lies like “It took Biden days to say he stands with Israel,” and “Biden personally delivered $6 billion in unmarked bills to Gaza in a ‘76 Camaro.” Wingnut media spent one particularly fruitful afternoon collectively pretending the White House calling a “lid” meant “Joe n’ Hunter got an 8 ball and rented all the Police Academy movies while the world burned.”
If you’re trying to figure out what’s actually going on in the world, stay the fuck off (the hellsite formerly known as) Twitter, now that the world’s second-most-destructive billionaire narcissist has transformed the once essential source of up-to-the-moment, on the ground news into an unnavigable quagmire of malignant misinformation.
Elon himself elected to steer his 160 million followers to known liars and anti-Semites, which he has instructed his lawyers to blame on the ADL.
Seems like a particularly healthy time for Texas Republicans to grapple with the not-at-all-difficult question of whether or not it is desirable to associate with, accept political donations from, and/or plan miniature golf outings alongside white supremacists.
Actually, Republicans’re flunking this extremely basic test of fundamental human decency all over the place, as demonstrated by the following roundup of totally normal, exceptionally healthy, not-at-all-terrifying headlines:
White supremacist group delivers show of force for Franklin mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson
Charlie Kirk hosts white nationalist writer Steve Sailer to attack minorities
Ex-Trump official called for purging Jews from media using pseudonym
And my personal favorite:
Trump Doral event with Eric Trump will feature a Hitler-promoting antisemite who killed someone
Now, as a general rule, I don’t like to shit on the Left here, but I need to take a minute to shit on the Left here, because many of the self-proclaimed progessivest progressives in all the land decided to climb atop the highest of horses to declare that Murdering Children is Good, Actually, Because Colonization or Some Shit, and Anyway How Many Children’re We Really Talking About Here, which is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad take. Y’all can cleanse the entire length of my colon with your paraglider memes.
Praising terrorists looks like lonely work, (as it fucking well should be) but you little creeps can cuddle up under the covers with your new bedfellow: Donald J. Trump, who agreed that Hamas and Hezbollah are “very smart,” […]
[…] one thing that sure would come in handy is a Congress capable of passing laws or confirming appointments or other such Congressy things, but alas, there’re far too many Republicans for that.
Yes, it’s SpeakerBowl 2023: Part Deux in the House That Gaetz Broke, and while this boondoggle certainly would’ve been plenty insufferable even without Nancy Mace triggering flashbacks of mandatory high school Hawthorne, you have to respect her devotion to traditional Republican self-beclowning rituals.
Steve “David Duke without the whip count” Scalise defeated Gym Jordan on the initial closed-door secret ballot, which might’ve meant something in a culture less devoted to the principle of loser supremacy. Jordan dead-enders found Scalise’s history with white supremacists enticing, but ultimately decided only an election-denying, subpoena-defying, abuse-enabler would do, so Steve scampered away without putting up a fight. Leadership!
Jordan narrowly edged late entrant Congressman Alreadyforgothisname (R-Someplace, surely) in a second round of voting on Friday afternoon, only to faceplant on the follow-up ballot, where he asked his colleagues to please, please refrain from doing to him what he just did Scalise, falling a whopping 65 votes short of the 217 required to win a majority on the House floor […]
Anyway, they’ve gone home for the weekend, to plot against one another, and maybe flip through The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Running a Congressional Majority…those that can read, anyhow.
(Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy lurks in the background, holding a half-eaten box of stale Valentine’s chocolates, upon which he has scribbled “Settle 4 Me Maybe?”)
Apparent baby thief George Santos landed himself a superseding indictment, and now faces a nearly Trumpworthy 23 federal counts, including wire fraud, access device fraud, sweater fraud, falsifying records, […] identity theft, and conspiring with Nicolas Cage to steal the Declaration of Independence. A few New York Republicans finally introduced a resolution to expel the little twerp, but his party’s more likely to approve one allowing members to complete their terms from prison.
Speaking of superseding indictments, seems soon-to-be-ex-New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez operated as an unregistered agent of the Egyptian government while chairing the Foreign Relations Committee. Allegedly. Unlike in certain political parties I could mention, it appears Bob’s (alleged) crimes’re having a negative impact on his future political prospects. What a concept!
[…] Well, after his blathering quackery failed to gain traction in the non-death cult party’s primary, RFK Jr. dropped out to run as an independent, and suddenly all the right-wing ratfuckers realized a Jill Stein, But For Anti-Vaxxers option on the ballot would only divide the coalition of the deranged, so out came the knives. […]
So, yeah…it’s pretty fucking gross out there, and I hope you and your loved ones figure out some way to stay safe n’ sane. […] Go think about something else for a few days, you deserve it.
A Japanese teen broke and set a new Guinness World Record in July for “most revolutions in a single skip – rope skipping.”
What happened: Kirato Hidaka, a 15-year-old student at the Kawanishi Junior High School in Yamaguchi City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, performed an impressive octuple-under in jump rope on July 17.
The feat was reportedly observed by Ehime Jump Rope Association judges at the school’s gymnasium, according to The Yomiuri Shimbun…
Details excerpted from the timeline posted by The New York Times:
The 10 gunmen from Gaza knew exactly how to find the Israeli intelligence hub — and how to get inside.
After crossing into Israel, they headed east on five motorcycles, two gunmen on each vehicle, shooting at passing civilian cars as they pressed forward.
Ten miles later, they veered off the road into a stretch of woodland, dismounting outside an unmanned gate to a military base. They blew open the barrier with a small explosive charge, entered the base and paused to take a group selfie. Then they shot dead an unarmed Israeli soldier dressed in a T-shirt.
For a moment, the attackers appeared uncertain about where to go next. Then one of them pulled something from his pocket: a color-coded map of the complex.
Reoriented, they found an unlocked door to a fortified building. Once inside, they entered a room filled with computers — the military intelligence hub. Under a bed in the room, they found two soldiers taking shelter.
The gunmen shot both dead.
This sequence was captured on a camera mounted on the head of a gunman who was later killed. The New York Times reviewed the footage, then verified the events by interviewing Israeli officials and checking Israeli military video of the attack as well. […]
Using drones, Hamas destroyed key surveillance and communications towers along the border with Gaza, imposing vast blind spots on the Israeli military. With explosives and tractors [and bulldozers], Hamas blew open gaps in the border barricades, allowing 200 attackers to pour through in the first wave and another 1,800 later that day, officials say. On motorcycles and in pickup trucks, the assailants surged into Israel, overwhelming at least eight military bases and waging terrorist attacks against civilians in more than 15 villages and cities.
Hamas planning documents, videos of the assault and interviews with security officials show that the group had a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of how the Israeli military operated, where it stationed specific units, and even the time it would take for reinforcements to arrive.
[…] The parents grabbed a chair, and wedged it under the door handle — making it harder to open.
They dragged a small cabinet, and pressed it against the chair.
Then they waited. There was an army base next to the village. Its troops would be here within minutes, Ms. Cherry remembered thinking.
What she didn’t know was that many of them were already dead.
All along the border, the Hamas gunmen had already overrun most, if not all, of the Israeli border bases.
Footage from the attackers’ head-mounted cameras, including the video of the raid on the intelligence hub, showed Hamas gunmen — from its highly trained Nukhba brigade — smashing through the barricades of several bases in the first light of the morning.
After breaching, they were merciless, gunning down some soldiers in their beds and underwear. In several bases, they knew exactly where the communications servers were and destroyed them, according to a senior Israeli army officer.
[…] In many cases, they were unable to protect themselves, let alone the surrounding civilian villages.
[…] the attackers were organized into well-defined units with clear goals and battle plans.
[…] the attack had been planned for at least a year.
[…] The attack by Hamas had unleashed a violent free-for-all. Some residents of Gaza had poured over the undefended border after it was breached, at times streaming what they were doing on their phones. Gazans were looting and ransacking homes, taking computers, clothes, crockery, televisions and phones, survivors said.
[…] Near Kibbutz Reim, General Goldfus said he ran into another senior commander by chance. Like him, the officer had rushed to the scene on instinct, without any instructions, and had assembled a small group of soldiers.
There and then, the two men came up with their own ad hoc strategy.
“There’s no orders here,” General Goldfus said. “I said: ‘You take from this place and further south — and I’ll take from this place and further north.’”
That was how some of the Israeli counterattack took place: soldiers or civilian volunteers — including retired generals in their 60s — rushing to the region and doing what they could.
[…] Israel Ziv, a former general, reached a nearby battle in his Audi.
Yair Golan, a retired deputy chief of staff and former leftist lawmaker, said he took a gun and began rescuing survivors of a massacre at a rave, who were hiding in nearby bushes.
[…] The intelligence hub near Gaza was one of the first places to be recaptured by Israel.
In the late morning, soldiers and reservists from different units reached the base from separate directions, overpowering the 10 Gazan gunmen who had filmed their deadly assault on video.
[…] In other parts of southern Israel, the first formal reinforcements came from an Israeli commando unit that arrived in helicopters, according to the senior Israeli officer.
[…] They were followed by other special operations units, including Israeli navy seals and a reconnaissance unit trained to operate deep inside enemy lines, rather than on Israeli soil.
Sometimes, the commandos joined forces with volunteers without body armor who had rushed into the fray to rescue family members.
Noam Tibon, a former general, drove south with his pistol to try to retake Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where his son, Amir, a journalist, was trapped. […]
[…] The outcome was a staggering series of atrocities and massacres […]
It shattered Israel’s aura of invincibility and provoked an Israeli counterattack on Gaza that has killed more than 1,900 Palestinians in a week, the ferocity of which has never been seen in Gaza.
It also upended assumptions that Hamas had gradually become more interested in running Gaza than in using it to launch major assaults on Israel. […]
“I’m having a hard time — I really am,” he said while touring a Charleston metal stamping plant. “The two-party system, unless it changes, will be the downfall of our country.” …
“Don’t worry about the ‘D’ or the ‘R’, worry about the person — who is that person?” said Manchin, who was a Democratic secretary of state and governor of West Virginia. “There can be a good D and a bad D and a good R and a bad R, but the identity — I like more the independent identity.”..
Sure, you’re always taking a chance; but currently only one of the two major parties is openly courting craziness, and welcoming it into their fold.
Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg’s testimony came to a screeching and unexpected halt Thursday afternoon just hours after a Forbes writer accused him of perjuring himself during an earlier day on the witness stand, The Messenger reports. Weisselberg testified Tuesday that he “never focused” on calculating the square footage of former President Donald Trump’s three-floor penthouse in an effort to distance himself from Trump’s false computation, which sized the property nearly three times greater than its actual square footage.
On Thursday, however, Forbes’ senior editor Dan Alexander reported that emails and reporter notes not currently in the New York attorney general’s possession contradict Weisselberg’s testimony. “Weisselberg absolutely thought about Trump’s apartment—and played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years that it was worth more than it really was,” Alexander wrote, adding that considering their discussions continued for years and the ex-CFO was very hands-on, “it defies all logic to think he truly believes what he is now saying in court.” …
This meme again. I agree that the House Republicans are doing a horrible job, but a consequence of this is that only zillionaires would be able to serve in Congress. No one actually depending on their congressional paycheck could afford it.
In the history of warfare, major wars can often be characterized as “offensive wars” and “defensive wars,” where either the attacker or the defender have a significant advantage.
Offensive wars can see rapid results and major exchanges of territory in short periods of time, as offensive tactics, technologies, or organization can nullify the advantages of defensive fortifications or terrain to the point where short decisive field battles determine the swings of fortune for vast areas of terrain.
Alexander’s campaigns, the Napeolonic battlefield, World War II are examples where field fortifications, while still important, took on a distinctly secondary role in strategic and operational movements.
Defensive wars are different. Fortifications themselves can become as important and famous as entire armies, because of the important the influence that they exert on strategic thinking. The French fortress-city of Orleans during the Hundred Years War, Hill 203 of the Russo-Japanese War, Verdun of World War I.
The pendulum of offensive and defensive balance swings constantly throughout history, and at different times, new advances and innovations have brought the importance of fortifications in and out of vogue.
There is now strong evidence that the Russo-Ukrainian War is a defensive war.
On October 11th, 2023, Russia launched a large scale multi-battalion offensive both north and south of Avdiivka, a town northwest of the major city of Donetsk. [map at the link]
As Russian forces have been attempting to do since even before the full scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia is aiming to encircle Avdiivka from the north and south. Russia committed numerous armored forces towards this effort for the past three days. [maps at the link]
Intense Russian artillery, rocket and armored attacks were thrown at heavily fortified Ukrainian positions. Even Russian sources agree that Russian losses have been significant, with a flood of videos showing burning wreckages of Russian armored vehicles. According to the visually verified count maintained by open source intelligence analyst Andrew Perpetua, Russia has lost at least 31 tanks and 54 armored infantry vehicles over the last several days. Ukraine claims to have destroyed over 200 Russian armored vehicles.
While Russia appeared to make some early gains particularly on the northern flank, Ukrainian counterattacks appear to have recovered most of Russian gains, in particular the “pile of mining waste” captured by Russian forces on the first day. By October 13th, Russian gains appear to have amounted a single treeline north of Avdiivka, advancing about 200 meters.
Even Russian sources agree the fighting has devolved into “battles for forester’s huts”.
An advance of 200 meters in 3 days amounts to around 65 meters per day, which would be a comparative blitzkrieg compared to what the Russian Army accomplished at Bakhmut.
Russia secured the key town of Popasna, east of Bakhmut on May 22nd, 2022. Russian troops captured Pokrovske, just east of Bakhmut by July 27, 2022. Russia was just 5 kilometers from the eastern edge of Bakhmut, and needed to advance just 14km to fully capture Bakhmut. [map at the link]
Russia would not declare the capture of the city until May 20th, 2023. It was 293 days later. Russia averaged just 48 meters per day to cover those 14 kilometers.
Ukraine’s advances in its offensive towards Tokmak has been significantly faster, but not by a huge margin. Ukraine faced a formidable array of defenses against what has been called the largest fortifications constructed in Europe since WWII. [map at the link]
Ukraine made slow but steady progress, breaching a portion of the first line around Robotyne in late June, liberating Robotyne on August 27 before fully breaching a portion of the second line of defense west of Verbove by Sept. 21. [map at the link]
Since then, Ukraine has unleashed a fierce barrage at Russian positions, setting off a firestorm on Russian-held territory greater than anything NASA FIRMS satellite data has detected in the war thus far. FIRMS was designed to track forest fires, but it it has become a handy tool to track war fires as well. The graph below tracks the intensity of war-related fires in Ukraine. Red is for fires in Russian-held territory, thus a result of Ukrainian artillery, and blue is fires on Ukrainian-held territory. As you can see, the ferocity of Ukraine’s fires today far outpace anything Russia delivered at any time in the war, including the very beginning when it enjoyed unchallenged artillery superiority. [Graphs at the link]
Despite this intense barrage of artillery fires, Ukraine has made only some minor territorial gains towards Kopani west of Robotyne. Attacks appear to be more of a probing nature, as no major losses of Ukrainian armored assets en masse have been noted on public tracking OSINT sources like Oryx (which means that Russia doesn’t have such video to disseminate).
Russia blunted Ukrainian progress by moving the 76th Guards Air Assault Division from the Eastern Front to the Robotyne area in early September. The 76th GAAD is one of Russia’s few remaining elite pre-war units, with its original and well trained forces still mostly intact.
In early October, Russia successfully managed to rotate out exhausted elements of the 291st and 71st Motor Rifle Regiments, as well as significant elements of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division. American think tank ISW assessed that heavy losses had rendered many of these units combat ineffective, and thus required rest and reconstituting with replacement troops. In their place, Russia rotated in fresh VDV troops from the 7th and 76th Airborne Divisions.
This operational rotation was both good news and bad news for Ukraine. On the one hand, the rotation demonstrated that Ukraine was dealing significant losses upon the Russian defenders in the advance toward Tokmak. Unfortunately, it also meant that Russia still had reserves to plug any gaps, something that some analysts had come to doubt.
As such, Ukraine’s advances have slowed. [maps at the link]
With fresh Russian reinforcements bolstering the front, Ukrainian is using its artillery firepower advantage to degrade those fresh and stronger Russian units. It takes time to weaken their armored and artillery assets before any attempts at larger scale assaults can proceed.
Still, Ukraine’s pace toward Tokmak is currently averaging around 90 meters/day, almost twice as fast as the Russian advance towards Bakhmut (48 meters/day). Still, while Ukraine’s pace of advance matches that of the allies in WWI, it’s clear that changing battlefield trends and technologies are reshaping what is possible, and how quickly it can be done.
Popular analyst Tatarigami_UA who writes on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter and known as a Ukrainian intelligence officer, provided a detailed analysis of how drones have transformed the effect of minefields. (Those without an X account can read the full thread here on Threadreader) [embedded links at the main link]
In particular, Tatarigami_UA notes:
In previous wars, it was easier to approach the enemy at close proximity without being easily detected. However, the element of surprise has diminished significantly due to the constant presence of drones, which easily detect any approaching mine-clearing vehicles.
Essentially, an attacker trying to assault an area defended by a minefield could count on the enemy being unable to keep 100% or even large portions of the minefield under surveillance at any given time. A combat engineering team could clear mines unmolested before coming under counterattack.
Today, drones can keep most of front line under constant surveillance, making any attack dramatically more difficult. We haven’t just seen it around Robotyne, but we’re seeing it right now in Avdiivka.
So what can we expect going forwards?
First, artillery is king in static defensive wars.
The Russo-Japanese War and World War I were predominantly artillery wars, as dominant defensive structures must be weakened before any advance. Artillery is supreme in Ukraine, with 80% of all combat losses resulting from indirect fires, and a near absence of tank-on-tank engagements.
A key factor is training. Any barely trained soldiers can hold an assault rifle in a trench and present a formidable obstacle. Coordinating groups of soldiers assaulting enemy positions, however, requires well-trained infantry supported by armored vehicles like Tanks, IFVs and artillery. The alternative is the horrific losses experiences by Wagner mercenaries during their Bakhmut campaign. Neither side can sustain those kinds of losses anymore. [Tweet and video at the link, video has English subtitles]
Ukraine has a pipeline delivering trained soldiers at a constant and expanding rate.
By contrast, Russia has no adequate training structure for its mobilized and conscripted forces. Russia never developed a professional core of non-commissioned officers that perform key training duties in Western armies. Russia’s low-level officer corps has been heavily attrited, and Russia cannot spare thousands of officers it needs to staff the training centers necessary for a large-scale mobilization—or even to train adequate replacements.
Russian units have tried to compensate by intermixing “disposable” infantry that conduct near-suicidal probing attacks accompanied by massive artillery bombardments, before elite assault units attack and identified weak spots.
While this helped somewhat preserve Russia’s few remaining elite units, it has led to horrific casualties—and doesn’t entirely shield the dwindling supply of Russian elite troops for which there are no replacements.
This lack of training manifest in many ways, like the lead armored vehicle in an assault column at the Battle of Avdiivka falling off a bridge. [tweet and video at the link]
A Russian mortar crew trying to load a mortar round upside down. [Tweet and video at the link]
Or Russian artillery laying down devastating barrages on their own troops. [Tweet and video at the link, video has English subtitles]
Ill-trained conscripts can bolster Russian defenses, but Russian offensive power will continue to dwindle.
The utter inability of Russian forces to make any advances at all around Avdiivka shows the precipitous decline in Russian offensive power. These advantages may not translate to immediate large-scale gains like during Ukraine’s September 2022 Kharkiv Counteroffensive. But piece by piece, Ukraine is building up and demonstrating its advantages. For example, HIMARS rocket artillery launchers for the first time deployed close enough to the front line to target Russian train logistics south of Tokmak. [Tweet and video at the link]
As destruction of Russian material and logistics continues apace, Ukraine will continue to press its advantages in the Southern Theater. So long as the West continues to commit to long term aid for Ukraine, Ukraine’s small advantages will gradually widen into larger ones.
[…] According to an opinion poll taken on Sunday by Agam Research, an Israeli company, 45 per cent of Israeli Jews now fear for their personal safety and 70 per cent fear for the country’s security. Opinion polls released by the Maariv daily showed Netanyahu’s Likud party losing more than a third of its previous support. […]
The survey, published by Maariv newspaper on Friday and carried out by Lazar Research in partnership with Panel4All, showed opposition parties would win a crushing majority against Netanyahu’s coalition if elections were held now.
Of the roughly 600 people surveyed, 48% said [Benny] Gantz was their preferred prime minister, while 29% chose Netanyahu. […]
The deadly violence between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas is putting Iranian oil under the microscope.
Republicans in particular are calling for more action to restrict this key source of income for Iran, whose decades-long backing of Hamas has come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of the group’s attack on Israel last weekend.
Former President Trump has sought to use the issue as a cudgel against his likely 2024 rival, accusing President Biden of allowing Iran “to sell massive amounts of oil” while speaking to supporters in Florida.
“Under my leadership, Iran was weak and broke and desperate for love,” Trump said. “And now they’re rich as hell.”
Fellow GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis told Fox News he would “move very quickly to shut off flows of money to Iran, the oil money is a big part for them.
”
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told NBC the U.S. should “stop Iran from being able to produce the oil.”
He particularly called for sanctions enforcement, saying that sanctions aren’t currently being enforced. The Biden administration has pushed back on such assertions, saying it is enforcing its sanctions against Iran.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went even further, telling NewsNation this week that if the conflict escalates, “we should tell the Ayatollah we will destroy your oil refineries and your oil infrastructure.”
[For the most part, this sounds to me like Republicans simple seizing on the latest opportunity to promote war against Iran. That’s what they always do.]
Iran has long backed Hamas, a political and military group that governs Gaza and has been designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization.
However, as of Friday, U.S. officials had not linked Iran to planning the specific attacks Hamas launched on Israel last weekend.
Deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told “Good Morning America” earlier in the week that while “Iran is broadly complicit in these attacks for having supported Hamas going back decades,” there’s currently “no evidence of direct support” for this specific attack.
[…] Iranian oil production and exports have risen during the Biden administration as compared to the Trump administration, according to experts — though they said U.S. sanctions enforcement may have played little role in that increase.
[…] as of January, Iran was producing 2.55 million barrels per day.
Data from the company TankerTrackers.com, which tracks oil shipments, also shows growth in Iranian exports in recent months.
Exports, which measure oil that actually leaves the country, were at about 1.6 million barrels of oil per day last month, according to the company. This is up from as low as 1.2 million barrels per day earlier this year. The company said these figures are higher than they were under the Trump administration but lower than in the last year of the Obama administration.
Hittle, however, said growth in oil production and exports does not necessarily point to a lack of sanctions enforcement. She said she believes any increases have more to do with the demand for oil in countries like China that buy Iranian oil despite U.S. sanctions.
“The sanctions are very stringent and there are no buyers except for countries that are able and willing to work out barter agreements with Iran,” she said. “The sanctions are working but there are enough buyers available and Iran’s oil is discounted enough that it becomes attractive.”
[…] “Iran has been discounting its oil pretty heavily and so Chinese buyers have been taking it,” Cahill [Ben Cahill, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies] said, noting a lot of these buyers are smaller, independent refiners.
“They’re just harder to target because they really don’t have exposure to the U.S. financial system,” he added.
[…] Biden administration officials have insisted they are enforcing their sanctions on Iranian oil. Yet, they have also signaled further action may be in the cards.
[…] the U.S. could target countries that are buying Iranian oil directly to try to pressure them to stop.
[…] Ten Republican senators signed a letter on Tuesday that called on President Biden to take coordinated action with other G7 letters to “further isolate Iran with severe sanctions.”
There have also been some calls, particularly from Biden’s rivals, to step up U.S. oil production. Republicans have repeatedly argued that the Biden administration’s energy and climate policies discourage domestic energy production.
However, U.S. oil production hit an all-time high earlier this month.
Welcome to another edition of the Blue State Special — the weekly feature we get around to doing once a month or so. It’s a chance to point out there are a bunch of states where Democratic governors and legislatures are doing neat stuff, even if they don’t get the sort of media attention that governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer do. So without any further ado, let’s take a look at Illinois, where Gov. JB Pritzker and the Democratic supermajorities in both houses of th Legislature) have done a heck of a lot of stuff we can definitely call “neat.”
Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune, is officially the richest person holding office in the US, which of course he also was when fake-billionaire Donald Trump was in the White House. But because Pritzker appears to be genuinely not evil, he’ll probably get a pass from the coming “Eat the Rich” laws. He spends bigly on electing Democrats nationwide, including himself, and while that’s good for getting Dems elected, it’s no substitute for a really strong public campaign funding law […]
Because he’s a big mover and shaker in national Democratic politics, Pritzker has been the focus of speculation that he might run for president, not to mention some silly drooling that he’s just waiting to jump into the 2024 race if only Joe Biden dropped out and then Kamala Harris did too, which is more levels of what-ifs than we want to bother with. […] Pritzker seems mostly happy doing the power broker thing and offering Biden his enthusiastic support, plus some advice now and then, like last year when he urged Biden to be more vocal about abortion rights in the lead-up to the midterms. Biden has certainly thanked Pritzker for his generous campaign spending, and the two frequently talk on the phone.
Let’s talk policies! A few highlights, and if we missed some, it’s because we live in Idaho and it’s Saturday morning:
Guns
Pritzker made headlines last year following the mass shooting at the Fourth of July Parade in Highland Park when he said,
“If you are angry today, I’m here to tell you to be angry. I’m furious. I’m furious that yet more innocent lives were taken by gun violence. I’m furious that their loved ones are forever broken by what took place today. I’m furious that children and their families have been traumatized. I’m furious that this is happening in communities all across Illinois and America. I’m furious because it does not have to be this way and yet we as a nation, well, we continue to allow this to happen. While we celebrate the 4th of July just once a year, mass shootings have become our weekly — yes, weekly — American tradition.”
Pritzker and the General Assembly followed that up with action, including a ban on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, which was upheld by the state supreme court in August, although Crom only knows what will happen when the Trump-McConnell federal courts inevitably get their bloodstained hands on it.
In May 2022, Pritzker also signed a ban on “ghost guns,” and this year he signed a bill to prohibit ads marketing guns to kids and militants, who one hopes are different groups.
Nonetheless, wingnuts nationwide will continue to say “but what about Chicago?” in arguments over gun restrictions until the heat death of the universe, completely ignoring that most guns banned in the city come from nearby states with lax gun laws, with others originating from firearms shops elsewhere in Illinois, or in thefts from “responsible” gun owners who didn’t secure the damned things.
Legal Cannabis
Illinois legalized cannabis sales at licensed dispensaries as of January 1, 2020, with similar limits to other states, and the expected boost in tax revenue too. Heck, this is one of those things that’s almost de rigueur in blue states now, innit? Pritzker has also followed that by pardoning thousands of people convicted of low-level marijuana offenses, and the state seeks to expunge such convictions from criminal records, too. Critics are not 100 percent delighted with the state’s efforts to pursue social equity goals in the awarding of dispensary licenses, however. So hey, opportunity to improve that!
Education ‘N’ Family
Whole bunch of neat stuff for schools and families in Illinois, in Axios bullet-list style!
– Mandatory paid family leave of up to 40 days per year.
– A ban on book banning, hell yes. Starting in 2024, schools that don’t adopt strong protections of the freedom to read will lose a chunk of state funding.
– New protections against bullying.
– Full-day kindergarten, to be offered in most Illinois public schools starting with the 2027-28 school year.
– An August 2023 law requiring schools to take concrete actions to measure and address childhood trauma, with requirements for school staff to learn and respond to signs of mental illness, trauma, and suicidal thinking, with particular emphasis on “trauma informed teaching” and addressing the higher rates of trauma experienced by children of color and those living in poverty.
– More resources to assist grandparents who serve as children’s primary caregivers.
Abortion Rights And LGBTQ+ Protections
This summer, Pritzker also signed new protections for LGBTQ+ rights, including a sweeping rewrite of the language in foster care laws to make sure they’re gender-inclusive, and legislation to make it easier for LGBTQ+ couples to marry. In 2021, Pritzker issued broad guidance protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ students in schools, including protections from harassment and the right to use the restroom or play on sports teams appropriate to a student’s identified gender.
In addition, Illinois passed a law in January protecting gender-affirming care, abortion, and reproductive healthcare rights; like several other states’ protections, it prohibits state agencies from cooperating with other states’ efforts to prosecute people who travel to Illinois for reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare. […]
We’re sure that Illinois is doing all sorts of other great stuff too, but as we say, it’s Saturday and we don’t have all damn day […]
If your kids are like most kids, they probably want to go trick-or-treating on Halloween this year. But have you considered getting them exorcised? Well, if you live in Tennessee, that will be an option for you, as MAGA Pastor Greg Locke will be performing a mass exorcism of children, to rid them of demonic forces. What a normal and non-traumatizing way to spend an evening!
Not only that, Pastor Locke and his wife Tai (who was his secretary until he divorced his other wife a few years ago […]) will be hosting a very exciting bonfire of “occult objects.”
The announcement on Instagram reads:
On Halloween night, we will be doing two very important things….
1. We will be conducting a mass deliverance service for children. Parents, don’t miss this opportunity to pray for the freedom and healing of your children. 95% of the adults we deal with In deliverance ministry have been under attack since they were kids. This will be a powerful move of the Lord.
2. We will once again be burning all things related to witchcraft and the occult. Ask the Lord to show you what’s in your home that needs to be removed. I can assure you, there are some items that must go.
Who among us would not just kill to find out what they come to that bonfire with? I bet you they all just cheat and run out to Home Goods and raid the Halloween sale section, grabbing all the gold skull soap pumps (I actually bought three, they’re super cute), Ouija Board kitchen floor mats and bat shaped ice cube trays they can find.
I would also love to know how people would know they were under attack from demons since childhood. How does this work? Are they the same demons or different demons? Is it that you get a couple of demons when you are a kid and then those same demons just stay with you and attack you for your whole life, or one demon attacks you and then tells the other demons what a good time he had attacking you and then they all show up and you become the new demon hotspot?
Greg Locke does not explain!
Of course, if you can’t be there, you can still exorcise your own demons at home, with his handy dandy Deliverance Handbook (which, hopefully, will not teach anyone to squeal like a pig.)
Now, the whole thing is 51 pages long, so we’re not gonna be fisking that today, but check out some of these fascinating “renunciations” the people being exorcised are supposed to do:
• I renounce all lust, perversion, immorality, uncleanness, impurity, adultery, fornication, pornography, and all sexual sin in Jesus’ name.
• I renounce every form of witchcraft, all sorcery, all divination, and all occult involvement known or unknown in the name of Jesus.
• I renounce any affiliation with the Catholic Church and its idolatry. I refuse to justify paganism. I release myself and my family in Jesus’ name from any generational curse that I have received from any and all false religions.
Wow! This guy really hates Catholics — and in a very creepy way that has nothing to do with any legitimate criticism of the Catholic Church, but which also makes Catholicism seem very cool and fun.
He’s also very upset about Masons and thinks that if your ancestor was a mason, you’re going to be cursed, sick and infested with demons.
I renounce any connection, known or unknown, that I have to the Masonic Lodge. Any secret society oath made by me or my ancestors is rendered powerless. I lift every curse, sickness, and demon that has resulted from the evil of freemasonry. In Jesus’ name, this evil power is broken and cannot continue to attack me and my family.
Seems like a really nice and normal exorcism they’ve got there! It’d be a real shame if someone showed up dressed like Linda Blair […]
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what they are hailing as a consensus choice, House Republicans have nominated a college intern named Zach to be the new Speaker of the House.
The freshly minted G.O.P. nominee acknowledged that he was “kind of surprised” to be chosen as Speaker but said that he was “totally stoked about wielding that hammer.”
“I’m, like, whoa—all of a sudden, I’m Thor,” he said. “This is gonna be dope.”
Zach, who is taking a year off from his studies at the Northern University of Southern Florida, is well liked within the G.O.P. conference, insiders said.
“Zach never screws up our coffee orders,” one Republican congressman said. “You couldn’t say the same for Kevin McCarthy.”
Another Republican is prepared to throw his hat in the ring if GOP nominee Jim Jordan stumbles in his quest for the House speaker’s gavel.
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., a member of the GOP leadership team, plans to jump into the race if Jordan, R-Ohio, can’t secure the 217 votes needed on the House floor, according to a source familiar with the lawmaker’s plans…
When the Supreme Court ruled in 303 Creative v. Elenis in 2023 that a businessperson could not be compelled to create art that violates their religious beliefs – specifically, a wedding website for a same-sex ceremony – supporters of the decision celebrated it as a victory for freedom of religion and expression. [Nobody was asking the religious doofus to create that website, nor to create any other “art” that featured a same-sex ceremony. It was all a ploy to get the issue before the Court.]
On the day the ruling was issued, the conservative Family Research Council called it “the latest in a trend of victories for free speech and religious liberty,” while the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression hailed “a resounding victory for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience.”
But contrary to these claims, the Supreme Court’s decision does not protect the freedoms of all Americans. Rather, it represents the culmination of a decadelong strategy by conservative Christians – known sometimes as the Christian right – to use the courts to limit the freedoms of groups of Americans of whom they disapprove. On issues where the Christian right’s First Amendment claims directly threaten the equal citizenship of sexual minorities, for example, the court left no question about which side it was on.
As experts on religion and politics globally and in the United States, we think the effectiveness of this strategy has the potential to degrade both the quality of American democracy and freedoms of religion and expression.
The First Amendment protects a cluster of core rights and freedoms: religion, speech, press, peaceful assembly and petitioning the government.
The 303 Creative decision threatens to undermine this crucial set of rights by privileging a particular group’s version of what it means to exercise speech and religion. We believe that will have harmful consequences for sexual minorities’ pursuit of inclusion and full citizenship across a range of domains, from intimate behavior and expression to inclusion in the commercial and economic realms.
[…] By overturning these lower court decisions, the Supreme Court’s ruling upends this standard of human dignity as central to liberty. It may also encourage other groups to seek exemptions from anti-discrimination laws, thus depriving the government of a crucial tool to protect those who face intolerance.
[…] As Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the 303 Creative case makes clear, these burdens include one group of Americans being denied access to goods and services that are otherwise publicly available, and consequently, a loss of dignity for that group.
Sotomayor provides several concrete examples, including one about a gay man going to a funeral home and not being able to bury his husband. Thus his grief is compounded by humiliation based on his sexual orientation.
We are, of course, not the first to point out the tensions between religious freedom and democracy in American history. Anti-discrimination laws are one way to address these tensions because they can level the playing field among citizens of different faiths and between those with and without faith. Liberty pertains to both freedom of and freedom from religion.
But it is increasingly clear from the nation’s highest court that religious objections can invalidate these protections and provide intolerance with an end run around the law. Writing before the 303 Creative decision, one observer predicted a Pandora’s box of religious exemptions. That box now seems to be wide open.
Much more at the link, including an historical perspective.
[…] About 5% of the caucus unseated Kevin McCarthy. Then Steve Scalise won the caucus vote to be Speaker. But a good couple dozen members still wouldn’t vote for him and he quickly dropped out. Then Jim Jordan won the vote and faced the identical problem. But Jordan, his recent establishment turn notwithstanding, is of the Trumpist right. So his supporters are taking a different tack. As the Times reports they’re mobilizing a base-focused press campaign, enlisting right wing media and activists, publishing ‘hit lists’ of recalcitrant members’ phone numbers, threatening primary campaigns. […]
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
CLAIM: A video shows a BBC News report confirming Ukraine provided weapons to Hamas.
THE FACTS: The widely shared video clip is fabricated, officials with the BBC and Bellingcat, an investigative news website that is cited in the video as the source, confirm. Social media users are sharing the bogus video to claim there’s a direct link between the wars playing out in Ukraine and the Middle East. The clip purports to show a BBC News story about a recent report from Bellingcat on Ukraine providing arms to Hamas, the Palestinian group that launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel this past weekend. “Bellingcat: Ukrainian military offensive failure and HAMAS attack linked,” reads the text over the video, which has more than 2,500 comments and 110,000 views on the messaging service Telegram. “The Palestinians purchased firearms, ammunition, drones and other weapons.” […] But neither the BBC nor Bellingcat has reported any evidence to support the notion that Ukraine funneled arms to Hamas. […] the claims have been amplified by Russian social media users. […] Ukrainian officials have similarly dismissed the notion that its country’s arms have somehow found their way to Hamas, whose incursion into Israel Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced this week. The country’s military intelligence agency, in a Monday post on its official Facebook page, accused Russia of plotting a disinformation campaign around these claims. […] Kiev is in the business of obtaining weapons and not giving them away.
— Associated Press writers Philip Marcelo in New York and Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv contributed this report.
CLAIM: The U.S. military is planning to reinstitute the draft.
[…] THE FACTS: Two articles discussing such a move are being misrepresented, and Defense officials confirm the armed forces have made no such recommendation to Congress or the president, which are the entities empowered to authorize a draft. With America’s allies in Europe and the Middle East embroiled in conflicts with no end in sight, social media users are sharing a headline from a Sept. 25 article from the Mises Institute, a libertarian group in Alabama, that reads: “The US Military Is Laying the Groundwork to Reinstitute the Draft.” Other posts include passages from an essay in Parameters, a quarterly journal published by the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. The essay, entitled “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force,” highlights military lessons from the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. […] But there’s no plans to bring back mandatory conscription in the U.S., military officials confirmed this week. […] The disclaimer also states that articles represent the opinions of their authors and “not necessarily those of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.” […] John Nagl, a professor at the U.S. Army War College who co-authored the Parameters essay, said the piece doesn’t even recommend the resumption of the draft. It states the U.S. Army faces recruiting shortfalls and a shrinking reserve corps, meaning it likely could not sustain the rate of casualties seen in the conflict in Ukraine at its current troop levels. […]
— Philip Marcelo.
CLAIM: Bill Gates obtained approval for an “air vaccine” that will be administered without people’s approval.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: A website known for spreading misinformation is misrepresenting a Yale University study that tested an inhalable COVID vaccine on mice; it was not tested on humans, nor funded by Gates. Posts spreading on social media platforms in both English and Spanish in recent days falsely suggest the government has given a green light for the billionaire and philanthropist to vaccinate unwitting citizens from the sky. […] a research article published in the journal Science Translational Medicine in August, but The People’s Voice wildly misrepresents what the journal says. […] The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation confirmed to the AP that the claim is false. The FDA must approve vaccines for use by the public in the U.S., and this intranasal vaccine is not one of the COVID-19 shots with approval or emergency use authorization. A spokesperson for the agency added that its regulations require “informed consent” for any clinical research on humans, which would be impossible in the scenario described in the false headline. The Chinese city of Shanghai did begin administering an inhalable COVID-19 vaccine in October 2022, which is delivered via a mist sucked in through the mouth, the AP reported. At the time, it appeared to be a world first.
NB – lots of new DNA cutters!
Since CRISPR-CAS9 was found, there has been a biological revolution. But the various CRISPR systems all have some flaws.
Now that other organisms than bacteria have been investigated for analog systems we seem to get an avalanche of new CRISPR analogs, and I hope there will soon be ways to bypass whatever shortcomings there are for use of the well-documented CRISPR systems.
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“Thousands of programmable DNA cutters found in algae, snails and other organisms ” https://phys.org/news/2023-10-thousands-programmable-dna-cutters-algae-snails.html
We are beginning to be besieged with ads, mailings, phone calls, etc. for Medicare “Disadvantage” plans. Don’t be fooled – it’s a scam to funnel people into private insurance — not Medicare. And it’s an assault on traditional Medicare with the goal to completely privatize a very popular government program.
There is a reason why 250,000 retired New York City employees fought back against a plan to move them into a Medicare Advantage plan – they were concerned about limited access and higher costs. In August, a judge banned the city from making this switch. Vermont’s retired state employees are currently in a battle to prevent a shift to an MA plan. A similar fight is being waged in the state of Delaware.
California’s Scripps Health recently notified 30,000 patients they would no longer accept MA insurance because $75 million of services were denied by these companies. Mayo Clinic also notified their Florida and Arizona patients that MA would no longer be accepted.
On October 4, PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program) issued a report that estimated that Medicare Advantage overcharges taxpayers by a minimum of 22% or $88 billion per year, and potentially by up to 35% or $140 billion. These overcharges could have paid for Part B premiums or Part D drug benefits. Either of these— or other crucial aspects of Medicare and Medicaid—could be funded entirely by eliminating overcharges in the Medicare Advantage program. [embedded link to additional resource is available at the main link]
On October 8, 2022, the New York Times published an article entitled “The Cash Monster was Insatiable: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions.” The article details the deceptive practices used: overstating the severity of illnesses or adding new ones, inflating bills, limiting choice, requiring pre-authorizations, denying care, delaying payments, etc. UHC, the largest insurer, was accused of fraud by insiders and the government, and overbilling by the Inspector General. [embedded link to additional resource is available at the main link]
[…] The US Senate Finance Committee issued a report in 2022 detailing the deceptive marketing practices that are common in selling MA plans. This report stated that complaints had more than doubled from 2020 to 2021. [embedded link to additional resource is available at the main link]
Read Wendell Potter’s essay in Common Dreams. Potter, who is a former health-care executive who helped develop PR schemes to market MA, has since made a 180 degree turn and is now lobbying against MA. [embedded link to additional resource is available at the main link]
The business model for these insurers is to make money, not to provide good quality health care. The US ranked 23rd among countries for its public health system, according to US News and World Report. The OECD 2023 report shows that the US spends more on administrative costs, but less on long-term healthcare, than other wealthy countries. The reason for this is simple; our health care is being run by private insurance and equity firms, there is not universal coverage, barriers exist for those who cannot afford insurance, etc.
50% of seniors are now enrolled in MA programs, threatening the foundation of Medicare itself, turning a popular public health program into a money-making enterprise for profit-driven insurance companies.
The goal of MA programs is to capture 100% of those over 65. When this is accomplished, there will be no incentive other than profit for companies running these plans. There is every reason to believe that our current ranking of 23 will fall even lower.
Please talk to family and friends who are turning 65 this year or in the coming years. Don’t let them be taken in by the deceptive marketing practices of these hucksters!
The so-called Medicare Advantage plans should not be allowed to use the word “Medicare” for a start.
The Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune’s first section was wrapped in a Medicare Advantage ad instead of the usual front page today. A second section in the paper had a smaller, but similar, wrap ad from a different “advantage” company.
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I processed and priced complex, costly MA surgical claims for many different insurance carriers for years. Always given the same verbal (never written) directions. 1) Deny the claim on the first submission, whether authorized or not. The carrier will claim ‘processing error’ if questioned. 2) Underpay the claim upon the second submission by the provider of service. Again, the insurance company will assert ‘processing error’. Remember health insurance companies can only profit by denying or underpaying services. At this stage, the carrier hopes the provider of service will bill the patient. Since most folks do not know what their liability is for any service, many will pay to avoid threatening notices from the providers of service. 3) Upon the third submission, pay the remaining portion of the insurance company’s liability, waiting until the last possible second within Medicare’s dictated processing time frame to ante up. Perhaps the patient will expire, in which case, the probability that the executor of the patient’s estate will choose to reimburse the provider of service rather than appeal to the insurance carrier is high. A big win for the carrier. The federal government is extremely efficient in correctly processing and paying Medicare claims. What might seem like a money saving proposition by going with a MA plan is just an illusion. Traditional Medicare is the way to go. The federal government has got this right!
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I had 15 phone calls Friday from the same outfit saying they were with Medicare.. All with a foreign sounding voice but an all American name like Frank, Joe, and James. Medicare does not call people.
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The amount of mail regarding our insurance and the insane number of phone calls is disgusting. it’s so clearly a scam. And in America it’s only right that anyone can cheat and prey on anyone perceived to be “weak”.
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BIG INSURANCE owns almost everyone in Congress and Senate!
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It is easy to switch from traditional Medicare to MA, but can be difficult to switch from MA to traditional Medicare.
Be wary of anything that is so heavily advertised. It is almost always better for the business, not you.
In the USA health care works well for rich people … it does not work well for anyone else.
Three people were shot and an unknown amount injured, after shots were fired at the food court of the State Fair of Texas. […]
A person holding a valid Texas License to Carry a Handgun (LTC), or a valid handgun license from a reciprocating state, is permitted to enter the Fair with his or her concealed handgun […]
We know that this is an important issue for many Texans, and that the Fair’s decision may disappoint potential fairgoers who regularly and responsibly practice open carry. However, the Fair strongly believes that allowing concealed carry and prohibiting open carry is a reasonable compromise that best ensures the safety and comfort of all Fair attendees.
[video at the link]
What is unfathomable, is the geniuses running this fair say that just not being able to see the gun is a “compromise.” I feel safer already.
They apologize to the open carry advocates, not the sane among us that you know, don’t feel comfortable walking around thousands of potentially armed people.
This sort of density mixed with firearms is reckless to the extreme. […]
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday that he and a congressional delegation he led to Israel were forced to rush to shelter from rockets in Tel Aviv.
“While in Tel Aviv today, our delegation was rushed to a shelter to wait out rockets sent by Hamas,” Schumer wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter…
Dariush Mehrjui, the director who helped lead a new filmmaking movement in his native Iran with films like 1969’s The Cow, was found stabbed to death this weekend alongside his wife, Vahideh Mohammadifar, in their home near Tehran. That comes from Variety, which says the news was first reported by Iran’s state media organization IRNA, which had said that the couple was found by their daughter with stab wounds in their necks. The killer has not been identified, but IRNA said that someone had recently made “alleged knife threats” to Mehrjui and his wife on social media. Mehrjui was 83…
Oil production in the United States has reached an all-time high. So why do Republicans keep telling American voters to believe the opposite?
On Thursday morning, Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin published a message to social media, urging President Joe Biden to “reverse course on his anti-American energy agenda and unleash domestic production to bring down prices and create market stability for the United States and our allies.”
I’m not in a position to know whether the Oklahoman actually believed his own rhetoric, but I do know that the senator’s timing was awful. The same morning in which Mullin condemned the administration’s “anti-American energy agenda” and implored the White House to “unleash domestic production,” the public learned that domestic oil production in the United States reached an all-time high. The Associated Press reported:
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration reported that American oil production in the first week of October hit 13.2 million barrels per day, passing the previous record set in 2020 by 100,000 barrels. Weekly domestic oil production has doubled from the first week in October 2012 to now.
The newly set record, the AP report added, “conflicts with oft-repeated Republican talking points of a Biden ‘war on American energy.’”
Yes. Yes, it does.
[…] There is, of course, a planetary climate crisis underway, creating an urgent need to cut carbon emissions. To prevent intensifying catastrophes, we’ll need to burn fewer fossil fuels, not more.
That conversation, however, is muddled to a ridiculous degree, not only by those who reject and deny climate science, but also by Republicans who keep telling the public that the Biden administration is dramatically scaling back production, even as production reaches record highs.
In August, at the first presidential primary debate for the GOP’s 2024 field, multiple candidates talked up the idea of “unlocking American energy,” as if production had been curtailed. Reality pointed in the opposite direction.
[…] Republicans don’t care that their rhetoric is false.
They want to tell voters that the United States isn’t churning out record amounts of oil, reality be damned, and the GOP isn’t about to be dissuaded by facts.
The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell added in a column two weeks ago:
If “energy independence” means exporting more than you import, we’ve achieved it in spades. The United States has been exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imports for 22 straight months now, far longer than was the case under Trump. If this is what waging war on fossil fuels looks like, Democrats apparently aren’t very good at it.
I won’t speculate as to why Republicans keep pushing brazenly untrue claims about energy policy, but there is no doubt that their talking points on the issue bear no resemblance to reality.
Summarized from NBC News: Louisiana is poised to take a sharp turn in a far-right direction: Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry will succeed Democrat John Bel Edwards as governor, winning in the first round of multi-candidate balloting on Saturday (winning about 51% of the vote, so, no runoff needed.)
Summarized from The New York Times: President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign took in $71.3 million in the third quarter, (July through August). Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co-chairman of the Democratic incumbent’s campaign, told The New York Times, “It certainly exceeded our own expectations around it significantly. The fact that we’re sitting with $91 million in the bank today is really an extraordinary advantage.” (That’s more money than Trump took in, despite Trump’s sneaky fundraising tactics.)
Meanwhile, NBC News reported that Mike Pence’s campaign is now in debt, about $620,000.
Trump said so many ignorant and offensive things about the Israel/Hamas conflict that he received a lot of pushback, even from conservatives. Then Trump actually walked that bullshit back.
