Monday should have marked the start of Donald Trump’s Washington, D.C. trial for attempting to overthrow the 2020 election, but has now been delayed for months by Trump’s claim to absolute immunity. With the Supreme Court agreeing to hear Trump’s appeal in April, the trial on charges of conspiracy and obstruction is unlikely to kick off before the fall.
In Florida, Trump’s trial on charges related to his withholding of classified documents continues to be put in doubt by a Trump-appointed judge. That one is currently set to begin on May 20, but Judge Aileen Cannon seems all but certain to move that date back by months.
In Georgia, where Trump has been charged with attempting to interfere in the state’s election results, proceedings have been delayed by a sideshow over the personal life of district attorney Fani Willis. The judge in that case has said he will rule on whether Willis must step aside within two weeks, but how this could affect the trial isn’t clear. No trial date has been set yet.
However, there is still one criminal trial that appears unaffected by the immunity appeal and unlikely to suffer further delays. That case includes 34 of the 91 felony charges Trump is currently facing, and it’s set to begin on March 25.
Unlike the recent trials for Trump’s sexual assault and defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll, or his trial for fraudulently inflating the value of his real estate holdings, the case that will go before a Manhattan court later this month is a criminal, not civil, proceeding.
This is the first time in history that any current or former president has faced a criminal trial.
The charges against Trump in this case involve falsifying New York business records to disguise hush money payments to adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels. Each of those charges carries a potential maximum sentence of four years in a state penitentiary.
While it may be satisfying to think of Judge Juan Merchan, who will oversee the case, sentencing Trump to 136 years behind bars, this is extremely unlikely. Of Trump’s four criminal trials, experts believe this case represents the least danger to Trump. Even if Trump is convicted on some or all of these charges, he could face a relatively small penalty when compared to the recent massive rulings in civil cases. He may not face any jail time.
Still, as The New York Times notes, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has extensive evidence against Trump, including audio recordings, and testimony from those involved. To avoid conviction, writes the Times, Trump’s attorneys will have to be “stellar.”
One of the witnesses testifying against Trump is likely to be his former attorney Michael Cohen. Cohen acted as the middleman between Trump and Daniels, and the repayments Trump made to Cohen are the subject of the charges against Trump. Cohen has already testified against Trump in his real estate fraud trial. Cohen was already tried in federal court and sentenced to three years in prison for charges related to the hush money scheme: tax evasion, campaign finance violations, and making a false statement to bank officials.
In this case, Trump is not going to be represented by the likes of Alina Habba or Rudy Giuliani. Instead, he will be represented by a new team of lawyers headed by Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles, both of whom have extensive experience in criminal court.
Whatever expertise his new legal team has, Blanche and Necheles may find it difficult to keep Trump under control. Trump made attacks on the judge and courtroom staff part of his routine in his civil cases. Considering his lack of success in intimidating Judge Arthur Engoron in the real estate fraud trial or Judge Lewis Kaplan in the Carroll case, Trump may have even learned his lesson about offending the person responsible for determining your sentence.
But probably not.
No cameras will be allowed in court, and additional steps may be taken to keep jury members anonymous based on the threats leveled against those involved in previous Trump trials. Expect further coverage of this trial as it approaches.
Donald Trump supporters are creating and sharing AI-generated images of the former president with Black voters. The photos appear to be an attempt to inflate Trump’s popularity with the Black community, which may be irreparably harmed by his ties to white supremacist groups, but the photos are nothing but fakes…
I see that The Infinite Thread reached the 500-comment limit in the previous chapter, and the thread has now rolled over to begin anew with comment #1.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to previous comments:
President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders have been using all their leverage to get House Speaker Mike Johnson behind critical Ukraine aid, and it appears to be working. CNN reported on Sunday that Johnson has reached out to the pro-Ukraine wing of House Republicans, which has been working on a bipartisan bill that includes military aid—but not humanitarian assistance—to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as some border-related measures. The group’s support among House Republican leadership is “[m]ore than you think,” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, told CNN. “We have to get something done.”
This promising development follows a meeting last week in which Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell ganged up on Johnson, pressuring him to make the House vote on the Senate’s foreign aid package, which includes Ukraine aid.
However, things might not be so simple.