[Trump] claimed, for example, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “let us down” and did “a very terrible thing” when the prime minister — according to Trump’s version of events — decided that Israel would not participate in a mission that targeted Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in 2020.
As we discussed soon after, Trump also criticized Israeli intelligence, and in the same appearance, described Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, as “very smart” — a label the Republican usually reserves for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jung Un and China’s Xi Jinping.
The rhetoric was not well received. For one thing, [Trump’s] claims about Israel’s role in the Suleimani mission have been discredited. For another, Trump’s criticisms of Israel — and compliments for Hezbollah — have faced significant pushback from the former president’s ostensible allies.
A New York Times report noted that even Israeli conservatives were “stunned” by Trump’s rhetoric. The article quoted Attila Somfalvi, a senior political analyst and commentator on Israeli television, adding that the former American president’s criticisms came “as a shock to a country that had been broadly supportive of Mr. Trump throughout his administration.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, who often goes to embarrassing lengths in service of Trump, appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” and conceded that Trump’s kind words for Hezbollah were “a huge mistake.” When host Kristen Welker also noted the former president’s admonishments for Netanyahu, the South Carolina Republican added, “I thought it was not helpful.”
It’s against this backdrop that Trump did something he generally does not do: He took some unsubtle steps to walk back what he’d done. The Associated Press reported:
Former President Donald Trump said Friday that he stood with Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as his GOP rivals continued to pointedly denounce his lashing out at Netanyahu days after Hamas’ deadly attacks. Referring to Netanyahu by his nickname, Trump posted “#IStandWithIsrael” and “#IStandWithBibi” on his Truth Social network Friday afternoon.
Three hours before his “#IStandWithIsrael” and “#IStandWithBibi” message [Trump] posted a separate item that read, “I have always been impressed by the skill and determination of the Israeli Defence Forces. As they defend their Nation against ruthless terrorists, I want to wish every soldier the best of luck. May you return home safely to your families, and may God bless you all!” [I wonder who wrote that for Trump.]
As a general rule, Trump responds to controversies surrounding his rhetoric by doubling down. […]
This time, however, someone apparently told [him] that he made a mess he should at least try to clean up.
The federal judge overseeing the 2020 election subversion case against Donald Trump in Washington imposed a narrow gag order on him on Monday, barring the Republican former president from making statements targeting prosecutors, possible witnesses and the judge’s staff…
Ed Currie, the South Carolina hot pepper expert who crossbred and grew the Carolina Reaper that’s hotter than most pepper sprays police use to subdue unruly criminals, has broken his own world record with a pepper that’s three times hotter…
[…] That ban does not apply to statements about the Biden Administration and supposed politicization at the DOJ, according to Lawfare’s Roger Parloff.
It’s an extremely significant ban for a man who built a business career and political machine around his gift for unfettered speech, and who has spent years bullying and threatening potential witnesses in civil and criminal investigations into his actions.
That tactic of browbeating people, often by making examples of certain figures, came to a head in recent weeks as the federal and Georgia criminal cases against Trump grind on and as New York Attorney General Tish James (D)’s civil fraud trial progresses.
Trump has cast wild aspersions on the Fulton County DA’s personal life, suggested that former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley should be executed, and slandered a clerk of the Manhattan judge trying the civil case. That last episode prompted the judge to issue a gag order on Trump from the bench.
[…] Erysipelas is a skin infection caused by Streptococcus bacteria. There were just too many cases, it seemed to Coley, where a chance bacterial infection seemed to be causing the reduction, or even disappearance, of tumors.
Coley began injecting cancer patients with live Streptococcus as close to their tumors as he could, and while he did have some real success, some of those patients also died of sepsis. So he eventually altered his approach and turned to injecting cancer patients with killed bacterial extracts. For awhile things seemed promising. [1908 photo at the link]
But despite an initial sensation, no one could explain why it worked sometimes and didn’t work at all other times, so no one knew what to make of it. With the advent of radiation therapy, which felt more controllable, Coley’s ideas began to fade from the medical community.
Since then, we’ve learned that some types of bacteria will colonize solid tumors yet mostly leave the rest of the body alone. This is especially true of bacteria that can grow with or without oxygen, because often the interior of a tumor is oxygen-poor. It’s also particularly true of motile bacteria, or ones that can move around under their own power. Different bacterial species even have preferences for what types of tumors they like to colonize.
When fighting cancer, we’re always looking first and foremost for some way to distinguish cancer cells in such a way that we can attack them while leaving normal cells alone. Because bacteria can not only seek out tumors but actually penetrate them and live inside them, we have ourselves an agent that can accomplish that. (Who needs nanobots?) That’s a huge part of the battle right there.
Once we find bacteria that can colonize a tumor, we need to somehow instruct those bacteria to promote the death of the tumor. We’ve gotten a lot better over the past few decades at engineering bacteria to do sophisticated things. And we’ve also gotten a lot better at understanding how the immune system targets things for destruction, and what signals it responds to in order to do that.
The culmination of all of this is starting to bear fruit. In the October 13 issue of Science, Dr. Tal Danino and crew at Columbia University describe how they engineered both a probiotic bacterium and human T cells to team up for tumor destruction.
So what is it that we want bacteria to do once they colonize a tumor? The simple answer would be: Have them produce a poison! Right? But we don’t want something that is deadly to human cells leaking out of the tumor and doing harm to the rest of the body. We’d like to be a bit more sophisticated than that. A better strategy would be to get the bacteria to sound an alarm to the immune system letting it know to come and attack the tumor.
Solid tumors are pretty insidious. They don’t really look like invaders to the immune system because they often don’t consistently produce anything on their surfaces that stands out to the immune system as unusual. So what we can do is engineer the bacteria to manufacture a protein that will go out to the surface of the tumor and make it stand out as an obvious invader.
A really good choice for Obviously Not Human Protein is green fluorescent protein (GFP). It is exactly what it sounds like: a protein that fluoresces green that we got from jellyfish. So if we get the bacteria to not only make that protein but deliver it to the surface of the tumor, we’ll have clearly marked the tumor as Thing From Bizarroland. And we’ll have an easy-to-spot fluorescent label for ourselves to monitor so we know the whole thing is working. Have you seen tumors that fluoresce green before? Me neither. And neither has your immune system, and I promise your immune system is not going to be amused.
The GFP gene we actually put into the bacteria encodes a hybrid of GFP and another protein that likes to stick to cell surfaces. So when the bacteria make this protein and it gets outside of the bacterial cells, it’s going to go right to the surface of the tumor and advertise the tumor’s alien nature for all to see.
Wait a second, though. How is the sticky-GFP hybrid protein going to get out of the bacteria? And if it does, won’t this happen all over the body, wherever any traces of bacteria are, and invite Immune Armageddon?
No, it won’t, and this is where our sophistication in engineering bacteria really pays off now. Bacteria have an innate way of sensing that they have a lot of neighbors, called quorum sensing. When bacteria sense they’re in a crowd, they turn certain genes on and off. Our researchers have hacked into this ability to trick bacteria into interpreting the crowd sensation as a signal to self-destruct. I kid you not. When a dense colony of sticky-GFP-producing bacteria forms inside a tumor, the bacteria literally explode, releasing GFP to the surface of the tumor! The few surviving bacteria grow up again, get dense, and explode again! So we get wave after wave of sticky-GFP release, but only inside the tumor, where bacterial growth is dense. Other areas of the body will not support dense bacterial colonies, and so there will be no bacterial explosions anywhere but within the tumor.
If you want to see this in action (and be amazed!), check out this video of bacteria engineered this way releasing GFP in waves. This is one of those “sophisticated things” I was talking about earlier. [video at the link]
We can also help insure safety in the body by using a probiotic bacterium that isn’t harmful (as our researchers here have done), but if we do find we need to use a less-friendly bacterium, we can remove its toxin genes and also make it require an amino acid or two that it can only get in the nutrient-rich environment of a fast-growing tumor. Clinical trials looking at safety of these kinds of “attenuated” bacteria have typically come back with great results.
It’s terrific that we’ve now unambiguously marked tumors as foreign invaders. The immune system is definitely going to notice. But could we also do something to help out the immune system?
Yes, we can. We can engineer T cells to recognize any target we want, such as GFP. Normally T cells act like patrol cars, each with its own randomly generated antibody, waiting to match up with some invader. But if we know exactly what the target is, we can grow up a bunch of T cells engineered specifically to recognize that particular target. These T cells will attach to anything containing that target, such as our GFP-displaying tumor cells, and kill them. This attachment also activates the T cells so they make more of themselves, and the tumor is in for some serious trouble.
We’ve begun having success against blood-borne cancers like leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma with T cells engineered in this way, because blood-borne cancer cells are free-floating and accessible, and they tend to show unique proteins on their surfaces that normal cells don’t. Solid tumors, however, aren’t so amenable, but infiltrating bacteria look like a promising way to make them so.
And now, finally, we revisit what William B. Coley did, only this time with a whole lot more knowledge and sophistication. The guy was ahead of his time, but the times have, at long last, caught up.
Danino’s lab at Columbia used the probiotic bacterium E. coli Nissle 1917 that they engineered to produce sticky-GFP and also to self-destruct when its population gets dense, along with human T cells engineered to make an antibody against sticky-GFP.
They describe a progression of good results, but I’m going to jump to the meatiest of them, where all the pieces are there. […]
A lawyer for Donald Trump told a London judge Monday that the ex-president plans to prove that a discredited report by a former British spy that contained “shocking and scandalous claims” that he was compromised by Russians in his first bid for the presidency was wrong and harmed his reputation.
Trump has sued the company founded by Christopher Steele, who created a dossier in 2016 that contained rumors and uncorroborated allegations about Trump that erupted in a political storm just before he was inaugurated.
Trump is seeking damages from Orbis Business Intelligence for allegedly violating British data protection laws. Steele’s company is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed during two days of hearings at London’s High Court. […]
In two previous High Court cases, a judge ruled Orbis and Steele were not legally liable for the consequences of the dossier’s publication.
Posted by readers of the article:
This is going the same place as all of TFG’s other legal attacks. A huge legal bill for his MAGA [followers] to pick up
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Also after all the lawsuits this racist dimwit has been involved in, how is it that he always forgets about discovery?
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Yeah! Discovery is going to be a blast! *munches on popcorn*
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What reputation?
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And let’s not forget that the Steele dossier was originally a Republican-funded project through the Washington Free Beacon. Democrats only got involved once the Free Beacon lost interest.
All Steele has to do is say “Yes, Your Honor, we are prepared to move to discovery immediately.”
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The Steele dossier was just raw intelligence based on rumors about Trump.
There is always a danger that a source is misinformed or has an axe to grind. That is why collecting intelligence from a variety of sources (as in the Steele dossier) is essential, as is contextualizing the findings.
What Steele found alarmed the veteran intelligence officer so much that he felt compelled to reach out to U.S. authorities, a rare event in a private investigation. The findings were shocking, but not far-fetched when contextualized with what the public records showed, and what was going on before our eyes.
Much of the Steele dossier hasn’t been disproved to date, but rather has gained greater credence based on Trump’s turbulent presidency.
Much of what the Steele dossier claimed about Trump being influenced by the Russians seems true.
[…] “We spoke about ‘several demonstrations across Britain during which people voiced their backing for Hamas.’ We accept this was poorly phrased and was a misleading description of the demonstrations.”
The apology was also read on the BBC’s air live on Tuesday. […]
Reginald Selkirksays
… In two previous High Court cases, a judge ruled Orbis and Steele were not legally liable for the consequences of the dossier’s publication.
IANAL.
I see this as a key point. Steele didn’t make public statements about Trump, he compiled a report for the people who commissioned it.
The lawsuit has been filed in Britain, which has different laws regarding defamation than the USA.
It’s a bedbug’s world now. We’re just sleeping in it.
On a brisk morning last month, the deputy mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire, stood in front of a French TV camera with a serious look on his face and said: “No one is safe.”
He wasn’t talking about the threat of climate change or some frightening new virus. He was talking about bedbugs.
For the blissfully unaware, bedbugs are small wingless insects that bite humans and feast on our blood, often at night. They find us by sensing the carbon dioxide in our breath and our body heat. While bedbugs can carry a large number of pathogens, they don’t seem to transmit diseases to humans, though they do produce itchy welts.
In recent weeks, viral videos showing insects that look like bedbugs on the Paris metro and trains, and sightings of bedbugs in movie theaters and at the airport, have fueled fears of a widespread outbreak across the city. People have been panicking. “These little insects are spreading despair in our country,” a French politician told Parliament earlier this month, urging the prime minister to act. (She brought a vial of bed bugs with her into the chamber, presumably in an effort to strengthen her point.)
Elevating these concerns is the looming Summer Olympics, which will take place in Paris just 10 months from now. Millions of people will descend on Paris for the Games. And you know what likes millions of people? Bedbugs.
[…] But this isn’t exactly good news. Paris certainly does have bed bugs. So does Chicago, New York, and every other major city in the world. These bloodsuckers are, unfortunately, everywhere.
It gets worse: Over the last two decades, there’s been a “global resurgence” in bedbugs, according to a recent scientific review, following lows in the mid-20th century. “The resurgence has been widespread, affecting virtually every sector of society,” the authors wrote.
[…] In the 1800s, some London hotels were so infested that lodgers “were advised to become half-drunk to obtain some sleep,” according to the recent scientific review. Entire buildings would be burned down in order to stamp out an infestation. It was the golden age of bedbugs (at least from the perspective of a bedbug).
The tables turned in the 1940s, when the chemical DDT was popularized as an insecticide. During World War II, militaries sprayed DDT to control mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, as well as body lice. It was also shown to be highly effective at killing bedbugs. Along with other newly developed pesticides, DDT helped wipe out bedbug populations. By the 1960s, bedbug infestations were rare, at least among wealthy nations, according to the review.
For the next few decades, citizens in the US and Europe enjoyed evenings largely free of bedbug bites, even after DDT was banned in the US in 1972 (for its harmful impacts on humans and wildlife). But the reprieve obviously didn’t last.
Around the turn of the century, the parasites began reentering people’s homes and beds in droves, according to reports from the UK, US, Australia, Japan, and a handful of other countries. In Australia, for example, infestations of bed bugs rose by an estimated 4,500 percent between 1999 and 2006.
[…] There are some obvious reasons. More people live in cities now, and bedbugs love densely packed warm bodies. We’re also traveling more than ever before, giving bedbugs an opportunity to spread (see: horror stories of bedbugs in Airbnbs).
But the main reason why it’s boom time for bedbugs, according to the review, is that they’ve evolved resistance to many pesticides, our main line of defense. Indeed, these critters are now resistant to “most of the major classes of insecticides,” the review states, including pyrethroids, which is still one of the most commonly used insecticides. They’ve also developed resistance to DDT, which attacks insects in a similar way to pyrethroids.
[…] That doesn’t mean bedbugs are impossible to destroy. High temperatures, around 113 degrees Fahrenheit and above, kill the insects, and research suggests that they aren’t likely to evolve heat tolerance. So do extremely cold temperatures. Fumigation using highly toxic chemicals and insecticide combinations can work too, Lee said, especially when they’re used repeatedly.
[…] “The biggest challenge when it comes to treating bedbugs is cost,” Lee said.
While it’s hard to eradicate bedbugs, it’s relatively easy to avoid them.
Here’s a tip: When you enter a hotel or Airbnb, immediately check the mattress for reddish-brown blood stains, Lee said. After bed bugs feast, he said, they defecate, and their poop includes some staining hemoglobin (sorry). You can also look for the bugs themselves, which are visible to the naked eye; they’re roughly the size of an apple seed.
Let’s say you do end up staying somewhere with bedbugs. When you get back home, Lee said, don’t bring your luggage inside. Take out your clothes and put them in the dryer for at least 30 minutes (or wash them and then dry them). Then, use a garment steamer to heat-treat your luggage outside. That should kill any eggs.
Now let’s say you’ve found them in your home. Immediately call for professional help, Lee said. “Do not attempt to treat it yourself,” he said. If the infestation is small, an exterminator may treat your bed or furniture with a hand-held steamer, though if they’re everywhere, the exterminator may want to fumigate or place your furniture into a heat chamber — that’s when the costs will go up.
Finally, a word from Lee for all of you thrifters: Be very wary about taking anything off the street, especially in cities like New York and Chicago. If you plan to take in any furniture — especially sofas, chairs, beds, and mattresses — you should have it heated first.
Books, too, should be treated. “Do not bring them directly into the house,” Lee said. If it’s the middle of summer or winter, you can leave the books outside for a day or two — the heat or cold will force the bedbugs out or kill them. Or you can simply put them in a sealed plastic bag and place them in your freezer for a few days. […]
“We have not seen the light at the end of the tunnel,” Lee said. “Until we come out with some method that is affordable to everyone, we will remain in the tunnel.”
Donald Trump is taking his campaign of harassing litigation global. He’s already sued Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Rod Rosenstein, the DNC, Michael Cohen, CNN, the Washington Post, Twitter, YouTube, Meta, Stormy Daniels, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and the Pulitzer Prize board. And now he’s jumping the pond to sue investigator Chris Steele and his former bosses at Orbis Business Intelligence over the “scandalous” allegations in the infamous Steele Dossier.
Trump, who brags about grabbing women by the genitals and once put a “naked” Melania Trump on the phone with Howard Stern’s show to claim that they bonked twice a day and that he was the most fantastic lover on earth, is bigly mad that he was “compelled to explain to his family, friends, and colleagues that the embarrassing allegations about his private life were untrue. This was extremely distressing for the Claimant.”
Note that he’s not suing over the claim that he lied about trying to build a Trump tower in Moscow, which is factcheck true.
Trump, who was recently found liable by a jury for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, is apparently incensed at the passages in the dossier that describe “sex parties” in Moscow and the famous piss-en-lit allegations. That’s right, he’s still pissed about the pee tape, so he’s suing Orbis and Steele for illegally processing his personal data in violation of UK privacy laws.
“The only way that I can fully demonstrate the total inaccuracies of the personal data in the dossier is to bring these proceedings and to prove, by evidence at trial, that the data are false,” he said in a witness statement to the judge reported by Reuters, adding, “A judgment of the English court on this issue will be an immense relief to me as it will completely confirm the true position to the public at large.”
Note that this is not a defamation case, even though the UK’s libel laws are far more favorable to plaintiffs than America’s. As the Washington Post notes, English courts already dismissed a libel case brought by Russian businessman Aleksej Gubarev, on the theory that Steele and Orbis were not responsible for the dossier’s publication after it was leaked to BuzzFeed. But three oligarchs, German Khan, Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman, won a privacy case in Britain’s High Court similar to Trump brings now, alleging that the dossier inaccurately reported their personal data. The recovery there was minimal, at just $22,000 per defendant, with four of the five charges being dismissed.
In court, Trump’s barrister Hugh Tomlinson argued that “President Trump begins this case because he seeks a vindication of his legal rights… that the statements in these memoranda are false.”
But Antony White, counsel for Orbis and Steele, countered that the suit is “principally based on reputational damage allegedly suffered by the claimant,” i.e. it’s really a libel action dressed up for Halloween (All Hallows’ Eve?) as a privacy claim, and is anyway barred under the statute of limitations, or whatever they call it over there.
“This claim is bound to fail on limitation grounds and because any reputational damage, and any resulting distress, allegedly suffered will have been caused by the BuzzFeed publication, for which the claimant accepts Orbis is not liable,” he said, according to the Daily Mail. […]
Republicans as warmongers (and doofuses, of course), devoid of nuance, devoid of context:
[…] Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” this was Tom Cotton’s [Arkansas Senator] measured opinion of the current conflict in Gaza.
COTTON: […] Israel has inflicted no suffering in Gaza. […] Hamas intentionally uses women and children and the elderly for human shields. And if, you don’t want your hospitals or your schools or your mosque, bombed you shouldn’t use them for military purposes.
Hamas is an evil terrorist organization, but the Palestinian people aren’t all Hamas. I also think it’s a leap to say Israel hasn’t inflicted ANY suffering to the Palestinian people. Many human rights groups argue that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip amount to an apartheid state.
When host Shannon Bream asked Cotton what people will think of Israel carpet bombing and denying essential things like food/water to the Palestinian people and creating a humanitarian crisis, he decided to double down on his homicidal and inhumane fantasies.
COTTON: As far as I’m concerned Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza. […]
It is not shocking that the guy who once suggested Trump should recreate the 1980s Tanker Wars incident, which killed a commercial jetliner full of innocent people as collateral from the US-escalated Iran-Iraq War, is now calling for this. […]
Tom Cotton is fine with cutting off food and water for a place where up to 50 percent of the population are children under 15 years because apparently, his “pro-life” position is highly subjective. […]
More at the link, including video snippets, and including details of concerning Ron DeSantis’s bullshit.
Foreigners and dual nationals packed into Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt on Monday as hopes of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas were dashed for the second time in three days, leaving the exit sealed as Israeli airstrikes pounded the enclave.
Despite efforts by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to reopen the crossing and reports by media outlets citing Israeli and Egyptian officials about a 9 a.m. cease-fire to allow out dual nationals and allow in aid, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office and Hamas denied any such agreement existed, and the violence has persisted.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry blamed Israel, saying that it had not “taken a stance that enables opening the crossing.” Israeli media, meanwhile, reported that “American demands on the humanitarian issue” were delaying a deal.
The standoff over the Egyptian border has deepened frustration and panic among aid groups, which warn that time is running out for wounded and displaced Gazans to receive critical — and in many cases, lifesaving — supplies, as the humanitarian situation rapidly deteriorates. […]
Russian ships linked to military transport networks have collected cargo from North Korea and delivered it to an apparent Russian military port on multiple occasions over the past two months, according to new satellite images providing the clearest evidence yet that Pyongyang may be helping Moscow’s war effort.
The two ships had no record of running this route between North Korea and Russia until August, when high-level meetings between North Korean and Russian officials began, paving the way for Kim Jong Un to meet Vladimir Putin last month.
U.S. intelligence assessments at the time suggested that Russia was looking to get North Korean weaponry to replenish its dwindling supplies for the war in Ukraine. White House officials said Friday this now appears to be happening and named one Russian vessel, alleging that North Korea has transported as many as 1,000 containers with “equipment and munitions” from North Korea to Russia “in recent weeks.”
[…] new satellite images, analyzed by the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and provided first to The Washington Post, suggest this operation is more regular, extensive and ongoing than the White House revealed.
Not one but two ships have been plying the route between the northeastern North Korean port of Rajin and a secure port facility in Dunai, in Russia’s Far East, making at least five round trips beginning mid-August through Saturday, according to the RUSI analysis.
Although it is impossible to tell what is being transported, the new images show ships linked to the Russian military logistics network, which strongly suggests these commercial vessels are carrying military equipment, RUSI analysts and U.S. officials say. […]
More at the link.
KGsays
With most votes counted in the Polish election, the exit polls appears to have been broadly right: three parties which are allied against PiS will get a majority of the vote between them (about 53%), and should have enough seats in the Sejm to form a government.
KGsays
further to #257: incidentally, all three of these parties are strong supporters of Ukraine. PiS made much of its support early on, but has recently fallen out with Zelenskyy. Moreover, its own anti-democratic actions made it a discreditable ally.
A Palestinian American family in Illinois was preparing on Monday for the funeral of a 6-year-old boy who the authorities said was stabbed to death over the weekend in an attack motivated by hate for Muslims and the fighting in Israel and Gaza.
A funeral for the boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was scheduled for Monday afternoon at a mosque in suburban Chicago, as new details emerged about the Illinois landlord charged in his death.
The killing on Saturday drew condemnations from President Biden and Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, as well as outpourings of grief from Muslim leaders across the country, many of whom saw the attack as an outgrowth of overheated rhetoric about the fighting overseas.
Wadea’s mother, Hanan Shaheen, who was seriously injured in the attack, was still recovering and would not be able to attend the funeral, a local Muslim leader said.
In court documents, prosecutors described the landlord, Joseph M. Czuba, 71, who has been charged with murder and hate crimes, as angry, erratic, paranoid and violent.
He had been listening to conservative radio coverage of the Middle East war in the days before the attack, the prosecutors said, wanted his Palestinian American tenants to move out of his building and was increasingly concerned that he was in personal danger because of his connection to them.
[…] Mary Czuba, Mr. Czuba’s wife, told investigators that he had recently become very interested in the conflict in the Middle East and was worried that Ms. Shaheen was going to “call over her Palestinian friends or family to harm him,” according to prosecutors. […]
Judge Donald W. DeWilkins ordered Mr. Czuba held in jail without the possibility of release. Mr. Czuba appeared in court in Joliet, Ill., on Monday […]
He faces charges of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, two counts of a hate crime and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. […]
Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said, “There is no humane world that can and should tolerate the murder of an innocent child because of his identity.” […]
“He was a playful child — really full of energy,” Ms. Jagodzinski said. “Kids are innocent. This really destroys so many hearts.”
The little boy was stabbed 26 times.
Reginald Selkirksays
@247: “supposed politicization at the DOJ”
I could believe that the DOJ is being used for political purposes.
Additional ink for news in comment 259, in case you cannot access the New York Times article.
[…] Wadea Al-Fayoume was stabbed 26 times at his Plainfield home by his landlord, Joseph Czuba, 71, on Saturday, investigators said. He died at the hospital.
His mother, Hanaan Shahin, 32, was stabbed more than a dozen times, authorities said, adding that she is at a hospital and is expected to survive.
“Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis,” the Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.[…]
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas caught a lucky break last week, with a news cycle dominated by the attack on Israel and the collapse of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. That meant the latest blockbuster story from ProPublica about the conservatives’ court benefactor, Leonard Leo, as well as Thomas’ hijinks went relatively unreported.
The extensive ProPublica story details the extent to which the whole conservative judicial establishment—from state supreme courts all the way up the ladder of federal courts—has been constructed by Leo and the ultraconservative millionaires and billionaires he’s recruited to the project. In the article, there’s a nugget about Thomas that’s worth highlighting:
On a chilly day in March 2017, about six weeks into Trump’s presidency, Leo arranged for a select group to have a private audience with Justice Clarence Thomas at the U.S. Supreme Court. The attendees were a group of high-net-worth donors who had been organized by [billionaire hedge-fund manager Paul] Singer to marshal huge resources toward electing Republicans and pushing conservative causes. That afternoon, the donors spoke with Thomas. The previously unreported meeting was described by a person familiar with it and corroborated by planning documents.
That’s Leo and Singer using the actual U.S. Supreme Court building, not to mention access to one of the justices, to fundraise for Republicans and their causes. Those causes include legal challenges—to voting rights, to abortion rights, to marriage equality, to environmental and consumer protections—that will work their way through the courts to be decided by Thomas and the other justices Leo put there.
Speaking of those cases, the court will consider at least four this session in which Thomas benefactor Harlan Crow has an interest. In case you’re wondering, no, Thomas hasn’t recused from any of them. Crow is the billionaire Texan who is BFFs with Thomas and has shown his friendship over the years via hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of largesse, everything from paying the private school tuition for Thomas’s ward to sweetheart real estate deals to providing luxury trips. […]
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled today that evidence gleaned from a warrant for Google’s search data could be used in the prosecution of a teen who was charged with murder for a fire that killed five people in the Denver area. From a report:
As police scrambled to solve the source of the 2020 blaze, they asked Alphabet’s Google to provide information about people who searched for the address of the house that went up in flames, using a controversial technique known as a keyword search warrant. After some initial objections, Google provided data that enabled detectives to zero in on five accounts, leading to the arrest of three suspects in the case.
Lawyers for one of the suspects, Gavin Seymour, who was found to have Googled the home’s address 14 times in the days before the fire, argued that the keyword warrant constituted an illegal search and that any evidence from it should be suppressed. His motion is the first known challenge to the constitutionality of keyword search warrants…
Hours after Ubuntu 23.10 was released last Thursday it was discovered Ubuntu 23.10 ISOs contained malicious user translations for those using the Ukrainian translations within the Ubuntu Linux desktop installer. Canonical suspended the desktop ISOs until the translations could be fixed and ISOs re-spun. That’s now happened and this afternoon Ubuntu 23.10 images are back online…
Citibank has won an employment tribunal after sacking a worker for claiming expenses for sandwiches and coffee for his partner, and then lying about it.
Szabolcs Fekete had accused the bank of unfair dismissal after he was fired last year for gross misconduct.
Mr Fekete had initially claimed that he alone had consumed two sandwiches, two coffees and two pasta dishes during a business trip to Amsterdam.
But he later admitted that his partner had shared some meals…
Approximately 2,000 U.S. troops have been put on prepare to deploy orders for possible support to Israel, a defense official tells NBC News. They are not going anywhere yet, nor would they necessarily go to Israel or Gaza — if given orders they will go to a nearby country to be prepared to support Israel. These are troops who were already on a 96 hour prepare to deploy order and they’re now on a 24-hour notice.
The Qassam Brigades said today they ‘have’ as many as roughly 200 to 250 hostages, after the IDF said earlier that it had notified at least 199 families that their loved ones had been kidnapped by the militant group.
A shooting in Brussels, Belgium, that reportedly left two dead is being investigated as an apparent terrorist attack as authorities try to determine the shooter’s motives. It was not immediately clear if the shooter had been engaged by police or was in custody.
The Biden administration, and more than 4,000 migrants who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration, reached a legal settlement Monday that allows the families to live and work in the U.S. for three years while receiving housing, mental health and legal assistance to apply for asylum. The settlement also prohibits the federal government from separating any migrant families crossing the border for eight years, unless the parents are considered a danger to their children or the public or they have previously entered the country illegally more than twice.
Three people were killed and three others were wounded as gunfire erupted at a party in Denver, authorities said.
Police were called to an “industrial storefront” on East 39th Avenue around 1:37 a.m. Saturday for reports of a shooting. One person was found dead from apparent gunshot wounds, Denver police said in a statement.
Five other shooting victims took themselves to hospitals. Two of them died, and the others are expected to survive, police said.
A motive remains unclear. Authorities said preliminary information indicates a party was occurring when “shots were fired from at least two firearms.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday afternoon that the Justice Department has launched a federal hate crime investigation into the brutal killing of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois.
“I am heartbroken by the abhorrent killing of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six year old child who died after being stabbed 26 times with a military-style knife. On behalf of the entire Justice Department, I want to express my deepest condolences to his family and his community as they grieve his loss,” Garland said in a statement.
“The Justice Department has opened a federal hate crimes investigation into the events leading to the tragic death of Wadea Al-Fayoume and the serious injuries suffered by his mother, Hanaan Shahin. The Department is limited in what more it can say because this is an ongoing criminal investigation,” he continued.
As my colleague David Kurtz noted in Morning Memo today, the child was pronounced dead at the hospital Saturday after he was stabbed 26 times with a serrated military-style knife, in an attack allegedly carried out by his 71-year-old landlord Joseph Czuba, who was arrested and charges with several criminal offenses.
“Joseph Czuba was charged with First Degree Murder, Attempted First Degree Murder, Hate Crime (2 counts), and Aggravated Battery with a Deadly Weapon,” the Will County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Sunday. “Detectives were able to determine that both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the on-going Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis.” […]
The current state of the so-called “moderate” bloc of House Republicans is complete collapse when it comes to their opposition to insurrectionist hard-liner Rep. Jim Jordan becoming House speaker. Their gutlessness is so notable that Capitol Hill reporters are mocking them. [Tweet and image at the link]
[…] Whatever Jordan has been selling them, they’re just lapping it up.
Take Rep. Ann Wagner of Missouri. Last Thursday night, she was a “HELL NO” on Jordan, dishing to reporters how obnoxiously he treated Majority Leader Steve Scalise in his short-lived victory for the speaker nomination. Today, Wagner is all on board. “Jim Jordan is our conference nominee, and I will support his nomination for Speaker on the House floor,” she tweeted. She also said that it was because Jordan agreed with her on “the need for stronger protections against the scourge of human trafficking and child exploitation.” For real. She actually said that—despite the fact that approximately half of all stories about Jordan include his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse of college students that were under his charge.
Then there’s House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers of Alabama, who Punchbowl News claimed Monday morning was the leader of the establishment Republicans fighting Jordan. By noon, Rogers had flipped. He said he had “two cordial, thoughtful, and productive conversations” with Jordan, and that they “agreed on the need for Congress to pass a strong NDAA, appropriations to fund our government’s vital functions, and other important legislation like the Farm Bill.”
Uh huh. The same Jordan who is ranked number 217 out of 222 Republicans in effectiveness by the Center for Effective Lawmaking is going to magically pass all those bills that have been derailed by Republican chaos all year.
After that, the would-be “moderates” dropped like flies, from the defense hawk establishment types to Scalise loyalists to vulnerable first-termers serving in solid Democratic districts. The opposition is nearing single digits at this point and establishment and moderate Republicans are proving just how meaningless those two descriptors have always been when applied to them.
They are proving that the GOP ethos is absolutely clear: party—the MAGA party—over country. The assumption is that Jordan is promising them something, and that he will be able to deliver that something better than anyone else could.
Yes, the same Jordan that former Speaker John Boehner called a “legislative terrorist.” The same Jordan who tried to overturn the 2020 election. The one who was on the phone with Donald Trump the morning of Jan. 6, 2021—mere hours before the MAGA mob attacked the Capitol, invaded their chamber, and threatened every member of Congress’s health and lives.
On Fox News and social media Sean Hannity has been pushing hard for Jordan. So has Trump.
MAGA mayoral candidate and Franklin, Tennessee, Alderman Gabrielle Hanson continues to make disastrous headlines. The latest: Hanson has lost an influential conservative group’s endorsement after an investigation revealed her connection to a white supremacist group. […]
HOT BREAKING UPDATE on the very serious and adult Republican process for choosing a new speaker of House: dunno. Don’t really fuckin’ care, to be brutally honest.
As of this morning, it wasn’t looking great for the dumb white coach who escaped from the Ohio State wrestling gym. It’s being said that there will be a challenger tomorrow when they all try to vote, and this morning Punchbowl said there are still “double-digit” number of Republicans hellbent committed to opposing Jordan, enough “Never Jordans” to make sure he doesn’t get to be speaker, now or ever.
So of course Jimbo the Clown and his people have been trying their own MAGA-style intimidation campaign.
First of all, that’s why they’re going to go ahead and force a vote (many votes?) tomorrow on the floor, because they want to peer pressure the Republicans who are “no” votes into flipping. (That’s not how you whip votes, or maybe it is if you’re a MAGA Republican baby child. Sorry, we’re just used to that thing where Democrats vote together when they’re supposed to because they know how to govern.)
Meanwhile, Juliegrace Brufke from Axios reports that Sean Hannity’s show is sending out the following bully email to Republicans who hate Jim Jordan like all patriotic Americans do. Check out this pantload of clownassery: [Screengrab of Hannity’s text at the link]
Oh my God LMAO.
If we were a member of Congress and we received this letter, we would laugh for DAYS. But we are a Democrat.
Democratic congresspeople are stronger humans than Republicans, who have demonstrated since Donald Trump waddled down that escalator in 2015 that they are pathetic cowards who are scared of literally everything, including their own shadows.
If Democratic reps got this letter, first of all, we wouldn’t hear it from Axios, we’d hear it because Swalwell or somebody posted it on Twitter the second they got it. Also we’re trying to imagine a hilarious world where, like, Maddow or Joy Reid sends members of Congress mean candygrams to intimidate them into voting for lib stuff.
We sincerely hope the Republican recipients think this is as funny as we do.
Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who is stupid/craven enough that he’s actually supporting Jim Jordan, took a pee on the strategy last night on CNN, as Playbook reported this morning:
“That is the dumbest way to support Jordan,” Rep. DAN CRENSHAW (R-Texas) said on CNN last night. “As somebody who wants Jim Jordan, the dumbest thing you can do is to continue pissing off those people and entrench them.”
Well, if a guy that daft gets it.
By the way, in that same CNN appearance, Jake Tapper asked Crenshaw if he was really OK with voting for Jim Jordan, considering how Jordan was such an active participant in the plot to overturn the election Donald Trump lost, voting against certifying electoral votes and defying subpoenas from the J6 Committee and so much more. And Crenshaw — that dumbass who totally wants you to believe he’s some kind of moderate reasonable guy — said, “But a lot of them did that! If I held that grudge, I wouldn’t have friends in the Republican conference!”
Bless his heart, we don’t think he made the point he was setting out to make right there.
Or as Ian Bassin from Protect Democracy puts it, in this tweet Charlie Sykes pointed out in his morning newsletter: [Tweet at the link: “All my friends are cowardly, immoral traitors to the Constitution. So I decided to give them a pass and just join them.”]
Anyway, fuck all these people, let’s watch ‘em fail some more tomorrow.
Over the years, NPR has relied on Anas Baba to be its eyes and ears within Gaza. This past week was no exception.
The Palestinian producer interviewed civilians seeking shelter from Israeli airstrikes at Gaza City’s main hospital, where hallways were crowded with the wounded and dying. Later, he called in an eyewitness account of young children traveling on foot for dozens of miles in an attempt to evacuate the city. The reporting took “a lot of effort and a lot of luck,” said Aya Batrawy, an NPR correspondent coordinating with Baba from Jerusalem on a story that aired Friday about horrific conditions inside the besieged enclave.
But meanwhile, Baba was contending with challenges that some journalists within Gaza are describing as the worst in memory.
“I was forced to leave my job … to go to my family in order to evacuate them,” he told NPR over a scratchy phone line last week, only to find that other neighborhoods were just as dangerous. “… Where am I going to hide them? Is there any safe place in Gaza?”
[…] Reporting at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, BBC Arabic reporter Adnan Elbursh and his team discovered their own neighbors, relatives and friends among those injured and killed.
[…] Eleven Palestinian journalists and three Israeli journalists have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. On Friday, Israeli shelling near the Lebanon border killed Issam Abdallah, a Beirut-based journalist for Reuters, and wounded six other journalists, an incident international press freedom monitors condemned.
[…] “There is a systematic effort to discredit the very idea that there is such a thing as an independent Palestinian journalist,” said Thanassis Cambanis, a former journalist in the Middle East and the director of foreign policy think tank Century International, which he called “a pernicious and dangerous piece of the information war.”
The effect is that Palestinian journalists come up against critics who are quick to dismiss their accounts of death and destruction as biased, partisan or even fabricated.
Even within Gaza, many people are struggling to access news about what is happening around them. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
In the other war, Russian generals keep using up their soldiers in human wave attacks. I am reminded of WWI, or of how the Imperial Japanese generals used up their troops. https://youtu.be/p_CNhVFeQdk
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Rep. Jim Jordan’s bid to become Speaker of the House faced a new obstacle after news spread that he had accidentally locked himself in his congressional bathroom.
The Ohio congressman, who had been expected to meet with holdouts opposing his candidacy, was missing for hours before aides noticed a desperate bellowing sound from inside his office’s water closet.
Jordan’s inability to engineer an exit from his own restroom raised fresh questions about his fitness to be Speaker, with some questioning whether he should be trusted with a large, potentially dangerous wooden hammer.
But, supporters like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene pronounced Jordan’s self-imprisonment in his bathroom irrelevant. “I accidentally lock myself in my bathroom three, four times a week, and it hasn’t kept me from being an excellent leader,” she said.
When Ukraine’s General Staff began logging the number of Russian losses last week, it was at first difficult to credit. It’s usually assumed that Ukrainian estimates of Russian losses are … generous. That’s to be expected. The Ukrainian military is largely compiling reports from the field, and it shouldn’t be surprising that multiple sources might report the same tank taken out, or that a damaged vehicle might be listed as outright destroyed.
But on Oct. 11, Ukraine didn’t report a dozen losses or even two dozen. They reported an astonishing 91 Russian armored combat vehicles destroyed, in addition to 34 tanks. The next day brought another 44 ACVs and 42 tanks. Altogether, over a period of five days, Russian losses were listed at 119 tanks, 233 ACVs, and 4,690 soldiers.
This was not the result of some lightning breakthrough in the south. Or a Ukrainian landing in Crimea, a move that continues to be predicted by sources on Telegram. It’s what happened when Russia decided to try and capture Avdiivka.
Since Ukraine began its counteroffensive over the summer, most reports have involved Russia being on the receiving end of Ukrainian advances. That’s been the case at multiple positions along the southern front and at positions around Bakhmut on the eastern front. In both locations, Russia has engaged in repeated attempts to hang onto territory or reverse Ukraine’s liberation of villages and towns.
Throughout this period, the impression has been that Russia has played a reactionary role, attempting to move forward only in response to Ukrainian successes. But that’s not accurate.
If estimates of Russian deployment are accurate, over half their frontline forces are not in the highly contested south but instead along the front north of Bakhmut. Russia has made multiple declarations that it intended to recapture the cities of Lyman and Kupyansk, forcing Ukrainians to retreat across the Oskil River. And they’ve tried.
Russia drove west from Svatove on multiple occasions, at one point capturing three small villages that Ukraine had liberated several months earlier. But that advance was extremely short-lived. Within a week, Ukraine blunted Russia’s attack, forced a retreat, and returned the front line to where it had been.
There has also been an effort over multiple weeks for Russian forces to move west from Kreminna toward Lyman. The fighting in this area has often been heavy, and early on, it appeared that Russia was having some success. But months later, fighting is still near the little crossroads town of Dibrova. The last time Russia made a measurable advance in the area was in August. They lost it the next day.
In the north, near Kupyansk, Russia seemed to be making significant advances. As late as August, there were reports that Ukraine had evacuated much of the eastern side of the city, and Russia was bragging that they would soon be fighting at the Oskil bridge. But much of what Russia recaptured in the north were small villages which were either ungarrisoned or very lightly defended. Russia is still launching the kind of squad-level assaults around Kupyansk that it has made in so many areas, but the front lines have not moved.
All of that has been part of the background, the noise that moved the numbers here and there, almost unnoticed when compared with the slugfest that has often taken place in the south. But Avdiivka was different. [map at the link]
Before Russia’s 2022 invasion, Avdiivka was an industrial suburb of Donetsk, with a population over 31,000. Many of the people there worked at a company that turned coal into “coke” for the production of steel. Since the start of the war, the population has dwindled, and Ukraine has made a deliberate effort to evacuate this frontline city. Still, there are thought to be at least a few thousand civilians still living in Avdiivka.
Soon after the 2022 invasion began, Russian made small advances both north and south of Avdiivka. After a long stalemate, Russia made a significant push in the area last May. That left Avdiivka looking particularly vulnerable. For Russia, the idea of pushing north from Vodiane and south from Krasnohorivka must have seemed like a matter of just applying sufficient force.
Closing a gap barely 7 kilometers wide would allow Russia to not just encircle Avdiivka but also cut off Ukraine’s forces in the area, breach defensive lines that had held since the beginning of the war, and push the front lines well back from Donetsk. It would also put an end to Ukrainian actions in the area that have kept large numbers of Russian forces pinned down.
According to a Russian military blogger, rather than dashing forward piecemeal, as it has at so many locations, Russia planned the operation at Avdiivka extensively, including two full brigades of troops, an opening artillery bombardment, and air support to be provided by a large number of helicopters. By all accounts—both Russian and Ukrainian—this initial assault met with considerable success, especially around Krasnohorivka. Ukrainian defenders were reportedly caught by surprise, and there was little artillery directed toward advancing Russian forces.
But less than a day into this attack, Russian advances slowed. Some of this was because Ukraine seems to have moved reserves into the area quickly. Another part seems to be that Russia was not prepared for its own success. One day later, those jaw-dropping numbers began to roll in.
Fighting in the area continues. At this point, Russia’s efforts seem mainly directed from the south. But the results don’t seem to have varied in days. [Tweets, video, and translation of Russian posts, excerpt: “The amount of Russian scrap metal near Avdiivka is piling up. Another attempt by the Russian army to break through the lines using several armored vehicles and trashing them all. There is even a turret toss included.”]
What’s clear is that the situation is vastly different than it was a year ago. Ukraine’s advances may have come at a high cost, but Russia can no longer seem to mount an offensive even with advanced planning, a concentration of forces, and the luck ofto catching Ukraine by surprise. [Tweet at the link: “Propagandist Sladkov is preparing his audience for the lack of any actions by Russia in the coming months and says it needs 5-10x superiority over Ukraine to advance again. Looks like the past year was just not enough for the second military in the world to accumulate potential.”]
——————————
[Tweets at the link: “These are just a few examples of Russian attempts to link Ukraine to Hamas in the past few days.
But the effort is clearly consistent and involves the entire media ecosystem – from Z bloggers and TV personalities to top officials and diplomats.”]
On Monday, Donald Trump brought his low-energy presidential campaign to Adel, Iowa. Trump is facing an absence of real competition in the Republican primary, and it shows. Adel marked Trump’s first appearance since U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan imposed a “narrow gag order” on the disgraced former president.
Now forbidden from targeting prosecutors, potential witnesses, and Chutkan’s staff members, Trump opted to redirect his ire to a target he has shown quite a bit of disdain for: military leaders. In a video posted to X by Aaron Rupar, Trump launched into an attack on military officials as a whole by way of a (probably made-up) story about former Joint Chiefs Chair Mark Milley:
And one of them said to me, Milley, he said, ‘Sir, it would be cheaper if we left everything.’ I said, ‘Where did this guy come … Where does he come from?’ A brand-new airplane costs $128 million, right? I said, ‘You mean you think it’s cheaper to leave it than to fill it up with a little, a little fuel and fly it the hell out to—even if you just fly to Pakistan, and you bring it back home. Or you fly it back home, most of them can make that journey, right?’ ‘No, it’s better to leave it, sir.’ I don’t want to have to tell you what I had to go through with these people. Some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met in my life.
Did this happen? Probably not. But if something sort of like this happened, we can assume it didn’t happen the way Trump has described it. [video at the link]
Meanwhile, Trump’s loosey-goosey verbal theatrics have been lazier than normal, as shown by this 10-second clip of Trump saying “woke” six times while sounding barely coherent. [video at the link]
It’s kind of nice to Trump being so boring, so incoherent, and so diminished.
Posted by a reader of the article:
It’s partly true. Most equipment (that was old) was left there for the Afghan regime we left in charge. When they collapsed, the reason given for leaving that old equipment was that it was cheaper to leave it than bring home and store dated equipment like that. But all the good stuff was removed. He takes a part truism and exaggerates it into a lie … standard tactic by the Cult Leader.
The murder of two Swedish soccer fans by a terrorist is partly connected to the koran burnings, and partly connected to the Turkish leader Erdogan and the Iranian leaders having a beef with Sweden.
.
A lot of Turkish refugees live in Sweden, and Sweden has delayed Turkey’s approach to the European Union over human rights issues.
Now that Sweden wants to join Nato, Erdogan enjoys getting back at Sweden (Yes, he is that petty because that is what dictators do).
He also believes Sweden protects kurdish terrorists (this is complicated, because to him all dissidents are terrorists).
During the koran burnings a government-owned Turkish news agency has spread desinformation claiming that the koran is the only religious book it is permitted to burn (This is a lie, but people in West Asia rarely check what happens in Stockholm).
These claims have gone unfiltered to Al Jazeera, which push them on to the whole islamic world. It is like a muslim version of Rupert Murdoch.
Also, muslim sources have spread lies that Swedish authorities take the children of muslims and have them adopted by gay couples.
This beef came about after authorities started taking honor violence seriously and started to look at parents who send the children – usually daughters – abroad before they turn 18 and marry them off.
The challenge by the authorities resulted in lots of aggro from fundamentalists, many based abroad. Iran – (which is outraged a torturer and killer was arrested in Sweden and convicted for crimes against humanity comitted in Iran in the 1980s)- is also playing a role in the propaganda war.
This is stochastic terrorism. We now see the result.
Isn’t religion fun?
birgerjohanssonsays
StevoR @ 282
I doubt the conservative forces get any tangible benefits from pissing on the aboriginies, but if this is like USA and Britain it is part of a wider culture war othering minorities.
Javier Milei, the current front runner for president of Argentina, pledged to eliminate government spending on research and shut down the country’s main science agency, the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), which provides funding for about 12,000 researchers at 300 institutions across the country. The libertarian candidate has said that shutting down CONICET, with its $400 million budget, could help to end Argentina’s fiscal crisis…
Great idea! Similarly, Argentina’s agriculture sector could save a lot of money by not planting seeds. Planting is a waste of time and money, agriculture’s profits are all in the harvest!
The Ukrainian military on Tuesday used U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles to strike nine Russian helicopters in eastern Ukraine, after Washington secretly shipped the weapons in recent weeks.
The delivery and use on the battlefield, confirmed by two people familiar with the move, marks a major ramp up of the administration’s defense of Ukraine, for the first time providing Kyiv’s forces with the ability to strike Russian targets far behind the front lines.
President Joe Biden had been hesitant to deliver the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, for fear of escalating the conflict…
Former President Donald Trump’s legal team appears more focused on leveraging his New York fraud trial to lay the groundwork for a future appeal, turning the proceedings into a fundraising event and relying on the trial as an excuse to avoid other court dates, rather than attempting to secure a victory, legal experts say.
Privately, his team has held conversations about how they believed losing this trial was inevitable. Their most viable option would be to contest the case in an appellate court, two sources familiar with the matter told Rolling Stone…
tomhsays
Text of Trump Gag Order in Election Interference Case Just in
[…]
In order to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings, it is necessary to impose certain
restrictions on public statements by interested parties. Undisputed testimony cited by the
government demonstrates that when Defendant has publicly attacked individuals, including on
matters related to this case, those individuals are consequently threatened and harassed…
Since his indictment, and even after the government filed the instant motion,
Defendant has continued to make similar statements attacking individuals involved in the judicial
process, including potential witnesses, prosecutors, and court staff….
Defendant has made those statements to national audiences using language communicating not merely that
he believes the process to be illegitimate, but also that particular individuals involved in it are
liars, or “thugs,” or deserve death…The court finds that such statements
pose a significant and immediate risk that (1) witnesses will be intimidated or otherwise unduly
influenced by the prospect of being themselves targeted for harassment or threats; and (2)
attorneys, public servants, and other court staff will themselves become targets for threats and
harassment.
And that risk is largely irreversible in the age of the Internet; once an individual is
publicly targeted, even revoking the offending statement may not abate the subsequent threats,
harassment, or other intimidating effects during the pretrial as well as trial stages of this case.
Accordingly, and pursuant to Local Criminal Rule 57.7(c), it is hereby ORDERED that:
All interested parties in this matter, including the parties and their counsel, are
prohibited from making any public statements, or directing others to make any
public statements, that target (1) the Special Counsel prosecuting this case or his
staff; (2) defense counsel or their staff; (3) any of this court’s staff or other
supporting personnel; or (4) any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of
their testimony.
This Order shall not be construed to prohibit Defendant from making statements criticizing the
government generally, including the current administration or the Department of Justice;
statements asserting that Defendant is innocent of the charges against him, or that his prosecution
is politically motivated; or statements criticizing the campaign platforms or policies of
Defendant’s current political rivals, such as former Vice President Pence.
[…]
Gabrielle Hanson is pretty out there even by MAGA standards.
Gabrielle Hanson is running for mayor of Franklin, Tennessee, as “A Voice For Franklin’s Principles and Prosperity,” but her voice is corrupt and unhinged.
Hanson, a town alderman, is a MAGA conspiracy theorist, which is sort of old hat at this point, but she took it up a notch when a group of white supremacists escorted her and her husband to a recent campaign event. The group calls itself the Tennessee Active Club and they are in fact actively racist.
Jeff Tischauser, senior researcher for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said, “This is a group that openly is anti-Semitic. They are racist, full of racist, bigoted white supremacists. Online, they are worshiping Hitler.”
This is indeed deplorable behavior. So far, news reports have contrasted all this overt white supremacy with the “idyllic main street town of Franklin”— “a city that prides itself on its small-town charm.” This is why we need more Black folks in media, because in our experience, “idyllic main street” and “small-town charm” usually describe some place where one of my relatives vanished.
Franklin’s Board of Mayor and Aldermen found all this repulsive, stating that “Individuals identifying as neo-Nazis and self-admitted supporters of Gabrielle Hanson threatened both our citizens and members of the media during and after this important civic event.”
Hanson herself refused to denounce her white supremacist entourage, and the whole scene led to this awesome quote from Alderman Brandy Blanton: “It’s embarrassing to end up on HBO, to end up on MSNBC — and not for the good stuff.”
The mayor’s race was already bizarre, thanks entirely to Hanson, who made unfounded claims about the Covenant School shooting and suggested she had a “secret source.” And it gets worse!
Hanson admitted last month that she was charged with promoting prostitution in Dallas during the mid-1990s. She claims this was all a misunderstanding from a seemingly innocent job she’d taken answering phones while attending Southern Methodist University.
“I answered the phone and took a name and took a number and a date,” Hanson explained, “and at the end of my work session I would call the owners and give them that information.”
Weird that she’s using “session” to describe her workday. Of course, I consider someone who knowingly promotes sex work more qualified for mayor than someone who insists she’s too stupid to know she was promoting sex work.
More recently, Hanson’s campaign lifted random women’s images from social media and claimed they were her supporters. She posted on Facebook in August, “Our heartfelt appreciation goes out to the Executive Women’s Club for their invaluable support and encouragement!” (A heart and “praise the Lord” emoji were also involved.) [Tweet and image at the link]
The photo includes several women of color and was taken seven years ago in Chicago, which right-wingers claim is perpetually reliving the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.
NewsChannel5 interviewed one of the women from the photo, April, who not only doesn’t support Hanson, she has no idea who the woman is: “And I have a pretty good memory,” April said. “I keep a tight circle of friends and colleagues, and I think I would have remembered someone like that.”
There is also no “Executive Women’s Club.” The women photographed were part of an ad campaign for the women’s clothing brand The Limited, which explains why they look like the cast of a CW series.
Doubling down on her lie, Hanson later updated her post to claim, “These are all my friends that have relocated to Nashville, Brentwood and Franklin, and they all support me.” We repeat: These women have no idea who Hanson is nor would they care to know. [LOL. It’s the double down that makes me laugh.]
Hanson and her campaign aide Erin Mazzoni responded to reporter Phil Williams for NewsChannel5’s investigation in what was correctly deemed “a bizarre and rambling conversation.” They didn’t directly answer any questions about the phony endorsement but did claim a federal court had upheld a candidate’s right to post whatever fiction they want. They also accused NewsChannel5 of “stalking.”
“This is not appropriate towards a woman, Phil,” Mazzoni said. “We are doing this in the light, and we are doing this with God on our side.” [LOL. God.]
Sure.
A month earlier, Hanson had been found in violation of the city’s ethics code for having sent an email to the Nashville Airport Board demanding the airport authority withdraw financial support from Franklin’s Juneteenth event, because she’s a stupid racist shithead she believed the event’s organizer, the Franklin Justice and Equity Coalition, is somehow “radical.” It’s unclear if this incident is why Hanson suddenly found lots of new Black friends on Facebook.
Gabrielle Hanson is more evidence of the spreading MAGA rot, and under absolutely no circumstances should this woman become mayor of anyplace.
birgerjohanssonsays
Lynna OM @ 290.
Imagine if five or more Republicans get so sick of the mess they make a credible threat to abstain from voting if the Gaetz posse of crazies do not stop their obstruction.
The threat of the Dem archenemy getting the speakership might be one of the few things to make an imprint in their fever-addled brains.
The damage caused by a government shutdown is obviously not enough to register.
The problem is, this requires some Republicans to show courage…
In case you want a pause from the mayhem in the world, here is some truck & engine porn.
“American reacts to why Nordic trucks are different than the rest ” https://youtu.be/vofujBofepQ
birger @293, I wouldn’t count on it. It would be lovely if six of them would just vote for Hakeem Jeffries in order to get government working again. They won’t.
birgerjohanssonsays
FUUUUUUUUUCK!
The latest Israeli bomb raid has resulted in so many deaths that several planned meetings between international representatives have been cancelled in protest.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 200 to 300 people were killed in what it called a ‘targeted’ bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital in central Gaza. Israel said it was terrorists, not its military that was responsible for the blast.
Hamas blamed Israel, and that lying propaganda has already gone around the world several times. Some protests around the world are based on this lie.
Israel, and other intelligence services are saying that a different Palestinian terrorist group bombed the hospital courtyard, probably unintentionally since about 37% of their rockets fail and never make it to Israel.
Surveillance camera footage shows the moment a rocket launched from the Gaza Strip appears to fall short and explode inside the Palestinian territory. [video at the link]
The video, taken from Netiv Ha’asara, appears to match footage taken by Al Jazeera, which also shows a rocket misfire landing inside Gaza. [video at the link]
Another video, published by Palestinian media outlets, shows the blast at the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which Israel says was caused by a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. [video at the link]
Earlier, the Foreign Ministry disseminated video, including on the official Israel X account, claiming to show an Islamic Jihad rocket falling on the hospital.
It then edited the tweet to remove the video after some people pointed out that it appeared to date 40 minutes following the blast, and also showed one video with a date in the future. [Fog of war shit all over the place.]
[…] The Foreign Ministry says firmly that “the IDF did not conduct any operations in the area at the time of impact.”
A man accused of killing two Swedish soccer fans in a suspected terror attack is dead after being tracked down by police in Belgium on Tuesday morning.
Some Good -ish news, as posted by The New York Times:
The number of murders in the United States dropped just over 6 percent in 2022 compared with 2021, the F.B.I. said on Monday. Experts say preliminary data for 2023 indicates that the decline has accelerated this year.
President Joe Biden dithered on delivering ATACMS long-range missiles to Ukraine. But on the 601st day since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the first of these missiles rained down on two Russian air bases.
The videos coming out of Russian-occupied territory are stunning, with Russian sources claiming it is the single worst day for Russian aviation in this misbegotten war. [Tweet and video at the link]
Thus far, Ukraine claims they destroyed nine helicopters, one air defense system, an ammo dump (you can hear it cooking off in the video above), and unspecified personnel and other equipment losses. Russia curiously released pictures of spent ATACMS rocket bodies: [Tweet and images at the link]
There were questions about whether the slower-flying ATACMS missiles would be more susceptible to Russian air defenses than typical GMLRS rockets, but the answer is clearly “no.” Oddly, a “senior Ukrainian official” told the Washington Post that they had fired 18 ATACMS, but that quote is now missing from the story. The original quote was: “Airfield runways were also damaged in the strikes, the message said. The senior official … confirmed ATACMS were used in the operation—10 fired at Berdyansk and eight at Luhansk.” The story now reads: “Airfield runways were also damaged in the strikes, the message said. The senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed ATACMS weaponry was used in the operation.”
Given that initial rumors suggested Ukraine would get around 100 ATACMS, perhaps admitting they blew through 18% of their stash on day one wasn’t wise. Or maybe it was just wrong. And who knows, maybe Ukraine is getting more than 100. The U.S. is certainly banking on the “element of surprise” to keep Russia off-balance.
Ukraine released videos of five of these monster missiles being fired. Here are the first three: [Tweets and videos at the link]
The ATACMS variant used is the oldest in the U.S. arsenal, made between 1996-1997, with a range of 165 kilometers, carrying 950 cluster munitions. That is roughly 11 times the 88 cluster bomblets a 155 mm artillery cluster round carries, but the real value, of course, is in the range. Newer ATACMS variants have double the range of this version. Does Ukraine have them? Who knows, and it’s best to keep the Russians guessing.
It’s amazing that a 30-year-old missile was so easily able to evade Russian air defenses. By all indications, the Russian helicopter base at Berdyansk was heavily protected by air defenses. For all their bluster, Russia still doesn’t have any response to rockets and missiles fired from MLRS/HIMARS launchers.
And with Berdyansk and other air bases now at risk from further attacks, Russia will be forced to push their remaining helicopters even further away from the front lines. Their attack helicopters have an operational range of around 500 kilometers before they need to fly home. Push them out beyond the 300-kilometer range of newer ATACMS variants, and those helicopters suddenly have a dramatically reduced ability to loiter over a battlefield looking for targets, and they may be forced to carry a lighter payload as well, further reducing their impact.
The arrival of this one single weapons system has dramatically reshaped Russia’s ability to wage its war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is certainly pleased. “Our agreements with President Biden are being implemented successfully,” he said. “ATACMS have proven themselves.”
Politico reports that the U.S. won’t be sending the long-range version. “Working together with the Defense Department, the National Security Council team came up with an idea,” Politico reported. “While the U.S. military’s existing stocks of the long-range Army Tactical Missile System were in short supply, the U.S. could send the medium-range version, carrying warheads containing hundreds of cluster bomblets that could hit targets 100 miles away.”
This shorter-range version of ATACMS can hit all of Russian-occupied Ukraine, except for the southern half of Crimea. [Tweet and map showing various missile ranges]
There is still no definitive word on whether Ukraine is allowed to strike targets on Russian territory. All such restrictions should be lifted.
Let’s also hope that the U.S. does send the longer-range versions, and that claiming otherwise is merely misdirection to set up Russia for more “surprises.” Ukraine doesn’t even need too many of the longer-range missiles. Send five, launch them periodically, and keep Russia guessing. Like Russia’s ships currently fleeing their Sevastopol naval base in southern Crimea, it doesn’t take much to push Russian assets further from the battlefield. As long as they know they can be hit, self-preservation pushes them further back.
Meanwhile, the celebration on the pro-Ukraine side is real. [Tweet and image showing Ukrainian ATACM meme, “Biden Delivery.”]
And the bipartisan celebration from our own side is real too: [Tweet from Ted Lieu: Thank you @POTUS for helping Ukraine stand up to Russian war crimes. In June @RepMcCaul @USRepKeating @RepJoeWilson @CongressmanKean @RepGolden and I authored a bipartisan resolution calling for the immediate transfer of long-range ATACMS to Ukraine. Pleased this is being done.]
Note that Russia had thousands of long-range cruise missiles at the start of the war. Imagine if they had used them to degrade Ukrainian military targets instead of civilian supermarkets, apartment complexes, and grain silos.
Unlike Ukraine, which is still range-restricted, Russia could hit anywhere in Ukraine it wants. Ukraine is showing how intentional use of assets can have a dramatic effect on the course of the war, contrasting with Russia’s genocidal rage tactics.
The former will lead to victory, the latter just to senseless death.
Rep. Debbie Lesko announced Tuesday that she will not seek reelection in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.
Lesko, R-Ariz., who since 2018 has served the solidly Republican West Valley district, said in a written statement that she wants to focus on her family…
An estimated 20,000 Britons have been approached by Chinese state actors on LinkedIn in the hope of stealing industrial or technological secrets, the head of MI5 has said…
The IRS will test a free tax filing service in 2024 for a subset of lucky taxpayers in as many as 13 states, the agency announced today. Direct File, as the service is called, is a shot across the bows of Turbotax, H&R Block, and other paid tax prep services, whose owners have resisted free and simple tax filing for decades…
The IRS describes Direct File as “a mobile-friendly, interview-based service” available in English and Spanish, intended for people with simpler tax situations like W-2s and common income credits and deductions…
Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and New York are the four states that are integrating with Direct File for 2024 (i.e. the 2023 tax year); Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming “may also be eligible,” due to not having state income tax, but it is not final. Every state was given the opportunity to participate in the Direct File program, but not all were “in a position to join.” …
Amazon rivers fall to lowest levels in 121 years amid a severe drought
Story by Reuters
.. (snip)..
Published 7:44 AM EDT, Tue October 17, 2023
Rivers in the heart of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil fell to their lowest levels in over a century on Monday as a record drought upends the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and damages the jungle ecosystem.
The port of Manaus, the region’s most populous city, at the meeting of the Rio Negro and the Amazon River, recorded 13.59 meters (44.6 feet) of water on Monday, compared to 17.60 a year ago, according to its website. That is the lowest level since records began in 121 years ago in 1902, passing a previous all-time low set in 2010.
Rapidly drying tributaries to the mighty Amazon have left boats stranded, cutting off food and water supplies to remote villages, while high water temperatures are suspected of killing more than 100 endangered river dolphins.
After months without rain, rainforest villager Pedro Mendonca was relieved when a Brazilian NGO delivered supplies to his riverside community near Manaus late last week.
“We have gone three months without rain here in our community,” said Mendonca, who lives in Santa Helena do Ingles, west of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state. “It is much hotter than past droughts.”
Uh oh.. when the Amazon is drying up and jungle there hasn’t seen rain for three months..
StevoRsays
Amazon rivers fall to lowest levels in 121 years amid a severe drought
Story by Reuters
.. (snip)..
Published 7:44 AM EDT, Tue October 17, 2023
Rivers in the heart of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil fell to their lowest levels in over a century on Monday as a record drought upends the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and damages the jungle ecosystem.
The port of Manaus, the region’s most populous city, at the meeting of the Rio Negro and the Amazon River, recorded 13.59 meters (44.6 feet) of water on Monday, compared to 17.60 a year ago, according to its website. That is the lowest level since records began in 121 years ago in 1902, passing a previous all-time low set in 2010.
Rapidly drying tributaries to the mighty Amazon have left boats stranded, cutting off food and water supplies to remote villages, while high water temperatures are suspected of killing more than 100 endangered river dolphins.
After months without rain, rainforest villager Pedro Mendonca was relieved when a Brazilian NGO delivered supplies to his riverside community near Manaus late last week.
“We have gone three months without rain here in our community,” said Mendonca, who lives in Santa Helena do Ingles, west of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state. “It is much hotter than past droughts.”
“Two of the named Russian sources have not been seen or heard of since. The publication of this document did serious damage to the US government’s Russian operations and their ability to recruit new Russian sources. The claimant’s [Trump’s] actions in this regard were truly shocking and arguably constitute one of the most egregious breaches of intelligence rules and protocol by the US government in recent times.”
[…] the [increase] in Congenital syphilis in pregnant women is mostly happening only in states that passed anti-abortion laws. Why would anti-abortion laws impact syphilis rates? Because Planned Parenthood is normally the number one organization helping people with STD’s. Because Planned Parenthood is the number one prenatal care giver to women with little or no health insurance. When a mother has prenatal care, she is screened and treated for STD’s.
What happens in anti-abortion states? They took away funding to Planned Parenthood […] and did their best to close them down. Per the New York Times over 61 clinics closed completely after the Dobbs decision up til the article was published in June, many more will be closing after various legal challenges.
What happens to women in areas with no Planned Parenthood? They don’t go to doctors, they don’t get STD’s treated, they don’t get prenatal care. They tend to live in areas with staffing shortages, even if they had insurance. They live in Ob-gyn deserts – no appts available. Why are there no service providers for women even with insurance? Again the abortion laws make it difficult to practice sexual health care for women, with all the politicians in the exam room. […]
Our eyes today have been on Washington and the pathetic failures of Jim Jordan. But Jordan’s mentor, hero, lord and savior Donald Trump has been out there running for president, at least between his court dates (he’s back in New York today), and he’s revealing some terrible things in the process. Not real things, of course, just things being bandied about by the syphilitic raccoons who live in his brain.
For instance, Trump explained in Iowa last night that he doesn’t like flies, but he can’t say he doesn’t like flies, because if he says he doesn’t like flies, he’ll get accused of animal cruelty, and also did you know they banned flypaper? [video at the link]
TRUMP: I didn’t know you had flies in Iowa.
He didn’t? Where perchance did he think the flies were if not in the cow butter corn prairies of the Midwest?
TRUMP: I hate flies! Now I’ll get in trouble for saying that. Cruelty to animals. No it’s true. You know, I said the other day I was at a place and it was a beautiful place, but they had like, flies. And I said, get flypaper! They said, “Sir, they’re not allowed to sell it anymore because of cruelty to animals.” They actually said that! I don’t know. Can you get flypaper? Used to be great, right? But they said, “You can’t do that anymore, sir, it’s cruelty.” What the hell is going on with this country?
Two things here:
Flypaper is not banned, as many on the internet have pointed out.
Also, the story Trump told? Did not happen. Know why we know that? Because the people in his story called him “sir.” Those are imaginary stories.
In the same appearance, Trump said he’s willing to go to prison if that’s what it takes “for our country to win and become a democracy again.” [video at the link]
And the crowd went wild!
It was part of an extended [complaint] about Judge Tanya Chutkan, the one who slapped the limited gag order on him yesterday in DC. Trump, because he’s a fucking moron, told the people at his rally that a “gag order” is something that means “[y]ou can’t speak badly about your opponent.”
Which … no. But anyway.
Obviously Donald Trump is absolutely terrified of prison, but hey, let’s hold him to it. For country to win and become a democracy again, it would be great if Trump went to prison.
Other evidence of Trump’s recent cognitive decline includes him praising Hezbollah as “very smart.” And saying windmills are detrimental to whales’ mental health. And asking if US American military veterans even have cell phones. And bragging about the dementia test he (says he) aced in 2018. And saying he has a better body than Joe Biden. And that you have to have an ID to buy bread. And, apropos of nothing, that he’d rather be electrocuted to death than sharked to death. And that electric cars make people schizophrenic. And that the “Obama administration” has it “in their stats” that Trump built 500 miles of border wall. (Not the only time recently he’s seemed confused about who’s president right now.) […]
In another shocking government overreach attack on America’s core freedoms, the Justice Department is suing online garage-sale facilitator eBay, accusing the company of selling and distributing hundreds of thousands of devices aimed at helping owners of diesel pickup trucks modify their emissions systems so the trucks can “roll coal.” That’s the hilarious practice of blowing thick black diesel exhaust into the faces of bicyclists, drivers of electric or hybrid cars, or just anybody on the street who needs thick black smoke in their face for eating outside, being in an area popular with snooty liberals, or just having it coming by being a pedestrian.[…]
The federal complaint says eBay is liable because the aftermarket devices violate the Clean Air Act, that federal “no fun ever” law signed by communist Richard Nixon, by bypassing vehicles’ federally required emissions control systems.
Aftermarket defeat devices significantly increase pollution emissions – including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and nonmethane hydrocarbons – that harm public health and impede efforts by the EPA, states, Tribes and local agencies to plan for and attain air quality standards.
The lawsuit also separately accuses eBay of selling illegal pesticide devices and banned paint-removal products as well, including one insecticide that should only be sold to certified pest-control techs — it was fraudulently being sold as a “protection” against the COVID virus. On the upside, it wasn’t being sprayed from lifted dually F-350s into the windows of Teslas.
Each illegal sale could earn eBay a fine of up to $5,580, meaning potential fines of $2 billion or more. […]
EBay denies the claims […]
Ah yes, the old “I am but a simple merchant plying my trade as honestly as I can, officer” defense. […]
In a related case, the DOJ announced in August that one manufacturer of the coal-rolling devices, “Sinister Diesel,” agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy and fraud charges, and to pay $1 million in fines for violating the Clean Air Act. Yes, even though some of the kits included warnings that the products were, wink-wink, for “offroad use” only, which doesn’t even make sense because you hardly ever find a Prius to roll coal on offroad.
In conclusion, nobody can have fun anymore and we’re sure Donald Trump will add this to his list of campaign grievances along with those toilets that you have to flush 20 times to even get rid of your patriotic MAGA dumps.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has spent the last decade functioning as Fox News’ man in Congress, a role that has helped him rise through the party ranks to his current position as the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Now, he’s set his sights on becoming House speaker, a post that would give the right-wing propaganda network unprecedented influence over congressional affairs.
Jordan is a charter member of the “Fox News Caucus” of Republican politicians who boosted their careers through the network’s airtime. Fox has interviewed the Ohio Republican more times in recent years than any of his peers — including his rival for House speaker, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA). Those appearances proved a major boon to Jordan’s rise during Donald Trump’s presidency; Trump, an avid Fox-watcher, would reportedly often phone Jordan because he had seen the congressman “on TV defending him.” This Fox-fueled relationship made Jordan “influential in shaping administration policies,” and eventually led to Trump awarding Jordan the Medal of Freedom.
But Jordan does not just sit for interviews with Fox — he operationalizes its content. The Ohio Republican turns Fox talking points into letters to government agencies, brings its smears into committee rooms, and folds its conspiracy theories into impeachment efforts.
For his efforts, the network’s hosts have showered him with praise, endorsed his bids to rise in the ranks, and risen to his defense — including when he became embroiled in scandal following allegations that he had ignored sexual abuse by the team doctor during his tenure as assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University. And his play for the House’s top spot — which is only possible thanks to the efforts of another Fox Caucus member, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), in ousting Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — has the support of network stars like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin, as well as its most prominent viewer, Trump. […]
JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): I don’t think we can have a Palestinian state at this point. I’ve had it with the Palestinians. I’ve given up on the Palestinians. If I was in Israel, I wouldn’t be talking about a Palestinian state right now. I don’t think Joe Biden should be talking about a Palestinian state right now.
And I don’t like how people try to differentiate between the Palestinians and Hamas. To me, I see people with guns — that’s Hamas. The people without the guns are the Palestinians. They believe the same thing. The Palestinians hire Hamas to run their government. You poll them, they all love killing Jews. It’s in their charter. They say they believe in suicide bombings.
Every time a Palestinian refugee goes to another country, it doesn’t work out so well for the other country and for those Palestinians. No one wants them. You don’t see Egypt opening up their doors, you don’t see Jordan opening up, you don’t see the Saudis. Why don’t they want the Palestinians, Dana? I think we all know why they don’t want the Palestinians. And it’s not working out, having these Palestinians and Hamas right next door to the Israelis.
I am thinking of the 6-year-old Illinois boy who was stabbed 26 times because he was Palestinian. [See comment 259]
Excerpt from coverage that described the killer:
He had been listening to conservative radio coverage of the Middle East war in the days before the attack, the prosecutors said, wanted his Palestinian American tenants to move out of his building and was increasingly concerned that he was in personal danger because of his connection to them.
An Israeli activist involved in past prisoner exchanges questioned the offer and Hamas acknowledged that it does not have custody of all the hostages seized from Israel.
After days of tense negotiations involving U.S., Israeli and Qatari officials, Hamas has expressed a willingness to release women and children it holds captive. But the group acknowledged that it does not have custody of all the hostages seized in the attack on Israel 10 days ago, a diplomat with knowledge of the talks and a former U.S. official briefed on the matter said.
Some of the hostages are held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another group based in Gaza, the officials said, and others are held by “random Gaza citizen opportunists,” the former U.S. official said. Hamas, which controls Gaza, is trying to gain custody of all of the captives but says it cannot amid continued bombing, the sources said.
The sources spoke shortly after a senior Hamas official told NBC News’ Richard Engel that the group is willing to immediately release all civilian hostages — foreign and Israeli — if Israel stops its airstrikes on Gaza.
The Hamas official said the hostages could be released within the hour as long as Israel meets its terms. He claimed that there is no safe place to release them now.
Gershon Baskin, an Israeli activist who helped secure the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, noted that it is essentially the same message the Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry put out Monday. “I think this is a false message, psychological warfare. It means nothing,” Baskin told NBC News.
He said he sees it as unrealistic, because “there are no guarantees that Israel will give that it won’t renew the fighting, and Hamas knows that.” Baskin said he thinks the only way an agreement could be reached would be if Hamas released women, children, the elderly and the sick in exchange for Palestinian women and minors held in Israel. […]
In the past 10 years, fewer than 600 Palestinians in all have come to the U.S. as refugees, according to the State Department.
Amid the Gaza conflict, Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail are advocating for a ban on any Palestinian refugees’ coming to the U.S. […]
Reginald Selkirksays
@313:
In the same appearance, Trump said he’s willing to go to prison if that’s what it takes “for our country to win and become a democracy again.”
Three members of California family pleaded guilty to their roles in a $600 million nationwide catalytic converter theft ring that operated over a three-year period, prosecutors say.
The Vang family were part of a nationwide catalytic converter theft ring that ceased operations in October of 2022 after authorities coordinated a takedown of thieves, dealers and processors over a $600 million sale to a metal refinery.
Monica Moua, 58, and her two sons Tou Sue Vang, 32, and Andrew Vang, 28 were paid over $38 million to transport stolen catalytic converters from California to New Jersey, federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of California announced Monday. All pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport stolen catalytic converters from California to New Jersey in return for the multi-million dollar payments.
Tou Sue Vang also pleaded guilty to an additional 39 charges related to money laundering.
Nine people, including members of the Vang family, out of 21 people believed to be involved in the ring, will face charges in California…
GOP Rep. Jim Jordan has been in Congress for nearly 16 years.
In that time, he’s introduced 30 bills.
Not a single one has ever been signed into law…
According to Congress’ online legislative tracker, Jordan’s introduced just 30 bills in total throughout his time in office. The failed bills include his attempt to restrict Washington, DC’s municipal government from issuing same-sex marriage licenses, “restore Second Amendment rights” to the city, and making a federal law stating that life begins at conception.
As for amendments he’s introduced regarding other members of Congress’ legislation, the legislative tracker shows he’s batting 1 for 17, amending a single bill in 2012 regarding renewable energy and biofuel.
Though he’s introduced very few bills while in office, Jordan’s co-sponsored 949 pieces of legislation. Co-sponsoring, however, simply means formally signing on to support a bill and doesn’t necessarily imply that a member of Congress had any involvement with its formation.
Of the 949 pieces co-sponsored by Jordan, only 69 have become law, with several of them simply naming government buildings…
Reginald @322, all true. In addition, Jordan is a bully. So … he’s a Republican who seldom does any real work and who bullies his colleagues. Perfect trumpian doofus. Nevertheless, he lost the vote for the Speaker’s gavel again today.
We are now into the third week of Republican chaos that has shut down the House when it comes to getting real work done.
Without a process to follow, or a consensus around which to build things, or any particular ideological flavor to the breakdown, each day is an open-ended exercise in personal advancement, score-settling, and posturing leading nowhere.
Yes, at some level it’s true that the House GOP is ignoring the nation’s real business in the midst of their own internal meltdown, but the dynamics of the current situation are the same as has bogged down the conference from policymaking, dealmaking, and normal legislating for a long time now. There’s no real reason to think that once they’re over this hump – whenever that may be – that we’d get anything approaching normal in the aftermath. […]
Aguilar: A vote today to make the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier, and an insurrection insider to the speaker of this house would be a terrible message to the country and our allies.[…]
The weight of evidence points to an errant rocket from within Gaza as the source of last night’s Gaza hospital blast.
I have no ability to evaluate grainy videos or make sense of what different blast patterns look like. But I’ve spent several years developing lists of open source intelligence and forensics analysts who are consistently credible. […] Credible doesn’t mean always right of course. By credible in this case I mean analysts who are highly knowledgeable in one relevant domain, use an empirical framework for analyzing videos, open source data, etc., and have a proven track record of the appropriate level of caution and skepticism in drawing conclusions.
Many of these people come out of the Bellingcat world, others got started (at least publicly) analyzing the Syrian and Ukraine conflicts. It’s actually remarkable what people not drawing on any state or property ‘intelligence’ can demonstrate with overlapping provenance-proven video evidence, geolocation, satellite photography, open source weapons information, tracking data and more.
I watched this group very closely overnight (even at the expense of getting much sleep) as more videos and data emerged about the hospital blast in Gaza and from what I can tell none of these people thinks the evidence points to an Israeli bomb as the source of the blast.
They’re not all saying it’s open and shut. In fact, I’m not sure any of them are saying that. That’s a very high standard. But every one that I follow is saying the weight of evidence points to some version of a failed rocket launch from within Gaza. And that with varying degrees of certainty.
Significantly, several different kinds of evidence appear to point to this same conclusion – nighttime video of the explosion, audio analysis of the sounds immediately prior to the blast, day after photographs of the impact site and blast zone, et al. Israel has published what it says is audio of Hamas operatives discussing the blast and ascribing it to the failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch. I don’t disbelieve that audio because it fits with the other evidence. But I place it in a separate category because a lot of people are going to be inherently skeptical of any evidence coming from one of the interested parties. All the evidence discussed above is from photographs and videos from international news organizations. Indeed, the key blast video, I believe, comes from a Hamas-run TV station.
[…] One interesting example of this analysis is tied to the photo at the top of this post. I’ll just speak generally since I’m no expert. I’m just summarizing. […] if you look there’s a small crater at the center of this parking lot. The cars right next to it are totally demolished. But cars just no more than twenty or thirty feet away have no more than blown out windows and some are almost totally unscathed. To a trained eye that suggests a relatively small blast.
With daybreak there are growing questions about whether the blast was of the magnitude reported last night and whether the alleged number of fatalities can be accurate. Unlike the ‘who did this’ question this analysis seems less clear to me. If I’m understanding the discussion it seems like the actual blast as opposed to the subsequent fire was fairly small and much of the blasted building is actually intact. […]
One red flag last night is that there were almost instant, very large and very round fatality numbers. The two I saw circulating in global media, based on the accounts from the Gazan (Hamas) health ministry, was either 200-300 or 500 dead. It’s almost impossible to actually count numbers of dead and wounded that quickly. So at best those were estimates in a highly chaotic situation. But while most global media showed some caution about who was responsible these death counts were reported more or less as fact. It’s possible they’ll prove to be accurate. But there’s significant skepticism about whether what’s visible in daylight squares with those immediate claims. I don’t know what numbers of fatalities are credible, just that credible analysts are skeptical of those original estimates.
[…] Generally, if you dip into this stuff, don’t take any one analysis as the one that settles it. Look at the weight of a opinion, whether it seems to point clearly in one direction or another. Also, run towards expressions of caution and away from expressions of certainty.
After being accused of attempting to intimidate Republicans into voting for Jordan for Speaker, Hannity accuses Hakeem Jeffries and AOC of intimidating Republicans who voted against Jordan
LOL
HANNITY: Of course, like all Democrats, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is trying to capitalize politically on this turmoil. Jeffries, along with “Squad” member AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and others, they are now targeting the 20 Republicans that voted against Jordan today, and they are encouraging them to give up the majority and let Jeffries actually take the gavel.
Commentary:
[…] First of all, kudos to the Hannity intern who had to find and cut together every still image of Hakeem Jeffries that the network had access to in order to create that montage of “Black guy points his finger in opposition to mediocre Hannity-promoted white savior.” But yes, what Sean is describing here is generally known as Doing Politics. If Jeffries can make a better case for Republican votes than seditious conspirator and alleged athlete-molestation-enabler Jim Jordan can, then that says just as much about Jordan’s loathsomeness as it does about Jeffries’ political skills.
Jeffries almost certainly won’t be speaker, though. Our history books already have some extremely important examples of conservatives preferring to give power to white guys, even ones who try to overthrow the republic, rather than give it to a Black guy. [..]
Curiously, Hannity saw fit to turn the spotlight on Jeffries (and “’Squad’ member AOC”) after the 20 Republicans who voted against Jordan on Tuesday were targeted with the kind of threats that generally follow when Jordan or other top Republicans identify supposed traitors in their midst. And yes, that’s the word that Hannity’s guests have been tossing around: “traitors.”
Hannity is in a tough spot. Jordan is obviously the candidate that Trump wants to be speaker—largely due to Jordan’s consistent efforts over the years to support and cover up alleged crimes committed by Trump or on Trump’s behalf—but Jordan remains mostly incompetent at doing anything except sabotage. His efforts to bully fellow House Republicans into voting for him have backfired spectacularly so far. So Hannity is mostly muddling his way through the news cycle, looking like he’d rather be somewhere else.
[…] Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska has been a target of a pressure campaign that extended to his wife. She received anonymous emails and texts saying, “your husband better support Jim Jordan,” and warning, “Your husband will not hold any political office ever again. What a disappoint [sic] and failure he is.”
Feel the unity!
That’s enough of a taste of Jordan’s idea of leadership to harden the opposition against him. Unless Jordan can figure out a way to overturn this election, his bid for power seems doomed.
Jordan is an excellent example of the devolution of GOP politicians. He is from a deep red district in which the sole skill required to be elected is performative obnoxiousness. He is exactly the kind of person who gets elected and seen as a “Leader” in today’s Republican party.
He has NEVER demonstrated any abilities to either lead or create compromise solutions to problems. He has never shown any ability to master the legislative process and in fact in 16 years he has not successfully written or sponsored passed a single piece of legislation.
His skill deficits become magnified when he is compared to Nance Pelosi who was a master at handling people and at using the sometimes byzantine House rules and procedures to advance an agenda.
His primary tactic in pursuing the speakership has been his usual crude bullying which is quite popular at Fox News but not actually effective at producing results. That is reflective of the party as a whole.
Earlier this year, the Florida Legislature passed what we’ll call the Look How Tough On China Ron DeSantis Is, Vote For Him Act of 2023, which prohibits anyone who’s “domiciled” in China from buying homes or property in Florida, unless they’re a US citizen or permanent resident. DeSantis said the law was absolutely needed to protect Florida and the USA from the threat of Chinese Communist Party members stealing our essence by owning a condo in Miami-Dade […]
the law has thrown a wrench into the Florida real estate market, causing frustration and chaos not for Chinese Communist Party officials but for ordinary well-off Chinese citizens who would like to have a vacation home in the States, or to purchase a place for their US-based adult kids to live, or to buy a condo or house to live in while they work in the US, what with China being not only an international center of evil, but also of business, which Republicans supposedly love. […]
The law includes other restrictions on property ownership by foreign nationals, but only Chinese citizens are banned outright from purchasing real estate in the state.
Funny thing: It also seems that if you exclude an entire category of people who have the money to buy property in Florida, that’s also terrible for Florida’s real estate business, which is a pretty big chunk of the economy. Now look what DeSantis has gone and done: He’s made us feel the teensiest bit of empathy for developers and real estate people.
And of course, the ban on property sales to Chinese nationals has led to ethnic profiling, because what realtor wants to go to jail for a year and/or be fined up to $1,000 for breaking the new dumb law? Potential buyers are also being scared off, even folks who might not be excluded under the law, since the penalty for a Chinese national who illegally purchases property in Florida is up to five years in prison and way larger fines.
NBC News leads its story off with the experience of Kristen Zhang, a longtime Orlando resident whose parents in China decided last year to build a house near her — not to spy on Walt Disney World but to be near their grandkids. (NBC News doesn’t say how high up the grandchildren are in the CCP, clearly covering up the real scandal.)
After the new law slammed down this summer, Zhang’s parents had to cancel their contract with the developer; luckily, they were able to call things off soon enough to get their deposit back. But Zhang said it isn’t the money that bothers her:
“This is racist,” she said. “After I told my parents about the bill, they feel like America doesn’t welcome us. They don’t want to come here anymore.”
Again, this is where your MAGAhead says “Good! Stay out! And take your daughter with you, commie spy!”
What with the whole thing being racist AF, the ACLU and other civil rights groups joined a group of Chinese residents to sue Florida in federal court.
The Justice Department backed their effort in a filing this summer, saying the measure is unconstitutional, but a judge ruled against the challenge in August, teeing up an appeal.
NBC News also looks at the supply side, interviewing several folks in the Florida real estate biz, who say the law has hurt their sales and generally been a fuckbungle. […]
Others in the real estate business say the law practically demands they screen clients in ways that border on racial profiling, or just stomp right past that border […]
Oh yes, and another provision of the law, NBC News notes, requires that Chinese nationals who already owned property in Florida need to register it with the Florida Department of Commerce before January 1, 2024 or face steep fines — up to $1,000 a day. There’s only one little problem, according to realtor Frank Lin: “They don’t even have a form yet or place or website, so that’s confused everyone.”
[…] So far, the real estate restrictions haven’t yet boosted DeSantis’s standing in the polls. Maybe he’ll need to kidnap some Chinese nationals looking at open houses this weekend and fly them to Massachusetts.
[…] “While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” said a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council, Adrienne Watson. Biden had earlier told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.”
“But there’s a lot of people out there not sure, so we’ve got a lot — we’ve got to overcome a lot of things,” Biden cautioned.
In Turkey, which only recently resumed normal relations with Israel, demonstrators burned Israeli flags in front of the consulate in Istanbul. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the blast the latest example of “Israeli attacks devoid of the most basic human values.” […]
[…] In 2022, Jeff Landry assisted a Republican lawmaker in unveiling a bill, House Bill 321, that would have made public the criminal records of young people between ages 13 and 18 who are accused of a violent crime—but only in Caddo, East Baton Rouge, and Orleans, all parishes with some of the highest concentrations of Black residents in the state. Landry made news appearances advocating for the bill and spoke at the press conference announcing it, later using portions of his speech for campaign ads attacking those three parishes’ DAs. […]
Commentary:
The Louisiana 2023 primary elections had the worst voter turnout in a dozen years, and that’s a shame, as those who did vote made some terrible decisions.
Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry absolutely crushed Democrat Shawn Wilson 51.5 percent to 26 percent. Despite early poll predictions, Landry won a clear majority so Wilson was spared the humiliation of a runoff. None of the other candidates even reached 10 percent each.
An estimated 36 percent of Louisiana’s three million registered voters showed up for the primary. Turnout was disproportionately low in traditionally Democratic areas, such as the dismal 27 percent in Orleans Parish.
“I think that in Louisiana, Democrats are in serious trouble,” Baton Rouge-based pollster John Couvillon said bluntly. “And it’s not just Shawn.”
[…] The tepid enthusiasm for Wilson and Landry’s relative strength among Black voters is somewhat surprising considering Landry ran an overtly racist campaign. […]
Landry will replace outgoing Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards. The difference in governance will prove stark. During his eight years in office, Edwards issued 319 vetoes, and 99 percent of them were sustained. Only two were overridden, most recently his veto of a Republican bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. Landry won’t simply sign the worst bills into law. He’ll actively encourage Republicans to make them worse. [Yikes]
[…] as attorney general, Landry catered to his party’s far-right MAGA base by fighting Gov. Edwards and the Biden administration in court over vaccine and mask mandates for even health-care workers, as well as sensible environmental regulations.
He was also a veritable pro-bono counsel for right-wing misinformation — leading a lawsuit that resulted in keeping the Biden administration from asking social media companies to remove content that violated their own terms of service.
Landry is a bad guy who will put the hammer to marginalized people. Yes, Louisiana is a solid Republican state and Edwards — an anti-abortion Democrat — was an outlier. But man did the Democratic Party lie down and die. Some of the races weren’t even contested. At least force the Republican candidates to spend money on campaign office space. Democrats must fight against the self-fulfilling prophecy that non-Republicans votes don’t matter.
There is also a national warning for Democrats that a horrible Republican candidate on the merits isn’t enough to inspire turnout against them. Let’s start knocking on those doors and getting everyone engaged. […]
Convincing people in the Deep South to even register is uphill both ways through the mosquitoes.
Even when the best candidates run
—————————-
So a little more than 18% of registered voters decided that the other 82% should suffer because “woke”.
—————————-
Getting into a losing streak in a state becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy–no one wants to put money up, no one wants to spend time organizing at the grass roots level, and no one wants to bother running as a candidate if they believe they’ll still lose handily, so they bow out and their losses convince voters it’s not worth bothering to vote this time or next, liberals who can move away do so, and the state becomes redder than ever.
——————————-
Dear Sweet Jesus! What a frigggin’ shitty “election”!
United Airlines will change its boarding order next week by letting economy-class passengers who have selected window seats to board before those with middle and aisle seats.
The company said the change could shave two minutes off the boarding process.
The new procedure will begin Oct. 26, according to a company memo shared with CNBC. […]
Airlines regularly tinker with boarding procedures to save precious time getting passengers onto planes, generally rewarding their biggest spenders with some of the earliest boarding.
United’s boarding process from preboarding — which includes travelers with disabilities, active duty members of the military, travelers with children under 2 years old and United’s top-tier elite frequent flyers — through Group 3 will remain the same, according to the memo.
Beginning with Group 4, passengers with window seats will board first, followed by those with middle seats and then aisle seats. People on the same reservation, such as families, can board together, United said.
The new boarding process will be implemented on all domestic flights and some international flights.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In the latest setback to Rep. Jim Jordan’s bid to be Speaker of the House, Rep. George Santos has declared the Ohio congressman’s identity “not worth stealing.”
Minutes after Jordan lost the first round of voting for Speaker, Santos took to the floor of the House and told his colleagues, “I would be embarrassed to use any credit card with Jim Jordan’s name on it.”
Don’t get me wrong, I was no fan of Kevin McCarthy,” Santos went on. “But, when it came time to buy myself a new pair of Uggs, sure, I gave Kevin’s Amex a whirl.”
Jordan, Santos claimed, was “another story.”
“I would never in a million years steal Jim’s identity,” he said. “Pretending to be Jim Jordan, even for a minute, would leave me feeling unclean.”
Springfield, Ohio, native John Legend is continuing his vocal support for abortion rights—while actually saying the word!—and we simply love to see it.
Legend cut an ad for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights where he encourages voters to “stand up for our families and our freedoms” by voting for Issue 1, the ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. He even managed to take a subtle dig at Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) in the process…
Jeansays
Just as a general comment, shouldn’t Jim Jordan be subject to section 3 of the 14th amendment? According to the January 6th committee, he was actively involved in many aspects of the January 6th insurrection. So he should be removed from his post in congress and never allowed to hold any office in the future. I don’t think many people would complaint about not seeing or hearing about him but no one is going to be willing to even mention the possibility.
A court employee was arrested Wednesday after she tried to approach former President Donald Trump while he was seated in the courtroom during his civil trial in lower Manhattan.
As the trial was taking place, the woman “disrupted the proceedings by standing up and walking towards the front of the courtroom and yelling out to Mr. Trump indicating she wanted to assist him,” according to a spokesman for the New York State Unified Court System.
The woman was stopped by court officers before she got near Trump or any of the attorneys or other litigants…
The Biden administration on Wednesday announced it will put $3.5 billion toward electrical grid resilience projects.
The funds, provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will cover 58 projects across 44 states, Biden administration officials told reporters on a call Wednesday. It marks the largest single federal investment in the electrical grid in the history of the U.S…
Ukrainian forces have crossed the Dnipro river and established a position on the opposite bank as they push into Russian-occupied territory in southern Ukraine, according to Russian sources.
Pro-Kremlin military bloggers said Kyiv’s troops had created a bridgehead, captured the town of Poima, and were pushing north towards the nearby town of Pishchanivka.
The two towns are south of a destroyed railway bridge and upriver from the Antonivka road crossing, meaning the Ukrainians have to make dangerous, amphibious crossings…
A pro-Trump Minnesota judge declared a new state law restoring voting rights for convicted felons unconstitutional, drawing a sharp rebuke from Minnesota’s attorney general and secretary of state who said he overstepped his authority and urged residents to vote anyway.
Mille Lacs County District Judge Matthew Quinn declared the law unconstitutional in a pair of orders last week in which he sentenced two offenders to probation, but warned them they are not eligible to vote or register to vote — even though the law says they are. It was an unusual step because nobody involved in those cases ever asked him to rule on the constitutionality of the law…
San Marcos, Texas, police officers and professional staff must receive training on responding to political violence and voter intimidation and ways to develop community trust as part of a legal settlement approved over a 2020 incident in which a caravan of Donald Trump supporters were accused of harassing a Joe Biden campaign bus as it drove on Interstate 35.
The city will also pay $175,000 to four individuals on the bus: former state Sen. Wendy Davis, who was running for Congress at the time; former Biden campaign staffer David Gins; campaign volunteer Eric Cervini; and bus driver Timothy Holloway.
They accused San Marcos law enforcement in a 2021 lawsuit of ignoring multiple requests for a police escort as they traveled on I-35 from San Antonio to Austin days before the 2020 presidential election. They said they were surrounded by Trump supporters who allegedly drove dangerously close to the bus while honking and shouting, forcing it to slow to a crawl…
Jean @336, seems right to me, but so far no republicans other than Liz Cheney have made a strong case that he did support Trump’s overthrow of the elected government.
Reginald @338, that is such a good idea! Glad to see it.
Posted by Rep. Mike Collins: “Hakeem Jeffries just lost his 17th straight vote for speaker.”
Let’s take a look at those numbers.
In January, it took Kevin McCarthy 15 votes to become speaker. House Minority Leader Jeffries got more votes the first 11 times. This week, Rep. Jim Jordan has made two attempts at getting elected speaker. Jeffries got more votes both times.
The House rules say that the speaker has to get a majority. A plurality doesn’t count, so Jeffries isn’t the speaker. But let’s be absolutely clear: He got the most votes 13 times.
And the only reason that Jeffries got the chance to get the most votes 13 times is that Republicans are in such disarray that despite having the majority, they have had to hold 17 votes for speaker this year. You would not think this is something to brag about—but Collins is so eager to own the libs, and so confident that his followers will be right there with him, that he went for it, as ridiculous as it was.
The incompetence is so epic that despite the high stakes and the damage House Republicans are doing every day, it’s still amusing watching them flail.
Justice must be done. But I caution this: While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes. I’m the first U.S. president to visit Israel in time of war. I’ve made wartime decisions. I know the choices are never clear or easy for the leadership.