Johnson’s problem is the threat from the far-right maniacs in his party—especially Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—who appear poised to oust him from the speakership the minute a Ukraine aid bill lands on the floor. Greene staked out her position in January, saying she personally would trigger the vote for his ouster. “We can’t fund Ukraine,” she said, saying it is “an absolute no-go—that would be a reason to vacate.”
However, Democrats have an answer to that, depending on what Johnson does. After the leaders’ meeting last week, Jeffries told reporters that “a reasonable number” of Democrats would likely protect him from that.
“It does seem to me,” Jeffries said, “based on informal conversations, that were Speaker Johnson to do the right thing relative to meeting the significant national security needs of the American people by putting it on the floor for an up-or-down vote, there will be a reasonable number of people in the House Democratic Caucus who will take the position that he should not fall as a result.”
[…] [snipped details about the discharge bill, which remains a long shot option.]
Jeffries is using both a carrot and a stick here, letting Johnson know Democrats would protect him if he does the right thing, but also sending the message that they’ll do everything they can to make him look even weaker by forcing it on him.
How “weak” Speaker Mike Johnson looks (or does not look) should not be an issue. Don’t care.
Nikki Haley won her first Republican presidential nominating contest over the weekend, easily defeating Donald Trump in the Washington, D.C., primary. The former president responded to the setback by saying “purposely” didn’t try to compete in the contest.
[…] Haley took 63% of the GOP primary vote to 33% for Trump. Just over 2,000 Washington Republicans cast ballots. Because Haley got more than half of the vote, she came away with the District’s 19 delegates. […]
Ten states still haven’t embraced Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. In a pleasant surprise, Mississippi might lower that total to nine.
Late last year, Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act finally reached North Carolina, extending health security to an estimated 600,000 low-income residents. It brought the total of states that have embraced the policy to 40, leaving just 10 holdouts.
A Washington Post report added soon after, “North Carolina may be the last of the Medicaid expansion holdout states to reverse course for a while.” There was every reason to believe that was true.
But once in a while, as those who follow the issue closely know, surprises happen. The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, reported last week:
The state of Mississippi is one step closer to giving more than 210,000 residents access to healthcare via a Medicaid expansion bill. House Bill 1725 passed the House by a vote of 98-20, with no vocal opposition to the bill after it was introduced by Medicaid Committee Chair Missy McGee, R-Hattiesburg.
Yes, Mississippi is a reliably “red” state. And yes, Republicans continue to control all of the levers of power, including sizable majorities in the state House and state Senate.
But on this issue, after years in which the state’s health system has struggled and hospitals have struggled to keep their doors open, there’s newfound interest in progressive change.
[…] The bill that cleared the state House now heads to the state Senate, where there is reportedly a fair amount of interest in advancing the proposal.
There is, however, an important hurdle standing in the way of success: Republican Gov. Tate Reeves remains a fierce opponent of the idea, and even if the legislature were to pass Medicaid expansion, the governor would be able to veto it.
But the legislative math matters: In the state House, the legislation passed by a veto-proof majority. If there’s a comparable vote in the state Senate, Reeves’ opinion on the matter might very prove irrelevant.
As for how we arrived at this point, when the U.S. Supreme Court initially upheld the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality, the court’s majority delivered some bad news to health care advocates: Medicaid expansion, the justices concluded, had to be optional, not mandatory under federal law. […]
Former President Trump pulled out an unanimous victory at the Supreme Court on Monday in his historic ballot ban case that invoked the 14th Amendment, but a 5-4 division among the justices emerged beneath the surface — joined by one of his own nominees.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the court’s three liberals criticized their five conservative colleagues for going further than they needed to in resolving Trump’s case by also determining that the only way for the 14th Amendment to be enforced is through a statute by Congress.
“This suit was brought by Colorado voters under state law in state court. It does not require us to address the complicated question whether federal legislation is the exclusive vehicle through which Section 3 can be enforced,” Barrett, Trump’s last appointee to the high court, wrote in a concurring opinion.
“The majority’s choice of a different path leaves the remaining Justices with a choice of how to respond,” Barrett continued. “The Court has settled a politically charged issue in the volatile season of a Presidential election. Particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up.”
[…] All nine justices sided with Trump on Monday by preserving his status on the ballot, reversing a lower court’s decision that disqualified him in Colorado under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection ban because of his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
The court’s decision came on the eve of Super Tuesday, when Colorado voters will join more than a dozen other states in casting their primary ballots for president. The court unanimously agreed that a singular state has no unilateral authority to disqualify federal candidates from the ballot.