There’s always cost, and it requires being deliberate. It requires asking very hard questions. It requires clarity about the objectives and an honest assessment about whether the path you’re on will achieve those objectives.
The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.
Harlan Crow, the billionaire political donor with controversial links to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has given the maximum contribution to Cornel West’s campaign for president.
West received a $3,300 donation from the Republican megadonor in August, according to the latest Federal Election Commission filings…
In the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, the cranberry business used to be a big part of the economy, going back to when child labor was a thing, even. Around the turn of this century, however, the cranberry industry started being pinched by a worldwide cranberry glut, with growers in Wisconsin and Quebec harvesting so many berries that the market crashed, leading many to get out of the business.
But what to do with the former berrylands? Farmers could probably sell out to developers, but that wasn’t necessarily something they wanted to see. Fortunately, crazy environmentalist hippies and ecologists (same thing) had an idea: How about restoring the bogs to be wetlands again, like they were before getting covered in sand for cran-griculture?
This nifty article at the well-named “Reasons To Be Cheerful” website explains how a former 600-acre cranberry farm called Tidmarsh was converted/restored into a healthy wetland after owners Glorianna Davenport and her husband, Evan Schulman, got out of the cranberry business in 2008-2010. They decided to turn the farm into wetlands — at the time, a new venture in ecology, helped along by a coalition of environmental groups, and in 2011, the state’s Environmental Protection agency, through its Division of Ecological Restoration.
Perhaps to avoid people giggling all the time at the acronym DER, the agency goes by “MassDER,” which is still funny for fans of Manos: The Hands of Fate. “The MassDER will not be pleased.”
Since 2018, MassDER has gone all in on bog restoration, and currently has 15 such projects going on across the state.
It’s a fun read, and a lovely example of what can be done to help nature come back at a time when climate disruptions need an everything-at-once set of solutions.
When Davenport was getting started on the project, we learn,
It was well-understood at the time that most cranberry bogs in Massachusetts were situated within natural wetlands but had been made more hospitable for cranberries — and stripped of other, undesirable plants — by putting down a fresh layer of sand every few years. Researchers already suspected that many of those wetlands were originally Atlantic white cedar swamps, an ecosystem that’s rare today. Yet evidence was mounting that cranberry bogs that were taken out of production grew into sandy pine and maple forests instead of reverting to the wetlands they were before.
The state was just getting going on its first attempt to restore a former wetland, at the headwaters of the Eel River in Plymouth, where researchers found — after a $2 million project to scrape off 60 acres of former bogland — that there was still wet peaty bog down there under all the sand, and that
the seeds left by those bygone swamps were still alive beneath the cranberry bogs. The researchers planted thousands of white cedar saplings in the seemingly lifeless piles of mud the project left in its wake. It wasn’t long before a thick carpet of native mosses, rushes, sedges and wildflowers sprouted around the young trees.
In more recent bog restorations, MassDER’s website explains, since removing all the sand is prohibitively expensive, other steps can be used to break up and saturate the sandy layers of soil that cover old wetlands, like roughening the surface and breaking up matted cranberry roots, filling in ditches, and restoring stream flows by pulling out old irrigation dams. Get everything nice and soggy, and soon enough,
Native wetland plants grow quickly from buried and dormant seed. If done right, little future human maintenance is needed. Only patience is required as the site heals and turns back into healthy wetlands over the following years.
For some fun photos to make you feel hopeful about our much-abused planet, check out MassDER’s Xitter stream, which has a lot of neato before and after photos of former bogs. From 2021, here’s a pair of pics of the same former bog just a year after the first phase of construction was finished in 2020: [photos at the link]
After wetlands are restored, most become part of the state park system, with walking trails and birds and critters and such. As for the former Tidmarsh farm, its restoration was completed in 2016; Mass Audubon purchased the site in 2017 and it’s now open to the public as a wildlife sanctuary. Mass Audubon brags that it’s “the largest freshwater ecological restoration ever completed in the Northeast.” Hard to believe that this was once a cranberry farm, and then every bit as muddy and desolate-looking as the first of those MassDER pics above. [photo at the link]
And this isn’t just about having nice places for wildlife and for coastal elitists to go birding; it’s a way to make good use of agricultural land that, thanks to climate change, is becoming economically less viable for cranberry crops. Once restored to wetlands, though, you’re doing some serious climate adaptation and resilience:
Wetlands are effective at storing carbon and filtering overabundant nutrients like nitrogen out of water. They provide good fish habitat and are rife with opportunities for recreation. And they can serve as buffers that shield nearby communities from flooding and sea-level rise. Protecting and restoring wetlands has been a recent priority among conservationists in part because it’s hard to replicate them in places they don’t naturally occur.
Of course, it certainly helps to have a state government that’s willing to invest in projects like these, instead of pretending that nothing needs to be addressed, oh, there we go getting all political again.
Social media influencer Douglass Mackey was sentenced Wednesday to seven months in prison for interfering with the 2016 election.
The Justice Department announced Wednesday that Mackey, who went by the name “Ricky Vaughn” on social media, was handed a seven-month prison sentence after being convicted at trial for conspiracy against rights. Mackey, who was a supporter of former Presdient Trump, was convicted of running a scam in 2016 that fooled thousands of people into believing that they could vote by text message.
Vaughn, who in 2016 had 58,000 followers on the platform previously known as Twitter, was accused of conspiring with other prominent Twitter users to put out misleading messages encouraging supporters of former presidential Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” through text message or social media…
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #350…
Typical… A Republican convicted of messing with the election.
A Republican congressman from Michigan is prepared to “step up” and serve as U.S. House speaker to help lead the party out of the chaos both it and the nation currently face, his spokesman said Wednesday.
Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., has been approached by colleagues and had conversations about making a bid for speaker, and would be willing to serve in that role to finish out the current congressional term, but not beyond that, Bergman spokesman James Hogge said in an email to the Detriot Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network…
Like the rest of Michigan’s GOP congressional delegation, Bergman has endorsed Trump for president in 2024.
Along with Republican Reps. Lisa McClain and Tim Walberg, Bergman was one of three members of Michigan’s congressional delegation who voted unsuccessfully to reject the Arizona and Pennsylvania results from the 2020 presidential election…
Yesterday, a Russian war reporter/propagandist reported a major Ukrainian push across the Dnipro River, south of the city of Kherson. [Tweet and map at the link]
Ukrainian sources were mum, and there was little initial video to confirm the scope of the operation. While Rybar, a Russian military analysis channel on Telegram, can be accurate at times, it is also known for fabricating major Ukrainian offensives, then proclaiming glorious Russian victories driving back those fictional Ukrainian advances.
So what was going on here?
Ever since driving Russia out of northern Kherson oblast, Russia’s presence on the left (southern) bank of the kilometer-wide Dnipro has been a threat to Ukrainian civilians on liberated territory. As elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, Russia rage-shells civilian areas. [Tweet and video at the link]
[…] Ukraine has periodically staged raids across the river and even held ground at times. The goal has been to make it untenable for Russian invaders to operate in the area. But the open marsh terrain is difficult to hold, as it’s exposed to both Russian artillery and drone fire. And supply-by-boat is not realistic for anything beyond small-unit incursions. Russia had large pontoon bridges and still couldn’t manage to sustain its occupation on the right (north) bank. Ukraine isn’t immune to the laws of sustainment.
So Ukraine crosses, wreaks havoc, pushes Russian forces back, raises a flag or two, then crosses back to safer terrain.
[…] Russian Telegram tracking a Ukrainian troop buildup in the area, and an interesting picture of two Ukrainian pontoon bridge layers destroyed by Russia. Ukraine has been busy on its side of the river.
As with elsewhere along the front, Ukraine has been busy eliminating Russian artillery, as prominent Russian war blogger Romanov reported on Oct. 10, sharing two reports from the front:
This is Kherson oblast. The situation is dire. [Ukrainians] are shelling with artillery, striking with FPV drones, right now shelling is 4x of what it was before. We’re holding but we need to think well and strengthen the defence near the bridge.
For this we need proper [electronic warfare], fire support of artillery for quick destruction of enemy targets. There’s none of that here.
[Ukrainians] figured this out and now they’re launching FPV drones at us without punishment, killing our best soldiers, for nothing.
Commanders know everything, but inaction of these jackals is killing us! We’re ready to defend the Motherland, help us! Fate of Russia is being decided now.
The second report was equally bleak for the invaders:
Good morning if it can be said so, I’m a contractor from the 28th motorised rifle regiment. I’m writing so attention would be paid to what is happening in Nova Kakhovka. I used to be a volunteer in Donbas and seen a lot, but I still can’t understand why on the 2nd year of the war we are unable to set up counter-battery fire while hohols are ironing us from artillery. I think many will know what it feels being under shelling when nothing depends on you and you can’t even see the enemy, and then you give first aid to your comrade from shrapnel. This is seriously affecting the guys. Something needs to be done urgently about counter-battery fire. I’m asking for help.
Ukraine’s primary motivation in taking out Russian artillery and infantry with shorter-range mortars is protecting its own civilians. But if Ukraine can open up some space for a push toward Crimea? That’s a bonus.
Russian Telegram really thinks something is up.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have concentrated several brigades of marines to cross the Dnieper, the pontoon fleet (German made) is estimated to be several hundred units, and there are countless boats on the other side.
The very fact of the presence of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on our shore is not news: the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been sitting and getting hit for months at the Antonovsky and Zheleznodorozhny bridges. However, the movement of reconnaissance, electronic warfare and communications systems to the front line of defense is a clear sign. Also, recently there have been attacks on our rear areas in order to disrupt logistics, communications and command and control of troops.
Hundreds of German pontoon bridges? Ukraine wishes. Germany has sent 45 of them. Ukraine’s allies sent at least another seven, and they are still waiting on systems from France and the United States. Denmark sent an unspecified number, but it’s unlikely to be more than a handful of units, at best. And many of these are already deployed in other fronts, like Kharkiv, where Ukraine blew bridges during the Russian occupation.
And brigades? We’re seeing just a handful, like these guys in the outskirts of the settlement of Pishchanivka: [Tweet and video at the link]
There is also video of a handful of Ukrainian soldiers leisurely walking back toward the river, either pulling back or rotating. [Tweets and videos at the link]
There will likely be a time when it makes sense for Ukraine to push hard across the Dnipro, but today is likely not it. Ukraine should be happy to keep degrading Russian artillery and units in the area indefinitely.
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Over the course of the week in which Russia attempted to capture the eastern city of Avdiivka […] Ukraine claimed it had destroyed over 300 pieces of Russian armor (on all fronts, to be clear). The OSINT guys have visually confirmed 63 of them around Avdiivka. [Tweet and image at the link]
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This is a sage thread from John Burn-Murdoch, a columnist at the Financial Times:
Some quick thoughts on why large parts of the mainstream media keep slipping up on Gaza/Israel (and why it was the same at times with Covid):
The main reason is a failure to keep pace with modern news gathering techniques, but there’s more.
With the proliferation of photos/footage, satellite imagery and map data, forensic video/image analysis and geolocation (~OSINT) has clearly been a key news gathering technique for several years now. A key news gathering technique *completely absent from most newsrooms*.
Obviously, not every journalist should be an OSINT specialist, just as not every journalist is a specialist in combing through financial accounts, or scraping websites, or doing undercover investigations. But any large news org should have *some* OSINT specialists.
The OSINT community has proved invaluable for wartime reportage. For instance, it is clear now, thanks much to the OSINT community, that the disaster at Gaza’s Al Ahli Arab Hospital on Tuesday came from a downed or malfunctioning missile fired by Hamas-aligned fighters. [Yes, Open Source Intelligence is important.]
This thread, in particular, by fierce Israel critic Nathan Ruser, shreds Hamas’ claims. “None of this absolves the IDF from the countless civilians it has killed in this aerial campaign. There is no excuse for the degree of civilian casualties that the IDF considers acceptable, nor of the siege tactics. And no one can deny the extent of devastation brought to Gaza,” Ruser writes after laying out his evidence. “But it seems extremely clear to me, that much (most (all)) of the initial reporting and discussion surrounding this explosion was inaccurate. The discourse and the reaction has quickly overtaken the facts and now it seems that the facts don’t really matter.”
Reality and the truth matter, even if people would rather believe the (mis)information that validates their preexisting biases and beliefs. And that will only become more of a problem as artificial-intelligence-generated videos and images further muddy the information space.
birgerjohanssonsays
Factoid.
More Palestinian children have been killed in a week than Ukrainan children have been killed in a year.
Ever entertaining, if not edifying or properly boring as court proceedings are supposed to be, Trump’s New York civil fraud trial was mildly disrupted by a woman approaching the front of the court from the spectator area to “offer to help Trump”, claiming to be an employee of the court.
She’s been charged with contempt and interruption of an official proceeding. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/court-worker-arrested-after-trying-to-get-close-to-donald-trump-at-ny-civil-fraud-trial/4780343/
And so, does yet another person sacrifice their career for their god-king wannabe. Upside is, there will likely be an opening in that court soon.
It does make me wonder when the martyrs will begin to appear in support of their satyr.
Slovakia’s president announced Thursday that she is postponing the appointment of a new Cabinet following last month’s parliamentary election because she cannot accept the nomination of a climate change skeptic as environment minister.
Liberal President Zuzana Caputova said Rudolf Huliak, who was nominated by the ultranationalist and pro-Russian Slovak National Party, could not ensure the proper functioning of the ministry because he opposes the government’s long-term environmental policies and Slovakia’s international obligations…
Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to reduced charges Thursday over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election in Georgia, becoming the second defendant in the sprawling case to reach a deal with prosecutors.
Powell, who was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with violating the state’s anti-racketeering law, entered the plea just a day before jury selection was set to start in her trial. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors related to intentionally interfering with the performance of election duties.
As part of the deal, she will serve six years of probation, will be fined $6,000 and will have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents. She also agreed to testify truthfully against her co-defendants at future trials.
Powell, 68, was initially charged with racketeering and six other counts as part of a wide-ranging scheme to keep the Republican president in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Prosecutors say she also participated in an unauthorized breach of elections equipment in a rural Georgia county elections office….
All misdemeanors? Probation but no prison time? Justice has not been served.
The Russian Black Sea Fleet’s weapons depot in Tsukrovaya Golovka near occupied-Sevastopol was hit by a missile on the evening of Oct. 18, ASTRA Telegram channel reported on Oct. 19…
wzrd1says
birgerjohansson @ 360, occasionally, one cannot avoid having to deal with the lower classed people. Hence, the loss of footwear, while making a hasty escape.
The Federal Communications Commission today voted to move ahead with a plan that would restore net neutrality rules and common-carrier regulation of Internet service providers.
In a 3-2 party-line vote, the FCC approved Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which seeks public comment on the broadband regulation plan. The comment period will officially open after the proposal is published in the Federal Register, but the docket is already active and can be found here. (The FCC website seems to be having some problems right now so these links may not work.)
The proposal would reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service, a designation that allows the FCC to regulate ISPs under the common-carrier provisions in Title II of the Communications Act. The plan is essentially the same as what the FCC did in 2015 when it used Title II to prohibit fixed and mobile Internet providers from blocking or throttling traffic or giving priority to Web services in exchange for payment…
birgerjohanssonsays
Sabine Hossenfelder at her best, when she sticks to her field of expertise and demonstrates the importance of serendipity in science.
Jim Jordan’s allies launched “a right-wing pressure campaign” to win over Republican skeptics. Violent threats soon followed — but they’re not working.
Late last week, Jim Jordan received some good news and some bad news. The good news was that the House Republican conference formally nominated him to be the next House speaker. The bad news was that several dozen GOP members said they had no intention of supporting Jordan’s bid during a floor vote.
The far-right House Judiciary Committee chairman had a few days to work with allies, win over skeptics, and execute a strategy to succeed. True to form, Jordan relied on the kind of tactics that have helped define his political career.
The New York Times reported on Monday that the Ohio congressman and his supporters “have begun a right-wing pressure campaign against Republicans opposed to electing him speaker, working to unleash the rage of the party’s base voters against any lawmaker standing in the way of his election.” The report added that Jordan’s allies had shared contact information online for lawmakers who appeared skeptical of his candidacy.
[…] NBC News reported:
A Republican congresswoman who initially supported Rep. Jim Jordan for House speaker before she backed another GOP lawmaker said she received death threats and threatening phone calls after she cast her vote Wednesday. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, revealed the death threats in a statement just hours after Jordan failed to secure enough votes in the second round of balloting for House speaker.
“Since my vote … I have received credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls. The proper authorities have been notified and my office is cooperating fully,” Miller-Meeks explained in a statement posted to social media.
The Iowa Republican added, “One thing I cannot stomach, or support is a bully.”
Miller-Meeks was not alone. Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska told reporters this week that his wife had received multiple anonymous messages with warnings about Jordan’s bid for speaker. Overnight, Republican Rep. Nick LaLota released a copy of a violent threat he received.
Some of the other GOP members who’ve balked at Jordan’s candidacy have pointed to related incidents of harassment from the Ohioan’s supporters.
Stepping back, there are a few dimensions to this that are worth keeping in mind. The first is that the threats appear to be having the opposite of the intended effect: None of Jordan’s Republican opponents have wobbled in response to the intimidation tactics.
[…] The second is that Jordan appears to realize how significant this problem has become, and roughly 12 hours ago, the right-wing congressman condemned the threats. It was, however, a little late in the process for such a statement — and the damage was already done.
Finally, it’s worth appreciating the significance of tactics like these in the larger context of the evolving Republican Party. As a Washington Post report summarized overnight, “It’s perhaps one of the most important but least-understood facets of the MAGA movement’s dominance of the Republican Party: the role of threats and intimidation.”
In case this isn’t painfully obvious, if the threats have the intended effect, we’ll see more of them. If they fail, we’ll see less of them.
Duped!
The defense team in the Mar-a-Lago case is running circles around U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon and not only does she not see it but she’s encouraged, enabled, and sanctioned it.
In a remarkable turn of events, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team submitted a new filing in the case late yesterday. It comes ahead of tomorrow’s resumption of the hearing on the conflicts of interest that defense counsel Stan Woodward has in representing Walt Nauta.
I don’t think you need much of the backstory except for this: Woodward has been denying for months that he has any conflict of interest even though he’s represented both Nauta and other witnesses key to the case who are adverse to Nauta, i.e., their testimony will hurt him. Cannon has played along, dragging out what should be a routine process for months now.
With that backstory, Smith’s team alerted Cannon that Woodward for the first time yesterday conceded to them that he won’t cross examine at trial the witnesses adverse to Nauta. If this is true … wow! Woodward didn’t explicitly acknowledge to prosecutors that he has a conflict of interest – after denying it all this time – but the implication is clear.
This doesn’t resolve the issue entirely by any means, but it marks a significant shift in Woodward’s posture and leaves Cannon badly exposed for not having taken a firm hand in this matter but instead hectoring prosecutors.
Still unresolved:
– Will Nauta sufficiently waive these conflicts of interest?
– Will Cannon disqualify Woodward, or give Nauta a chance to confer with independent counsel before he waives his rights?
– Will Woodward, as he apparently has told prosecutors, seek to keep them from using his name when they draw out witness testimony at trial? (Remember one of the key witnesses flipped as soon as the judge in DC provided him with counsel other than Woodward.)
– If Woodward continues representing Nauta, can he undermine the testimony of his former clients in his closing argument?
– All of that should be ironed out in tomorrow’s hearing, but with Cannon who knows. She should see by now that she’s been played. It’s led to months of delay in resolving this basic issue.
Prosecutors not so subtly reminded Cannon in the latest filing that it is up to her to ensure that the trial is a fair adversarial proceeding and not undermined or compromised by inadequate representation of counsel working under crippling conflicts of interest.
I’m not religious but isn’t there something Biblical about Reaping what you Sow? I’m sure these good Christian Republicans can look it up at their next bible study class/caucus meeting.
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Jordan could get Ken Buck’s vote just by admitting that Biden won the election fair and square in 2020. That’s it. That’s all he has to do. And Jordan still won’t do it. He’s willing to throw away his chance at speaker to keep the delusion alive.
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Election Denial is a loyalty test, nothing more. And it’s not even one big, key issue. Election Denial is the issue.
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Jordan announces he will NOT hold a third vote as speaker now.
He will get behind the plan to temporarily empower McHenry until Jan 3.
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As Speaker designee, Jim Jordan is running the caucus. Then there’s also a largely ministerial medium-term, super-sized but not full size pro tem Speaker, who presumably take his cues from the head of the caucus, Jim Jordan.
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He will remain Speaker Designee.
That is not even a fucking thing. What an asshole. So desperate for a title. Any title.
How about “accessory to sexual assault.” There is a deserving title for you, Gym!
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As Tom Nichols has it, today, this is precisely what their voters want:
The [GOPs] deliver what their voters really want: show trials and passion plays, and, mostly, to see other people unsettled and angry. These citizens vote not for determined legislators with complicated plans—that stuff is just so boring—but for entertaining rogues who can liven up the Fox prime-time hours.
The Republican voters’ resentments and grievances have nothing to do with governance or policy, Nichols writes, and everything to do with “boredom and dissatisfaction in their own lives.”
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before I get too drunk on schadenfreude, I need to wipe the sweat from my brow that one of the chief insurrectionists came VERY close to holding the gavel (in that he was ever nominated at all). He should be in jail by now, expelled from Congress, ripped of all committee assignments, etc. Pick a consequence, any consequence at this point. Holy crap, that was too close.
tomhsays
Re: #362
The first to flip gets the best deal. Powell was in the middle of it all and can bury a lot of her co-defendants, possibly including the big one.
whheydtsays
Re: tomh @ #371…
She’s actually the second to flip. I suspect that she and/or her lawyers realized that (a) Fani Willis really has the goods on her, and (b) the tactic of demanding a speedy trial will blow up in her face because Willis is ready to go to trial and Powell’s lawyers aren’t. Note that this has happened on the day before jury selection is supposed to start. She was looking down the barrel of the gun and blinked.
Let’s see if Trump’s endorsement sinks another Republican candidate:
With just 18 days remaining in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron appears to be trailing in the polls. The Republican nominee is therefore unveiling a new television ad featuring endorsement from Donald Trump.
CSX train employees found metal materials jammed into the tracks and rail switches of an Ohio train line for months after a near-catastrophic derailment in August, according to court documents.
During a test run for a CSX employee appreciation day, a train hit an obstruction on the track and temporarily derailed before the wheels dropped back into place.
The seemingly mysterious accident quickly became a concerning issue when employees continued to find more “purposefully placed” materials along the tracks, which matched methods taught by international terrorist groups to make homemade derail devices, court documents say.
The investigation led to Cleveland man Joseph Findley, 43, who was arrested and charged with terrorist attacks against railroad carriers…
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas city on Wednesday agreed to a $175,000 settlement with passengers on one of President Joe Biden’s campaign buses in 2020, including Democrat Wendy Davis, who accused police of ignoring their calls for help after a caravan of Donald Trump supporters surrounded them on a highway.
The episode took place days before the November election as the bus approached Austin. Video that circulated widely on social media at the time showed trucks with large Trump flags driving close to the bus, which had campaign surrogates and staffers on board but not the candidates.
A lawsuit filed by Davis, a former state senator who ran for Texas governor in 2014, and the other passengers accused San Marcos police of ignoring “acts of violent political intimidation” and abdicating their responsibility by not sending an escort despite multiple 911 calls made from the bus.
The bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza is indisputably horrific.
What is disputable is the blame.
What is also indisputable, and indeed unconscionable, is the speed with which partisan actors, including the media, rushed to blame Israel. Doctors Without Borders (also referred to as MSF — Médecins Sans Frontières) tweeted the above message [screengrab available at the link] which has been seen 5.6 million times and counting.
“We are horrified by the recent Israeli bombing…”
In fact, as the actual analysis is being conducted by more responsible actors, we are learning that Israel almost certainly did not bomb the hospital… and why would they, strategically or morally?
[…] the facts as of tonight:
Late last night and into this morning, Israel has released its evidence. First, they released drone footage and videos showing the impact site — showing a tiny crater and not much damage to surrounding buildings. They have released radar evidence of the barrage of rockets fired at the same time as the explosion, with the path being directly above the hospital. Additionally, they have released audio they claim is from two Hamas terrorists discussing the explosion — and detailing how the rocket seems to be locally produced, not Israeli — possibly a PIJ rocket.
Irresponsible propagation of inaccurate or incomplete facts is beneath an organization of MSF/Doctors Without Border’s caliber. It may have been just one poorly judged tweet, but moments like these undermine the need for the organization to stay above conflicting parties and the political fray to do its work to help innocents. On their website it is stated: “MSF is an independent and impartial medical humanitarian organization.” Broadcasting inaccurate or incomplete information prematurely compromises their mission and adds fuel to further animosity.
No doubt the credibility and usual moral high ground of organizations and leaders such as MSF/DWB who jumped to this conclusion added justification for the violent protests that happened in the region in response to this explosion.
Along with intense Israel-blaming media coverage, leaders of nations in the Middle East were quick to broadcast an assumed narrative – and perhaps subsequently caused King Abdullah II and President El Sisi to be less likely to meet with President Biden to discuss solutions. As such, a small tweet can cause more deaths and ultimately delay efforts at humanitarian aid or a cease-fire.
I have donated thousands of dollars to MSF/DWB over the years. I contacted them today and asked that they remove or update this tweet.
As of this writing, it remains on X exactly the same as it was first trumpeted 24 hours ago.
I am a family doctor. We all need to be on the side of non-combatants, families, children, and peacemakers on both sides. I hope Doctors Without Borders hears my grave concerns and those of similar others, quickly. They should apologize for blaming Israel prematurely and with devastating effects, true to their mission of independence and impartiality.
Re: Lynna, OM @ #374…
I’ve seen claims that Powell made proffer in order to get the plea deal. That presumably gives information about she can testify about and if she fails to deliver, the proffer can be used to restore the rest of the charges against her and convict her on those charges. So she’s pretty much stuck turning on at least some other people now.
How a scandal-plagued health care giant profits off a failing child welfare system.
The first time Katrina Edwards was locked in a psychiatric hospital for children, she was sure a foster parent would pick her up the next day.
It was a spring night in 2012 when Edwards, then 12 years old, was admitted to North Star Behavioral Health in Anchorage. […]
Alaska’s Office of Children’s Services had put Edwards in foster care earlier that year after she reported being sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. Asked why she’d ended up at North Star, Edwards explained that she had threatened to run away from her foster home and commit suicide. Medical records from her admission noted that she had a history of fleeting suicidal ideation, but that Edwards said she didn’t have a plan or intention of killing herself.
Then, the psychiatrist asked, if Edwards had three wishes, what would they be? Instead of talking about her dreams for the future, Edwards focused on the past: She said she wished that she hadn’t been abused, that she hadn’t been sexually abused, and, pointedly, that she hadn’t threatened suicide.
Edwards sobbed and yelled in protest as she handed over her cellphone and jewelry and changed into blue scrubs and hospital socks. She refused to sign the admissions paperwork; an OCS caseworker did so instead, according to court documents. Her outburst continued as a staffer ushered her into the unit for adolescent girls.
“If you keep acting like this,” one girl warned her, “you’re gonna get booty juiced.”
In the days to follow, Edwards learned the facility’s peculiar vernacular. “Booty juice” was the intramuscular sedative that staffers gave to kids they thought were acting out. According to court documents, they would restrain children and pull their pants down to administer the injection, then seclude them in the small, unfurnished space known as the “quiet room.” […]
How was it possible, Edwards wondered, that passing thoughts of suicide had landed her in a “mini prison for children”? She says that when she mentioned suicide to her foster mom, she hadn’t meant it literally; she’d meant that she felt miserable and wanted someone to sit down and listen to her. The chaos of the facility felt like the opposite of what Edwards needed. A few weeks into her stay, she filled out a “personal de-escalation plan.” It asked, “What are some things that do not help you calm down or stay safe?” She checked all the boxes on the sheet: things like “loud tone of voice” and “being ignored.” She also wrote in her own answer: “Being in North Star.”
[…] The psychiatrist increased Edwards’ Seroquel prescription; she was also taking Concerta for ADHD, Benadryl for “agitation,” melatonin for sleep, and the antidepressant Lexapro. At times, Edwards pleaded to stop the meds. “They are messing up with my body,” she told her psychiatrist, according to medical records. “They are messing up with my mind and sometimes I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
[…] OCS turnover was so common that Edwards often didn’t know who her caseworker was, but on the rare occasions they spoke, Edwards begged to go anywhere else. According to Edwards, North Star staffers told her she’d have to wait for a foster family to become available. “They would tell me, ‘Oh, you’re only gonna be here for a month,’” she said. “And then a month would go by, and they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, we got to extend it for like another month.’” Medical records show that Edwards’ discharge was pushed back on at least two occasions because OCS couldn’t find a home for her.
Edwards celebrated her 13th birthday at North Star in March, and her 14th a year later. She remained in the facility for 18 months.
North Star is owned by Universal Health Services, a publicly traded, Fortune 500 company that is the nation’s largest psychiatric hospital chain, with 185 inpatient behavioral health facilities and dozens of acute care hospitals across the country, in addition to centers in Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom. More than 21,000 inpatient psychiatric beds—or one in six across the country—are operated by UHS, which brought in $13.4 billion last year.
In recent years, the company has been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits and investigations, including a blistering BuzzFeed News series in 2016 and a Department of Justice probe that resulted in $122 million in settlements in 2020. The claims of these investigations bear a striking resemblance to Edwards’ experience: UHS facilities admitted patients who didn’t need to be there to begin with, failed to provide adequate treatment and staffing, billed insurance for unnecessary services over excessive lengths of time, and improperly used physical and chemical restraints and isolation. […]some of the company’s psychiatric hospitals used suicidal ideation to “justify almost any admission”; in 2013, UHS hospitals submitted Medicare claims for suicidal ideation at more than four times the rate of non-UHS psychiatric hospitals.
[…] Politicians on both sides of the aisle have decried the company, and Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) launched an ongoing probe into UHS and other operators of residential facilities for kids in July 2022. Celebrity heiress Paris Hilton—who experienced physical and sexual abuse as a teenager in the 1990s at Provo Canyon School, a Utah facility since bought by UHS—took aim at the company as part of her advocacy work against the so-called troubled teen industry. [Yes, it is an “industry.” Reminds me of privately-owned prisons used by the government.]
Despite all this scrutiny, a large, highly profitable, and easily exploitable group of UHS patients has been overlooked: foster children. A yearlong Mother Jones investigation shows that thousands of foster kids have been admitted in recent years to UHS’s psychiatric facilities, where they typically stay for weeks or months, sometimes leaving far worse off than when they arrived. Foster children provide a lucrative patient base for the same reasons they’re so vulnerable: There’s rarely an adult on the outside clamoring to get them out, and often, they don’t have anywhere else to go. Plus, Medicaid typically foots the bill, which at North Star costs $938 per night.
[…] Over time, a symbiotic relationship has developed between overburdened child welfare agencies, which have too many kids in custody and not enough places to put them, and large, for-profit companies like UHS, with beds to fill and profits to make […]
For some foster children, the results have been devastating. As Edwards endured her stay at North Star, a 12-year-old West Virginia foster child was placed at UHS’s Cedar Grove Residential Treatment Center, a program in Tennessee for sexually abusive and reactive boys, even though he wasn’t a sex offender. He begged his caseworker to let him leave but was held at the facility for 18 months, according to a subsequent lawsuit against the state’s CPS agency. In 2018, Oregon CPS sent a 14-year-old girl to Provo Canyon School, where she experienced 42 instances of peer assault, seclusion, or restraint—including being forcibly injected with the antipsychotic Haldol 17 times—over the course of three months, according to records obtained by state officials. The same year, Virginia’s CPS agency sent 17-year-old Raven Nichole Keffer to UHS’s Newport News Behavioral Health Center, where she collapsed after days of complaining of feeling sick. According to a lawsuit, a 15-year-old patient was the first to call 911; Keffer died of an allegedly preventable adrenal insufficiency. In 2021, Alabama CPS placed a 10-year-old at UHS’s Alabama Clinical Schools, where he was repeatedly assaulted by staffers over six months, resulting in a broken collarbone and black eye, in addition to being bitten by scorpions in his bed “many times,” according to a recent lawsuit. When he reported the injuries, staffers allegedly threatened to kill him.
[…] As many lawsuits have documented, child welfare agencies across the country rely on locked psychiatric facilities, many of which use punitive disciplinary tactics, to house difficult-to-place kids. These placements disproportionately affect children of color. Black and Indigenous kids—including Edwards, who is part Yupik—are more likely to enter the foster system and more likely to be sent to residential treatment facilities.
[…] The 38 states that provided data sent foster children to UHS facilities more than 36,000 times between 2017 and 2022. Meanwhile, the 31 states that responded to my Medicaid query spent more than $600 million on the treatment of foster children at UHS facilities over the same period.
[…] “It is a huge, huge market, dollarwise. And the thing that irritates advocates and people like me is that so much of this marketplace is either unnecessary or patients could far more easily be treated at far lower cost in outpatient care.”
[…] Back in 2020, North Star’s Haley Morrissey had a clear sales goal: “Get numbers up and make sure census was at capacity.” That meant spreading the word about the treatment center to 120 people each month. As part of a five-person team of “clinical community liaisons,” Morrissey contacted police officers, first responders, and emergency departments, alerting them when North Star had open beds and reminding them that prospective patients could always get a free assessment. She met with school counselors across southeastern Alaska. Her team sent care packages to OCS offices with North Star–branded mugs, stress balls, and lip balms, thanking them for their work. Organizations with particularly high referral rates to North Star received bath bombs and cards reminding the recipients to practice self-care.
[…] Her enthusiasm dimmed, though, as she became increasingly alarmed by the understaffing and unsafe conditions. […] Eventually, Morrissey decided to resign, leaving North Star last fall. Her message for families today is a far cry from when she was on the road marketing North Star: “Absolutely do not send them there.”
[…] behavioral health resources for kids are so lacking that the DOJ recently concluded the state is violating the Americans With Disabilities Act.
[…] OCS data shows that the agency pays for kids to stay at North Star even when Medicaid reviewers have determined it’s not medically necessary. Between 2017 and 2020, the agency paid North Star more than $1 million for the care of foster children whose stays weren’t covered by Medicaid.
[…] Davis: Nathon didn’t really belong at North Star anymore because he didn’t meet that level of care, and he was already stabilized, at least as far as North Star goes, but there wasn’t anyplace else with the right level of care to put him?
Bothe: Correct.
Davis: So he just stayed locked up in a psychiatric facility?
Bothe: Yes.
Davis: For months.
Bothe: Yes.
[…] Several patterns emerged: Very few kids needed inpatient psychiatric treatment to begin with; the out-of-state treatment centers were substandard; and more often than not, they presented imminent risk of sexual or physical abuse. The researchers found that foster children in the facilities—particularly those out of state—were essentially stranded […]
UHS facilities kept beds filled at the expense of patient safety. Employees in 14 treatment centers were allegedly pressured to hold patients until their insurance coverage ran out […]
Much more at the link, including the history of UHS, which was founded in 1979. Mostly, it’s about the money to be made, and about ripping off Medicaid. “[…] most of the company’s business came from children and adolescents, “and the vast majority of those are Medicaid or state agency” kids.”
whheydt @382, good point. The prosecutor should get some useful testimony from Powell.
Followup to comment 383: I should have also mentioned that the article provides a lot of details confirming that those psychiatric hospitals were also managed to maximize profit, and that included incentives to understaff the places constantly, to rip off insurance companies, to rip off the government, and to rip off the state. Children, foster kids in particular, suffered as a result. It’s disgusting.
Update on the Jim Jordan/Speaker of the House clown show, from Wonkette:
Steve Bannon, serious person, does not like what happened with Jim Jordan this morning!
BANNON: With half of those weasels and snakes and pencil necks up there and gutless cowards, what they’re trying to do, brother Jordan …
“Brother Jordan” LMAO that’s how pedophile conservative Christian pastors talk.
BANNON: … in making you the speaker designee and waiting until January, is to audition you. It’s like a mail-order bride back in, I don’t know, back in the 1870s or something, out West.
They ordered them in the mail just to make them audition until January?
BANNON: And they’re gonna put McHenry as the front man, the professorial bow-tied front man, a shorter version of George Will in his sartorial splendor. So professorial, such a genius, he gave you the debt deal. He was the lead negotiator.
[Steve Bannon is criticizing what McHenry wears to work?]
OK.
What we imagine Bannon is alluding to is that under the current working plan (WHICH HAS JUST NOW BECOME DEAD, BREAKING NEWS), if it had passed, Patrick McHenry would be the substitute teacher speaker of the House until January 3, but Jordan would remain the “speaker designee,” because he’s the guy running for speaker. So in theory he could get a constipation at any point and call a vote to make him speaker, and then lose again.
(BUT THAT PLAN IS DEAD NOW, AS OF FIVE MINUTES AGO.)
So Bannon is saying that what this (DEAD) plan really means is the House Republicans ordered Jim Jordan out of a catalog and had him shipped on the Pony Express to them at a saloon in the Wild West and now that he’s arrived they’re going to settle up with the bartender and Yosemite Sam their guns in the air few times before going through the swinging saloon doors with Jim Jordan over their shoulder to go make Frontier Coitus.
That is what he is saying, yes?
The only thing we are certain of is that Steve Bannon is mad.
And on that count he is in agreement with all the biggest creepers, groomers and “Kick Me” signs in the House Republican caucus and in the punditry.
When they went back for their conference meeting, it quickly reportedly just turned into huge fights everywhere. Kevin McCarthy screamed at Matt Gaetz [“Sit your ass down!”] when he tried to get up and talk, and Rep. Mike Bost apparently “almost lung[ed] at him.”
Chip Roy of Texas is tweeting his [complaints] about the idea of Republicans having to work with Democrats to empower McHenry with the hashtag #ShallChuseTheirSpeaker, which we guess thinks makes him look clever and well-read, using an old-timey spelling like that.
Bloomberg reporter Erik Wasson reports that Rep. Troy Nehls says the only solution now is to have 100 days of Speaker Donald Trump. [OMFG]
Lauren Boebert is bellyaching, saying she ran for office because she “was sick and tired of politicians coming up here and cutting deals and releasing ‘holier than thou’ statements about why we just had to accept it.” We figured she ran for the Beetlejuice tickets and two-for-one hot wing specials.
The Biden campaign tweeted out Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that the Republican conference is broken. (She tried to blame it on Democrats, but she can go fuck herself.)
And here’s a funny CNN report about how far-right crazypants Republicans hate the plan — IT’S DEAD NOW, DID YOU HEAR — featuring whinyass Jim Banks of Indiana saying it’s the “biggest F-U to Republican voters I’ve ever seen, it’s a big mistake.” He said over half of House Republicans are against it. (AND NOW THEY KILT IT.) [video at the link]
And now, breaking news, MSNBC is reporting that the plan is dead. (AS WE SAID.)
Speaking to MSNBC and gloating about that, Matt Gaetz said, “Speaker Light is a bad idea, just like Bud Light!” (Hand to God, we couldn’t make up more pathetic quotes for these people if we tried.)
Every Republican in the world failed today, because that was God’s plan. (GOD’S PLANS NEVER DIE.)
Oh also more late breaking news but Jim Jordan is meeting with the 22 holdouts right now and Jim REALLY WANTS another vote tonight LMAO, my God.
By the way, Biden is addressing the nation from the Oval tonight at 8. (There will be livestream at the top of Wonkette’s homepage.) That’s what you should be watching.
Rob Grigjanissays
Question for Youtube experts.
I made a comment on a particular video. If I’m signed in to Youtube, and sort by newest comments, I can see my comment by scrolling down a bit. However, if I’m not signed in, my comment seems to disappear. Any thoughts on how that could be?
Last week, Allen Weisselberg’s testimony in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud trial against Donald Trump, Weisselberg himself and others abruptly ended. And while the fact of that ending was easily observable, the why was not.
Some suggested it could have been because just hours earlier, Forbes, citing emails and reporters’ notes, published a report accusing Weisselberg of lying on the stand. And earlier this week, I noted that while it’s impossible to know, on the basis of publicly available information, whether Forbes is right, if Weisselberg gave knowingly false testimony, there could be consequences given his probation conditions.
For days, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ team has been quiet about Weisselberg. But it broke its silence on Thursday morning with a letter that seems to confirm the Forbes report was indeed the reason the former Trump Organization CFO did not return to the witness stand after the lunch break on Oct. 12.
The letter explained that during a sidebar — a conversation between counsel and the judge that the parties, witnesses and spectators are not meant to hear — the attorney general’s office “asked for an opportunity to follow up on the Forbes article … and its discussion of ‘old emails and notes, some of which the attorney general’s office does not possess.'”
But the veracity of Weisselberg’s testimony is not the attorney general’s chief concern right now, much less a stated concern at all. For now, the attorney general has not itself accused Weisselberg of lying.
Instead, having reviewed documents produced by the Trump Org, the attorney general’s office told Judge Arthur Engoron that it “has identified likely omissions from production around inquiries from Forbes in 2016,” including communications between Weisselberg and an employee of Marcus & Millichap, with whom he consulted with respect to golf course valuations.
The attorney general’s office said Marcus & Millichap itself produced certain communications between its employee and Weisselberg regarding “golf course comparables” that Weisselberg sought in responding to Forbes. Yet these documents include ones the Trump Org itself did not hand over, according to the attorney general’s office.
You might be thinking, “So what? Is it really a big problem that the attorney general is missing certain emails from the Trump Org if it received them from the other party?”
Yes and no.
The attorney general’s letter attaches a single example of an email produced by Marcus & Millichap that wasn’t found in the Trump Org’s own documents. That document, of course, is just an example, and one that is relatively costless for the attorney general’s team to highlight. (Significantly, it has already been used as a trial exhibit.)
What that example might illustrate, on the other hand, is a potentially big problem, or as the attorney general describes it, “a breakdown somewhere in the process of preserving, collecting, reviewing and producing documents” despite years of work by the attorney general to “ensure a complete response to [the attorney general’s] subpoenas.”
More ominously, the attorney general’s office observes that in light of “multiple affidavits on behalf of the Trump Org attesting to the completion of their production obligations,” the fact that it can still point to missing documents is “also suggestive of potentially broader issues in the production process.”
[…] the attorney general’s office also has not alleged that anyone associated with the Trump Org, from individual defendants to its outside counsel, has willfully or recklessly contributed to the destruction of evidence. But in asking that retired federal judge Barbara Jones, the current monitor overseeing limited financial reporting and other Trump Org obligations, not only “undertake a forensic examination” of the Trump Org’s electronic data for August to September 2016, but also diagnose what happened and “propose remedies,” the attorney general is arming itself for a larger battle over truth, consequences and the future of the Trump Org before it or anyone else even determines what recourse, if any, Weisselberg warrants.
The document preservation and production issues the attorney general raised Thursday are considerably less sexy than accusations of false testimony. But could they be part and parcel of the same spectrum of misconduct among those who believe the rules do not apply and that malfeasance doesn’t count unless you’re caught? You bet.
Rob Grigjanissays
Re my #386: On looking up the problem in google, it appears I’ve been ghosted by Angela Collier (on her space elevator video). No-one can see my comment except me when I’m signed in. That’s pretty fucking sleazy if true.
The early years of the 20th century saw dizzying progress in aviation. The Wright Brothers’ first flight in 1903 barely made it off the ground for 12 seconds. A little more than a decade later, planes would be conducting dogfights over Europe and launching bombing raids during World War I.
In the years between World War I and the start of World War II, military experts like American Billy Mitchell and Italian Giulio Douhet began theorizing about a new form of strategic warfare: making use of air power’s ability to strike civilian sectors of the enemy to destroy public morale. It was a concept that would see use by both sides of the conflict in what would become known as “terror bombing.”
The development of international law and firmer restrictions on deliberate targeting of civilians has seen this tactic recede into the past, at least on any large scale.
That was until the fall and winter of 2022-23 in Ukraine, when the Russian military launched a coordinated and sustained series of attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and citizenry. The methods had changed, though; Russia relied on the use of massed volleys of cruise missiles and Iranian Shahed suicide drones rather than conventional bombers. The aims—terrorize the citizenry and cripple the economy—had not changed.
What has increasingly become clear is that this winter, Russia will almost certainly repeat this strategy. These coming attacks will represent a significant test of Ukrainian air defense capabilities. There are good reasons to think Ukraine is far readier than it had been in December 2022.
The Russian commander in December 2022, Sergey Surovikin, developed a series of tactics aimed to penetrate Ukrainian air defenses.
Surovikin’s primary target appeared to be Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The highest-cost and highest-capability missiles in the Russian arsenal, the supersonic Kalibr cruise missiles, were predominantly directed at civilian Ukrainian power plants.
However, Surovikin apparently lacked sufficient numbers of advanced cruise missiles to launch attacks capable of overwhelming Ukrainian air defenses while dealing sufficient amounts of damage to his primary targets. If all Surovikin launched were his Kalibr missiles, Ukraine’s air defenses could focus all their efforts on the small numbers of incoming missiles.
To confuse and overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, Surovikin began mixing S-300 anti-air missiles, as well as other anti-ship missiles, into the cruise missile barrages. Repurposed and unmodified anti-air and anti-ship missiles lack the proper guidance systems to conduct a precision strike against a ground target and would have difficulty conducting anything other than simply landing in the general vicinity of a city-sized target.
However, these missiles landing in Ukrainian cities deal horrific damage. [Dnipro photo at the link]
As such, these missiles require a response from Ukrainian anti-air defenses, and thus divert attention away from the strikes on Ukrainian electrical infrastructure. The destruction of civilian homes and the killing of Ukrainian civilians also serves to accentuate the concept of “terror bombing” strategies of the 1930s and ‘40s.
Surovikin added additional stresses to Ukraine’s air defense by employing Iranian Shahed drones in the mix of air attacks on civilians. Western security think tanks like the Institute for the Study of War noted that the Shahed drones were inexpensive but unsophisticated and thus were likely deemed to be primarily suited to strike poorly protected civilian targets rather than military targets.
A major advantage of the Shahed drones is their inexpensive nature. They cost only $20,000 a piece, compared with around $6.5 million for a single Kalibr cruise missile. It is simple to understand why Russia can afford to send swarms of as many as 60-70 Shahed drones on strikes; their combined cost falls well short of a single Russian cruise missile.
Modern ground-launched air defense missiles, such as those fired from the NASAMS or the IRIS-T systems, are many times the cost of a Shahed drone. For example, an IRIS-T system’s missile costs around $500,000 per unit, thus they are not cost-effective solutions to the type of low-cost threat posed by Shahed drones.
The German Gepard 35 millimeter anti-air gun has proved to be an incredibly effective counter to drone threats, but Ukraine has received only 67 Gepards. Between drone defense for its artillery and other key military assets and the need to defend numerous large cities and towns, Ukraine’s air defense needs are very heavy.
To counter these drone threats, Ukraine’s allies have moved toward an improvised system employing lost-cost, older anti-air missiles. In particular, that’s the British ASRAAM missile and the American AIM-9M Sidewinder missile.
I previously wrote about the British innovation of strapping a basic radar system and the heat-seeking ASRAAM missile to the flatbed of a Supacat truck.
The ASRAAM is not radar-based, but is instead a heat-seeking missile, making it more autonomous than a radar-based anti-air missile. Thus it’s well suited to be used as an improvised SAM missile.
The system does appear highly improvised, with a simple launcher welded onto the rear of the high-mobility vehicle. It’s unclear if it has its own radar, but it’s likely a very inexpensive and weak system if so. The ASRAAM normally has a range of 25 km, but this assumes being fired from a fighter jet flying at Mach 1 or greater, and at high altitudes. But when the 50 km-ranged AIM-120A AMRAAM is fired from a NASAMS, its range drops to under half to around 25km. Thus, the 25km ASRAAM will likely only sport a horizontal range of 10-15km at most.
While an improvised system comes with some obvious limitations, this solution does come with two significant advantages. The UK, and many European allies, have major stockpiles of older ASRAAM missiles it can dispatch to Ukraine without fear of impacting their own stockpiles. The Supacat high mobility vehicles are also ubiquitous and can be delivered in mass quantities. Thus it appears this system can be delivered in quantity as soon as launchers can be affixed to trucks.
[Tweet and photo at the link]
Ukraine showed the system in operation, allegedly successfully intercepting a Russian drone, on Oct. 11, 2023. [Image at the link]
The other missile bolstering Ukraine’s air defense capabilities is the AIM-9M missile.
The AIM-9 is a venerable modular air-to-air missile, with the first prototypes being fired in 1953 and entering service in 1956. The newest version of the missile, the AIM-9X, remains in service as the standard short-range air-to-air missile of NATO and Western-aligned air forces.
One of the most prescient aspects of the missile’s design—adding to its immense longevity—has been the modular nature of the missile. Nearly any aspect of the missile can be swapped out for a new component, allowing modernization of missiles to be far simpler. The AIM9-X represents the fifth-generation version of the missile, replacing the AIM9-M when the 9-X entered service in 2003.
Using the advanced and expensive AIM-9X to try to combat the Shahed drone threat would represent the same problems as using other expensive air-to-air missiles still in use and needed by the Western allies. However, the AIM-9M is a different story.
The AIM-9M entered service in 1982 in a era of large, Cold War-inflated defense budgets, and it was rapidly and widely adopted by Western militaries. As a result, the AIM-9M and its export variants were built in comparatively huge numbers—more than an estimated 35,000 were produced, many of which remain in Western stockpiles. By way of contrast, the U.S. military stockpiles just 2,500 AIM-9X missiles.
These outdated missiles from the 1980s are unlikely to be needed by modern militaries that still have them in stockpiles, thus making them ideal drone and helicopter interceptors.
The U.S. included an unknown number of AIM-9M missiles in a recent aid package. This led to speculation that the U.S. had created an improvised ground-launch platform for the AIM-9 missiles. This was confirmed by an anonymous Pentagon official to the Associated Press.
For months, the Pentagon had been engaged in a joint effort with Ukraine and her allies to create an effective launch platform for Ukraine to deploy the AIM-9M. This program was called the FrankenSAM Project in the Pentagon. It aimed to create a readily available improvised system that could deploy the AIM-9M effectively.
Jakub Palowski, the deputy editor-in-chief of Polish outlet Defence24, speculated that Ukraine might deploy the AIM-9M from a modified SA-8 Gekko 9K33 “OSA.”
Palowski noted on X (formerly known as Twitter):
[I]t is not impossible that Ukrainian SAMs (SA-8 in particular) could be integrated with AIM-9 in a similar way to that SA-11 was integrated with RIM/AIM-7, I wrote about it for @Defence24pl as the Polish industry had such concepts.
Ukraine was noted to be quickly running out of Soviet-era anti-air systems missiles, and it is almost certain the OSA is no exception.
Repurposing existing Soviet air defense systems to use Western anti-air munitions was already done with the Buk SAM system and the Sea Sparrow missile. Polish defense firms successfully integrated RIM-162 Sea Sparrow missiles onto Buk Missile systems in 2012, which laid the groundwork for Ukrainian engineers to integrate the older RIM-7 Sea Sparrow missiles to its own Buk Launchers in early 2023.
Either alternatively, or in addition, the U.S. may be manufacturing entirely new “FrankenSAM” systems for firing the AIM-9M.
The Pentagon reportedly has been building these “FrankenSAM” launch units and sending them to Ukraine for some time, as of mid-October 2023. Details are sparse; whether these units are modifications applied to Ukrainian OSAs or entirely new launch units is unknown.
If new launch units are being built, The War Zone speculated that the units may be modified or modernized versions of the Cold War-era Chapparal SAM Systems—essentially, an M113 armored personnel carrier with a four-tube AIM-9 launcher and a basic radar. [video at the link]
Ukraine has received over 800 armored vehicles that make use of the M113 chassis. Therefore, it would have the added benefit of having spare parts and technicians trained to repair the vehicle already in ample supply.
Whatever the case may be, finding ways to make use of large stockpiles of older Western equipment carries many benefits. Heading off the drone threat posed by Russian kamikaze drones requires cost-effective solutions that can be implemented rapidly.
Making use of large stockpiles of old Cold War-era missiles that have few uses in modern air-to-air combat is an excellent way to use outdated munitions in a role for which they are overqualified.
An agreement was reached, officials said, to raise a U.N. flag at the Rafah crossing and to have international observers inspect aid trucks before they enter the enclave.
With basic human necessities in Gaza nearly depleted and trucks full of food, water and medicine waiting nearby in Egypt, officials said they had made progress on Thursday in complex negotiations to open the border for humanitarian deliveries.
Aid organizations have been told that the Rafah border crossing would open on Friday morning, according to an aid official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. But there were no public announcements giving any details of how the desperately needed supplies were to be delivered.
Two officials said that, under a United Nations agreement, the U.N. flag would be raised at the Rafah crossing and international observers would inspect aid trucks before they enter Gaza to satisfy a demand by Israel. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the news. Another person briefed on the situation said that roads were being repaired so that the large aid trucks could reach and pass through the crossing.
Those were the latest indications that the various diplomats, U.N. officials and aid workers needed to arrange for the deliveries were inching toward a resolution. On Wednesday, President Biden said that Israel had agreed to allow some aid into Gaza and that Egypt said it would allow 20 aid trucks to enter.
The U.S. Department of State said on Thursday that David Satterfield, the newly appointed special envoy for humanitarian assistance in the war, had met with Israeli and Egyptian officials to “develop the exact mechanisms” of opening the Rafah border crossing to humanitarian aid. […]
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut alerted Americans in Lebanon to make plans to leave as soon as possible ‘while commercial options are still available.
NBC News:
The State Department issued a worldwide caution advisory Thursday, due to ‘increased tensions in various locations around the world, the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests,’ it said.
A U.S. journalist has been detained in Russia, her employer said, the second such case since the war in Ukraine started. Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual Russian American reporter with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was detained in the southwest Russian city of Kazan on Wednesday while awaiting the return of her passports, her employer said Thursday in a statement.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office has dismissed the charges against one of the 16 people who allegedly signed a document falsely claiming that Donald Trump won the state’s electoral votes in 2020 during an effort to overturn the results of the election. The decision came after the alleged fake elector, James Renner, agreed to ‘cooperate fully’ with the attorney general’s investigation.
Mocked as old, feeble and bumbling by Republicans, Democratic President Joe Biden has now visited two active war zones in eight months ― two more than all the previous presidents combined.
The USS Carney, a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer in the northern Red Sea, on Thursday shot down multiple missiles and drones launched by Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen that the Pentagon said were potentially headed toward targets in Israel…
In a closed-door meeting Thursday, Rep. , R-N.C., told GOP colleagues he might resign as speaker pro tempore if Republicans push him to try to move legislation on the floor without an explicit vote to expand his powers, according to multiple lawmakers in the room…
An upstate New York judge who pointed a loaded handgun at a Black man during a 2015 court hearing was removed from office Thursday by the state’s highest court.
Justice Robert J. Putorti was a Whitehall Town and Village Court judge. He repeatedly emphasized the race and stature of the litigant when recounting the episode, sometimes boastfully, according to an independent review by the New York State Court of Appeals. Putorti had said he aimed the gun at the man because he approached the stand too quickly, crossing a stop line for litigants.
In one instance, Putorti described the defendant to another judge as being 6 feet 9 inches tall (206 cm) and “built like a football player.” In reality, the man was only 6 feet (183 cm) and 165 pounds (75 kg), the decision noted.
The high court affirmed the state Commission on Judicial Conduct’s removal of Putorti, and noted the former judge’s description of the defendant “exploited a classic and common racist trope that Black men are inherently threatening or dangerous, exhibiting bias or, at least, implicit bias.”
Putorti’s lack of remorse after the gun episode contributed to his removal, according to the decision…
wzrd1says
St Louis kids football team season cancelled after father of one of the players shot the coach multiple times for not starting his child.
Coach, thankfully, is recovering and regretful that the city cancelled the season, out of concern and respect for the kids playing.
The coach’s wife didn’t inform their 3 kids about dad being shot until she was certain he’d survive.
HOUSTON — A Texas judge has ruled that Infowars host Alex Jones cannot use bankruptcy protection to avoid paying more than $1.1 billion to families who sued over his conspiracy theories that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax.
The decision is another significant defeat for Jones in the wake of juries in Texas and Connecticut punishing him over spreading falsehoods about the nation’s deadliest school shooting. U.S. District Judge Christopher Lopez of Houston issued the ruling Thursday.
Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year and more recent financial documents submitted by his attorneys put his personal net worth around $14 million. But Lopez ruled that those protections do not apply over findings of “willful and malicious” conduct.
“The families are pleased with the Court’s ruling that Jones’s malicious conduct will find no safe harbor in the bankruptcy court,” said Christopher Mattei, a Connecticut lawyer for the families. “As a result, Jones will continue to be accountable for his actions into the future regardless of his claimed bankruptcy.”
An attorney for Jones did not immediately return a message seeking comment Friday.
After 26 people were killed by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, Jones made a false conspiracy theory a centerpiece of his programing on his flagship Infowars show. He told his audience last year he was “officially out of money” and has asked them to shop on his Infowars website to help keep him on the air.
But Jones’ personal spending topped $93,000 in July alone, including thousands of dollars on meals and entertainment, according to his monthly financial reports in the bankruptcy case. The spending stuck a nerve with Sandy Hook families as they have yet to collect any of the money that juries awarded them.
Sandy Hook families won nearly the $1.5 billion in judgments against Jones last year in lawsuits over repeated promotion of a false theory that the school shooting that ever happened.
The amount of money Jones owes Sandy Hook families could grow even larger. Another lawsuit is pending in Texas, brought by the parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of the children slain in the attack. A trial date has not yet been set.
Relatives of the victims testified at the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones’ believers, who sent threats and even confronted the grieving families in person, accusing them of being “crisis actors” whose children never existed.
MANHATTAN (CN) — The judge in Donald Trump’s fraud case threatened the former president with imprisonment on Friday after a “blatant violation” of a court-imposed gag order.
Judge Arthur Engoron discovered that Trump had never fully deleted a disparaging social media post about his court clerk, which was the reason for the Oct. 3 gag order in the first place. Trump had deleted the post from Truth Social, but it remained live on his presidential campaign site.
Earlier this month, Engoron ordered Trump to remove the post immediately and barred him from making any further disparaging posts against his staff, threatening “serious sanctions” for a violation.
“Despite this clear order, last night I learned that the subject’s offending post was never removed from the website DonaldJTrump.com, and in fact, had been on that website for the last 17 days,” Engoron said Friday. “I will now grant defendants the opportunity to explain why this blatant violation of the gag order should not result in serious sanctions, including financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt and possibly imprisoning him.”
[…]
Trump’s lead counsel Christopher Kise said the incident was “inadvertent” and the fault of Trump’s “large machine” of an election campaign.
“The Truth Social post, and I believe this happens with all his Truth Social Posts, they are captured and published on the website as what’s called a ICYMI email,” Kise said, explaining that the campaign team must have forgotten to delete the post from the site after the gag order was issued.
Engoron didn’t buy it.
“I will take this under advisement,” he said. “But I want to make clear that Donald Trump is still responsible for the large machine even if it is a large machine.”
[…]
Ken Chesebro has agreed to resolve the Georgia RICO case against him by pleading guilty in exchange for testimony.
Chesebro is one of the main architects of the fake electors plot, a scheme which tried to lay the legal groundwork for Trump to stay in power after having lost the 2020 election. Chesebro gave TPM an exclusive interview last year about his work.
At the hearing, Chesebro said he had agreed to plead guilty to one felony count: conspiracy to commit filing false documents. Per the agreement, which a Georgia judge approved Friday morning, Chesebro will give a full proffer interview with state prosecutors, write an apology letter, provide records to prosecutors, and testify in future proceedings.
Per the deal, as described by the state prosecutor, Chesebro agreed to a sentence of five years probation, restitution of $5,000, and 100 hours of community service. Georgia’s first offender law means that his conviction will be expunged upon completion of probation.
Chesebro wrote a series of memos in late 2020 and early 2021 in which he argued that the Trump campaign should convene slates of electors in states which Trump lost to masquerade as real ones, sending certificates to Congress and the government. In Chesebro’s thinking, this would give state legislatures, the courts, and whoever Trump managed to bully into having a legal means to grant him the electoral votes to win.
The Harvard Law-educated attorney faced seven charges brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee signed off on the deal during a live-streamed hearing on Friday.
The plea is a stunning move from an attorney who took a bizarre route to Trumpworld. At Harvard Law, Chesebro was mentored by Constitutional Law Professor Larry Tribe in a group which included future Supreme Court Justice Larry Tribe and journalist Jeffrey Toobin. Chesebro spent years after law school working with Tribe, known as a premier liberal litigator, in the elite world of appellate law.
Now, after contributing his legal theories to Trump’s effort to stay in power via a coup, Chesebro is a cooperating witness with a felony plea to boot.
The prospect of Chesebro cooperating with the prosecution offers Willis’ team a direct line into the inner circle of Trump’s legal effort to reverse his 2020 defeat. Chesebro was at the center of the action. Emails show him strategizing with attorney John Eastman over how maximize their chances at the Supreme Court, while he allegedly held numerous calls with Rudy Giuliani over the fake electors plot.
Chesebro himself, records show, played a key role in convening the fake elector slates themselves. He sent documentation across the country and helped corral local GOP officials into participating in the scheme.
The plea comes one day after ‘Kraken’ attorney and former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell took a deal, and on the same day as jury selection began in Chesebro’s trial.
And so the dominos fall, one by one. People will be testifying against Donald Trump, and against other defendants.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)’s office has shared voicemails with NBC News of callers threatening her and her family.
“I’m from a militant group,” a caller in a voicemail says in one, according to NBC. “I can’t wait till our group sees you one day and I can rip your f‑‑‑ing rag off your head… I hope the Israelis kill every f‑‑‑ing one of you.”
Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) are the only two Muslim women in Congress.
“This dishonest smearing empowers those who spread the harmful myth that Muslim-Americans are a threat rather than valued members of our country,” Omar said in a statement emailed to The Hill. “It has directly endangered my life and that of my family, as well as subjected my staff to traumatic verbal abuse simply for doing their jobs.”
Omar has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians throughout her time in Congress. She and Tlaib were among a handful of progressive Democrats urging the Biden administration to push for a cease-fire amid Israel’s war on Hamas, which broke out after Hamas killed an estimated 1,400 people during an attack about two weeks ago.
According to a Democratic aide, Omar, Tlaib and other progressives who have critiqued Israel were briefed by the U.S. Capitol Police and the House Sergeant at Arms on possible threats, NBC News said.
“I cannot believe I have to beg my country and colleagues to value every human life, no matter their faith or ethnicity,” Tlaib wrote last Saturday in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
President Biden condemned Islamaphobia and antisemitism in his Oval Office speech Thursday, pointing to the killing of a Palestinian American boy — 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume — that officials have said was motivated by anti-Muslim bias amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“We must without equivocation denounce antisemitism. We must also without equivocation denounce Islamophobia,” Biden said. “And to all of you hurting … I want you to know I see you. You belong. And I want to say this to you: You’re all America.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) blasted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as a “clear and present danger” before Jordan’s third attempt to gain the Speakership on Friday. [Jordan lost … again. And he is going downhill, having received even fewer votes than in the previous round.]
“Jim Jordan is a clear and present danger to our democracy,” Jeffries told reporters in the Capitol. “He wants to end Social Security as we know it, he wants to end Medicare as we know it, doesn’t believe that President Biden was elected in 2020. That’s disrespectful to the American people.”
“Jim Jordan wants to impose a nationwide abortion ban, and he is the poster child for MAGA extremism,” Jeffries continued. “We are saying to our traditional Republican colleagues, good men and women on the other side of the aisle: End the attachment to the extremist Jim Jordan and join with Democrats in finding a bipartisan path forward.”
The House has been without a Speaker since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was ousted in a vote more than two weeks ago.
Jordan, the conservative chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, became the Speaker-designate for the GOP after Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) initially won a closed-door Republican vote but then dropped out of the race when Jordan supporters refused to back him.
Jordan has failed to win the 217 votes from his party that would make him Speaker.
Democrats are particularly opposed to Jordan, who has been a top ally of former President Trump and who downplayed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. They have repeatedly criticized him for denying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Jordan has also been a key figure in the House GOP’s impeachment drive against President Biden. […]
Earlier this week, the Biden campaign opened up an account on Truth Social, Donald Trump’s Twitter knockoff website that’s basically just the place where Trump […] grunts in public all day and night and fawns all over himself and reposts QAnon accounts and does witness intimidation and attacks prosecutors and calls for the execution of generals.
It’s not a real place on the internet, if you know what we mean. Like, it’s technically real, but … […]
Anyway, the Biden campaign made an account […] They made Dark Brandon their profile pic. They admitted immediately they were only doing it because it cost no money. Because it amused them. […]
Just good clean fun, hurts no one.
Well, quickie update!
The Biden campaign officially has more followers on Truth Social than the Trump campaign does. As of this writing, it’s 31,900 to 26,400. (That’s what we mean when we say it’s not really a place on the internet. Super low energy numbers.)
And yes, duh, most of the Biden followers are just MAGA idiots hate-following so they can make poopy in the comments, and probably some libs who made an account they will never actually use, for the sole purpose of following Biden.
And yes, Trump’s personal account obviously has far more followers. Or at least far more bots following him. It could be bots.
Doesn’t matter. Donald Trump is obsessed with size and has extremely low self esteem. This will upset him.
When the Biden campaign joined up, the quotes from the Trump campaign were so sad. They tried so hard to make it their own lib-owning situation, with Steven Cheung, his spox who apparently has zero self-love or respect, saying that “Crooked Joe Biden and his team are finally acknowledging that Truth Social is hot as a pistol and the only place where real news happens.” Yeah. [lol….lol….lol]
On Wednesday, Truth Social tried to brag to its users about this hot new celebrity Let’s Go Brandon Biden joining up:
“Dear Friend, Recently, Joe Biden’s presidential campaign joined Truth Social. You can find their account @BidenHQ here,” Truth Social said in an email sent to users Wednesday.
Bless their hearts.
If you want to set up a Truth Social account for fun, fellowship and following Joe Biden, knock yourself out.
Probably should make a burner email, though. And wear a hazmat suit. Never know who’s lurking in creepo places like that.
Trucks of desperately needed aid for Gaza remain stuck on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, a situation that U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said left him “broken hearted” during a brief and chaotic visit to the highly militarized zone Friday.
In President Biden’s high profile visit to Israel to express support, he announced a deal to get aid flowing into the besieged enclave, but days later, wrangling over the conditions persists.
“We are witnessing a paradox: behind these walls, we have 2 million people that is suffering enormously — that has no water, no food, no medicine, no fuel; that is under fire; that needs everything to survive,” he said. “On this side, we have seen so many trucks, loaded with water, with fuel, with medicines, with food — exactly the same things that are needed on this side of the wall.”
“It is impossible to be here and not to feel a broken heart,” he said.
Guterres appealed again for a humanitarian cease-fire, but he made clear that this should not be a precondition for the delivery of aid, which he said needed to continue on a daily basis.
Inside Gaza, Palestinians told The Washington Post that distributing the aid would be extremely dangerous for them without a halt in Israeli airstrikes, which have continued across the coastal enclave, including in areas in the south that Israel said would be considered safe-zones.
Over the last 24 hours, Israeli shelling killed at least 352 Palestinians in Gaza and injured another 669, the Gaza-based Ministry of Health spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said Friday. Overall, at least 4,137 Gazans have been killed and another 12,162 injured in the fifth war between Israel and Gaza, the bloodiest yet, according to the ministry. [Numbers not verified by independent sources.]
[…] In a briefing Friday, Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israeli planes had been bombing Gaza “at a rate not seen for decades,” ahead of the next stage of operations.
Under a deal reached with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said 20 trucks would be permitted to cross the border into the besieged Gaza Strip. He reemphasized his commitment to the deal Friday saying “the people of Gaza urgently need food, water and medicine” in a statement.
More than 200 trucks from the United Nations, Egyptian Red Crescent and other sources are waiting to cross into Gaza, but the details of how the aid will be verified and whether it will be a continuous flow remain under discussion, said Guterres. […]
Biden Asks Congress for More Aid for Israel and Ukraine
President Biden’s $105 billion request included funding to help Israel and Ukraine fight “terrorism and tyranny,” the White House said. It also contained relief funds for Gaza, where a U.N.-backed aid corridor had yet to open.
The Biden administration formally asked Congress for emergency funding for Israel and Gaza on Friday, a request that came as an effort to get desperately needed aid to the blockaded enclave appeared to be hitting stumbling blocks.
In Washington, the Biden administration tied aid for Israel to Ukraine, formally asking Congress for $105 billion in emergency funding that would include $10.6 billion in military support for Israel and $61.4 billion for Ukraine. The request also included about $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Israel, Gaza and Ukraine.
The humanitarian situation was growing more urgent in Gaza, but the Rafah crossing between the blockaded territory and Egypt still hadn’t opened to aid, a day after a United Nations-led deal appeared to have had laid the groundwork to allow trucks carrying supplies to enter. Negotiators were still trying to come to agreement on thorny issues, including who would inspect the shipments for weapons, diplomats familiar with the talks said.
Gaza had already been living under a 16-year blockade by Israel and Egypt when Israel responded to the Hamas attack that killed 1,400 people this month with airstrikes and a complete siege of the enclave. Resources have since grown more scarce.
Essential supplies like food and fuel are running out ahead of an anticipated ground invasion, and the health care situation has grown increasingly dire. Over 60 percent of primary health care centers have been shut down, and hospitals were running out of power, medicines, equipment and staff, the United Nations said in a report […]
House Minority Whip Katherine Clark nominated Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for speaker during Friday’s continued Republican-led fiasco. Clark gave a rousing speech, bringing Democrats together in a show of unity that continues to elude the Republican Party.
Clark made it clear that GOP speaker nominee Jim Jordan and what he represents are a danger. Calling the Ohio representative “disconnected,” she told the floor his “vision is a direct attack on the freedom and the rights of the American people.” She proceeded to detail Jordan’s record of voting against things like health care for veterans, children, and even 9/11 survivors.
But Clark wasn’t done. “He has opposed lowering the cost of insulin, repeatedly. He wants to cut Social Security and Medicare,” she said. “Over his 16 years in the House, the Republican nominee has never supported a farm bill. What does that mean? What does that mean? It means he has turned his back on farmers, on rural communities, and the 11 million children who go to bed hungry in this country.”
Clark brought her fellow Democrats to their feet as she targeted Jordan’s misogynistic attacks on reproductive rights.
The Republican nominee wants a national abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of a mother. We want to make our own health care decisions in consultation with our families, our doctors, our faith. Not with Jim Jordan.
Watch the compelling video below. [video at the link]
Democrats are using Jim Jordan’s run for Speaker of the House as an opportunity to out him as the unethical person he is. Good job.
Republicans who voted against Rep. Jim Jordan as House speaker have gotten death threats. Rep. Don Bacon’s wife slept with a loaded gun following threatening phone calls. Jordan’s allies don’t see the problem.
To Rep. Scott Perry, a Jordan backer, threats are “nothing new to any member of Congress,” so talking about these specific threats is a “red herring.” But it does not sound like Bacon’s wife sleeps with a loaded gun every night, which suggests there is something new and different about these threats. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks referred to “credible death threats,” which are different from statements like “you should die.” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who has voted for Jordan but doesn’t think he can win, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “These attacks have become extremely vicious. They’re different. I have been the subject of a lot of attacks from the far right. These are different.”
Fellow Jordan ally Rep. Warren Davidson went further in dismissing the threats, according to Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman. At the House Republican meeting Thursday, Davidson “said it’s not Team Jordan’s fault that holdouts are getting death threats. They are getting the death threats, he said, because they voted against Jordan,” sources told Sherman. In a separate tweet, Sherman reported that “Davidson also said this will continue as long as people oppose Jordan for speaker.”
They had it coming. If they just would have done what Jordan wanted, they wouldn’t have been threatened. It’s not going to stop. They shouldn’t talk about it because it’s a red herring. [JFC]
Does that sound like Team Jordan is not responsible for the threats, at least in part? They know these are their supporters, and they don’t see a problem with it. Jordan himself has cultivated this political environment. Crenshaw also told Tapper, of Jordan’s online allies attacking the holdouts, “they’re often paid. Nobody should think that they’re principled people with their own opinions.” The death threats may not be coming from paid influencers, but those influencers have created the environment in which death threats proliferate.
But while Perry wishes the Jordan opponents would stop talking about their irrelevant little death threats, there is something he wants to hear from them. “If you’re not voting for Jim Jordan, you at least owe it to the American People to tell them the REAL REASON,” he tweeted. The wording is calculated to encourage conspiracy theorists to believe there’s some nefarious secret reason for opposing Jordan, which isn’t going to tamp down the death threats one bit. [JFC … again]
Is it so hard to believe that some Republicans simply oppose the idea of Speaker Jim Jordan? Personally, I can come up with so many reasons—House Minority Leader and leading vote-getter Hakeem Jeffries laid them out clearly, like Jordan’s stances on abortion, Social Security, and Medicare—but you don’t have to be a Democrat to see problems with Jordan. Quite obviously.
Rep. Ken Buck’s reason is clear: He won’t vote for an election-denier for speaker. He’s given Jordan chances to reverse course on the 2020 election, and Jordan won’t do it. Bacon, who represents a district that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020, doesn’t like how Republicans got to this point where Jordan is their choice—and the threats have only hardened his resolve. Rep. Kay Granger tweeted, “Steve Scalise is an honorable man and has earned my vote for Speaker. This was a vote of conscience and I stayed true to my principles. Intimidation and threats will not change my position.”
These Republicans have reasons not to vote for Jordan! They are not my reasons […] but they’re not hiding some sneaky “REAL REASON.” Perry’s implication is just going to lead to more personal attacks and threats. And he and Davidson have made it clear: They really don’t care.
“Verified” accounts on Elon Musk’s X platform spread nearly three-quarters of the 250 most viral posts containing commonly shared misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war, according to a study released yesterday by NewsGuard, a company that has worked with the European Commission on misinformation initiatives…
wzrd1says
Jungle Gym is out, voted out by GOP vote. Now, all are scrambling to find a new squeaker candidate.
wzrd1says
Reginald Selkirk @ 415 and Musk now is testing charging people for the privilege of posting or responding on the platform, hoping to make a buck a year from each bot account, erm I mean, that nobody would pay to bot there.
Because, political parties and governments are always shy about spending money…
He’ll have them available again as penny stock in no time at all!
A new name has been added to the list of British monarchs after experts examined a coin found in a Hampshire field by an amateur detectorist.
Dating from around 50BC and smaller than a fingernail, the gold coin is stamped with the name Esunertos, a previously unrecorded Iron Age ruler. It sold at auction for more than £20,000.
The find, by hobbyist Lewis Fudge, has been described by experts as “one of the outstanding discoveries of recent decades”.
The coin was dug up from a farmer’s field in March by Mr Fudge, a construction worker, after he obtained permission to detect…
Re: Lynna 414
I realize that is the article title, but Warren Davidson’s words is not indifference. That is implicit support. Stochastic terrorism in action. They get death threats because they have supporters willing to make death threats.
WINDSOR, Colo. (KDVR) — A spokesperson for U.S. Rep. Ken Bucksaid the landlord of their Windsor office is terminating their lease after the congressman voted against Rep. Jim Jordan’s speakership bid.
On NBC News Thursday, the congressman said, “I’ve been evicted from my office in Colorado. I have notice of an eviction because the landlord is mad with my voting record on the speaker issue.” …
@ 422 She was most famous for The Windsors and Drop Dead Donkey on TV
.
The Belgian Minister of Justice has resigned after the terror deed at the soccer game last weekend.
wzrd1says
Reginald Selkirk @ 420, the Ukrainians singing “Tanks for the memories”.
Seriously though, that’s a major loss, given Russia’s current difficulties in building operational tanks.
@ 421, sounds like a contract dispute for federal court, if he’s got even the slightest shred of evidence. Unlawful influence charges are possible against the landlord, because such pressures are indeed unlawful and oh yeah, never heard of a property lease agreement that has a clause, “I must agree to everyfucking thing you vote for or this contract is null and void”.
Speaking of litigation, Trump just got a spit on an erupting volcano fine of $5k for violating the gag order on talking smack about court officers. Specifically, claiming Engoron’s clerk is Shumer’s girlfriend because they were in a photograph together. An odd claim, does that mean that George HW Bush was my girlfriend, as there does exist a photograph of us together?
What would be effective is 90 days in jail and a public apology to the court and all parties concerned. The imprisonment threat has been issued again, should another “blatant violation” reoccur.
Likely, Trump would be strutting into jail shouting, “We bad, we bad!” and expect a special custom cell.
And he can’t have mine, mine has rubber wallpaper to protect the walls from damage if I have a fall.
Using customised hydraulic suspension systems, lowriders can bounce, lower and lift individual wheels – often hovering just above the road.
California has lifted its bans on cruising lowriders, a practice once associated with crime and gangs. Beyond cruising, lowriders contain American cultural identities.
(with video)
A Czech parish priest has apologised to local children after stomping on Halloween pumpkins near his church.
Father Jaromir Smejkal destroyed the carved pumpkins on two successive days in a park in Kurdejov, a village in the wine-making region of South Moravia.
He has apologised for the vandalism in an open letter to the mayor and published on the village Facebook page.
He said he would have acted differently had he known they were carved by children.
“Leaving the rectory on Sunday evening, I saw numerous symbols of the satanic feast of ‘Halloween’ placed in front of our sacred grounds,” he wrote.
“I acted according to my faith and duty to be a father and protector of the children entrusted to me and removed these symbols,” said Father Smejkal, parish priest at the Roman Catholic Church of St John the Baptist.
He added that in his view the modern tradition of Halloween had been conceived in a “heathen, contemporary world”, as a counterbalance to the Catholic feast of All Souls’ Day…
On Friday, Donald Trump-aligned attorney Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty in the Fulton County, Georgia, indictment brought by District Attorney Fani Wilis. This follows a Thursday plea by attorney Sidney Powell. Both Chesebro and Powell have provided recorded statements to prosecutors and agreed to act as witnesses in the cases against their 17 codefendants.
Where Powell’s involvement in Georgia was largely related to efforts to tamper with voting machines in Coffee County, Chesebro was involved in all aspects of the false-electors scheme. Between the two witnesses, they can provide testimony that speaks to a large portion of the efforts headed up by Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani to overturn the 2020 election.
The guilty pleas by Chesebro and Powell represent a huge threat to Trump’s chances of once again becoming the Republican nominee, much less of moving back into the White House.
In exchange for Chesebro’s testimony, Willis is dropping six of the seven charges against him. That includes letting him out of the racketeering charge, commonly known as RICO, that would have made jail time mandatory for any other violation. The remaining charge against Chesebro is one count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents, which is count 15 on the indictment. For this charge, prosecutors are recommending that Chesebro be sentenced to five years probation, pay a $5,000 fine, and write a letter of apology to Georgia voters. [video at the link]
As with Powell, it’s easy to see this penalty as a slap on the wrist … because it’s a slap on the wrist. That’s even more true in Chesebro’s case. His actions in Georgia were blatant and obvious. Few of the 19 codefendants’ charges would have been easier to prove than Chesebro’s. His efforts to file false documents, impersonate a state official, and seat false electors isn’t a matter of conjecture: Chesebro put it all down on paper. The seven original charges he was facing could have easily earned him more than a decade in jail.
Chesebro features prominently in 19 separate acts described as part of the greater RICO conspiracy, and still, Chesebro evaded being charged with being part of that greater conspiracy. In the Georgia case, Chesebro was much more deeply involved than Powell, and his skating away with this level of punishment is a jaw-dropping deal.
The question is: Why?
With Powell, Willis got a witness who can testify both to the Coffee County effort and to every aspect of the Trump-Giuliani scheme that involved false claims about voting machines. That has value, and it definitely means that the people involved in those aspects of the case should be getting their outside-the-bars affairs in order and gathering up some light reading material.
There’s no doubt that Powell was also involved in the largest election-overthrow scheme. However, there is an issue. That issue is that she’s Sidney Powell. Finding footage that shows her ranting about dead dictators while rattling off a dozen nonsensical claims will not be difficult. It’s not hard to imagine a Trump attorney saying, “I submit, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, that the government’s witness is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. No further questions at this time.”
In other words, Powell’s demonstrated history of instability and unreliability may be an issue if it comes down to a he-said/Sidney-said.
Fortunately for Willis, she already has a backup when it comes to the Coffee County charges. Bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty in September, and his involvement in the case strongly overlaps the charges against Powell. So prosecutors will have a more grounded source.
Chesebro doesn’t bring that baggage. What he does bring is a deep involvement with the false-elector scheme in Georgia and elsewhere. Chesebro’s name isn’t just in the indictment for attempting to forge a false election certificate: It’s in the indictment alongside Trump, Giuliani, and a half dozen others involved in the same act. Chesebro was intimately involved in this plan, working elbow to elbow with the folks at the top of the RICO pyramid.
He also worked closely with attorney Bob Cheeley and political staffer Michael Roman. Seeing those two in jail may not be all that important for most people. However, their presence in Georgia may make them more important to Willis.
Chesebro got a better deal because he’s a more valuable witness.
At this point, he has already given his recorded proffer to the prosecutors. He has also reportedly agreed to turn over additional emails and more information related to the case. Willis must have thought it was worth it.
For anyone else hoping get a deal as good as that provided to Chesebro, the bar is going to be very, very high.
On Thursday evening, President Joe Biden delivered an Oval Office address to the American people. In sharp contrast to the follies, fights, and clashing egos being demonstrated by Republicans in the House, Biden showed that his White House remains the calm, stable center of our government.
He spoke clearly, earnestly, and eloquently, drawing parallels between the fight going on between Israel and Hamas with that of Ukraine and Russia. He spoke about how those who renounce violence and hate are not excused from action in the face of the worst forms of injustice. And he did something extraordinarily brave in speaking to the mistakes that America made by acting out of rage in the wake of 9/11.
Some presidents, like Barack Obama, have been lauded for their soaring oratory. Others, like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, have been described by the media as skilled in communicating, even when all these men were communicating was racism, fear, and prejudice. But President Biden has largely been dismissed as a second-tier speaker, that guy with the stutter who occasionally mangles a phrase. That verdict is completely wrong. Joe Biden may be the best speaker, the best communicator, and the best orator of America’s innate strength in this century.
What made this speech by Biden a genuinely great one was that it didn’t do the easy thing. It didn’t do any of the easy things. It didn’t call for blind support of our allies. It didn’t demand vengeance. It didn’t suggest standing aside, turning away, or hiding behind dishonest demands for perfection.
Instead, Biden acknowledged evil, recognized the difficulty of the situation as it exists for both Israel and Palestine, and warned against giving in to the demands of outrage and shock.
His speech pointed out the humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians. It promised assistance to both Israel and Palestine. It asked both Israel and Palestine to retain their humanity in the face of inhuman circumstances. It is a promise that America will do something it so rarely has: act according to its ideals, not just based on poll numbers. [video at the link]
Perhaps the biggest intention behind Biden’s speech was reminding the public that the world isn’t facing just one crisis. While searching for the path forward in the Middle East, we can’t afford to forget the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
The U.S. has a moral obligation to act in both locations. Citing past U.S. transgressions doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility, and refusing to act is merely another form of evil.
“Hamas and Putin represent different threats,” said Biden, “but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy—completely annihilate it.”
It’s an important speech, one that doesn’t deserve to be lost in a day of massive events and angry politics. It’s that rarest of things: a speech that doesn’t just call on America to live up to its ideals, but also doesn’t pretend that those ideals are limited to saying the right words. It’s easy to create a city on a hill when all it has to do is shine. Joe Biden is demanding something more: a nation willing to stand on the ground and reach out its hand.
A Navy destroyer in the Red Sea shot down at least 15 drones and four cruise missiles launched from Yemen on Thursday, two defense officials said, in an incident that was hours long and even larger than initially reported.
The USS Carney shot down the munitions after they were launched by Iranian-backed Houthi militants, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The cruise missiles were seemingly headed toward Israel, the officials said, while the direction of the drones was not disclosed.
Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, disclosed the operation Thursday, noting then that three land-attack cruise missiles and “several” drones had been shot down. Ryder said Thursday that the Defense Department was assessing whether the drones were targeting the destroyer. One of the defense officials Friday said that is still the case, but noted that personnel on the ship did believe the drones posed a threat. […]
beholdersays
@386, 389 Rob
You can use the ‘yt-dlp’ utility (very useful generally to backup online videos) to download all publicly-visible comments from a video into a single JSON file. It takes a little while if the video has thousands of comments, but it should spit out a decent-sized text file you can then search through for your username:
beholder @432: What I actually did was, while I was signed in to Youtube, sort comments by newest first, scroll down to my comment, and take a screen capture.
Then I signed out, again sorted comments by newest first, and scrolled down until I recognized the comments that had bracketed mine. My comment had disappeared. I took a screen capture of that too.
Bottom line: I think Collier ghosted my comment because she didn’t want her audience to read a valid criticism of her calculation. I wonder how many others got the same treatment (there must have been others who recognized her error).
That said, if you can think of an innocent explanation for what I saw, I’d love to hear it.
Rob Grigjanissays
Minor correction to #433: I took the ‘signed out’ screen shot first. I’d done the ‘sign in’ then ‘sign out’ several times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
On Oct. 11, Russia began an offensive around the city of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine. The idea was to cut off this suburb of Donetsk, score the first real advance for Russia in months, isolate Ukrainian forces in the area, and give Vladimir Putin something to brag about at a time when world attention was focused on events in Israel and Palestine.
[…] That Russia’s first major offensive action since well before Ukraine began its own counteroffensive in the early summer would get attention isn’t unusual, but the thing about Avdiivka is that it started as a fiasco for Russian forces, grew into a disaster, blossomed into a full on catastrophe, and just … kept right on growing.
Because as of Oct. 20, Russia is still at it. They’re not only continuing to lose at Avdiivka; they’re also setting new records for how badly they are losing. From a Ukrainian perspective, it’s worth celebrating, but it’s also worth asking: Just what the hell is Russia doing?
Here’s the language Ukraine’s General Staff used in describing the situation at Avdiivka in their end of the day analysis on Friday.
Avdiivka axis: the enemy conducted unsuccessful assault operations with air support in the vicinities of Avdiivka, Novokalynove, Stepove, Pervomais’ke (Donetsk oblast). The Ukrainian defense forces repelled around 20x enemy attacks in that area
That doesn’t sound too unusual. In fact, there are other locations, such as the Kupyansk area, that also recorded 20 attempted Russian advances. Another 10 occurred south of Bakhmut, 15 at Marinka, and smaller numbers across the map. Reading the text, the report doesn’t look all that different than any other day.
However, this does: [list of Russian losses at the link]
That’s 120 Russian armored vehicles reportedly put out of action in a single day. Russian sources are reporting that more equipment has already been lost at Avdiivka than in the months of fighting around Robotyne. How much equipment might that be?
Since Russia launched the attack at Avdiivka, it has lost:
– 8,980 personnel.
– 218 tanks.
– 428 armored vehicles.
– 299 artillery.
That’s 10 days. Not all of those losses have been at Avdiivka, but the great majority certainly have been. These aren’t anywhere close to the levels of Russia’s worst losses in World War II, but in terms of losses over time, this is a disaster in any war. Those losses are made only more staggering by the fact that Russia is still at it.
They’re not attacking in large numbers supported by helicopter air support—a system which gave them momentary success on the first day. They’re not attacking in the kind of small, squad-level probing attacks that have been typical for most actions over the past year. Instead, Russian commanders seem to be grouping their forces into nice, bite-sized pieces. Then they’re driving them out into the middle of a field littered with the flaming remains of earlier losses, to be smashed by Ukrainian drones and artillery. [Tweet and video at the link]
Maybe it’s not madness. But it sure looks like madness. [Tweet and video at the link]
If Russian commanders were trying to demolish their own army, it’s hard to think how they could do it more efficiently. [Tweet and video at the link]
On the other hand, this does seem to represent a kind of impressive, if horrifying, discipline. Maybe Russia really does have a faction of troops set aside to force their fellow soldiers to advance or be shot. If not … how in the hell are they getting people to keep doing this? [Tweet and video at the link]
Someone back in Russia is probably going to write a poem about the guys trying to make this advance at Avdiivka. But if that poem doesn’t end with them frogmarching their commanders forward as part of a general surrender, it’s going to be one very sad poem.
—————————-
A travel advisory. This time it doesn’t seem to be a Russian commercial airliner, but an Il-76 military transport plane that crashed near the Gissar Air Base in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Russia appears to have lost at least eight transport or fighter jets outside of Ukraine this week. [Tweet and image at the link]
—————————-
Speaking of downed aircraft, here’s more information on that strike at Berdyansk, which kos covered in one of the rare posts from the past week that wasn’t focused on Avdiivka.
[Tweet and images at the link] Many people have criticised GeoConfirmed’s count of “21 helicopters destroyed or damaged” in the recent strikes on Berdyansk and Luhansk airfields. Someone said that GeoConfirmed had “counted empty revetments”, which is not true.
I can say that this count is based on VHR satellite imagery that I have seen. These images show that the entire area inside the Berdyansk protective berms was peppered with cluster munitions. This type of image cannot be distributed publicly because of copyright restrictions.
However, GeoConfirmed did make a mistake when analysing these images by identifying a Pantsir as a helicopter.
Here is my analysis based on VHR imagery and displayed through Planet imagery.
8 helicopters were completely destroyed, 6 were damaged and probably totalled and a radar was destroyed at Berdyansk. A Pantsir SAM located outside the image to the east may also have been damaged.
In Luhansk, at least 7 helicopters were damaged or destroyed (one of which was not included in previous public analyses).
Confirmed losses therefore amount to 21 helicopters destroyed or damaged and one radar destroyed.
In a second tweet, close-ups show the visible damage caused by submunitions in the northern and southern parts of the Berdyansk airfield.
Initial reports were that Russia had lost nine helicopters. However, that number has continued to climb, with current estimates at an amazing 21 helicopters destroyed by what was reportedly the first use of ATACMS in Ukraine. If this is accurate, expect it to impact Russian air support along the southern front.
As a single-day aviation loss, it’s hard to think of anything this large since the loss of the last carrier in World War II.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@beholder #432:
Neat! That tool continues to surprise me.
About the commandline you wrote:
– Question: Is no-mtime superfluous? Omitting didn’t affect the date on my json.
– Observation: It writes a LOT of metadata, including comments, to a single “title [id].info.json”
I learned some fancy variations that might interest you.
This’ll let you dump ONLY comments into a named file. Without an info.json. yt-dlp --skip-download --write-comments --no-write-info-json --print-to-file "after_filter:%(comments)j" "comments.json" VIDEOLINK
If you want two files: all the metadata, but with separate comments… yt-dlp --skip-download --write-comments --print-to-file "after_filter:%(comments)j" "comments.json" --parse-meta "video::(?P<comments>)" VIDEOLINK
This will
– Write comments (at the ‘after_filter’ stage).
– Forget it saw comments (parse an empty string to set a new value for comments at the ‘video’ stage).
– Then write info.json with everything (incl blanked comments, after the ‘video’ stage).
– Learned from a github issue.
beholdersays
@436 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain
You’re one-upping my one-liners >:(
Thanks for the tip, though. I hadn’t even thought of using the postprocessor. I’ll have to file that away for later…
If I may borrow your phrasing: Neat! That tool continues to surprise me, too. What would data-hoarders do without it? Granted, it still gives me JSON-formatted comments, but I can clean that up and make it human-readable with a python script. I would almost say this makes reading Youtube comments convenient, except they’re still Youtube comments. YMMV.
Is --no-mtime superfluous?
Probably. It lets me sort my downloaded videos nicely, so I didn’t think to delete the string when I didn’t need it.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
@beholder:
Ooh very sneaky caveat:
Code says the dumped “timestamp” on those comments is only a rough estimate, taking the vague “n days ago” and subtracting from the present.
YouTube’s Data API makes accurate timestamps available for comments: “publishedAt” (initial wording), and “updatedAt” (last edit). Requires authentication. Beyond yt-dlp’s anonymous capabilities, I guess. Didn’t test, but I don’t think giving yt-dlp credentials will get true times.
A week to the day after the Indigenous Voice proposal was defeated in Australia due to Dutton’s ctynical and selfish lack of bipartisanship and a torrent of disinformation and fear-mongering funded by reuichwing and mining lobbies this article sums things up sadly well :
Why did the referendum fail? The reasons are multifaceted, but at the core of this failure lies a disturbing sense of self-interest. A large number of Australians voted “No” seemingly because they were more interested in what was in it for them, or what they might lose. This isn’t to say that all “No” voters were driven by selfishness, but the overall outcome revealed a disturbing lack of collective empathy.
The “No” campaign was spearheaded by political figures like Peter Dutton and shadowy organisations like the Atlas Group that fed division and misinformation. It employed fear, lies, and social media algorithms to manipulate public opinion. The fact that such tactics succeeded in swaying public opinion is deeply troubling. It suggests that Australians are too lazy to inform themselves and make decisions for themselves. We are a society happy to let social media algorithms tell us what we should think. Australia is a selfish nation which prioritises self-interest.
In the lead-up to the referendum, I, like many Australians, believed we would unite in the pursuit of justice and Reconciliation. We had an opportunity to move forward as a more equitable and harmonious nation. But Australia failed the empathy test.
Diprotodons to be precise. The largest marsupial ever.
StevoRsays
@441. Silentbob : Really? One Indigenous figure contradicts all the others the majority of whom did want the Indigenous Voice to Parliament to go through?
Indigenous communities overwhelmingly voted yes to Australia’s voice to parliament
Polling catchments where Indigenous Australians form more than 50% of the population voted on average 63% in favour of the voice. Regions with a high proportion of Indigenous Australians overwhelmingly voted yes in the referendum – including the community where prominent no campaigner Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s family is from.
The yes vote in polling catchments where Indigenous Australians formed more than 50% of the population was, on average, 63% in favour of enshrining an Indigenous voice to parliament, according to political analyst Simon Jackman, who estimated the proportion of Indigenous Australians at each polling area based on data from the 2022 election.
Pre-Referendum campaign polling found about 80% of Indigenous People or more wanted the Voice. It is true that some Indigenous people eg. Lidia Thorpe, Blak Soverign (fringe) Movement opposed the Voice preferring a Treaty first. Same tactic as what brought the previous Republic Referendum down. That oldest trick in the book of divide and conquer, set those wanting the perfect (Treaty, Direct Election) against those wanting at least a good start and something new to build upon and some positive step.(The Voice, Minimalist Republic model.)
As for for misinformation being spread well, that’s very clear :
It was created more than 40 years ago and inflamed the land rights debate in Australia. Red Over Black, a book and documentary released in the early 1980s, claimed the movement was a communist plot to erode Australia’s sovereignty.
Now, the film is being used as a clarion call by anti-Voice to Parliament campaigners in the referendum to be held on October 14.
ABC Investigations has tracked how the hour-long documentary was repurposed, revealing Australian white supremacists played a major role in its appropriation and dissemination.
The documentary has been circulated among groups promoting Saturday’s rallies against the Voice around the country.
Warning: This story contains references to racist and anti-Semitic language.
While it’s difficult to quantify in real terms, he told SBS News “there’s no doubt that on the Voice, we’re seeing an incredibly large volume of mis- and disinformation”.
“It doesn’t take long, if you open up any social media platform and start looking for content on the Voice, to see that it appears the majority of it all looks very similar.
“It is all around the same types of lies and myths about the Voice.”
Similar and repeated types of misinformation is a “telltale sign that these are organised networks,” Coper said. “We do know that overall, the amount of sentiment on social media platforms around No is significantly higher than Yes.”
Graham argues the online space becomes even more muddied by a “grey zone” of information that would not necessarily be called mis- or disinformation, but has a similar effect.
“It is opening up a really big, complex grey area that is ultimately producing doubt, fear and uncertainty,” he said.
He said he would have acted differently had he known they were carved by children.
“Leaving the rectory on Sunday evening, I saw numerous symbols of the satanic feast of ‘Halloween’ placed in front of our sacred grounds,” he wrote.
“See, I thought the pumpkins were an expression of someone else’s religious beliefs, so obviously I stomped the shit out of them.”
From the warm-and-fuzzy files comes this feel-good Friday post, chronicling this week’s takedown of two hated ransomware groups. One vanished on Tuesday, allegedly after being hacked by a group claiming allegiance to Ukraine. The other was taken out a day later thanks to an international police dragnet.