The other five conservatives — two Trump appointees in Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito — also concluded that Congress has exclusive authority to enforce the provision.
[…] the court’s three liberals said the finding was unnecessary and was designed to insulate Trump and others alleged insurrectionists from disqualification.
[…] The liberal justices said Monday they could not join an opinion that “decided momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily,” also saying the conclusions were “inadequately supported” and “gratuitous.”
“By resolving these and other questions, the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office,” the trio of justices wrote.
“And I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.”
Any school with a vaccine mandate? Because that would be damn near every school in America, with the possible exception of the Moms for Liberty Bible-Readin’ and Whooping Cough Academy we told you about a few weeks ago.
It’s hilarious that Trump is making such a pledge at the same time we’re getting news reports like this out of two separate states:
Both the [measles] outbreaks in Broward County, Florida, and Philadelphia made news after children brought the disease into the wider community. Six children grew sick at Manatee Bay elementary in Florida, and nine in Philadelphia after a child went to a daycare while infected.
First off, if Quinta Brunson is reading this, we have a script for an episode of “Abbott Elementary” for you. We’ll have our agent give you a ring. Actually, we’ll get an agent, then have that agent give you a ring.
Second, this isn’t really up to Trump. Congress writes the budget bills. If Congress says no, we’re not pulling Department of Education funding from Plague J. Plague-arama Middle School because it followed its state laws and common sense and made all its students get an MMR vaccine, then President Brainworms will sign whatever budget bill covers it. He’s free to then go impotently whine on Truth Social about the whole situation, we don’t care, we don’t have an account at his online Nazi clubhouse.
The situation in Florida brings new attention to the state’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, a right-wing hack appointed to the position two years ago by old Smilin’ Ron DeSantis, who was busy at the time turning his state into a laboratory for all sorts of MAGA-themed policies. […]
Ladapo sent parents in the Broward County school district (home of Manatee Bay Elementary) a letter in which he said, basically, parents should use their own judgment about whether to send their at-risk kids to school. […]
Measles was wiped out in America a quarter century ago. Apparently Ladapo’s attitude toward a measles vaccine is the same logic the Supreme Court used to gut the Voting Rights Act: the VRA put a stop to racially motivated voter suppression, so we can get rid of it and just assume everything’s cool now and everyone learned their lesson.
[…] Florida’s Department of Health later tried to clarify that it was all the media’s fault for lying about what Ladapo said, saying in a statement that “In reality, [Ladapo] has used available data and immunity rates to drive policy decisions impacting Manatee Bay Elementary.”
Right, that’s the problem: Ladapo used that data and immunity rates to reach the exact opposite conclusion of what the CDC and decades and decades of education and experience tell us is the correct one.
[Trump’s] people will probably write “bring back polio” into the Republican platform at this summer’s convention.
This story was originally published by Grist.
On Thursday, the Biden administration announced new washer and dryer efficiency standards that could ease those burdens.
The updated standards — first reported by Grist — will result in top-loading clothes washers that are 11 percent more energy efficient than similar current machines while using 28 percent less water. Dryers will see up to a 40 percent reduction in energy use, depending on the model. The requirements are in line with current Energy Star efficiency benchmarks, and will apply to equipment produced after March 1, 2028…
If a consumer were to swap the least efficient model available today to the most common models available under the new efficiency standards, they would save around $120 per year, according to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a nonprofit that helped negotiate the new standards…
Um, that’s a bit of fancy footwork. So the efficiency standards for appliances are getting better. The least efficient models will be gone, but your savings will depend on how well your old appliances met or exceeded the old standards. And also, they won’t save you anything at all until the next time you change appliances.
@12: Farron Cousins: “Republicans Sound The Alarm As Party’s Fundraising Completely Dries Up”
Right now, donors are skittish, because they want their donations to influence political campaigns, not go straight into Trump’s legal defense fund. But they won’t stop buying the influence their wealth and the Supreme Court grants them. They will find ways to do it that do not channel their funds through the RNC. Such as: Koch-backed group unveiling campaign showcasing ‘truth on Bidenomics’
Also, I expect that over time they will claim that Trump’s candidacy is inevitable, and so they will give up their “principles” and go ahead and fund him. This expectation is based on their complete lack of backbone and track record of previous behavior.