The first group, calling itself Trigona, saw the content on its dark web victim naming-and-shaming site pulled down and replaced with a banner proclaiming: “Trigona is gone! The servers of Trigona ransomware gang has been infiltrated and wiped out.” An outfit calling itself Ukrainian Cyber Alliance took credit and included the tagline: “disrupting Russian criminal enterprises (both public and private) since 2014.” …
The second ransomware gang takedown this week happened to Ragnar Locker, a group that has hacked numerous organizations worldwide. On Friday, Europol said:
In an action carried out between 16 and 20 October, searches were conducted in Czechia, Spain and Latvia. The “key target” of this malicious ransomware strain was arrested in Paris, France, on 16 October, and his home in Czechia was searched. Five suspects were interviewed in Spain and Latvia in the following days. At the end of the action week, the main perpetrator, suspected of being a developer of the Ragnar group, has been brought in front of the examining magistrates of the Paris Judicial Court.
The ransomware’s infrastructure was also seized in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden and the associated data leak website on Tor was taken down in Sweden…
Jon Stewart and his weekly talk show The Problem with Jon Stewart are out at Apple, according to reports from The New York Times and Variety. Apple canceled the show just weeks before its third season began taping. Its cancellation sheds some light on the conflict of priorities Apple faces as it leans more into content rather than just selling tools, platforms, and gadgets…
A white Vallejo Police Department officer was recorded punching a Black woman in the face after she was involved in a car accident in Vallejo, California, on Oct. 13.
TikTok user Romyr Hamilton was nearby during the arrest and recorded the footage on a cellphone.
The footage captured Ofc. Colin Eaton forcibly removing the woman from her vehicle, slamming her against a cement truck, and punching her when she was on the ground near the 100 block of Admiral Callaghan Lane. The woman was reportedly a shoplifting suspect, according to the Open Vallejo…
StevoR @443, thanks for that additional information. That presents a clear picture of the misinformation that is being passed around online. The effects are bad. Sorry to see that.
North Carolina Republicans just unveiled new gerrymanders that would not only entrench the party in power but would also reward a turncoat Democrat whose inexplicable party switch handed the GOP a veto-proof supermajority in April and ushered in a new era of ultraconservative governance.
As a result of that switch by state Rep. Tricia Cotham, Republicans were able to quickly pass a host of far-right priorities despite vetoes by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. Those bills, among other things, severely restricted abortion access, curtailed voting rights, and gave the GOP greater control over both state courts and North Carolina’s elections.
Cotham’s decision to change parties came as a shock because she had campaigned as a mainstream, pro-abortion rights Democrat and won a safely blue district in the Charlotte area just last year. Local Democrats had no reason to expect anything else: Cotham had previously served as a reliable member of the state House caucus for several years until leaving for an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 2016.
But just three months into her new term, Cotham claimed she was leaving the Democratic Party because of a progressive backlash when she missed a key vote that enabled Republicans to loosen gun safety regulations. She also said that Democratic lawmakers had repeatedly disrespected her, something Democrats have steadfastly disputed.
However, subsequent reporting cast significant doubt on Cotham’s justifications for her change. Republicans had encouraged her to run in the first place, according to The New York Times, and GOP-aligned interest groups supported her with substantial donations ahead of last year’s primary. The Assembly also reported that Cotham had a history of petty personal grievances with Democratic lawmakers rather than any sort of deep ideological differences.
Cotham’s move was still bewildering, though, because her current district supported Joe Biden by a 61-38 margin—inhospitable turf for any Republican, let alone a former Democrat who had enraged her onetime supporters. (Last year, Cotham herself easily defeated her GOP opponent 59-41 in the 112th District.)
Now, however, Cotham’s district would be radically reshaped (and renumbered as the 105th), so much so that it would instead have voted for Donald Trump 50-48—a 25-point shift in partisanship from its present incarnation. But should Cotham decide that this boon is an insufficient reward for enabling the GOP’s agenda (even her revamped district would remain competitive and, like so much suburban turf, it’s trending toward Democrats), she also has the option of once again running for Congress.
In addition to their new legislative maps, Republicans also released a pair of proposals that would gerrymander North Carolina’s congressional districts in extreme ways, so much so that this perennial swing state would likely wind up with a House delegation made up of 11 Republicans and just three Democrats.
Notably, though, both of those plans would also place Cotham’s base of suburban Mecklenburg County in a safely red open seat (numbered the 8th on one map and the 9th on the other). While Cotham fell far short in her previous House bid, finishing a distant third in the Democratic primary, with just 21% of the vote, her new allies might very well smooth her path to the GOP nomination.
Cotham has not yet indicated what she plans to do next year. However, her overnight transformation into a MAGA Republican has earned her a warm reception from GOP leadership and right-wing media for betraying her former party and the voters who elected her. Given the GOP’s warm embrace of opportunists—including Trump himself—Cotham may find herself richly rewarded indeed.
Jack Smith and his team knocking down Trump’s immunity claims.
Jack Smith has filed his argument against Trump’s Immunity Claims for any insurrection and coup crimes, that he may have committed.
Lawyers for Trump had asked U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan earlier this month to toss the federal election subversion case, asserting that he was immune from prosecution for actions he took while fulfilling his duties as president. […]
GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE IN OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO DISMISS ON PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY GROUNDS
[pg 12]
I. Introduction
Defendant Donald J. Trump moves to dismiss the indictment, asking the Court to afford him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for what he expansively claims was official conduct during his presidency. ECF No. 74 (“Mot.”). That novel approach to immunity would contravene the fundamental principle that “[n]o man in this country is so high that he is above the law.” United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 (1882). The defendant is not above the law. He is subject to the federal criminal laws like more than 330 million other Americans, including Members of Congress, federal judges, and everyday citizens.
None of the sources the defendant points to in his motion—the Constitution’s text and structure, history and tradition, or Supreme Court precedent—supports the absolute immunity he asks the Court to create for him. In staking his claim, he purports to draw a parallel between his fraudulent efforts to overturn the results of an election that he lost and the likes of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and George Washington’s Farewell Address. These things are not alike. [LOL. Nice bit of understatement there.]
The more apt parallel the defendant identifies is to judges, who, like a former president, enjoy absolute immunity from civil damages liability for certain conduct but who are “subject to criminal prosecutions as are other citizens.” Dennis v. Sparks, 449 U.S. 24, 31 (1980). The same is true for the defendant. For the reasons set forth below, the defendant’s motion to dismiss the indictment based upon presidential immunity should be denied.
[pg 41] Bestowing blanket immunity from criminal prosecution on a former president would also create troubling incentives. A president wholly immune from criminal prosecution for any conduct undertaken while in office—particularly one in a second term who would not face voters in another presidential election—could commit crimes with impunity that benefit himself, endanger the republic, or both. [snipped citations]
[pg 48] The indictment alleges a conspiracy to overturn the presidential election results, through targeting state officials; creating fraudulent slates of electors in seven states; leveraging the Department of Justice in the effort to target state officials through deceit and substitute the fraudulent elector slates for the legitimate ones; attempting to enlist the Vice President to fraudulently alter the election results during the certification proceeding on January 6, 2021, and directing supporters to the Capitol to obstruct the proceeding; and exploiting the violence and chaos that transpired at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. Allowing a former President to face criminal prosecution for that alleged conduct would not encroach on an Article II power, let alone a core presidential responsibility. Instead, the allegations focus principally on the defendant’s actions as a candidate for elective office.
Furthermore, the indictment alleges that the defendant acted deceitfully or corruptly to secure a personal benefit to himself as a presidential candidate, not to carry out constitutional obligations entrusted to the presidency. Immunity should not foreclose the Government from shouldering the burden to prove those demanding standards, see supra 31-32, beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. The defendant’s contrary arguments are unpersuasive.
Former DA and now legal expert for MSNBC Joyce Vance, commented that the original request for “presidential immunity” by Trump’s Lawyers was “frivolous” and “likely done as a delay tactic.” She thinks their request will be rejected by the DC Judge — and then will likely be appealed to a high court, once denied.
Delay, delay, delay.
[…] Giving him any shred of credibility (like calling him Mr. President), only furthers his campaign of deception and intimidation threats. It does not clarify, or bring into focus, these disgusting tactics. […]
Vance implied it would probably die in the Circuit Appeals Court — with much derision.
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I’m not worried about the Supreme Court ruling in favor of TFG on this sort of ridiculous thing. Seriously. They’re much more interested in their religious agenda and dismantling govt regulations that affect big business. When they’ve had the chance to tip the scales in favor of TFG personally, as in the 2020 election fraud cases, they’ve always declined to do so.
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The stink would be bad if they even suggested they would take the case.
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They’re just throw Ketchup at the wall
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Just the fact that his lawyers ask for immunity from answering to charges of criminal acts sort of indicates to me that he must have done criminal acts in order to request immunity
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they’re grasping at straws — last ditch attempts to push the DC trial into “Election season”
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FORMER LAWYERS FOR TRUMP. They could be a voting block
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They don’t care about creating such precedent because – despite TFG’s rhetoric about the “Biden Crime Family ” – they know President Biden would never violate the law and abuse his office in that way. Another example of asymmetric warfare.
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His attorneys should be sanctioned for even trying this. There is NO ‘Presidential duty’ to break the law, much less shred the constitution in pursuit of overturning an election loss. Dumb fucks
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Better yet file for disbarment, after the case is over.
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Nothing he does is gonna change the date this trial begins next March. Set. In. Stone. This SCOTUS has already ruled on absolute immunity and there’s no way anyone along the way issues any kind of stay.
wzrd1says
I do heartily approve of smashing pumpkins, after either roasting them or pressure cookering them – if they’re one’s own pumpkins. Got a really nice pie pumpkin here, just waiting for the weather to cool a bit more so that I can roll out some good pie crust.
Any leftover pumpkin goes into a batch of soup.
Smashing pumpkins to suppress another’s “religion”, do explain why a wrecking ball shouldn’t be taken to a now prohibited church, since religious freedom isn’t within your scope of beliefs and the government should reciprocate.
Otherwise, what’s next? Accept when bombs and machine guns are used against people of “the wrong faith”?
Especially, given the Nativist riots of Philadelphia, where artillery was actually used against churches.
The operator of a distribution center in Hebron, Kentucky, faces a $30,000 fine for employing children — ages 11 and 13 — to operate a forklift and pick up warehouse orders. The findings add to a trend of employers hiring more children illegally, with some of them working in dangerous jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Investigators discovered the children to be illegally employed in August at a Win.IT America Inc. distribution center in Hebron. The kids had worked there for months and had worked for more hours than legally allowed …
Commentary:
If there’s one trend that’s stood out in the Trump and post-Trump years, it’s that America’s grade school-aged children yearn for jobs in heavy industry. Children might go to their parents complaining of all the attention a classmate has received after an accident in which cleaning equipment in a meat processing plant peeled the flesh of one arm to the bone. Or maybe you’ve seen children gaze longingly toward your town’s industrial zone, impatient to begin a career at one of the three remaining factories, none of them unionized.
Most importantly, America’s children want to drive forklifts and receive the lowest possible wages to do it. […]
Life in America is difficult for today’s young children. They have the right to be shredded by high-powered rifle fire in their elementary school classrooms, with bullets removing so much of their faces that their parents can identify the bodies only by the clothes the children are wearing. And they’ve learned to coat their faces with the blood of murdered friends in an attempt to trick a shooter into thinking they’re already dead, showing critical thinking skills that may rank far above that of some adult employees. But our government still prohibits them from becoming forklift certified.
Our industry lobbyists haven’t been able to change that yet, but we at Hunter Industries can at least help to ensure your unlicensed tween workers reach new peaks of efficiency while waiting for governors to right this wrong. Look for our new website—coming soon!—and let’s maximize factory child labor synergies together!
At its root, war is very simple. To destroy the enemy, you need two things: knowing where to shoot, and being able to shoot at it.
When Russia began its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, one of the few advantages that Ukraine enjoyed from the outset was in military intelligence—aka knowing where to shoot. There are two factors that stood out.
The first was the role of Western intelligence. Western intelligence proved its value through extremely accurate predictions of Russian invasion plans and intentions in the early days of the conflict. Western spy satellites provide Ukraine with high-resolution images of Russian positions multiple times per day, while Russian satellites reportedly only pass over Ukraine once every two weeks.
The second factor is very active partisan movement in occupied Ukrainian territories. Ukrainian partisans have conducted spectacular raids, successfully attacking airfields, bridges, and armored trains. But the quiet work of obtaining intel on what time Russian officers congregate at the naval headquarters in Sevastopol, or marking where ammunition is carried once offloaded from trains and relaying those coordinates to Ukrainian intelligence officers may be some of their safest yet most valuable activities.
However, knowing where to strike is only half the equation.
For much of 2022, Ukraine was sharply limited in its ability to strike behind Russian lines. Its longest-ranged weapons were the much-celebrated HIMARS and M270 MLRS rocket artillery systems, but Ukraine was limited to firing the GMRLS missile, which has a range of only 70 kilometers.
Even this capability vastly strengthened Ukrainian military ability, as it outranges most conventional artillery firing ordinary ammunition, which is limited to reaching 20 kilometers at most behind enemy lines.
Russia responded to this threat with characteristic inflexibility and slowness.
Russian logistics were built around an assumption that Russia would establish a railhead close to its lines of advance and establish fixed, large-scale supply depots from which transpiration to individual units could commence. The number of trucks, lorries, and other logistical equipment assigned to Russian military units was calculated upon this basis.
When Ukraine gained the ability to strike at these depots located close to the front lines, the results were spectacular. [image at the link]
But by and large, Russian military assets that were held 80 kilometers or more behind the front lines were safe in 2022. So Russia had, in theory, two obvious options: move their supply depots further back, or split the supply depots up into smaller, less obvious targets.
Russia took an extremely long time to make either adjustment, finally moving its central supply depots further back to 120 kilometers from the front lines by April 2023, almost nine months after HIMARS first arrived in Ukraine. Breaking the supply depots into smaller depots presumably proved too logistically complicated for Russian logistics officers, but obtaining sufficient numbers of trucks and transportation equipment to maintain supply depots 120 kilometers from the front lines presumably proved time-consuming and difficult.
Furthermore, Russia clearly still maintains some significant supply depots fairly close to the front lines, as ammunition storage explosions in Tokmak, less than 30 kilometers from the front lines, have been reported in August, September, and October 2023.
But Russia has clearly moved some of its vulnerabilities out of the range of HIMARS systems.
Ukraine has the means to identify targets, but without the longer-ranged weapons obtained after 2022, it would lack the means to hit them.
Unfortunately for Russia, Ukraine has vastly expanded its arsenal of weapons capable of striking much deeper behind enemy lines.
ATACMS
The long requested ATACMS missile arrived in Ukraine with quite a flair. Ukraine used the missiles to strike airbases in Luhansk and Berdyansk, resulting in the destruction of as few as 15 or as many as 21 helicopters on Oct. 17, 2023. [Tweet and images at the link]
Think tank Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russia would likely be forced to transfer its helicopters to air fields further to the rear. A Ukrainian intelligence officer that goes by Tatarigami_UA on X (formerly known as Twitter) assessed that Russia had already transferred all helicopters not immediately undergoing maintenance within a few days of Oct. 17.
These strikes illustrate precisely what ATACMS missiles bring to Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities.
For example, to strike Berdyansk, the ATACMS missile had to traverse nearly 100 kilometers of Russian-controlled and heavily defended territory crawling with anti-air batteries. [map at the link]
This is possible due to the ballistic trajectory of the ATACMS. Unlike cruise missiles, which attempt to avoid radar detection by hugging the ground, a ballistic missile like ATACMS relies on speed and altitude to evade interception.
Upon being fired, the ATACMS ascends to a maximum altitude of around 50 kilometers (over 160,000 feet) before hurling down towards its target at a speed over Mach 3. The extremely high altitude en route precludes any chance of interception, so any enemy system would have to attempt to intercept the missile as it descends towards it target. But the sheer speed of the missile makes interception quite challenging.
Thus far, Ukraine is only known to have received the oldest version of the ATACMS, the M39. The M39 missile is extraordinarily effective against unarmored targets, but largely worthless against anything armored or housed in concrete. The M39 would also do minimal damage to infrastructure targets. If the U.S. were to also supply Ukraine with the M48 Unitary Warhead missile with a single, high-explosive 500-pound warhead, it would be ideal to strike infrastructure targets or fortified structures, but there has been no indication as of yet that the U.S. would do so.
These attributes make the M39 ATACMS an ideal weapon to take on Russian aircraft, helicopters, and anti-air missile batteries. The ballistic trajectory of the the missile allows the ATACMS to penetrate Russian air defenses and strike deep behind enemy lines, where air fields are located. These are high-value targets that are minimally armored, making them highly vulnerable to cluster munition attacks.
By forcing Russian helicopters in particular to use air fields that are further back, they will have less fuel to spend loitering near the front waiting for ideal targets, rendering them less effective as attack helicopters.
STORM SHADOW/SCALP EG
Ukraine has a supply of Storm Shadow and SCALP EG cruise missiles to use against fortified structures and to strike infrastructure. The two missiles are virtual copies of each other, due to a joint development program between the U.K. (Storm Shadow) and France (SCALP EG). [Photo at the link]
There are two key differences between the Storm Shadow and the ATACMS. First, the Storm Shadow’s BROACH warhead is designed to destroy armored or heavily fortified structures, also making it ideal for destroying infrastructure targets. It is not well suited to destroy numerous widely dispersed, lightly-armored targets.
The Storm Shadow’s CEP, or strike radius, is under 5 meters, making it well suited to pinpoint small targets successfully.
For example, Storm Shadow missiles were used to strike the Chonhar Bridge that connects Zaporizhzhia to the Crimean Peninsula. [Tweet and video at the link]
Ukraine also used Storm Shadow missiles to launch a devastating strike on the Russian submarine Rostov-on-Don when it was in drydock at Sevastopol. [Tweet and images at the link]
One drawback to the Storm Shadow compared to the ATACMS is its low-altitude trajectory. Once fired, the Storm Shadow quickly establishes a low cruising altitude at near-treetop heights. This helps it to avoid radar detection as it approaches its target, ideally leaving virtually no time for enemy air defenses to react by the time it detects the incoming missile.
However, unlike the ATACMS, the Storm Shadow can be both detected and intercepted en route. If Ukraine were to fire the Storm Shadow directly at Berdyansk, the Storm Shadow would undoubtedly be detected by the radars of numerous SAM batteries stationed between the front lines and its target.
Russian air defense batteries would have ample time to coordinate their defenses and intercept the missile before it reaches its final destination.
Although the Storm Shadow has a 300-kilometer range, it is not well suited to be fired over enemy-held territory with anti-air units. This limits the targets that can be selected, and “clearing a path” for the cruise missile strike by eliminating enemy radar units can be a necessary precondition for a successful strike.
NEPTUNE
In contrast to the ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles that are provided by Ukraine’s allies, the R-360 Neptune cruise missile is domestically designed and produced by Ukraine.
Purported to have a 280-kilometer range and a powerful 150-kilogram warhead, the Neptune was designed as an anti-ship missile. The Neptune became famous early in the war when it sunk the Moskva, the flagship of the Russian navy’s Black Sea Fleet, in April 2022.
However, there had long been rumors that Ukraine was adapting the missile to strike land-based ground targets.
Based on reporting from Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov, Ukraine successfully struck a highly advanced Russian S-400 anti-air battery with an R-360 Neptune missile during its first operational use as a land-attack weapon. [Image at the link]
The Neptune’s capabilities and limitations (low-altitude cruising, precision strike ability, large unitary warhead) are broadly similar to the Storm Shadow missile.
However, one key difference is the fact that the Neptune missile is domestically manufactured. Many Western weapons and munitions come with conditions that Ukraine not use them to strike targets in what is legally Russian territory. Targeting Russian equipment in Crimea or Donbas is acceptable, but striking Rostov-on-Don or Belgorod is not.
As a domestically produced missile, the Neptune comes with no such restrictions.
S-200
In early July, Ukraine deployed a new long-range weapon: the S-200 anti-air missile adapted for a land attack role. [Tweet, video, and images at the link]
The S-200s were 1960s-era archaic anti-air missiles that Ukraine stopped deploying with its units by 2013. However, the missiles themselves sport a powerful 500-pound warhead, and carry a massive amount of fuel in an 8-ton missile.
Simply by adding a basic GPS guidance system, the missiles could be adapted into a land-attack role.
Though S-200s could theoretically strike as far as 400 kilometers away, it has been noted that their destructive potential would be much greater when targeting locations 150 to 200 kilometers away, as the remaining fuel would add to their destructive effect. Indeed, Ukraine initially used the missile to target Bryansk, just 180 kilometers away.
As large, loud, hot, and high-flying missiles, S-200s are much easier to intercept than Storm Shadow or ATACMS missiles. While Russia has yet to credibly intercept any Storm Shadow or ATACMS, there have unsurprisingly been some credible reports of successful Russian interceptions of the S-200 missiles.
Nonetheless, the S-200’s availability is a major plus. Ukraine is believed to have hundreds of S-200 missiles in storage, and the country’s former Soviet Bloc allies are believed to have hundreds more. S-200s can be used on their own as high-volume attempts to overwhelm Russian air defenses, or as part of coordinated attacks with other higher-value assets, aimed to confuse and overwhelm Russian air defenses.
DRONE ATTACKS
Ukraine has increasingly displayed the ability to launch long-range drone strikes on targets hundreds of kilometers from the front lines, successfully striking targets in Moscow, Soltsy Air Base, and Crimea.
It is difficult to describe Ukraine’s equipment in detail, as Ukraine has employed a variety of drones and their full capabilities remain shrouded in mystery, to an extent. For example, Ukraine claims the UJ-22 drone has an operational range of 800 kilometers, launching attacks that destroyed several Russian transport planes 700 kilometers from the front lines.
The Ukrainian Bober or “Beaver” drone has a claimed range of 1,000 kilometers and has likewise been used to strike targets deep in Russian territory.
However, Ukraine also supplies partisan saboteur teams with suicide drones to be deployed deep behind enemy lines. So it is not always clear if a drone penetrated Russian air defenses to travel hundreds of kilometers behind enemy lines, or if they simply were deployed much closer to their target by a saboteur team.
Due to their small size, drones tends to less visible to Russian radar systems, making it difficult to engage with traditional Surface-to Air Missile batteries, known as SAM batteries. During an attack on Moscow, it was observed that a Beaver drone twice struck a building that was located 300 meters from a Pantsir SAM battery. The strikes on consecutive days on the same building demonstrated that Russian claims that the drones were jammed and out of control when they exploded were false. So it was particularly curious that the Pantsir battery failed to engage the target, suggesting a SAM battery could not detect a drone of that size.
Furthermore, most drones’ small heat signatures makes them difficult to engage with man-portable air-defense systems, known as MANPADS, leaving electronic jamming as the Russian forces’ primary countermeasure.
However, Russia may have a hard time dealing with Ukraine’s coming new weapon: the GLSDB, which will reportedly share many attributes with these suicide drone strikes.
GLSDB (GROUND-LAUNCHED SMALL DIAMETER BOMB)
Like the GMLRS rocket, GLSDBs can be fired from the HIMARS or M270 MLRS rocket artillery systems, but also have their own dedicated mobile launchers. It combines two existing and available systems: a warhead in the form of the ordinarily air-launched 250-pound GBU-39 glide bomb attached to a 227mm-caliber M26 rocket.
The M26 acts as a rocket motor, launching the glide bomb to altitude and speed, then the GBU-39 glide bomb, as the name would imply, deploys winglets that allow the bomb to glide to its target. The GBU-39 is highly maneuverable, accurate to within 3 meters, and can be set with a variable timed fuse, allowing it to punch through concrete to destroy armored or fortified targets, or to explode on contact for unarmored targets. [video at the link]
The glide bomb can strike 150 kilometers away or more.
The main disadvantage of the GLSDB is its slow speed. As a glide bomb, particularly when fired to reach maximum distances, it is likely to be much slower than a cruise missile, thus much easier to intercept.
However, the GLSDB has several major advantages.
First, it is likely to be available in quantity. Both components of the GLSDB are available in large quantities and the production cost of the GLSDB is estimated to be only $40,000 per unit (compared to over $3 million for a Storm Shadow missile). GLSDBs could be fired in waves with a goal of overwhelming enemy air defenses. Even if fewer than one-half or one-third of the bombs make it through, fire enough bombs at a target and you are likely to achieve a strike on target.
Second, the GLSDB has qualities that make it difficult for anti-air systems to intercept. As a glide bomb, it essentially has no heat signature, so heat-seeking missiles (most common on MANPADS) are worthless at intercepting a GLSDB.
Furthermore, the bomb is quite small. It has a wingspan of less than 2 meters, making it even smaller than the Beaver drone. If Russian SAM batteries struggle to detect incoming Beaver drones, it’s even less likely they can detect a GLSDB.
Lastly, compared to Ukrainian drones, GLSDBs have far more sophisticated anti-jamming equipment. They are much more likely than most drones to be able to strike their targets without interference from Russian electronic warfare.
GLSDBs are capable of striking a wide variety of targets, but how Russian air defense fares against them remains an open question. The effectiveness of those air defenses (or lack thereof) would likely dictate how far behind the lines the Ukrainian batteries dare to attack.
Ukraine has a vastly expanded toolbox it can use to strike deep into Russian defensive positions. As Ukraine’s offensive rolls on into the fall and then winter, expect them to reach for the right tools to inflict maximum damage to the Russian military.
This Ukraine Update impressed me with its emphasis on choosing the right weapon for the job.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is always good for a laugh … admittedly bitter laughter:
With all that is going on in the world right now, you might think that the governor of a whole-ass state would have more things on her mind than just policing the speech of everyone who works in her government. But no! No, Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ big priority this week was a new plan to bar government employees from using inclusive language. Or, as she deems it, “woke” language. Probably because of how very much she loves free speech.
The terms Huckabee is most riled-up about are those meant to be inclusive to trans men and non-binary folks who are able to get pregnant. Some of the terms, I must admit, even I haven’t heard before, so it’s hard to imagine that they are running so very rampant in Arkansas government that Huckabee felt the need to come in and put a stop to it. It’s almost as if this is some performative shit meant to boost her profile in the culture war.
Here’s the list, should you be so curious
a. Rather than “pregnant people” or “pregnant person,” use “pregnant women” or “pregnant mom.”
b. Rather than “chestfeeding,” use “breastfeeding.”
c. Rather than “body fed” or “person fed,” use “breast fed.”
d. Rather than “human milk,” use “breast milk.”
e. Rather than “birthing person,” use “birth mom.”
f. Rather than “laboring person,” use “birth mom.”
g. Rather than “menstruating person” or “menstruating people,” use “woman” or “women.”
h. Rather than “birth-giver,” use “woman.”
i. Rather than “womxn” or “womyn,” use “woman.”
That last one … I’m pretty sure was actually coined by second-wave era feminists who didn’t like the term “woman” because the word suggested that being “man” was the norm and women were merely an offshoot of the brand. It was also, ironically, popularized due to its use by the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival — which was notably and notoriously a transphobic enterprise that only admitted “womyn-born-womyn.” Like, they were out here barring trans people from stuff before anyone in the GOP even thought to do it.
[…] We must remember, of course, that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a fierce, fierce warrior for free speech. Please to recall the speech she gave in response to Biden’s state of the union, in which she practically wept for the way she imagined the government was colluding with big tech to take away the free speech rights of conservatives.
“Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight,” she said. “Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is—your freedom of speech. That’s not normal. It’s crazy, and it’s wrong.” [Projection]
To be clear, no one asked her or anyone else to do any rituals, salute any flags or worship any false idols. That is all made up. […]
What they don’t get to do is be shitty to other people without consequences or discriminate against anyone in an official, illegal way. That’s literally it! That is all! Other than that, they are free to do as they please. They’re the ones who want everyone to practice their religion, salute when they tell them to salute — and actually try to pass laws to make this a reality (or claim, wrongly, that such laws already exist).
It’s curious how many of the Right’s culture war issues are rooted in wanting to feel special. They want kids to be compelled to practice their religion in schools, they want store clerks to wish them a “Merry Christmas,” they thought that same-sex marriage would make their own marriages “less special,” they were upset about the phrase “Black Lives Matter” because they heard that and thought “Does that mean MY life doesn’t matter?,” they love nationalism and talking about how they live in the greatest country in the world and are the “Real Americans,” they’re constantly fretting about white people being “replaced,” they fall for absolute dumbasses like Donald Trump who just keep telling them how wonderful they are — and I will believe until I die that much of the opposition to abortion is rooted in male fear that their own mothers wouldn’t have loved them enough to sacrifice their lives for them.
This is why the mere idea of this kind of language is so upsetting to them: it’s inclusive of people they have decided should be excluded, and they just can’t feel good unless they are excluding someone.
Damn, we really wish the rest of America would please just come to its senses and fall in love with Joe Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) like we have. The name is a big part of the problem. “Inflation reduction” was a concession to get Joe Manchin on board. Can laws get better names retroactively, maybe something as simple as the “American Climate Plan”?
It’s the biggest climate action the US has ever taken, and while it got attention recently on the first anniversary of its signing, we sometimes think we should be going up to people in the street and telling them just how much it’s already doing in moving the US toward a renewable energy economy. That long-delayed transition is no longer a “gonna happen,” it’s a “happening right now” — just this week, the London-based energy think tank Ember released an analysis that found roughly half the world’s economies are “five years past peak fossil-fuelled power generation” (silly British spelling!). Obviously that’s not due to the IRA, from just over a year ago, but it’s a measure of progress.
Biden’s Right: Addressing Climate Means Jobs
[…] the tax incentives in the IRA — both for buyers of EVs and for manufacturers — have already led to a boom in planned US battery factories, as well as a lot of other clean energy investments. Goldman Sachs estimated earlier this year that, since the programs run through 2032 and have no spending cap, total IRA investments in clean energy will approach $1.2 trillion over the next decade, spurring Crom only knows how much in spin-off investments, jobs, and growth.
On Thursday, Heatmap published an update on another tranche of spending built into the IRA, its $110 billion in grant programs, of which the administration has awarded the first $11.8 billion so far. But what a range of grants! Let us nerd out together:
There’s more than $100 million for protecting the Pacific Ocean’s salmon and steelhead fisheries.
Hundreds of millions more to plant urban canopies in Atlanta, Phoenix, and dozens of other cities.
$1 billion for two new weather research ships for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and tens of millions for mapping the best “fuel breaks” — roads, rivers, and other natural features that will slow wildfires in Colorado, Wyoming, and other states.
Most initial funding has gone to existing federal programs, to fund climate programs in the Agriculture Department, to upgrade the nation’s national energy research labs, to hire more conservation scientists for US Fish and Wildlife, to make federal buildings more energy efficient, and so on. The second-largest single grant, around $3 billion, has already gone to the Postal Service to fund an entirely new fleet of delivery vehicles, the vast majority of which will be EVs. (They should start hitting the streets in 2026.)
Still Building Charging Stations On The Road To Utopia
So far, new programs created by the IRA are still ramping up, and haven’t yet started funding grants, because that’s how government programs do unless you’re trying to shovel money out during a pandemic to prevent an economic crash. (Yes! You can absolutely say the climate crisis calls for similar alacrity, albeit with more oversight to prevent grifting.)
Heatmap offers some for-instances where the programs are still coming on line:
The EPA has yet to start making grants from its $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, for instance, a multi-purpose fund which will eventually help capitalize dozens of green banks and provide loans to cut the cost of rooftop solar.
The EPA has also yet to disburse money from its new programs to reduce air pollution from ports, cut methane emissions from oil-and-gas infrastructure, and help environmental-justice organizations.
The IRA also provided nearly $10 billion to the USDA to help rural electric cooperatives decarbonize their power plants; that money has yet to flow as well.
[…] the White House explained in a statement that it’s already “launched” $70 billion in IRA grant and rebate programs, which Heatmap translates to mean that the feds “may have opened up applications to receive funding from those programs, but not yet awarded any money from them.”
For an analogy, consider the the pace of another major Biden climate program, this one under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Its $5 billion “National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI)” program granted states funds to build out a network of EV charging stations. Joe Biden signed the BIL into law on November 15, 2021, but that didn’t make charging stations just start popping up like itinerant preachers on college campuses on a nice spring day.
The Departments of Energy and Transportation had to design the NEVI grant program, then states had to apply to for approval of their plans, set up their own bidding processes and determine where stations would go, and all that. That’s why it took not quite two years after BIL passed for Ohio to announce last week (without even thanking Joe!) that it had become the first state to break ground on a fast-charging station funded by the program.
People should start seeing NEVI-funded charging stations around the country in 2024 going forward. Oh, hey, want to see how your own state’s doing with its EV charging station progress? There’s a federal website for that! Thanks a lot, Biden!
If You Fund It, They Will Build
In other words, look for the pace of IRA grant spending to pick up in the coming year and beyond, and for example, for those rural electric co-ops to start greening up, at least in places where Trumpers aren’t fretting that solar panels will poison the groundwater. (They won’t.)
There’s some concern that IRA money needs to go out before the end of 2024, to get climate progress into the pipeline before any chance that Donald Trump might return to the White House and mandate that coal be served with all school lunches. The IRA would have to be repealed by Congress to fully reverse it, but any Republican administration could certainly use the levers of executive power to effectively gut much of it, (as that “Project 2025” wet dream for dismantling democracy from the Heritage Foundation lays out).
Of more immediate concern to many Democrats is that some of the IRA’s key rebate programs for home energy upgrades — particularly a program promoting energy efficiency/weatherization, and another focused on electrifying homes — aren’t yet available to consumers. The Energy Department hasn’t yet finalized the necessary rules, which leaves states waiting for the funding that will help them set up and administer the rebates.
As a result, some of the rebates won’t be available until next year, which has led to frustration for consumers who want to green up their homes and for companies who’d be happy to install insulation, better windows, efficient appliances, and smart circuit breaker panels. Potential customers are holding off on projects until the rebates are available, and that in turn means companies aren’t yet staffing up to meet the demand.
That will of course get worked out, the sooner the better, and there are other factors — especially current high interest rates — that are holding back some parts of the energy transition. (My personal pet theory is that the Energy Department regulators might be doing their damnedest to bulletproof the rules from legal challenges, and that takes time and deliberation. This is pure speculation on my part, but informed by the rightwing reaction to many other federal programs like Obamacare, EPA regulations, and Biden’s student loan forgiveness proposal.)
Happily, Heatmap notes, while consumers and contractors await the availability of those grant programs, another IRA program is already up and running that’ll augment the green transition: a “$200 million program meant to train home contractors to install heat pumps and other home efficiency measures” will begin awarding grants on November 1.
Oh no, jobs, clean energy, and economic growth! Sounds like hell, huh?
Bottom line: I think Collier ghosted my comment because she didn’t want her audience to read a valid criticism of her calculation. I wonder how many others got the same treatment (there must have been others who recognized her error).
I am of two minds about that. On one hand, Youtube provides a halfway decent way to tamp down on harrassment, and it seems like space elevator lady knows how to use it. On the other, I am immediately suspicious of x-tubers who use controversial hot takes to get clicks, but who can’t handle criticism of their opinions in turn.
On a mutated third hand, Youtube videos and Youtube comments are terrible places to have any sort of structured exchange of ideas for the purpose of persuading others of your views. Personally, I’d much rather read a book about space elevators, orbital rings, supramundane worlds, and lofstrom loops instead of clicking on a series of videos where x-tubers are slinging mud at each other over a rather esoteric question.
Rob Grigjanissays
beholder @465: Agreed on your third hand, but anyone (especially supposed professional scientists) who fucks up and then tries to conceal their fuck-up should be called out. The fucking up part isn’t a huge deal; we’ve all done it. The concealing is unforgivable.
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid passed from Egypt into Gaza on Saturday for the first time since Israel’s attacks on Gaza began. With Gazans’ access to water, food and power cut off by Israel, the aid that entered Saturday — food and medical supplies but no fuel — was not enough to relieve the steadily worsening humanitarian crisis, groups on the ground said. At a global summit in Cairo, Arab countries condemned the killing of civilians in Gaza and called for a peace process, while the United Nations reiterated appeals for a cease-fire.
Israel’s military said Saturday that the aid coming through the Rafah crossing was for those living in south Gaza only, and that Israel will allow more to flow if it’s not diverted to Hamas. Palestinians told The Washington Post it would be extremely dangerous to distribute the aid without a halting of Israeli airstrikes, which have continued across the Strip. […]
As Israel’s war in Gaza spreads anger and anxiety across the Middle East, one of America’s most famous brands has found itself in the thick of it: McDonald’s.
It all started earlier this month when a McDonald’s franchise in Israel run by Alonyal Limited said it would provide free meals to Israeli soldiers as well as hospitals.
Franchises elsewhere in the Middle East were quick to distance themselves, saying they had nothing to do with the decision to serve soldiers, and some began making donations to Gaza in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Then in the wake of a horrific strike on a Gaza hospital that killed hundreds, several branches of the chain were vandalized in Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt.
With more than 40,000 stores worldwide at the end of 2021, McDonald’s is one of the globe’s most recognized brands and is closely associated with America — even though the vast majority of the restaurants are locally owned under the franchise system.
Over the years, the stores with their highly recognizable golden arches have been repeatedly targeted as symbols of the United States, especially in the Middle East.
Unlike U.S. Embassies with their concrete walls and police protection, McDonald’s and other fast-food franchises have been easy marks for politically motivated vandalism.
The emergence of McDonald’s as a flash point harks back to an era of Arab boycotts of American brands in the early 2000s, during the second Palestinian intifada and after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. During the Arab Spring protests in Cairo in 2011, the fast-food restaurants around Tahrir Square were attacked, gutted and turned into first aid stations for protesters.
The current storm over the hamburger chain has intensified as the death toll has soared in Gaza following nearly two weeks of Israeli bombardment, sparked by a deadly Hamas incursion into Israel.
A week into the crisis, franchises in Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon and across the Persian Gulf released statements distancing themselves from the actions of their Israeli counterparts.
“What the licensee in Israel did was an individual and private act, and not with the approval or direction of the international company or any other licensee, especially in our Arab world,” read a statement released by Al Maousherji Catering Company, which operates McDonald’s Kuwait. […]
But the gestures have not stopped calls for a boycott of the fast-food company, as well as attacks on some locations. In Egypt, boycott calls quickly circulated online as many people took to social media to express their anger.
[…] The vitriol spurred a popular Egyptian talk show host, Amr Adib, to tell his viewers on Oct. 14 to not boycott the local franchise because it is owned by the Egyptian billionaire Yaseen Mansour and provides jobs to countless Egyptians, he said.
“What is the point of closing McDonald’s … what is the point of hurting this man and hurting people’s livelihoods?” he said. Egypt’s franchisee, Manfoods, said in a statement that it provides “more than 40,000 job opportunities directly and indirectly for Egyptian citizens.”
[…] American multinational corporations such as McDonald’s adopted strategies such as making donations and emphasizing the impact on the local economy to quell boycott calls […]
Mike Lindell, the election fraud conspiracy theorist and ardent Trump supporter, is selling Wi-Fi monitoring devices after claiming that the signals at polling stations are creating voter tampering. Election officials in Northern Kentucky have said that Lindell’s devices are illegal, likely a felony, and voted that poll workers will be instructed to not allow the devices. Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, is banned from X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, for spouting election fraud conspiracies. He reportedly collected donations from the Election Crime Bureau Summit back in August for the devices, which he said would be sold for less than $500. Kenton County Clerk Gabrielle Summe said that Lindell’s devices are particularly dangerous because they are small enough to sneak into the polls and could illegally identify voters. “These are the kinds of things that keep me up at night,” Summe said…
A judge has rejected three more attempts by former President
and the Colorado GOP to shut down a lawsuit seeking to block him from the 2024 presidential ballot in the state based on the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.”
The flurry of rulings late Friday from Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace are a blow to Trump, who faces candidacy challenges in multiple states stemming from his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. He still has a pending motion to throw out the Colorado lawsuit, but the case now appears on track for an unprecedented trial this month…
Sydney Powell will spend no less than 15 years in prison for the murder of her mom Brenda Powell…
Yes, two different women named Sydney Powell are in legal trouble right now.
Silentbobsays
@ 466
Lol.
Now look here Dr Collier: While your work for our university has been exemplary, a very serious matter has come to my attention. Very serious indeed. I hear that among the 3,000 comments on a droll, light-hearted and very funny YouTube video you made about “space elevators”, there was one from some random dude on the internet saying you were mistaken; and while quickly scanning your thousands of comments to moderate out trolls, you included that one instead of mounting a robust defence! This type of behaviour – needless to say – is completely unforgivable! Clear out your desk “Doctor” Collier – you’re expelled from the academy and your career in theoretical physics is finished!
Honestly, some people’s egos are so easily bruised.
John Moralessays
Honestly, some people’s egos are so easily bruised.
Some people make a habit of addressing the person rather than the claims at hand.
(Would work better were their perception at all congruent to reality)
Silentbobsays
@ ^
This comment is addressing the person and not the claim at hand, but the author remains oblivious.
John Moralessays
Honestly, some people’s egos are so easily bruised, lol.
(What a thing to write)
—
the author remains oblivious
<snicker>
Silent is not bob.
birgerjohanssonsays
The Israeli settlers on the West Bank are using the war as a perfect diversion for land grabs, driving arab bedouins and farmers away from their villages, killing arabs while the Israeli army does nothing.
(Swedish-language article, so no point in linking)
I forgot the subtitle
-A call for a caring society.
Silentbobsays
@ 477 birgerjohansson
Wow. That’s unheard of.
I mean – except for every day for 75 years. :-(
Rob Grigjanissays
Silentbob @473: Egos don’t come into it. My reaction would be the same if I’d seen a post by someone else correcting Collier’s high-school-level error, and then seen that comment disappeared.
Collier couldn’t handle having a glaring mistake pointed out. Not a good quality in a scientist.
BTW, weren’t you the bloke who encouraged people to skip the “boring math” part? Apparently you didn’t think that part was “droll, light-hearted and very funny”.
wzrd1says
Rob Grigjanis @ 481, I’ve made my share of glaring, school child grade math boners over the years, I’ve even gotten corrected in a comment on YT over my comment with such an error.
I profusely thanked the corrector, as fixing and acknowledging a mistake is the proper way to move forward.
And well, I’m infamous for such errors, where simple math is my nemesis, but theory and non-number crunching math I’m reasonably decent at.
I’ve also gotten confounding results, due to an experimental error yielding results wildly well, just wrong. By an order of magnitude. Confounded engineers that looked at it until I finally replicated it and found the cause being harmonic amplification creating the odd result.
Learning from that guarded against repeating the error and once, was useful in achieving a desired specific goal.
In that case, one set of terminals had a weird stray capacitance not present anywhere else on a breadboard. Replicated on a soldered circuit later and used for output voltages needed when the proper components were not at hand. If it’s ugly, but it works, it’s beautiful. ;)
StevoRsays
Indigenous leaders who supported the Yes case at last week’s Voice referendum have written to the prime minister saying the No vote was a “shameful victory”.
“That people who came to our country in only the last 235 years would reject the recognition of this continent’s First Peoples — on our sacred land which we have cared for and nurtured for more than 65,000 years — is so appalling and mean-spirited as to be utterly unbelievable a week following,” the letter reads.
…(Snip)..
..The Indigenous leaders who endorsed the letter attributed the historic referendum loss to a lack of bipartisanship, as well as “lies in political advertisement and communication” and racism.
“The support for the referendum collapsed from the moment Liberal and National Party leaders, Mr Dutton and Mr Littleproud, chose to oppose the Voice to Parliament proposal after more than a decade of bipartisan support,” the letter reads.
“The proposal was tracking 60 per cent support compared to 40 per cent opposition for several years until the National and Liberal parties preferred wanton political damage over support for some of this country’s most disadvantaged people. There was little the Yes campaign could do to countervail this.
“The truth is that the majority of Australians have committed a shameful act whether knowingly or not, and there is nothing positive to be interpreted from it,” the letter reads.
The Israeli bombings are levelling up, no surpeises there.
Also, 17 trucks with supplies from the Egyptian side are not enough to help a population of 2,2 million.
An investigation by WBEZ, Chicago Sun-Times and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found allegations of excessive force, improper searches and racist comments on the job…
On Oct. 11, Russian military blogger Rybar reported that Ukraine had attacked and damaged the large Russian patrol ship Pavel Derzhavin. The attack reportedly damaged the ship’s rudder, preventing it from steering. A tug boat was sent out to rescue the Pavel Derzhavin, but soon after the two ships met, the tug was also attacked. The source of the attack was reportedly Ukrainian drone boats. The Ukrainian navy has confirmed the damage to the Pavel Derzhavin. Some reports have insisted that the ship has “exploded.”
This wasn’t the first such attack by Ukraine. At least one other Russian ship of the same Project 22160 Class, the Sergey Kotov, was reportedly damaged by Ukrainian aquatic drones on Sept. 14, possibly along with a third boat in this class. In October 2022, a reported nine-drone “fleet” attacked Russian ships at anchor near Sevastopol.
Just as with aerial drones, Ukraine has been rapidly developing, innovating, and building new generations of aquatic drones since the Russian invasion began. According to some reports, the Pavel Derzhavin was hit by one of Ukraine’s “Sea Baby” drones, such as the one used in an attack on the Kerch Bridge in September. But there was one feature of the attack that made it stand out. According to Russian sources, “the epicenter of the explosion was underwater.”
So, it seems, was the ship’s attacker.
What happened to the Pavel Derzhavin has an interesting precursor in U.S. history.
On the evening of Feb. 17, 1864, the 1,260-tonne sloop-of-war USS Housatonic was holding station in Charleston Harbor as part of a Union fleet blockading the Confederate Coast. Just after 9 PM, a Black recruit named Robert Flemming, who was stationed high up in the rigging, noticed something odd in the water about 100 meters from the ship and called out a warning. However, his concern was dismissed by a white officer who declared that Fleming had spotted only a log. Two minutes later, an explosion struck the ship on the starboard side. It sank quickly, settling down in 25 feet of water. Because of the shallow bay, only five men were lost in the explosion and subsequent sinking, but the Housatonic had just earned itself a spot in the history books as the first ship to be sunk by a submarine.
The submarine in question was the Confederate boat H. L. Hunley, and while it had just achieved something never before accomplished, within minutes of taking out the Housatonic, the Hunley also sank, killing all eight men on board. More people died on the first “successful” naval attack submarine than on the ship it attacked.
The Hunley, which was found in 1995, salvaged, and now sits in a small museum near the docks from which it launched, is now semi-famous—both for its single exploit and for the ridiculous level of danger it represented for the men on board. The crew that died on Feb. 17, 1864, was actually the second crew to be killed by the treacherous little boat. On Aug. 29, 1863, a bad control caused Hunley to dive with one hatch open. Five men died. On Oct. 15, 1863, the Hunley was practicing its attack maneuver in the harbor and simply failed to surface. Eight more men died in this second accident, including the sub’s designer and namesake. The Hunley made the OceanGate Titan seem like an exemplar of safety, but the Confederate navy just kept dragging the thing back to the surface and feeding it men.
What’s less well-known is that the Hunley wasn’t alone. In ports all over the South, men were struggling to build effective submarines. From the Texas coast to Mobile Bay to the rivers of Virginia (and sometimes at sites well away from the sea), Confederate sympathizers viewed the submarine as a miracle weapon: the one thing that could break the Union blockade. Ambitious designers even wrote about taking the war north to the harbors of Boston and New York, where their new devices would sink ships and make foreign merchants think twice about trading with the Union.
There were some in the Union who feared that all this might be possible. They had a name for these would-be submarine marauders and for the underwater mines that Conderates planted around their harbors. They called them “infernal machines.”
What happened to the Pavel Derzhavin near Sevastopol is far from a second coming of the Housatonic, and Ukraine is in no way like the Confederacy. Not only was the South dedicated to the idea of maintaining slavery and inequality, it also just … sucked. Especially as a place from which a new technology might develop. In fact, the South was technologically regressive expressly because it had built an economy around nearly free manual labor provided through chattel slavery. Had it been the Union who needed to develop submarines, you can bet your ass there would have been submarines.
Ukraine isn’t just a democratic nation fighting for its continued independence and individual liberty; it is also a hotbed of innovation with a long history of higher education and celebrated achievements. What it has done with both aerial and surface drones is astounding. In many ways, Ukraine has rewritten the rules for how an army should operate against a larger but more hidebound enemy. In particular, it has shown how inexpensive aerial drones can reshape the battlefield.
Now they’re taking a step that could impact how navies operate well beyond this war.
At the outset of the unprovoked invasion, there was a widespread fear that Russia’s Black Sea Fleet would so dominate the coasts of Ukraine that they might have free reign over all territory within kilometers. Cities like Odesa might be in serious danger—not because Russia had any skill at conducting a naval landing, but because those ships might make it impossible for the Ukrainian military to operate anywhere near the coast. Russia had a fleet. Ukraine really didn’t. And if navies are worth anything, surely that gave a big edge to Vladimir Putin.
That turned out to be just about 180 degrees from the truth. Ukraine took down the flagship of the Russian fleet barely a month after the invasion began. Since then, Russian ships have been sunk off the piers of Berdyansk, blasted in their main harbor at Sevastopol, and even blown up while in drydock for repairs. Both anti-ship missiles modified for launch from the shore and missiles designed for land targets repurposed to go after ships have been used successfully, as have a growing host of aerial drones that have proven capable of harassing Russian ships almost anywhere they dock.
Six hundred four days after the war’s onset, the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been battered by attacks and is currently down by a reported 20 surface vessels and one very expensive submarine. How many ships and boats are currently damaged isn’t clear, but it’s absolutely obvious that Russia’s remaining fleet is extremely restricted in the operations they can support. They’ve mainly been relegated to acting as floating platforms to launch Kalibr missiles into Ukrainian cities and a means of harassing grain carriers well away from the Ukrainian coast.
Earlier this month, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet was reportedly moved from Crimea to the Russian port of Novorossiysk, along with several other ships and three submarines, to keep them away from the constant barrage of Ukrainian attacks. A new amphibious carrier ship of the Ivan Rogov class was expected to take on the role of flagship last year, It’s still mysteriously absent.
All of this shows how effective Ukraine has been at not just nullifying what was supposed to be a huge Russian advantage, but also turning it into a resource sink for Russia.
– Ukraine has a limited number of high-precision, long-range weapons.
– Russia happens to have these things sitting around that cost an estimated $250 million or $350 million each and are guaranteed to hold a couple of hundred personnel, including officers.
There may not always be a concentration of Russian vehicles, or gathering or Russian officers, that seems like a worthy use of Ukraine’s limited high-precision resources, but there is almost always a ship in a vulnerable position.
As Ukraine has rapidly advanced their skills with aquatic drones, they’ve moved from vehicles made with bolting components, to existing small craft, to custom-made forms that are sleeker, faster, have a longer range, and are harder to detect. The “Sea Baby” drone that Ukraine showcased over the summer has been used against both ships and infrastructure targets. Ukraine is cranking out these drones in numbers while continuing to improve their capabilities. [video at the link]
According to Ukraine, the Sea Baby can carry up to 850 kilograms of explosives. Ukraine has another, more compact aquatic drone that carries a smaller explosive load but is incredibly fast and maneuverable. Both of these drones have been involved in attacks on Russian ships.
But it’s another drone that may be the new “infernal machine.” And it’s called the Marichka.
According to Naval News, the Marichka is an uncrewed underwater vehicle which is 6 meters long and has an astounding range of 1,000 kilometers. Also known as a UUV, it was created by the volunteer engineering team at AMMO UKRAINE. With an estimated cost of $433,000, the Marichka is much more expensive than the FPV drones buzzing around Ukraine’s skies and about twice the cost of a Sea Baby.
[…] can be fired 1,000 kilometers from its target, linger in place for days, pass around obstacles, enter into harbors, and strike in conditions where ships feel safe. [two videos at the link]
UUVs aren’t exactly new. Research vessels with simple guidance systems date back to the 1950s. However, Marichka may be the very first UUV to successfully attack a military ship. If this is actually what took down the Pavel Derzhavin, then it’s a moment far more important than when the Hunley sank the Housatonic. For one thing, Ukraine doesn’t suck. If the tug that showed up to tow the Pavel Derzhavin was sunk in the same way, then there were at least two Marichka deployed in this very first attack. [tweet and videos at the link]
It’s not going to be 50 years before this happens again. Considering the rate at which Ukraine has been depleting the Russian fleet, it’s not going to be 50 days. There will be more Marichka, and those newer versions will, like the Sea Baby, be more capable and more elusive than the initial versions. Put enough of these in the Black Sea, and Russia will be either shifting the remainder of its fleet elsewhere, or watching it go down.
That’s something that also has to be alarming to every other navy.
One final note: Robert Flemming, the young Black sailor who spotted the Hunley approaching on that long-ago night in Charleston Harbor, was not among those lost when the ship went down. He moved on to serve on another ship; return to Massachusetts after the war; invent a new kind of guitar that created a louder, truer tone than those being sold at the time; patent his invention; and open a business to manufacture his improved guitars. He continued selling his guitars, composing music, and serving as a music teacher long enough to read about the sinking of numerous ships by German U-boats before his death in 1919.
Among Flemming’s compositions was a piece called the “National Funeral Hymn.” Russia might want to borrow it … for those lost to the Marichka.
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[Defense Intelligence Update available at the link.]
——————————
Latest numbers from the UK Ministry of Defence may not match the estimates from UA General Staff, but both numbers are staggering. [List of combat losses available at the link] The difference between the two is genuinely small considering that the UK numbers omit the losses by Wagner Group, especially the prisoners lost in “meat wave” attacks at Bakhmut. Before his “accident,” Wagner CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin said the losses there had been over 20,000.
Some of the recently recorded equipment losses are hard to credit, but when it comes to the grim matter of human losses … the numbers may be spot on.
—————————
[video of $400 FPV drone blowing up a Russian TOS-1A "Solntsepyok," which costs $15 million.] Every time one of these things is removed from the battlefield, it’s worth celebrating.
Keeping the House of Representatives open should be easy. Like, keeping-an-Oregon-weed-dispensary-open kind of easy. But much like acknowledging that the person who wins our presidential election should get to be president, Republicans can’t seem to do it. So we get grotesqueries like Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan’s abortive speaker bid, which felt a bit like Sideshow Bob repeatedly stepping on a rake in the cockpit of the Hindenburg.
Of course, as eager as Republicans are to blame their series of increasingly embarrassing own goals on Democrats, that talking point is unlikely to gain much traction on this week’s Sunday shows, no matter how much they love to both-sides the issues. Except for maybe on “Fox News Sunday,” which would book a fart in a jar […]
[…] Liz Cheney joined Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” and made a bit of news in the process. Turns out she could still run for president, presumably as a Republican, even though she’s almost certainly less popular with the GOP than with Democrats and independents these days. Of course, if all she does is tell Vivek Ramaswamy to sit in the corner and drink his milk during the debates, it will all be worth it. In fact, that alone could be enough to vault her to second place—a mere 60 points behind the long-disgraced current face of the GOP.
But more important than any potential presidential run is her determination to keep reminding voters that the Republican frontrunner literally tried to end America less than three years ago. [video at the link]
CHENEY: “We’re going to see what happens, we’re going to see how things unfold. I think Donald Trump is the single most dangerous threat we face. I would imagine that there will be a number of other candidates in the race.”
TAPPER: “Would you be one of them?”
CHENEY: “I’ll tell you what I am definitely going to do. I’m going to spend the next year between now and the election certainly helping to elect serious people, helping to elect sane people.”
TAPPER: “Of both parties?”
CHENEY: “Yes. Because I think that we could well find ourselves in a situation, given what we know the Trump folks are doing in terms of attempting to question the results of the election, we don’t want a situation where the election is thrown to the House of Representatives and Donald Trump has any possibility at all of prevailing under those circumstances. So we’ve got to elect people who believe in the Constitution and take their responsibility seriously to Congress. So I’m going to be spending a lot of time doing that, in addition to other things.”
TAPPER: “But you’re not ruling out a presidential run.”
CHENEY: “No, I’m not.”
TAPPER: “Okay, and we’ll see when your book comes out.”
Some people will think the big takeaway from that clip is that Cheney is still not ruling out a presidential run, as quixotic as it might be. And as long as she doesn’t try to run as a third-, fourth-, or fifth-party candidate, she’s welcome to try. But to me the takeaway is that Cheney appears to think there are enough “sane” Republicans left to staff a Sunglass Hut, much less populate half the House. Guess that’s why she has to help out sane Democrats, too.
Oh, he went there. Because of course he did. Kevin McCarthy, who used to spend all day dreaming about being speaker but now only fantasizes about launching Matt Gaetz out to sea on a trebuchet, is still steamed about the eight Republicans and 210 Democrats who voted to Scaramucci his worthless ass.
McCarthy joined Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” to complain that House Democrats failed to rescue a speaker who’d spent the previous nine months repeatedly stabbing them in the back, front, and undercarriage. [video at the link]
WELKER: “As we have said, the House of Representatives has been without a speaker for nearly three weeks now. What do you say to Americans who look at this chaos and believe it’s a sign that Republicans cannot govern?”
MCCARTHY: “Well, it’s embarrassing, and you got to understand why we’re here. Eight Republicans led by Gaetz have created this chaos by joining every single Democrat in voting to shut down one branch of government. Look, I would do the exact same thing again. Could you imagine if we were having this discussion right now with the American government shut down, with our troops in the Middle East wondering when they’ll ever get paid again? Keeping the government open was the right decision to make and I’d make it again each and every day. Now the two men, Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, they could have done the job as speaker. Unfortunately, the chaos has continued.”
Yeah, you’re not going to pin this on Democrats, Kevin. It just won’t work. You’re just embarrassing yourself further—assuming that’s even possible.
Thanks for keeping the government open, Kevin. And for covering your mouth when you sneeze. And for showing up to all your interviews wearing pants. You’ve passed Humaning 101. Barely. Congrats.
So Kevin is embarrassed? Hey, so is GOP Rep. Michael McCaul. What a coincidence! Know who’s not embarrassed? Not one single congressional Democrat.
McCaul joined ABC “This Week’s” Jonathan Karl to dump ashes on his head and rend his garments. (Metaphorically, of course, though who knows what really goes on in the green room?) [video at the link]
KARL: “You need to have a speaker of the House before you get any of this done. What the hell’s going on?”
MCCAUL: “I have to say, and this is my 10th term in Congress, this is probably one of the most embarrassing things I’ve seen, because if we don’t have a speaker of the House, we can’t govern, and every day that goes by we’re essentially shut down as a government. We have very important issues right now, war and peace, and we cannot deal with an aid package, or my resolution condemning Hamas and supporting Israel.”
KARL: “You can’t even pass a resolution condemning Hamas. … So are you supporting, I mean, I’ve lost count now. I think we’re pushing a dozen candidates and potential candidates for speaker. Who are you supporting?”
MCCAUL: “Look, I haven’t decided, but I want a speaker in the chair so we can move forward and govern. My issues, my committee of war and peace [House Foreign Affairs Committee], it’s too dangerous right now. The world’s on fire, and this is so dangerous what we’re doing. And most importantly it’s embarrassing because it empowers and emboldens our adversaries like [Chinese] Chairman Xi [Jinping], who says, you know, democracy doesn’t work.”
KARL: “Is there any possibility of, I don’t want to say coalition government, but is there any possibility that you’re just going to need some kind of arrangement that has Democratic support as well?”
MCCAUL: “This is, you know, discussed. If you can’t get to 217 within our conference …”
KARL: “This is not really not a strange hypothetical.”
[CROSSTALK]
MCCAUL: “How do you get there? But I think for some, they see that as very dangerous as well.”
KARL: “But you wouldn’t rule it out if …?”
MCCAUL: “You know, I’d rather it be the Republicans nominating and voting on the floor for a Republican speaker, but this can’t go on forever. I don’t know if we’re going to have a speaker next week. I don’t know how this plays out.”
Hmm, so just two years after 147 congressional Republicans voted to overturn the results of a free and fair U.S. election, Republicans are suddenly worried that we’re sending the wrong message to our foreign adversaries about the virtues of democracy. Funny how that works. (To be fair, McCaul did not vote to overturn the 2020 election. He took a firm stand that was roughly as honorable and courageous as not deliberately running over squirrels on the way to a Klan meeting.)
It’s also interesting that all this chaos has erupted since Vladimir Putin successfully installed a puppet at the head of the U.S. government. And now the puppet’s puppets are puppeteering the country into a ditch. Weird how that works.
Let’s see, would you like a video about Hamas and Israel and all those concomitant horrors, or a short clip of Jake Tapper calling a congressional Republican a clown to his face? Okay, then. Let’s go with Tapper and the Clown. GOP Rep. Mike Turner rolled out of his tiny car and onto our teevees as a guest on “State of the Union.” [video at the link]
TURNER: “I really hope in the next several days that we come together as a Republican caucus that we’re able to resolve that, that we go unified to the House floor and deliver a speaker.”
TAPPER: “I hope you don’t take this personally, but do you have any idea how clownish you look?”
TURNER: “Well, you know, Jake, I’m very fond of saying that Congress is a lot like high school, but even more so. So hopefully we’ll get past this and, you know, I certainly have been part of the governing majority and I’m going to stay part of that, and I look forward to those who are on the fringes hopefully coming together so that we can get a speaker.”
TAPPER: “I said that to Congressman [Steve] Womack last week—high school—and he said that that’s an insult to high school students. It’s more like junior high. Congressman Turner, Chairman Turner, good to see you. I hope you guys pick a speaker sometime soon.”
TURNER: “Great. Thanks, Jake.”
High school. Junior high. Either way, Matt Gaetz will hang around long enough to make everyone super uncomfortable. Guess the only solution is for all these folks to finally grow up. Hakeem Jeffries has a plan for that. [Washington Post link to Hakeem Jeffries plan.]
[…]
Israeli forces released footage of the “Iron Sting” system launching a mortar bomb to take out a rocket launcher in its first-ever use in an operation on Sunday.
The Iron Sting, described as “an innovative and accurate mortar bomb,” is one of a variety of weapons being used to thwart dozens of terrorists, the Israeli Air Force posted on X, along with video it said showed the 120mm mortar decimating an enemy rocket launcher. The Israeli army used the weapons system in conjunction with the Israeli Air Force.
The weapons system uses a “precise, laser and GPS guided mortar munition” to engage targets in dense, urban environments while “reducing the possibility of collateral damage and preventing injury to non-combatants,” Elbit Systems, which developed the system, said in a 2021 news release…
birgerjohanssonsays
News Biscuit; news from Britain.
Headlines
Party responsoble for catastrophic failures ‘bafflingly’ loses by-elections.
PM Sunak to Netanyahu: “No one likes me eiter”
Turns out, pandas have been doing anal all along.
KGsays
An interesting (and to some degree, heartening) occurrence in Argentina. There were predictions that the self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei* could win in the first round of the Presidential election (for which he would need to come first with 45% of the vote or 40% with a 10% lead over the next candidate). In fact, he came second with just 30% of the vote, some 6.5% behind the “centre-left” Peronist Sergio Massa. Milei could still win the run-off, as deep disillusionment with the political class is thoroughly justified in Argentina, and the third-placed candidate comes from the conservative establishment right. But there was no justification in polling for the repetition of his own claims he would win in the first round; this seems like another example of the media falling over themselves to talk up the prospects of the far right.
*Milei’s actual policy proposals (e.g. banning abortion, slashing public spending and abolishing benefits, adopting the US dollar as Argentina’s currency), rhetoric (minimising the murders of the military junta of the 1970s-80s, calling climate change a “socialist lie”, brandishing a chain saw supposedly to emphasise his intended cuts in spending, using the Gadsden flag), and close links to Bolsonaro and Trump – reveal the fascism that seems always just under the surface of “anarcho-capitalism”.
In 2023, the state of our digital privacy is very creepy
In numbers, that translates to 75.6/100, with 100 being the most creepy. Our annual benchmark measures the current state of digital privacy — and what direction it’s trending…
Republican infighting showed no sign of abating over the weekend as Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) issued a blistering letter to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and seven others in the conference who voted to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
The sarcastic missive, shared online by several congressional reporters, was in response to a Friday letter from Gaetz and six of the seven others to their colleagues…
“We truly don’t deserve you,” he wrote…
Oh yes you do. The Republican Party refused to exclude or deny MAGA, so they absolutely deserve what they got. It’s just unfortunate the entire country has to suffer with them.
A prominent German leftist politician has launched plans to form a new party that some observers think could take votes away from the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Sahra Wagenknecht on Monday presented her “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — for Reason and Fairness.” The aim is to formally launch the party in January, in time for European Parliament elections in June. Three state elections in Germany’s formerly communist east will follow next fall.
Wagenknecht offers a combination of left-wing economic policy, with high wages and generous benefits, and a restrictive approach to migration. She also questions some environmentalists’ plans to combat climate change and opposes current sanctions against Russia, which was once Germany’s leading gas supplier, and German arms supplies to Ukraine…
Scientists say they may have made the biggest breakthrough in treating cervical cancer in 20 years, using a course of existing, cheap drugs ahead of usual radiotherapy treatment.
Trial findings, revealed at the ESMO medical conference, show the approach cut the risk of women dying from the disease or the cancer returning by 35%. …
“This isn’t a war,” said the artilleryman. “It never was a war, any more than there’s war between man and ants.” – H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
Former U.S. congressman Will Hurd drops out of Republican presidential race
… and no one noticed.
GOP tells Republicans not to support RFK Jr. because he’s denied the validity of presidential elections
Election denial is a cause to drop him? Ahem…
Thousands of WordPress sites have been hacked through tagDiv plugin vulnerability
@3–
@3– SOP for the GOP. Election denial is not the problem, it’s directing it at Republicans.
Han shot first !
@7 – and Deckard was a replicant.
Wars will get harder to do after we’ve wiped ourselves out.
@ 9
Necromancers: “Not with THAT attitude!”
In case / hope its of some intrest here :
This weeks Endangered Species of the Week is the critically endangered Morris Squill (Scilla morrisii) also called the Pallid Squill getting its name from Hubert Meredydd Morris.*** Found in just three places in Cyprus – at least according to some sources with others saying it is slightly more widespread and actually found in a 12 spots tho’ still endemic to Cyprus and merge it with a related species. This is a member of the asparagus family, Asparagaceae – although unlike our edible asparagus this one is somewhat toxic.* It is a perennial herb growing to 35 cm tall with straight leaves and star-shaped slightly variable flowers coming in a trio of colours – blue, white and purple.** It prefers to grow between 250–900 metres in altitude amidst old oak tree stands – specifically of Aleppo Oak (Quercus infectoria) – which is where its trouble starts since these are fast disappearing due to logging, destruction for agriculture and road construction. There are also issues to its survival caused by fire frequency changes and predation as well as inbreeding from this rare little plant having only small and isolated populations. In 2006 there were thought to be only 600 individuals of this rare Cypriot flower left although another source argues there are more but, again, merges it with a very close cousin, Scilla cilicica. In either case it is an endangered pecious petal indeed and one that would be sad to lose. Fortunately, it is protected and its seeds are being stored and conservationists are recommending its cultivation as an ornamental plant.
Presumably the bulb in particular although this isn’t clear from my reading here and it could include other parts of the species even the whole plant – whatever the case, I would strongly urge folks NOT to try and eat it! 😉
** At least as we see them. It would be interesting to learn if it looks different in infra-red or ultra-violet light as many flowers do.
*** Who my google fu has failed to turn up more knowledge of sadly.
See : https://top50.iucn-mpsg.org/species/49
Plus : https://savvastryfonosplants.com/scilla-morrisii/
In addition to : https://cyprustravels.org/asparagales/scilla-morrisii/
Ah, autumn. Leaves are turning yellow, birds are migrating and underwater gas pipes are mysteriously exploding in the Baltic Sea.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20054549
A couple days, ago, a leak was noticed in a gas pipe connecting Estonia and Finland. Now it’s thought to be sabotage, just like the NordStream incidents last year. Coverage in English is coming up on the Guardian’s Ukraine/Russia live blog. The Finnish article I linked has a map showing the current locations of two Finnish Coast Guard vessels that are presumably inspecting the leak – the exact location of the leak isn’t out to public yet. It’s apparently in international waters between Finland and Estonia, just within Finnish exclusive economic zone.
Many thanks to PZ for granting The Infinite Thread a new lease on life.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to the previous thread:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2023/07/11/infinite-thread-xxviii/comment-page-8/#comment-2197241
In a four day period in September, the cable news stations mentioned Biden’s age 193 times while Trump’s age was mentioned just 56 times. (MediaMatters.org on September 29, 2023.) After this one sided coverage, these same media outlets then polled the voters about Biden’s age and found (surprise!) that voters are more concerned about Biden’s age than Trump’s age. It’s garbage in and garbage out.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2023/07/11/infinite-thread-xxviii/comment-page-8/#comment-2197235
As Republicans scramble to blame the White House for Hamas’ attack on Israel, there are all kinds of errors of fact and judgment to keep in mind.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2023/07/11/infinite-thread-xxviii/comment-page-8/#comment-2197150
Ukraine Update: Hamas learned the wrong lessons from Russia
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2023/07/11/infinite-thread-xxviii/comment-page-8/#comment-2197139
More than 2,000 people killed as earthquake strikes western Afghanistan
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2023/07/11/infinite-thread-xxviii/comment-page-8/#comment-2197060
Why did Hamas invade Israel?
The New York Times reported that Trump’s latest pitch to an audience in New Hampshire including recycling his “travel ban” ideas:
Commentary:
Link
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/that-wsj-article
Followup to lumipuna @12
I’m still looking for more information, but in the meantime here’s: Russia has attacked the gas line and optical sea cable between Finland and Estonia. (Headline exhibits too much confidence.]
Lots of questions unresolved.
Followup to comments 12 and 16.
Posted by readers of the article:
War Update: Israel, Ukraine, Russia, and Republicans, by Mark Sumner
Cartoon: Doom spiral
Link
See also: https://www.vox.com/23910085/netanyahu-israel-right-hamas-gaza-war-history
Red States Kicking Millions Off Medicaid, Including Kids, Because They Can
https://www.wonkette.com/p/red-states-kicking-millions-off-medicaid
No other major country treats its children this badly. We’re Number One.
Ruben Gallego Courteously Engages At Airport With Frothing Unhinged Imaginary Gov Kari Lake
https://www.wonkette.com/p/ruben-gallego-courteously-engages
We didn’t realize Ruben Gallego is a goddamned saint.
Washington Post link
More at the link. I posted an excerpt to indicate that Smith’s seems ready to also establish “what Trump intended.” That should be interesting.
Here it is, the final sign of the end of civilization:
Pumpkin Spice Red Vines Are a Seasonal Frankenstein
Steve Garvey announces bid for California U.S. Senate seat
That’s all I need to know. If he is willing to associate himself with today’s Republican Party, he must be a horrible person, and would make a horrible senator.
Florida Becomes Latest State to Fight Abortion Ballot Measure with ‘Viability’ Question
Satire written by Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Link
The last nice Republican presidential candidate was Bob Dole, the late politician who ran against Bill Clinton 96. Today’s Republicans would loathe him as a rino.
I do not count McCain, he elevated Sarah Palin to stardom.
A few excerpts from coverage of President Biden’s remarks on war in Israel and Gaza:
Link
Mano Singham found a great article at Politico with several scolars offering their opinion on The Republican Party.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/06/republican-leaders-mccarthy-expert-roundup-00120170
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/republicans-hate-robert-f-kennedy
More at the link.
Washington Post link
Pumpkin weighing 2,749lb squashes world record
Just a heads-up on “what’s on deck” at God Awful Movies next week.
Exsorcist; Believer, a 2023 film that only got 5 out of 10 at IMDB.
Their Patreon version just provided The Unwanted Guest, a crap film that is literally a long ad for a specific ghost hunting outfit (I am not giving away the name of the company), preying on the gullible.
You know, I am still trying to figure out how shutting off water, food, electricity and destroying the telephone network stops missiles from being launched.
But then, I’m still trying to figure out how thousands of missiles attached to hundreds of large trucks slipped through the most heavily surveilled landscape on the surface of the planet, with a missile reloading system that takes up 12 meters of space – plus working room and the trucks can only fire four missiles.
Not to mention how many missiles slipped through the impenetrable Iron Dome ABM system.
But then, I’m still also mystified as to why so many US conservative politicians are so fixated upon nations that aren’t our own – to the point of exclusive attention and loyalty to said foreign nations.
With some wanting our military to become involved, albeit, without its leadership that they refuse to appoint, because of hand wave.
But, I do disagree with President Biden, there most certainly is room for hate in the US. After a two mile each way walk to the stupidmarket today, I really hate gravity, as well as that singular prick that turned it up during the walk back, as well as the miserable bastard that keeps stretching the road farther and farther each trip.
Should’ve picked up some chili con carne with nukes.*
Repeal gravity! It’s an unfair and oppressive lawAWawAWaw… {gasp}
Dumb bastards did it…**
*Trust me, inside of my gullet, they’re like a vulcan cannon upsized to howitzer caliber, firing nuclear projectiles that instantly induces shock and all to all on the same continental land mass.
**No, I’m not going to replace either your keyboard or monitor, it’s not my responsibility for what you spew upon either.
Re: wzrd1 @ #38…
I’m not up on all the really recent methods, but there used to be a lot tunnels under the Gaza/Egypt border used to smuggle all manner of goods into Gaza, including the materials used to build missiles (used to be most of the Hamas missiles were “home brew” and of extremely low accuracy…e.g. a CEP of about a medium sized city). They also used to dig tunnels under the Gaza/Israeli border to use for making attacks inside Israel.
I suppose it’s possible that they’re now running tunnels big enough to handle trucks and re-loadable missile launchers. Again–used to be–that the Hamas missiles were mostly one missile, one–very minimal–launcher. During active hostilities, the Israelis would run attacks on launch sites, but usually only after a missile had been launched and at that point, there was nothing of value there to destroy.
Much of the Hamas missile production was done in underground “factories”, often built under residential areas. This goes a long way to explain much of the Israeli targetting. It’s also why the very tight restrictions on Gazans importing construction materials–especially cement and the like. The quite real fear was Hamas either using fronts supposedly doing legit construction, simple diversion, or just outright theft for Hamas military uses.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67073935
@ 36, much to my delight, at the dentist, after I had a molar extracted that had shattered into a razor sharp hook that literally cored a quarter inch wide and deep hole into my tongue, I found at the supermarket next door two delights. Both, I’ve spent two years looking all about for locally.
A fine pie pumpkin (figure around 6 – 8 inches diameter) and some frozen fresh pork hocks.
The latter, a critical ingredient for my best pasta sauce, the former, well, you can use that frequently adulterated canned shit, I prefer a fresh pie pumpkin – which is enough to make between two and three pies.
Irritatingly, today I realized, I had absolutely no shortening to make a pie crust. Had to run out today for shortening. While at that store, I found to my shock, two more fresh pork hocks. The shortening is happily on the shelf now, the hocks, comfortably resting inside of my freezer, awaiting my usage of my last couple of quarts of pasta sauce.
I do a kosher/halal version as well, largely of lamb and goat meat, substituting olive oil for the necessary fats to help meld flavors. Lamb is annoying to find within walking distance, goat, not so much, given Caribbean diets in our local markets and I first tried goat in Somaliland region of Africa. Sort of an unwilling guest, we had built a school as volunteers during our off duty hours and dropped off food supplies, a local family insisted upon slaughtering their only remaining goat for a meal on our behalf and well, refusing would be an insult in most cultures.
Erm, there was a conspiracy after that, a few cases of food supplies fell off of the back of the truck as it passed their home, which was oddly not quite on the truck’s normal route.
We all agreed, sharing what little you have and going hungry afterward isn’t cool, less cool is letting one’s family go hungry to thank someone just doing what’s fucking right.
Can’t stand American beef after having real beef abroad, it’s like cardboard to me. Australian beef, like American beef in fat content, more flavorful, Pakistani, Egyptian and regional beef, even more flavorful and lower in fat.
Lamb and goat, cool, foul, wonderful but harder to make a good sauce from, but got recipes from around the planet for all.
For the record, there is absolutely no fucking problem feeding every single person on this planet and never has been in the modern era. The problem is a scarcity economics driven distribution system and lack of a desire to create a proper distribution system that doesn’t waste, rather than distribute food.
Which would eliminate the scarcity driven supporters system anyway, as one won’t be able to supply warlords with food if they’re overwhelmed with it flooding in.
And a lot of ships returning from the US are empty or far from capacity anyway, containers rusting empty and only supplying preppers here.
Me, @ 37
GAM 425 The Unwanted Guest is now freely available for masochists.
https://youtu.be/mhTR-2c0uZc
War Update: Not all civilian deaths in war and conflict carry equal moral weight
They did the right thing, but only after trying very hard to do the wrong thing.
https://twitter.com/Lyla_lilas/status/1711711341839286512
NBC News:
NBC News:
The Verge:
@ 45, the most useless thing ever, but, in the region.|
Can’t launch an offensive, can only launch defensive, but “expresses our interest”.
Re: USS Ford off the coast of Israel…better hope nobody is paying attention to what Ukraine has been doing with low profile, sea surface drones. Or as the old submarine joke goes…there are two kinds of ships: Submarines and targets.
“Corporate Profits Soar At the End of the World”
Disney’s animatronic “Dinosaurs” predicted the future.
https://youtu.be/WhQG54QvTTc
@49: naval drones
Anyone can play that game
The US Navy turned the tables on Iran, sending drones that look like speedboats to spy on its warships and troublesome gunboats
Colourful beauty of Parthenon marbles revealed in scientific analysis
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/oct/11/colourful-beauty-parthenon-marbles-revealed-scientific-analysis
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Ukraine liveblog. From there:
Two brothers, 23 and 30, who’ve fled to Russia.
Update:
Here’s a link to today’s Guardian Israel-Gaza liveblog. From there:
Two Guardian opinion pieces:
Naomi Klein – “Why are some of the left celebrating the killings of Israeli Jews?”:
Simon Tisdall – “In the midst of war, Benjamin Netanyahu is a liability who can only make things worse. He must go”:
Guardian liveblog – update to #54:
Guardian liveblog:
A few more Guardian links:
“2023 wildlife photographer of the year winners – in pictures”:
“Don’t cheer the scale: Doctors and dieticians untangling body size from health”:
Moustafa Bayoumi – “The double standard with Israel and Palestine leaves us in moral darkness”:
Reminder that RFK Jr is a neo-Nazi – or has a neo-Nazi in charge of his tweeter.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/robert-f-kennedy-jr-tweet_n_64c3fab7e4b021e2f29310ba
But not me. Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
I think we just had this discussion on Mano’s blog. In short:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/oct/12/dont-cheer-the-scale-doctors-and-dieticians-untangling-body-size-from-health
That is complete bullshit. Being (significantly) overweight is as big of a risk factor for premature death as smoking. It is perhaps the single most important indicator of general health. The only reason why I’m not for a culture of fat shaming is that I believe that fat shaming doesn’t work to help people lose weight who are fat. I am particularly annoyed by a very small cadre of doctors and influencers who are spreading this ridiculous lie that there is not an extremely strong causal link between overweight and severe health risks.
NBC News:
Additional details:
Link
Re: #59
I visited my cousin in a retirement home, and he said, “You know the one thing you don’t see here? Fat people.” That was enough to convince me.
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/unity-government-et-al
It is not just Tommy Tuberville that is holding up confirmations of officials nominated by President Joe Biden . Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are doing something similar. So, naturally, Fox News is blaming Biden for all the empty slots. This is so ridiculous and frustrating.
Fox News blames Biden for diplomatic crisis caused by Ted Cruz and Rand Paul
I agree with that last sentence.
@43 Lynna
Yeah, no shit. They’re both war crimes.
Your attempts to excuse the more powerful actor for their genocidal ambitions are just that, terrible excuses. Everything Israel hits magically turns into a military target, who would have guessed? I’m surprised by their impeccable accuracy.
Or at least I would be if the U.S. and Israel didn’t have a history of making shit up about their civilian targets.
Channel calling for aborting Black pregnancies temporarily restricted by YouTube
beholder @64, yes, I agree that it is not right to say that one kind of killing civilians is correct while another kind of killing civilians is not correct. That argument bothered me too. (I don’t think it is that simple. Nor do I think that the author of the article presented it as that simple. That’s not, however, my main point in replying to you now. See below.)
To go on to say “Your attempts to excuse the more powerful actor for this genocidal ambitions …” is misleading and not fair. It was not me that made the argument to which you are referring. Please stick to disagreeing with the author of the article, and do not equate me with that author.
Furthermore, even the author of the article did not excuse genocidal ambitions. By overly simplifying the presentation, you weaken your own objections.
Points made in that article are worth discussion, worth taking note. And, yes, I am glad to see someone disagreeing with the concept of trying to parse the rights and wrongs of killing civilians as if there were any “right.”
If you read all of my posts about the war in Israel/Gaza, both in this thread and in the previous chapter of this thread, you will see that I have made an effort to present coverage that is nuanced and that includes context.
Followup to comment 63.
Posted by readers of the article:
@66 Lynna
I think I can be forgiven for assuming your tendency for one-way reposts has the strong implication of endorsement, without a clear editorial line at the top or bottom that says anything to the effect of, “Wow, this is some strong bullshit.”. I appreciate the clarification.
I disagree about the author’s intent, however. It was a clear attempt to muddy the waters and give Israel’s indefensible actions a defense.
New York Republicans to move to oust George Santos from US House
Re: beholder @ #66…
Would you care to comment on Hamas apparent policy of putting military assets in (or under) civilian structures?
Re: me @ #70…
That should have been Re #68.
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/big-intrigue-big-consequences
@70 whheydt
Where else would they put it? Israel keeps them caged up in a prison.
It’s frankly disgusting that you have more excuses at the ready to justify asymmetrical retribution and siege warfare.
Scalise secures GOP Speaker nomination
GOTS @ #59, I don’t have time for your nonsense today. Here are a few links:
Maintenance Phase – “Is Being Fat Bad For You?”:
On the Media – “The F-Word”:
Katherine Flegal in Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases – “The obesity wars and the education of a researcher: A personal account”:
GOTS:
Well, that’s pretty shitty! (Also, given that you recognize this harmful and cruel practice is ineffective at its purported goals and given that it’s moreover extremely harmful rather than helpful to people’s health, you should actively oppose it.)
tomh @ #61:
Good grief.
This Is Fucked, Y’all
https://www.wonkette.com/p/this-is-fucked-yall
This is staying pinned up top until I’m not mad anymore. Good luck to us all.
@61 tomh
Doesn’t sound like an accurate description of any of the nursing homes I’ve seen. You sure it was a retirement home and not a concentration camp?
I fail to see a meaningful difference between shaming people for smoking, vs shaming people for being fat. In the vast majority of cases, people who are fat are fat because of lifestyle choices that they could change, e.g. bad eating habits and bad exercise habits. If shaming people helped them quit their tobacco addictions, then we should do it. It would make them better off. Rather than being a shitty thing to do, it would be a moral good and a moral requirement. Ditto for fat people. I simply don’t shame fat people because I don’t think that shaming actually helps them lose weight, and I only rare shame smokers by saying more or less “you know smoking is bad for you? You should quit”.
Do you know what’s shitty? Lying to people by telling them that it’s ok to be overweight and that the health risks of being overweight are exaggerated or simply fake. That’s the shitty thing to do. That’s what you did by linking to that garbage article.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/laura-ingraham-wishes-joe-biden-would
@78 Lynna
Thanks for the reminder never to read Wonkette.
Washington Post link
Re: beholder @ #73…
So you agree that Hamas is building military infrastructure in or under civilian structures. You are arguing that there is no where else to build. It is a defensible proposition that the actual Hamas goal is to use civilians as human shields to protect the military assets. Either way, since the Israelis want to eliminate as much Hamas military capability as they can (especially since Hamas primary medium to long range weapons are wildly inaccurate rockets, which can only be used to “target” areas of purely civilian use), just how do you propose that the IDF degrade Hamas militarily without causing large scale collateral civilian damage, injury and death? Note that Israel does broadcast warning for civilians to get away from areas the IDF targets, so they are at least making some effort to avoid civilian casualties. Hamas, on the other hand does nothing to try to limit it’s attacks to military targets.
Please note that I am not defending attacks that hit civilian targets….by either side. And, indeed, I can’t see any way that those attacks are going to do anything whatsoever to create a long term solution, but merely extend the tit-for-tat attacks into the indefinite future.
My own prediction is that, when Hamas either exhausts its supply of rockets or reduces its supply to some level of reserve, they will be amenable to a cease-fire brokered by some third party…most likely Egypt. When the IDF runs out of any possible targets that they think represents a Hamas military asset, they will be amenable to a cease-fire brokered by some third party…most likely Egypt. Once a cease-fire is in place, everything will return to the status quo ante while Hamas rebuilds its supply crappy rockets. No one, not Israel, not Hamas, not Egypt will do anything to move the needle toward a permanent resolution. The whole ugly mess will repeat in a few years.
Excerpts from a longer opinion published by The New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/opinion/israel-hamas-.html
Here’s a link to the Al Jazeera Israel-Gaza liveblog.
From the Guardian liveblog:
See my comments on the other threads about this rhetoric. It shouldn’t be allowed to stand.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/south-carolina-supreme-court-redistricting
SC @84, adding this humanitarian disaster to the already horrible situation … JFC.
Looks like Republicans may finally expel George Santo.
Posted by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito.
#85
Amendment for shortest splitline districting please.
GOTS @ #78, as I said, I don’t have time for your nonsense or your non-engagement with evidence. You’ve confirmed that you’re full of it and a lousy person to boot.
As described at my links above (and their citations and links), the evidence does not support the claims you regurgitate here. What the evidence does show, overwhelmingly and entirely unsurprisingly, is that anti-fat stigma/bias/fat-shaming are extremely detrimental to people’s health, in the same way racism, sexism, and anti-LGBT bias are. If you genuinely cared about people’s health, which you don’t, you would work to oppose practices that are clearly shown to harm it.
The Guardian article links to the National Eating Disorders Coalition (of Australia, it appears), which recommends efforts to reduce weight stigma in its section on prevention:
Numbered citations at the link.
NASA unveils asteroid sample that could reveal details about life on Earth
The space rock is “an astrobiologist’s dream,” as preliminary analysis has found carbon and water in it, which could help explain Earth’s oceans and more.
‘Kill us or send us home’: Amazon workers in Saudi Arabia say they were exploited by labor supply and recruiting firms
More than 50 current and former workers said they were misled by firms that supply labor to Amazon in Saudi Arabia and by recruiting agencies in Nepal.
@SC
I’m an awful person because I don’t support fat-shaming? I think I missed a memo. Again, I don’t fat-shame, and I don’t support fat-shaming.
It seems likely you’re just strawmanning me because I am speaking inconvenient truths, which is that being overweight is as bad for your health as smoking, and that nearly all fat people are fat because of fixable lifestyle choices, e.g. diet and exercise.
And I don’t see the need to post the overwhelming evidence from Lancet and elsewhere that shows an extremely strong causal relationship between being overweight and a plethora of severe health risks and severe reduction in life expectancy. You’re being quite unreasonable to deny this. Shall I also post evidence that the Earth is not flat?
The former Trump Org CFO, Allen Weisselberg, deflected or claimed not to recall dozens of times. But he both helped and hurt Trump in the initial hours of his testimony.
Link
Bardcore / Medieval version of modern songs
Running Up That Hill
Cover in early middle English
https://youtu.be/DHspDQZKvwg
Keith Jefferson (Django Unchained, Day Shift) has died of cancer. The announcement came from his friend Jamie Foxx.
Russia fails to return to UN rights body after losing vote
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
Voting begins in Ohio in the only election this fall to decide abortion rights
VT Senator Bernie Sanders Calls Israel’s Siege On Gaza “A Serious Violation Of International Law”
Link
WIRED link
Are you this dense or is this bad-faith trolling?
Slate:
Samuel Alito Really, Really, Really Wants to Save This Racial Gerrymander in South Carolina
BY CHRIS GEIDNER / OCT 11, 2023
Some podcast episodes:
Know Your Enemy – “Elon Musk, the Jews, and the ADL (w/ Mari Cohen, Alex Kane, & Peter Beinart)”:
The War on Cars – “112. Unintended Consequences with Steven Johnson”:
This is wild.
New Books Network – “Tariq D. Khan, The Republic Shall be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression“:
(Miranda Melcher is the best interviewer there by a stretch.)
Behind the Bastards – “Part One: G. Gordon Liddy: The Fascist Behind Watergate”:
I’d like to think neither, but I guess I’ll pick option #1: dense. I still don’t understand what possible complaint you could have regarding me that isn’t strawmanning or denying wildly accepted scientific facts.
Not me, because I am not on that Nazi site. Why is anyone still there?
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #106….
As regards your–I presume rhetorical–question… Beats me. I was never on it. Nor Facebork, for that matter.
Ukraine Update: Russia suffers catastrophic losses in two ill-fated attacks
8,700 Ford Kentucky Truck plant members join UAW strike
@GerrardOfTitanServer 93
Your first sentence at least is a lie. I see you being shamed for specific things and opposing fat-shaming is not one of them.
I see you being shamed for insisting on a point while ignoring claims to the contrary at the least.
@GerrardOfTitanServer #93:
Talking like this does not help you, in any situation, unless seeking negative attention is the goal.
#105:
#93:
Here’s a more convenient source for that podcast in SC’s #75.
Plus a teaser excerpt. Lots of trivia about misreading correlations in the episode.
Maintenance Phase – Is Being Fat Bad For You? (1:25:06)
^ Webplayer, Transcript, Resources
* MP3 Link
This is like the artificial hand of Commander Travis (Blake’s 7)
…but without the inbuilt gun.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-bionic-merges-user-nervous-skeletal.html
On the NEA Bennu results :
Source : https://www.space.com/osiris-rex-bennu-asteroid-sample-carbon-water
Meanwhile :
So no launch there today – USA time or tomorrow morning – my Aussie time.
Tommy Tuberville Falling Off A Plane Is The Best Thing We’ve Seen Since The Cop Slide
Windows 12 in 2024? Intel Thinks So
Oh and in other more Aussie news albeit a state often thought of as our “Deep North” :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-12/qld-hate-symbols-laws-explainer/102965556
Japan to ask court to strip Unification Church of religious status
As often the case these nights, I’m tired. So,so tired. Yet I cannot sleep.
Australia’s car crash, grimly woeful performance – Starc &Labuschagne aside in the ODI (50 over) Cricket World Cup.. Not helping. The Voice referendum in two days..
^ See :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-12/cricket-world-cup-australia-south-africa-scorecentre/102938296
Criket~wise.
Addled brain … Trump speaks about the Israel/Hamas war:
Cartoon: Inflation on Counter-Earth
Angry Little Wisconsin GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden Had Another One Of His Incidents Yesterday
GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin was at the Capitol on January 6th, though he claims he never went inside. He has not been prosecuted. He is up for reelection next year. Let’s hope he gets voted out of Congress. He seems to be a true MAGA dude who thinks it is a virtue to bully others.
Followup to comment 120.
I’m sorry. This is obscene and perverse.
https://www.who.int/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/6-facts-on-obesity
Cherrypicking studies and cherrypicking quotes regarding the small adverse health effects of those who are only slightly overweight, and doing whataboutism regarding the health risks of those whoa are underweight, is very poor form. Being overweight is one of the leading causes of death in the world today. The number of premature deaths per year is almost as big as the number from air pollution, which frankly astounds me.
Go ahead and lie to yourselves if you want, but please stop spreading this ridiculous nonsense to others. You’re doing real harm here. What you are doing is morally comparable to spreading the misinformation that smoking doesn’t cause (lung) cancer.
Lying about posters in this thread matters.
And if all you can do is post the word cherry-picking I don’t see how your continued posting will be useful. You haven’t acknowledged the earlier lie and now you accuse others of lying.
Brony.
Along with John Morales, you are one of the two regulars on FTB that I believe are absolute scum. I don’t give a flying fuck what you think.
The Scathing Atheist 556
https://youtu.be/6pPcujb_y8U
Superseding Indictment Charges Senator Menendez with Conspiracy to Act as Foreign Agent
Serious.
It’s what it’s.
It’s not very useful. I’m unlikely to fuck off. This is a common area.
Ignoring Trump is a good sign.
Donald Trump told Republicans to elect Jim Jordan as House speaker. Most the GOP ignored him. It wasn’t the first time.
27 Americans dead, Kirby says; Gaza hospitals running out of supplies.
Washington Post link
A message from a former Medicare Advantage salesman. Why you must get the real thing!
Excerpt from a previous blog post:
Another blog excerpt:
A next-generation intranasal trivalent MMS vaccine induces durable and broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern
Reginald @134, that sounds like good news!
In other news: Trump agreed to pay Weisselberg $2 million. But what does Weisselberg owe in return?
Weisselberg’s severance agreement with the Trump Org highlights serious constraints on Weisselberg’s ability to talk voluntarily about what he did and saw as CFO.
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
Washington Post:
Oh FFS.
Sen. Lindsey Graham says the US should ‘bomb’ Iran’s oil fields to ‘punish them’
Classic warmongering from Graham.
The Washington Post report on the number of hostages:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/10/12/israel-hostage-count-videos/
More details, including video snippets at the link.
New Clues Suggest Stolen FTX Funds Went to Russia-Linked Money Launderers
WIRED link
Whoever looted FTX on the day of its bankruptcy has now moved the stolen money through a long string of intermediaries—and eventually some that look Russian in origin.
More details at the link, including use of mixing services popular with North Korean hackers. There’s also some cryptic text that hints as more to the story: “Elliptic has other intelligence pointing to the money launderers’ Russian ties, but doesn’t yet have permission from the source to make it public.”
Re #140
Good to see that “cryptocurrencies” are not that much “crypto” and it should be evident to everyone by now that they’re not “currencies” at all either. I’d also like to see how much energy was wasted to do all those transactions.
Re: Jean @ #141…
How much energy was wasted do all those transactions? All of it.
Ukraine Update: More details emerge around Russia’s Avdiivka disaster
Jean @141 and whheydt @142, LOL. I was thinking along those same lines.
I didn’t even post all of the transactions. The article noted a few more.
Scalise drops bid for speaker
Sheesh. Republicans are now even further away from electing a Speaker for the House of Representatives than they were a few days ago!
Now there’s even more chaos. And the work of governing, including approving funds for Israel and Ukraine, cannot be done.
Judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon Sinks Garcia Hearing
More on the same subject, from The Washington Post:
‘Twist And Shout’
Robert Isley of The Isley Brothers has died at 84. He must have been very young during their breakthrough , there are very few pre-Beatles Pre-Rolling Stones artists left.
The Pysche mission to, erm, Pysche asteroid launch is scheduled for 3 hours time – or, at least, the start of the live launch video coverage is here :
https://www.sciencealert.com/nasas-psyche-mission-is-about-to-launch-watch-live
Here’s hoping tonight’s attempt flies.
StevoR @ 148
-getting a look at an exposed planetary metal core, if on a smaller scale. It will be interesting if they find osmium and other rare elements.
@ ^ birgerjohansson : Avsolsultely. There’s more info on the NASA blog here too :
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/psyche/
“Absolutley” that first word was absolutely meant to be.. Sigh.
Meanwhile, in other astronmical news Major Milky Way Updates: Our Galaxy May Be Completely Different From What We Thought by Anton Petrov which is a dozen minutes long and discusses findings that our Milky Way may be much less massive and have a faster spin and an eggier halo than we previously thought.
Colorado judge strikes down Trump’s attempt to toss a lawsuit seeking to bar him from the ballot
With so many “originalists” in the judiciary, why does it seem so few are taking the 14th amendment seriously?
Ukraine hits Russian Buyan cruise missile carrier and Pavel Derzhavin vessel with drones
Ubuntu Desktop 23.10 ISOs Recalled Due To Malicious User Translations
T minus three minute still till Pysche launch to Pysche now..
Lift off!
So far so good.. Pysche (spacecarft -and well asteroid too) is in space still on its Falcon rocket.* 2nd stage. Boosters have landed back on Earth.
The asteroid o’course has never been on a rocket and still isn’t.
Russians’ train blown up in Melitopol cutting them off petrol and ammunition supply
Researchers use AI to read word on ancient scroll burned by Vesuvius. The scroll is one of many carbonised by pyroclastic flows from the famous eruption of 79 CE and discovered in Herculaneum from 1752 onwards (others were apparently destroyed, and more may remain buried). It is hoped that the scrolls, which cannot be unrolled without destroying them, contain lost works of Greek and Latin literature and philosophy. High-definition X-rays and new machine learning techniques have now enabled the reading of the scrolls to begin, although how much can be read remains to be seen. The first word deciphered is the Greek for “purple”.
Ride of the Valkyries: The Army Is Getting the US Military’s Most Powerful Laser Weapons Yet
Ukraine Invasion Day 597: The beatings will continue until morale improves as Penal Units advance
Update on rudderless House Republicans:
Link
Followup to comment 161
Readers posted about Austin Scott:
And Scott’s being offered as an improvement over Jim Jordan. On January 7, 2021, Scott did not object to the Electoral College certification in the House of Representatives, so is that moment of sanity.
Link
Link
Not as bad as X/Twitter … correct, but is that a low bar.
Link
https://www.wonkette.com/p/everybody-wishes-trump-would-stfu
Israel orders 1 million Gazans to evacuate; U.N. says that’s impossible.
Washington Post link
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/opinion/israel-military-war.html
Navalny, an update:
New York Times link
Young Turks host Cenk Uygur launches Democratic primary bid against Biden
Link
Trump tells court he had no duty to ‘support’ the US Constitution in bizarre legal defence
Racism in AI
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/10/racism-in-ai
“So they decided to be more specific. They entered phrases that mentioned Black African doctors providing food, vaccines or medicine to white children who were poor or suffering. They also asked for images depicting different health scenarios like “HIV patient receiving care.”
Try as they might, the team was unable to get Black doctors and white patients in one image. Out of 150 images of HIV patients, 148 were Black and two were white. Some results put African wildlife like giraffes and elephants next to Black physicians.”
Reginald @171, grasping at straws. That does not work.
Brony @172, well that demonstrates how systemic racism is.
Cartoon: War reporting
Link
The American Nobel Laureate Louise Gluck has died. She received the Nobel Prize in literature in 2020. She was 80 years old.
Greg Abbott Deploys Murder-Wire At Texas-New Mexico State Line, To Repel Hordes Of Georgia O’Keeffe Fans
https://www.wonkette.com/p/greg-abbott-deploys-murder-wire-at
Sure, to ‘keep out migrants,’ definitely not to keep women in.
@Lynna
They can have African animals apparently.
Treat rather. That calls the nature of the biases into question though.
The hand-ringing will be amazing when bigotry detection in language and code happens.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/principal-who-punished-student-for
Footloose!
Followup to comment 181
The anti-dancing actions taken by a high school principal in Louisiana.
There’s a video of the student’s response available at the link. She is extremely worried that she let everyone down.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-rcna120252
Raw milk outbreak sickens 14 in Utah—a state with loose laws, bad track record
Pasteurization is a good thing.
Followup to comment 175.
Link
Republicans rally around loser Trump’s victimhood schtick
Are you sure it was because Scalise has cancer, and not because Mr. “David Duke without the baggage” is a cancer on humanity?
A reminder of how brittle power can be.
I just found this at Youtube. 1989; East Germany celebrates 40 years.
Gorbachev stands next to Honecker, Yassir Arafat and other dignitaries. I assume Ceaucescu is somewhere in there. He died first, Gorbachev lasted until Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
(Regarding parades -GDR was really the last iteration of Prussia)
https://youtu.be/7wK3k1kd7fY
The cooties is right there in the result. It can’t let the black person care for the white children. But it will displace to African wildlife.
Bloody hell. Huffpost:
‘U S Diplomats advised not to call for “de-escalation” in Gaza’
Biden is not going to try to moderate Netanyahu ‘s response!
The old guy cannot be bothered to make a difference. But we knew that during the primaries – his argument to businesses was that nothing would change.
Annular Solar eclipse 2023: Ring of fire to sweep Americas on Saturday
@190
Well, the Palestinian lobby didn’t pay as much as others for Brandon’s support.
A certain FreeThought Blogger is in (morally good, politically risky) trouble again.
Ooops! My bad @ # 193 – no idea how I got Arundhati Roy mixed up in my mind with Taslima Nasreen, except that they’re both eloquent, controversial South Asian women writers I greatly respect.
My apologies to both! 😩
Pierce @194, thanks for quickly correcting that mistake.
Ukraine Update: Russian sources admit their Avdiivka disaster
NBC News:
NBC News:
CNBC:
Herald Tribune:
NBC News:
Link
Josh Marshall:
Link
Followup to comment 202.
Link
I think there’s an Elon Musk submarine reference here but others might know better.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/13/2199112/-Break-out-the-white-boots-DeSantis-says-he-s-authorizing-rescue-operations-in-Israel
Australia’s referendum on giving our Indigenous First Nations Peoples a Voice to Parliament is on today. See :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-14/australians-prepare-to-vote-on-voice-to-parliament-referendum/102974498
See also : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-14/nine-million-australians-still-to-vote-in-voice-referendum/102976642
Plus live coverage here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-14/live-updates-voice-to-parliament-referendum-latest-news/102969568
Lynna, OM@202 (quoting Josh Marshall),
One possible conclusion from the clusterfuck in the House is that having the proceedings of an elected assembly controlled by an explicitly partisan officer isn’t such a great idea.
The right has won the election in New Zealand, but the main party of the right, National, will (if I interpret the linked article correctly – it’s not entirely clear) need the support of two others (the bonkers “libertarian” ACT and the politically incoherent New Zealand First) for a majority (just – National+ACT would be one seat short). The Greens, who are to the left of Labour, increased their vote-share and seats.
Cops Boot 15-Year-Old Known for Challenging DeSantis From GOP Event
KG @206, I agree. Reforms are needed.
StevoR @205, thank you for keeping us up to date on the vote to “recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice”.
Brony @204, I think DeSantis is just trying to sound like he has a really big plan when he really is just supporting sending a charter plane to Israel to help evacuate Americans.
Cartoon: Skinheads for Gabrielle Hanson
Judge penalizes Giuliani for ‘continued and flagrant’ disregard of court order in 5-page ruling
CNN Pundit Blames Democrats’ ‘Identity Politics’ for GOP Speaker Chaos
Congratulations, Speaker Scal- Excuse Me, Speaker Jord- Y’know What? Screw It.
Japanese teen sets jump rope world record with astonishing feat
Details excerpted from the timeline posted by The New York Times:
New York Times link
Sen. Joe Manchin considers independent 2024 run, warns party system could be nation’s ‘downfall’
Sure, you’re always taking a chance; but currently only one of the two major parties is openly courting craziness, and welcoming it into their fold.
“Highly problematic”: Ex-Trump CFO’s testimony abruptly halted after he’s accused of perjury
Haley says House members don’t need pay ‘until they fix this’ amid Speakership chaos
This meme again. I agree that the House Republicans are doing a horrible job, but a consequence of this is that only zillionaires would be able to serve in Congress. No one actually depending on their congressional paycheck could afford it.
Ukraine Update: Ukraine has the upper hand, but it’s a defensive slugfest
Interesting political developments in Israel:
Link
Iranian oil faces scrutiny amid Israel-Hamas conflict
Illinois Progressives. We LOVE Illinois Progressives!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/illinois-progressives-we-love-illinois
Pastor Greg Locke Wants To Mass Exorcise Your Children This Halloween
Satire written by Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
Rep. Mike Johnson plans to launch House speaker bid if Jim Jordan falters
Never heard of him.
‘Ring of fire’ eclipse brings cheers and shouts of joy as it moves across the Americas
SCOTUS Is Helping The Christian Right Undermine The Force Of Anti-Discrimination Law
Much more at the link, including an historical perspective.
Sheesh. Drastic tactics:
Link
Essential fact checking:
Link
NB – lots of new DNA cutters!
Since CRISPR-CAS9 was found, there has been a biological revolution. But the various CRISPR systems all have some flaws.
Now that other organisms than bacteria have been investigated for analog systems we seem to get an avalanche of new CRISPR analogs, and I hope there will soon be ways to bypass whatever shortcomings there are for use of the well-documented CRISPR systems.
.
“Thousands of programmable DNA cutters found in algae, snails and other organisms ”
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-thousands-programmable-dna-cutters-algae-snails.html
It’s Now Open Season on Seniors
The so-called Medicare Advantage plans should not be allowed to use the word “Medicare” for a start.
Followup to comment 231.
Posted by readers of the article:
In the USA health care works well for rich people … it does not work well for anyone else.
After 3 Shot, People Flee in Horror at State Fair of Texas, Which Allows Licensed Concealed Carry
“Runestones reveal the power of a Viking queen ”
(As queen Thyra and king Gorm remained in their realm they were technically not ‘vikings’)
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-runestones-reveal-power-viking-queen.html
Schumer rushed to shelter from rockets in Tel Aviv
Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui and his wife found murdered in their home
Businessman Noboa wins Ecuador presidency, eclipsing father’s legacy
Colorado’s I-25 is partially closed after a coal train derailed off a bridge and killed a semi-truck driver, authorities say
Exit polls suggest Poland’s ruling PiS (“Law and Justice Party”, a self-designation on a par with 1984‘s “Ministry of Love”) will be unable to form a government after yesterday’s election, either on its own, or with an even viler far-right party. If the exit poll is right, three opposition parties, two described as “centrist” the third and smallest as “leftist”, will together hold a majority of seats. However, as the linked article explains, the President, in office until 2025, is a PiS member, and PiS has seized enough key posts and entrenched its position sufficiently to make any non-PiS government’s task in dismantling its anti-democratic hold on power very difficult.
KG @ 239
What if the president has a Russian-style accident as he leans out a window?
Video: A very scary predator.
https://youtu.be/A1wBW3Br_5M
U.S. oil production discredits weird Republican talking points
Oil production in the United States has reached an all-time high. So why do Republicans keep telling American voters to believe the opposite?
Summarized from NBC News: Louisiana is poised to take a sharp turn in a far-right direction: Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry will succeed Democrat John Bel Edwards as governor, winning in the first round of multi-candidate balloting on Saturday (winning about 51% of the vote, so, no runoff needed.)
Summarized from The New York Times: President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign took in $71.3 million in the third quarter, (July through August). Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co-chairman of the Democratic incumbent’s campaign, told The New York Times, “It certainly exceeded our own expectations around it significantly. The fact that we’re sitting with $91 million in the bank today is really an extraordinary advantage.” (That’s more money than Trump took in, despite Trump’s sneaky fundraising tactics.)
Meanwhile, NBC News reported that Mike Pence’s campaign is now in debt, about $620,000.
Trump said so many ignorant and offensive things about the Israel/Hamas conflict that he received a lot of pushback, even from conservatives. Then Trump actually walked that bullshit back.
Link
Trump has narrow gag order imposed on him by federal judge overseeing 2020 election subversion case
Pepper X marks the spot as South Carolina pepper expert scorches his own Guinness Book heat record
Followup to Reginald @245:
Link
Bacteria can selectively infiltrate solid tumors and clearly mark them as invaders
Much more at the link.
You would think that Trump already has plenty of lawsuits to handle.
Trump sues ex-British spy over dossier containing ‘shocking and scandalous claims’
Posted by readers of the article:
BBC apologizes for saying pro-Palestine demonstrators were ‘backing’ Hamas
IANAL.
I see this as a key point. Steele didn’t make public statements about Trump, he compiled a report for the people who commissioned it.
The lawsuit has been filed in Britain, which has different laws regarding defamation than the USA.
It’s not just Paris. There’s a “global resurgence” of bedbugs.
It’s a bedbug’s world now. We’re just sleeping in it.
Followup to comments 249 (me) and 251 (Reginald).
https://www.wonkette.com/p/donald-trump-sues-in-london-court
Republicans as warmongers (and doofuses, of course), devoid of nuance, devoid of context:
More at the link, including video snippets, and including details of concerning Ron DeSantis’s bullshit.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/republicans-nuanced-response-to-israel
Washington Post link
North Korea may be sending arms to Russia for Ukraine war, images suggest [images at the link]
Washington Post link
More at the link.
With most votes counted in the Polish election, the exit polls appears to have been broadly right: three parties which are allied against PiS will get a majority of the vote between them (about 53%), and should have enough seats in the Sejm to form a government.
further to #257: incidentally, all three of these parties are strong supporters of Ukraine. PiS made much of its support early on, but has recently fallen out with Zelenskyy. Moreover, its own anti-democratic actions made it a discreditable ally.
Muslim Boy, 6, Is Mourned After Illinois Attack Linked to Mideast War.
New York Times link
The little boy was stabbed 26 times.
I could believe that the DOJ is being used for political purposes.
Hawley taps DOJ to investigate pro-Palestinian student groups’ potential ties to Hamas
Hunter Biden as a ‘foreign agent’? Inquiry comes as DOJ ramps up previously ‘rare’ enforcement
Additional ink for news in comment 259, in case you cannot access the New York Times article.
Link
More at the link.
KG @258, thanks for that additional information. Without some updates from you, it is difficult to understand the political situation in Poland.
Colorado Court OKs Use of Google Search Data in Murder Case
Ubuntu 23.10 Desktop ISOs Re-Released Following Translation Snafu
Citibank wins case after sacking banker over two-sandwich lunch claim
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
Followup to comments 259 and 261.
DOJ Launches Hate Crime Investigation Into Brutal Killing Of Palestinian American Boy
‘Moderate’ House Republicans folding like cheap tents for insurrectionist Jordan’s speaker bid
On Fox News and social media Sean Hannity has been pushing hard for Jordan. So has Trump.
Followup to comments 210 and 213.
Good news:
Link
Followup to comment 273.
LMAO This Dumb Candygram Hannity Is Sending To Republicans Who Won’t Vote For Jim Jordan
https://www.wonkette.com/p/lmao-this-dumb-candygram-hannity
This is supposed to be intimidating.
Washington Post link
“It’s becoming impossible to report from Gaza”
In the other war, Russian generals keep using up their soldiers in human wave attacks. I am reminded of WWI, or of how the Imperial Japanese generals used up their troops.
https://youtu.be/p_CNhVFeQdk
Satire from Andy Borowitz:
Link
Ukraine update: Russia’s disaster at Avdriivka shows how much things have changed, by Mark Sumner
Enjoy Trump saying military officials are ‘some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met in my life’
It’s kind of nice to Trump being so boring, so incoherent, and so diminished.
Posted by a reader of the article:
Informative short animation here on how Over 40% of Antarctica’s ice shelves reduced in volume over 25 years, scientists say (1 min 23 secs long.)
Trio of links on the Indigenous Voice defeat in Australia incl how how misinformation contributed & Indigenous Voice supporters statement here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2023/10/09/today-is-indigenous-peoples-day/comment-page-1/#comment-2198259
The murder of two Swedish soccer fans by a terrorist is partly connected to the koran burnings, and partly connected to the Turkish leader Erdogan and the Iranian leaders having a beef with Sweden.
.
A lot of Turkish refugees live in Sweden, and Sweden has delayed Turkey’s approach to the European Union over human rights issues.
Now that Sweden wants to join Nato, Erdogan enjoys getting back at Sweden (Yes, he is that petty because that is what dictators do).
He also believes Sweden protects kurdish terrorists (this is complicated, because to him all dissidents are terrorists).
During the koran burnings a government-owned Turkish news agency has spread desinformation claiming that the koran is the only religious book it is permitted to burn (This is a lie, but people in West Asia rarely check what happens in Stockholm).
These claims have gone unfiltered to Al Jazeera, which push them on to the whole islamic world. It is like a muslim version of Rupert Murdoch.
Also, muslim sources have spread lies that Swedish authorities take the children of muslims and have them adopted by gay couples.
This beef came about after authorities started taking honor violence seriously and started to look at parents who send the children – usually daughters – abroad before they turn 18 and marry them off.
The challenge by the authorities resulted in lots of aggro from fundamentalists, many based abroad. Iran – (which is outraged a torturer and killer was arrested in Sweden and convicted for crimes against humanity comitted in Iran in the 1980s)- is also playing a role in the propaganda war.
This is stochastic terrorism. We now see the result.
Isn’t religion fun?
StevoR @ 282
I doubt the conservative forces get any tangible benefits from pissing on the aboriginies, but if this is like USA and Britain it is part of a wider culture war othering minorities.
Argentina’s Presidential Front Runner Vows To Slash Science Funding
Great idea! Similarly, Argentina’s agriculture sector could save a lot of money by not planting seeds. Planting is a waste of time and money, agriculture’s profits are all in the harvest!
Ukraine uses secretly shipped U.S. missiles to launch surprise strike
Legal expert warns Trump lawyers could face “disbarment” and “possibly be jailed” over court stunts
Text of Trump Gag Order in Election Interference Case
Just in
Jordan fell short on the speakership vote. There is still no Speaker of the House.
Followup to comment 289.
The final tally: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries finished with 212 votes, while Jordan finished with 200. To succeed, a candidate needed 217.
Live Coverage link
Guess We Should Discuss That Crazy Bigot With Imaginary Black Friends Running For Mayor In TN.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/guess-we-should-discuss-that-crazy
Gabrielle Hanson is pretty out there even by MAGA standards.
Lynna OM @ 290.
Imagine if five or more Republicans get so sick of the mess they make a credible threat to abstain from voting if the Gaetz posse of crazies do not stop their obstruction.
The threat of the Dem archenemy getting the speakership might be one of the few things to make an imprint in their fever-addled brains.
The damage caused by a government shutdown is obviously not enough to register.
The problem is, this requires some Republicans to show courage…
How a Bronze Age rock became a ‘treasure map’ for researchers.
https://phys.org/news/2023-10- bronze-age-treasure.html
Aargh. Trying again https://phys.org/news/2023-10-bronze-age-treasure.html
In case you want a pause from the mayhem in the world, here is some truck & engine porn.
“American reacts to why Nordic trucks are different than the rest ”
https://youtu.be/vofujBofepQ
birger @293, I wouldn’t count on it. It would be lovely if six of them would just vote for Hakeem Jeffries in order to get government working again. They won’t.
FUUUUUUUUUCK!
The latest Israeli bomb raid has resulted in so many deaths that several planned meetings between international representatives have been cancelled in protest.
NBC News:
Hamas blamed Israel, and that lying propaganda has already gone around the world several times. Some protests around the world are based on this lie.
Israel, and other intelligence services are saying that a different Palestinian terrorist group bombed the hospital courtyard, probably unintentionally since about 37% of their rockets fail and never make it to Israel.
Times of Israel link
What is not in dispute is that many Palestinians clustered at the hospital in the hope of finding safety there were killed.
NBC News:
Some Good -ish news, as posted by The New York Times:
House speaker chaos: New poll shows Americans increasingly blame Republicans for dysfunction in Congress
Ukraine Update: ATACMS (finally!) wreck Russian bases.
Rep. Debbie Lesko won’t seek reelection
20,000 Britons Approached By Chinese Agents On LinkedIn, Says MI5 Head
IRS will pilot free, direct tax filing in 2024
India’s top court refuses to legalize same-sex marriage
Boo hiss boo
Source : https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/17/americas/amazon-river-lowest-levels-drought-climate-intl/index.html
Uh oh.. when the Amazon is drying up and jungle there hasn’t seen rain for three months..
Source : https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/17/americas/amazon-river-lowest-levels-drought-climate-intl/index.html
Uh oh.. when the Amazon is drying up and jungle there hasn’t seen rain for three months..
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-18/elders-react-to-referendum-defeat/102986250
London Trump case: Steele testifies Trump endangered agents – who immediately went missing.
Link
Trump’s Cognitive Decline: OH NO THEY BANNED FLYPAPER! Edition
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trumps-cognitive-decline-oh-no-they
https://www.wonkette.com/p/revenge-of-the-prius-nerds-justice
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/jim-jordan-fox-news-man-congress-now-he-may-become-house-speaker
Fox News’ Jesse Watters: “I don’t like how people try to differentiate between the Palestinians and Hamas”
I am thinking of the 6-year-old Illinois boy who was stabbed 26 times because he was Palestinian. [See comment 259]
Excerpt from coverage that described the killer:
Hamas expresses willingness to release some captive women and children
An Israeli activist involved in past prisoner exchanges questioned the offer and Hamas acknowledged that it does not have custody of all the hostages seized from Israel.
More at the link.
Republicans want to ban Palestinian refugees from entering the U.S., but it’s already very hard for them to get in
In the past 10 years, fewer than 600 Palestinians in all have come to the U.S. as refugees, according to the State Department.
Did he accidentally say something true again?
World Rugby To Introduce Smart Mouthguards To Detect Player Concussions
California family behind $600 million, nationwide catalytic converter theft ring pleads guilty
Jordan
Reginald @322, all true. In addition, Jordan is a bully. So … he’s a Republican who seldom does any real work and who bullies his colleagues. Perfect trumpian doofus. Nevertheless, he lost the vote for the Speaker’s gavel again today.
We are now into the third week of Republican chaos that has shut down the House when it comes to getting real work done.
Link
Well, they wanted to wreck everything. “Behold the chaos.”
Fog of War, Rush to Judgment and the Day After
The weight of evidence points to an errant rocket from within Gaza as the source of last night’s Gaza hospital blast.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/fog-of-war-rush-to-judgment-and-the-day-after
Followup to comments 322 and 323.
Posted by Acyn:
LOL
HANNITY: Of course, like all Democrats, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is trying to capitalize politically on this turmoil. Jeffries, along with “Squad” member AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and others, they are now targeting the 20 Republicans that voted against Jordan today, and they are encouraging them to give up the majority and let Jeffries actually take the gavel.
Commentary:
Link
Link
Followup to comment 326.
Posted by a reader of the article:
Wow. The stupidity is mind boggling.
Ron DeSantis’s New Chinese Exclusion Act Hitting Them Where It Hurts. Them Being Real Estate Agents.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/ron-desantiss-new-chinese-exclusion
Washington Post link
Bolts Magazine:
Commentary:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/incoming-gop-louisiana-gov-jeff-landry
Posted by readers of the article:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/same-time-tomorrow-jim
New Study Explores Why Some People Have So Much Neanderthal DNA
Link
Satire from Andy Horowitz:
New Yorker link
John Legend Urges Ohioans to Vote to Protect Abortion Days After Governor Claims There’s No Need
Just as a general comment, shouldn’t Jim Jordan be subject to section 3 of the 14th amendment? According to the January 6th committee, he was actively involved in many aspects of the January 6th insurrection. So he should be removed from his post in congress and never allowed to hold any office in the future. I don’t think many people would complaint about not seeing or hearing about him but no one is going to be willing to even mention the possibility.
Court employee arrested for approaching Donald Trump during civil trial
Biden administration announces $3.5 billion for grid resilience measures
Trump fraud-trial fireworks: ‘You lied yesterday!’ defense lawyer shouts while grilling an AG witness
Ukrainian forces cross Dnipro river in major tactical advance
Minnesota leaders to fight court ruling that restoring voting rights for felons was unconstitutional
Texas town to pay $175,000 to Democrats after ‘Trump Train’ highway incident
Jean @336, seems right to me, but so far no republicans other than Liz Cheney have made a strong case that he did support Trump’s overthrow of the elected government.
Reginald @338, that is such a good idea! Glad to see it.
In news related to Jean’s comment 336, Republican frantically tries to spin Hakeem Jeffries getting most speaker votes again
Posted by Rep. Mike Collins: “Hakeem Jeffries just lost his 17th straight vote for speaker.”
Excerpt from Biden’s speech in Tel Aviv:
Cher says Trump’s reelection would drive her out of US
Billionaire linked to Clarence Thomas donated to Cornel West’s campaign
https://www.wonkette.com/p/woke-farmer-mob-converts-former-ma
‘Mind-boggling’ sea creature spotted off Japan has finally been identified
New York Public Radio Fires 20 Staff as High-Paid Executives Refuse to Cut Their Six-Figure Salaries
Social media influencer charged with election interference in 2016 sentenced to prison
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #350…
Typical… A Republican convicted of messing with the election.
Michigan GOP Rep. Jack Bergman ready to ‘step up’ and serve as House speaker after Jordan loses twice
Reginald @350, glad to see that doofus punished.
whheydt @351, yep.
@352, and yet another election denier tries to take a position of power in the Republican Party. Sheesh!
Ukraine Update: Ukraine raids Russian-occupied Kherson. Is it more than a raid?
Factoid.
More Palestinian children have been killed in a week than Ukrainan children have been killed in a year.
U.S. Govt Restricts Shipments of GeForce RTX 4090 to China, Other Countries
Ever entertaining, if not edifying or properly boring as court proceedings are supposed to be, Trump’s New York civil fraud trial was mildly disrupted by a woman approaching the front of the court from the spectator area to “offer to help Trump”, claiming to be an employee of the court.
She’s been charged with contempt and interruption of an official proceeding.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/court-worker-arrested-after-trying-to-get-close-to-donald-trump-at-ny-civil-fraud-trial/4780343/
And so, does yet another person sacrifice their career for their god-king wannabe. Upside is, there will likely be an opening in that court soon.
It does make me wonder when the martyrs will begin to appear in support of their satyr.
The Search for a Real-Life Cinderella! Someone Left Their Shoe at the Castle After Prince Christian’s Birthday
If they’re size 43, they’re mine. I’m forever losing my shoes and reading glasses. ;)
I also have 43, but I avoid royals like the plague so it is not mine.
Slovakia’s president rejects appointment of climate change skeptic as environment minister
Sidney Powell pleads guilty in case over efforts to overturn Trump’s Georgia loss and gets probation
All misdemeanors? Probation but no prison time? Justice has not been served.
Russian Black Sea Fleet’s weapons depot near occupied Sevastopol hit in missile strike
birgerjohansson @ 360, occasionally, one cannot avoid having to deal with the lower classed people. Hence, the loss of footwear, while making a hasty escape.
FCC moves ahead with Title II net neutrality rules in 3-2 party-line vote
Sabine Hossenfelder at her best, when she sticks to her field of expertise and demonstrates the importance of serendipity in science.
https://youtu.be/j_ArhoIh6XIE
or
https://youtu.be/j_ArhoIh6XlE
https://youtu.be/j_Arholh6XIE
https://youtu.be/j_Arholh6XlE
birger @366: That link (those links?) didn’t work for me. Try this.
Threats targeting Jim Jordan’s GOP opponents jolt speaker’s race
Jim Jordan’s allies launched “a right-wing pressure campaign” to win over Republican skeptics. Violent threats soon followed — but they’re not working.
Link
Followup to comment 368.
Link
Posted by readers of the article:
Re: #362
The first to flip gets the best deal. Powell was in the middle of it all and can bury a lot of her co-defendants, possibly including the big one.
Re: tomh @ #371…
She’s actually the second to flip. I suspect that she and/or her lawyers realized that (a) Fani Willis really has the goods on her, and (b) the tactic of demanding a speedy trial will blow up in her face because Willis is ready to go to trial and Powell’s lawyers aren’t. Note that this has happened on the day before jury selection is supposed to start. She was looking down the barrel of the gun and blinked.
Elon Musk launches test to see if users are willing to pay $1 a year for X
My answer is a hard ‘Nope’. I don’t need more Nazis in my life and I certainly wouldn’t pay to have that.
Re: 362, 371 and 372, I’m waiting to see if the requirement for Powell to testify truthfully makes a difference when it comes to convicting Trump.
Let’s see if Trump’s endorsement sinks another Republican candidate:
NBC News article, as summarized by Steve Benen.
Attempted Ohio train derailments part of alleged terrorist plot: court docs
Cartoon: Mike Luckovich on Jim Jordan
Re: #372
Powell’s the first big fish to flip, far deeper into everything than the bail bondsman was.
San Marcos, Texas, settles lawsuit over police response to Trump supporters surrounding Biden bus
Some Justice. Good.
Link
Link
Re: Lynna, OM @ #374…
I’ve seen claims that Powell made proffer in order to get the plea deal. That presumably gives information about she can testify about and if she fails to deliver, the proffer can be used to restore the rest of the charges against her and convict her on those charges. So she’s pretty much stuck turning on at least some other people now.
Inside the Psychiatric Hospitals Where Foster Kids Are a “Gold Mine”
How a scandal-plagued health care giant profits off a failing child welfare system.
Much more at the link, including the history of UHS, which was founded in 1979. Mostly, it’s about the money to be made, and about ripping off Medicaid. “[…] most of the company’s business came from children and adolescents, “and the vast majority of those are Medicaid or state agency” kids.”
whheydt @382, good point. The prosecutor should get some useful testimony from Powell.
Followup to comment 383: I should have also mentioned that the article provides a lot of details confirming that those psychiatric hospitals were also managed to maximize profit, and that included incentives to understaff the places constantly, to rip off insurance companies, to rip off the government, and to rip off the state. Children, foster kids in particular, suffered as a result. It’s disgusting.
Update on the Jim Jordan/Speaker of the House clown show, from Wonkette:
Question for Youtube experts.
I made a comment on a particular video. If I’m signed in to Youtube, and sort by newest comments, I can see my comment by scrolling down a bit. However, if I’m not signed in, my comment seems to disappear. Any thoughts on how that could be?
Drag queens: Farmer’s son brings joy to Welsh countryside
It now seems clear why Allen Weisselberg’s testimony ended
Re my #386: On looking up the problem in google, it appears I’ve been ghosted by Angela Collier (on her space elevator video). No-one can see my comment except me when I’m signed in. That’s pretty fucking sleazy if true.
Ukraine Update: Ukraine is ready for Russia’s coming winter terror bombing campaign
Egypt and U.N. Lay Groundwork for Aid Into Gaza, Officials Say
An agreement was reached, officials said, to raise a U.N. flag at the Rafah crossing and to have international observers inspect aid trucks before they enter the enclave.
Link
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
NBC News:
HuffPost:
US Navy destroyer in Red Sea shoots down cruise missiles potentially headed toward Israel: Pentagon
In the latest sign of House chaos, the temporary speaker is threatening to quit
New York judge fired for pointing gun at a Black man in court
St Louis kids football team season cancelled after father of one of the players shot the coach multiple times for not starting his child.
Coach, thankfully, is recovering and regretful that the city cancelled the season, out of concern and respect for the kids playing.
The coach’s wife didn’t inform their 3 kids about dad being shot until she was certain he’d survive.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/19/us/st-louis-missouri-legends-football-league-parent-shot-coach/index.html
Huh. Just tried posting on the endangered Western Glacier Stonefly twice and neither has come through here. No idea why not.
Re: wzrd1 @ #399…
That’s the big problem with kids sports…the parents.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/judge-rules-alex-jones-bankruptcy-protection-avoid-paying-104171699
Pipeline Dreams: The Desert City Out To Surpass Phoenix By Importing Water
Manhattan judge threatens Donald Trump with jail time for ‘blatant violation’ of gag order
ERIK UEBELACKER / October 20, 2023
Courthouse News Service
BREAKING: CHESEBRO REACHES PLEA DEAL IN GEORGIA RICO CASE
And so the dominos fall, one by one. People will be testifying against Donald Trump, and against other defendants.
Link
Link
Make Me, Shub-Niggurath, Your House Speaker, Or Be Cast Into Death Beyond Death, Mortals.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/make-me-shub-niggurath-your-house
Biden Campaign Already Has More Truth Social Followers Than Trump Campaign
https://www.wonkette.com/p/brandon-alert-biden-campaign-already
Good advice in that last sentence.
Gaza’s aid still blocked at Rafah while ‘heartbroken’ U.N. chief looks on.
Washington Post link
More at the link.
New York Times link
Biden Asks Congress for More Aid for Israel and Ukraine
President Biden’s $105 billion request included funding to help Israel and Ukraine fight “terrorism and tyranny,” the White House said. It also contained relief funds for Gaza, where a U.N.-backed aid corridor had yet to open.
2 Americans held by Hamas have been released
Two U.S. hostages taken custody by Hamas have been released, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
[Developing story]
Democrats are using Jim Jordan’s run for Speaker of the House as an opportunity to out him as the unethical person he is. Good job.
Jordan’s allies show indifference to threats against opponents
Even after losing three times, Jordan and his allies continue to stoke the fires of violence.
Top Israel/Hamas misinformation spreaders use Elon Musk’s paid “verification”
Jungle Gym is out, voted out by GOP vote. Now, all are scrambling to find a new squeaker candidate.
Reginald Selkirk @ 415 and Musk now is testing charging people for the privilege of posting or responding on the platform, hoping to make a buck a year from each bot account, erm I mean, that nobody would pay to bot there.
Because, political parties and governments are always shy about spending money…
He’ll have them available again as penny stock in no time at all!
Amateur detectorist’s coin find reveals unknown British king Esunertos
Re: Lynna 414
I realize that is the article title, but Warren Davidson’s words is not indifference. That is implicit support. Stochastic terrorism in action. They get death threats because they have supporters willing to make death threats.
Nearly 1400 Russian troops, 55 tanks eliminated over past 24 hours
That’s a lot!
Buck says he’s being evicted from Windsor office after voting against Jordan
Actress Haydn Gwynne dies at 66.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/oct/20/haydn-gwynne-actor-dies-aged-66
@ 422 She was most famous for The Windsors and Drop Dead Donkey on TV
.
The Belgian Minister of Justice has resigned after the terror deed at the soccer game last weekend.
Reginald Selkirk @ 420, the Ukrainians singing “Tanks for the memories”.
Seriously though, that’s a major loss, given Russia’s current difficulties in building operational tanks.
@ 421, sounds like a contract dispute for federal court, if he’s got even the slightest shred of evidence. Unlawful influence charges are possible against the landlord, because such pressures are indeed unlawful and oh yeah, never heard of a property lease agreement that has a clause, “I must agree to everyfucking thing you vote for or this contract is null and void”.
Speaking of litigation, Trump just got a spit on an erupting volcano fine of $5k for violating the gag order on talking smack about court officers. Specifically, claiming Engoron’s clerk is Shumer’s girlfriend because they were in a photograph together. An odd claim, does that mean that George HW Bush was my girlfriend, as there does exist a photograph of us together?
What would be effective is 90 days in jail and a public apology to the court and all parties concerned. The imprisonment threat has been issued again, should another “blatant violation” reoccur.
Likely, Trump would be strutting into jail shouting, “We bad, we bad!” and expect a special custom cell.
And he can’t have mine, mine has rubber wallpaper to protect the walls from damage if I have a fall.
California gives green light to cruise again in lowriders
Czech village priest sorry for smashing pumpkins
Cardiff University Students’ Union bans blue shirts and chinos
Cancel culture
Another Trump codefendant cops a plea in Georgia election conspiracy
Joe Biden’s powerful speech should not be lost in the chaos of the day
‘Garbage on a platter’: Chocolate loaded omelette irks netizens
U.S. Navy shootdown operation over Red Sea larger than initially known
Washington Post link
@386, 389 Rob
You can use the ‘yt-dlp’ utility (very useful generally to backup online videos) to download all publicly-visible comments from a video into a single JSON file. It takes a little while if the video has thousands of comments, but it should spit out a decent-sized text file you can then search through for your username:
yt-dlp --no-mtime --skip-download --write-comments [VIDEOLINK]Replace [VIDEOLINK] with the video URL.
beholder @432: What I actually did was, while I was signed in to Youtube, sort comments by newest first, scroll down to my comment, and take a screen capture.
Then I signed out, again sorted comments by newest first, and scrolled down until I recognized the comments that had bracketed mine. My comment had disappeared. I took a screen capture of that too.
Bottom line: I think Collier ghosted my comment because she didn’t want her audience to read a valid criticism of her calculation. I wonder how many others got the same treatment (there must have been others who recognized her error).
That said, if you can think of an innocent explanation for what I saw, I’d love to hear it.
Minor correction to #433: I took the ‘signed out’ screen shot first. I’d done the ‘sign in’ then ‘sign out’ several times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
Ukraine Update: Avdiivka or die
@beholder #432:
Neat! That tool continues to surprise me.
About the commandline you wrote:
– Question: Is no-mtime superfluous? Omitting didn’t affect the date on my json.
– Observation: It writes a LOT of metadata, including comments, to a single “title [id].info.json”
I learned some fancy variations that might interest you.
This’ll let you dump ONLY comments into a named file. Without an info.json.
yt-dlp --skip-download --write-comments --no-write-info-json --print-to-file "after_filter:%(comments)j" "comments.json" VIDEOLINKIf you want two files: all the metadata, but with separate comments…
yt-dlp --skip-download --write-comments --print-to-file "after_filter:%(comments)j" "comments.json" --parse-meta "video::(?P<comments>)" VIDEOLINKThis will
– Write comments (at the ‘after_filter’ stage).
– Forget it saw comments (parse an empty string to set a new value for comments at the ‘video’ stage).
– Then write info.json with everything (incl blanked comments, after the ‘video’ stage).
– Learned from a github issue.
@436 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain
You’re one-upping my one-liners >:(
Thanks for the tip, though. I hadn’t even thought of using the postprocessor. I’ll have to file that away for later…
If I may borrow your phrasing: Neat! That tool continues to surprise me, too. What would data-hoarders do without it? Granted, it still gives me JSON-formatted comments, but I can clean that up and make it human-readable with a python script. I would almost say this makes reading Youtube comments convenient, except they’re still Youtube comments. YMMV.
Probably. It lets me sort my downloaded videos nicely, so I didn’t think to delete the string when I didn’t need it.
@beholder:
Ooh very sneaky caveat:
Code says the dumped “timestamp” on those comments is only a rough estimate, taking the vague “n days ago” and subtracting from the present.
YouTube’s Data API makes accurate timestamps available for comments: “publishedAt” (initial wording), and “updatedAt” (last edit). Requires authentication. Beyond yt-dlp’s anonymous capabilities, I guess. Didn’t test, but I don’t think giving yt-dlp credentials will get true times.
A quickie with all of the switches on a page, with a few examples.
https://www.mankier.com/1/yt-dlp
And people wonder why I so love my command line!
A week to the day after the Indigenous Voice proposal was defeated in Australia due to Dutton’s ctynical and selfish lack of bipartisanship and a torrent of disinformation and fear-mongering funded by reuichwing and mining lobbies this article sums things up sadly well :
Source : https://johnmenadue.com/australia-has-shown-itself-to-be-a-selfish-nation-that-lacks-empathy/
What an utter crock of shit, StevoR.
Arnhem Land clan leader plans to vote
No to Voice as treaty quest continues | ABC News – YouTube
News on some pretty big – quite literally – fossil finds :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-18/diprotodon-skeletons-excavated-in-pilbara/102985942
Diprotodons to be precise. The largest marsupial ever.
@441. Silentbob : Really? One Indigenous figure contradicts all the others the majority of whom did want the Indigenous Voice to Parliament to go through?
Source : https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/oct/15/indigenous-communities-overwhelmingly-voted-yes-to-australias-voice-to-parliament
Pre-Referendum campaign polling found about 80% of Indigenous People or more wanted the Voice. It is true that some Indigenous people eg. Lidia Thorpe, Blak Soverign (fringe) Movement opposed the Voice preferring a Treaty first. Same tactic as what brought the previous Republic Referendum down. That oldest trick in the book of divide and conquer, set those wanting the perfect (Treaty, Direct Election) against those wanting at least a good start and something new to build upon and some positive step.(The Voice, Minimalist Republic model.)
As for for misinformation being spread well, that’s very clear :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-23/white-supremacist-red-over-black-geoff-mcdonald-voice/102891560
(Emphasis original.)
Plus among many other places :
Source : https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/extremely-politicised-and-very-worrying-how-misinformation-about-the-voice-spread/w9sl4pzba
#426
“See, I thought the pumpkins were an expression of someone else’s religious beliefs, so obviously I stomped the shit out of them.”
Feel-good story of the week: 2 ransomware gangs meet their demise/a>
The Problem with Jon Stewart cancellation highlights a problem for Apple’s content
‘She May be Hurt’: California Cop Pummels Black Woman In the Face After She Crashes Car In Shocking Video. He Has a History of Violent Arrests
Bobby Charlton has died.
Rob Grigjanis @ 448
Ohhh, that’s sad.
Emmer sends ‘Dear Colleague’ letter officially announcing Speaker bid
Texas Reps. Jodey Arrington, Pete Sessions and Roger Williams are making moves to become U.S. House speaker
Maybe they should just hold a raffle.
StevoR @443, thanks for that additional information. That presents a clear picture of the misinformation that is being passed around online. The effects are bad. Sorry to see that.
Trump says Republicans ‘should not debate’ but unite against Biden
Says one of the most divisive people ever.
Silentbob @441, please do not embed videos in this thread. You can provide a link to a video, but do not embed it.
Thanks.
A turncoat Democrat gave the North Carolina GOP a supermajority. She just got her reward
Well that’s sleazy and despicable.
Cartoon: Pumpkin gag
https://twitter.com/BidenHQ/status/1715437254607286508
Republicans in disarray: A compilation
Good video from the Biden/Harris campaign team. The video is 35 seconds long.
Jack Smith and his team knocking down Trump’s immunity claims.
Link
Followup to comment 458.
Posted by readers of the article:
I do heartily approve of smashing pumpkins, after either roasting them or pressure cookering them – if they’re one’s own pumpkins. Got a really nice pie pumpkin here, just waiting for the weather to cool a bit more so that I can roll out some good pie crust.
Any leftover pumpkin goes into a batch of soup.
Smashing pumpkins to suppress another’s “religion”, do explain why a wrecking ball shouldn’t be taken to a now prohibited church, since religious freedom isn’t within your scope of beliefs and the government should reciprocate.
Otherwise, what’s next? Accept when bombs and machine guns are used against people of “the wrong faith”?
Especially, given the Nativist riots of Philadelphia, where artillery was actually used against churches.
CBS News:
Commentary:
Link
More at the link, including satire that describes “forklift booster seats for children.”
Ukraine Update: Russia increasingly has nowhere to hide
This Ukraine Update impressed me with its emphasis on choosing the right weapon for the job.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is always good for a laugh … admittedly bitter laughter:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/free-speech-lover-sarah-huckabee
https://www.wonkette.com/p/can-biden-hand-out-100-billion-in
@433 Rob
I am of two minds about that. On one hand, Youtube provides a halfway decent way to tamp down on harrassment, and it seems like space elevator lady knows how to use it. On the other, I am immediately suspicious of x-tubers who use controversial hot takes to get clicks, but who can’t handle criticism of their opinions in turn.
On a mutated third hand, Youtube videos and Youtube comments are terrible places to have any sort of structured exchange of ideas for the purpose of persuading others of your views. Personally, I’d much rather read a book about space elevators, orbital rings, supramundane worlds, and lofstrom loops instead of clicking on a series of videos where x-tubers are slinging mud at each other over a rather esoteric question.
beholder @465: Agreed on your third hand, but anyone (especially supposed professional scientists) who fucks up and then tries to conceal their fuck-up should be called out. The fucking up part isn’t a huge deal; we’ve all done it. The concealing is unforgivable.
20 trucks arrive in Gaza, but aid groups say it’s not enough
Washington Post link
How did McDonald’s become a new flashpoint in the Israel-Hamas war?
Washington Post link
Mike Lindell Wi-Fi Monitoring Devices Banned From Northern Kentucky Polls
The best and worst retirement systems in the world: US is just mediocre, survey finds
Lawsuit to block Trump from Colorado 2024 ballot survives more legal challenges
Opinion: Sidney Powell’s plea is bad news for Trump and other co-defendants
+++
Former College Student Sentenced for Stabbing Mom Over Suspension
Yes, two different women named Sydney Powell are in legal trouble right now.
@ 466
Lol.
Now look here Dr Collier: While your work for our university has been exemplary, a very serious matter has come to my attention. Very serious indeed. I hear that among the 3,000 comments on a droll, light-hearted and very funny YouTube video you made about “space elevators”, there was one from some random dude on the internet saying you were mistaken; and while quickly scanning your thousands of comments to moderate out trolls, you included that one instead of mounting a robust defence! This type of behaviour – needless to say – is completely unforgivable! Clear out your desk “Doctor” Collier – you’re expelled from the academy and your career in theoretical physics is finished!
Honestly, some people’s egos are so easily bruised.
Some people make a habit of addressing the person rather than the claims at hand.
(Would work better were their perception at all congruent to reality)
@ ^
This comment is addressing the person and not the claim at hand, but the author remains oblivious.
Honestly, some people’s egos are so easily bruised, lol.
(What a thing to write)
—
<snicker>
Silent is not bob.
The Israeli settlers on the West Bank are using the war as a perfect diversion for land grabs, driving arab bedouins and farmers away from their villages, killing arabs while the Israeli army does nothing.
(Swedish-language article, so no point in linking)
Bernie Sanders ‘socialism’ – Tikkun
https://www.tikkun.org/bernie-sanders-socialism/
I forgot the subtitle
-A call for a caring society.
@ 477 birgerjohansson
Wow. That’s unheard of.
I mean – except for every day for 75 years. :-(
Silentbob @473: Egos don’t come into it. My reaction would be the same if I’d seen a post by someone else correcting Collier’s high-school-level error, and then seen that comment disappeared.
Collier couldn’t handle having a glaring mistake pointed out. Not a good quality in a scientist.
BTW, weren’t you the bloke who encouraged people to skip the “boring math” part? Apparently you didn’t think that part was “droll, light-hearted and very funny”.
Rob Grigjanis @ 481, I’ve made my share of glaring, school child grade math boners over the years, I’ve even gotten corrected in a comment on YT over my comment with such an error.
I profusely thanked the corrector, as fixing and acknowledging a mistake is the proper way to move forward.
And well, I’m infamous for such errors, where simple math is my nemesis, but theory and non-number crunching math I’m reasonably decent at.
I’ve also gotten confounding results, due to an experimental error yielding results wildly well, just wrong. By an order of magnitude. Confounded engineers that looked at it until I finally replicated it and found the cause being harmonic amplification creating the odd result.
Learning from that guarded against repeating the error and once, was useful in achieving a desired specific goal.
In that case, one set of terminals had a weird stray capacitance not present anywhere else on a breadboard. Replicated on a soldered circuit later and used for output voltages needed when the proper components were not at hand. If it’s ugly, but it works, it’s beautiful. ;)
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-22/indigenous-leaders-call-referendum-defeat-appalling/103004646
Switzerland projected to shift to right in national elections
Dog walker films winds lifting forest floor during Storm Babet in Scotland
The Israeli bombings are levelling up, no surpeises there.
Also, 17 trucks with supplies from the Egyptian side are not enough to help a population of 2,2 million.
Trump Announced Sidney Powell Joined His Legal Team In 2020, Now Claims She Was ‘Never’ His Lawyer
There’s room for everyone under the bus!
https://twitter.com/Adam_Morfeld/status/1716101047960174828
Chicago police with extremist ties have troubling records
Ukraine Update: Infernal Machines, by Mark Sumner.
Link
Israeli army releases footage of first operational use of ‘Iron Sting’ munition destroying rocket launcher
News Biscuit; news from Britain.
Headlines
Party responsoble for catastrophic failures ‘bafflingly’ loses by-elections.
PM Sunak to Netanyahu: “No one likes me eiter”
Turns out, pandas have been doing anal all along.
An interesting (and to some degree, heartening) occurrence in Argentina. There were predictions that the self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei* could win in the first round of the Presidential election (for which he would need to come first with 45% of the vote or 40% with a 10% lead over the next candidate). In fact, he came second with just 30% of the vote, some 6.5% behind the “centre-left” Peronist Sergio Massa. Milei could still win the run-off, as deep disillusionment with the political class is thoroughly justified in Argentina, and the third-placed candidate comes from the conservative establishment right. But there was no justification in polling for the repetition of his own claims he would win in the first round; this seems like another example of the media falling over themselves to talk up the prospects of the far right.
*Milei’s actual policy proposals (e.g. banning abortion, slashing public spending and abolishing benefits, adopting the US dollar as Argentina’s currency), rhetoric (minimising the murders of the military junta of the 1970s-80s, calling climate change a “socialist lie”, brandishing a chain saw supposedly to emphasise his intended cuts in spending, using the Gadsden flag), and close links to Bolsonaro and Trump – reveal the fascism that seems always just under the surface of “anarcho-capitalism”.
Welcome to Mozilla’s first-ever Annual Consumer Creep-O-Meter
GOP Lawmaker Goes To Town On Matt Gaetz And His Allies In Snark-Filled Letter
Oh yes you do. The Republican Party refused to exclude or deny MAGA, so they absolutely deserve what they got. It’s just unfortunate the entire country has to suffer with them.
Elon Musk offers $1M to Wikipedia if they’ll change their name
Wikipedia would be foolish to count on Musk keeping his word.
Turkey’s president submits protocol for Sweden’s admission into NATO to parliament for ratification
Prominent German leftist to launch a new party that could eat into far-right’s support
Biggest cervical cancer drug advance in 20 years hailed