A federal judge on Monday rejected U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez’s claims that search warrants that led to corruption charges and the discovery of gold bars and cash at his New Jersey home were unconstitutional.
Judge Sidney H. Stein ruled Monday that multiple warrants used to conduct 2022 searches of the Democrat’s email accounts and his home were properly sought and carried out…
birgerjohanssonsays
“I met the Israeli settlers Biden placed sanctions on. They’re bad – but part of a rotten system” | Zak Witus | The Guardian
Former President Donald Trump is set to receive national security intelligence briefings once he secures the Republican nomination despite being indicted on charges that he mishandled classified materials after leaving office.
Barring any changes, once Trump is formally nominated at the Republican National Convention, he will be offered intelligence briefings ahead of the general election. Despite facing a “bevy of federal charges” stemming from his stash of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago residence in August 2022, “nothing” would currently restrict Trump’s access to further classified information if he secures the Republican nomination this summer, unless he is convicted by a jury or pleads guilty, Javed Ali, former senior counterterrorism official at the Department of Homeland Security, told Salon…
The bipartisan Indiana Election Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to remove one of two Republican U.S. Senate candidates from the primary ballot, and the state Supreme Court rejected his legal challenge to the law barring his candidacy.
The decision to remove John Rust from the ballot leaves U.S. Rep. Jim Banks as the only GOP candidate for the seat.
Rust had sued state officials over Indiana’s law requiring that candidates must have voted in their party’s past two primaries or received the approval of a county party chair in order to appear on the primary ballot…
Political parties, which are not mentioned at all in the U.S. Constitution, and yet they have more power over who can be a candidate than the Secretary of State and Supreme Court of Colorado or other states. Go figure.
Quebec’s public health director is asking Quebecers to make sure they and their children are properly vaccinated against the measles, as cases of the virus are on the rise in the province, especially in Montreal.
Dr. Luc Boileau said health officials have so far counted 10 measles cases in Quebec. At least three are related to international travel, but Boileau said a small number of cases are suspected to have been caused by community transmission. ..
John Moralessays
Reginald @17:
Political parties, which are not mentioned at all in the U.S. Constitution, and yet they have more power over who can be a candidate than the Secretary of State and Supreme Court of Colorado or other states. Go figure.
Easy enough to figure, just going by what you quoted.
A political party can veto someone from being a candidate representing that party.
(Why you find it strange that the GOP (silly name, that) can veto someone from being a GOP candidate is itself strange)
birgerjohanssonsays
Lords pass five amendments to Rwanda bill in heavy defeat for Rishi Sunak | Rwanda | The Guardian
Former President Donald Trump is set to receive national security intelligence briefings once he secures the Republican nomination despite being indicted on charges that he mishandled classified materials after leaving office.
Donald Trump capped off his split-screen debacle of an appearance at the border with a weekend speech in Virginia driving home exactly how mentally unfit he is to be commander in chief of the U.S. military.
Trump, using the specter of nuclear mayhem, sought to suggest his chief political rival for the presidency was a threat to global stability.
“Putin has so little respect for [Barack] Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word,” Trump told the rally, as the crowd fell silent.
Trump, seeking a reaction, revisited the word ‘nuclear.’ “You heard that—nuclear. He’s starting to talk nuclear weapons today,” Trump repeated, falling completely flat with the audience. [video at the think]
Trump topped off his botched attack by adding, “We have a fool—a fool—as a president.”
The pitch here from the ultimate chaos candidate was supposed to be that America is unsafe under “Obama”—otherwise known as President Biden to the rest of us—but will be safe under Trump because he’s a stronger leader. In other words, Trump will supposedly impose world order across the globe if he reclaims the White House. Never mind the fact that he has mixed up former President Obama—whom he’s never run against—with President Biden at least eight times during the past several months of campaigning.
[…] Trump also had a choice message for all those reality-based Mitt Romney Republicans out there: Take a hike.
After claiming that MAGA Republicans account for “96% and maybe 100%” of the GOP, Trump said, “We’re getting rid of the Romneys of the world.
“We want to get Romneys and, uh, those out,” Trump added, in a dash of verbal mastery. [video at the link]
“Those,” as Trump so aptly put it, account for anywhere from 25% to 30% of the Republican Party. In South Carolina, for instance, Trump’s GOP rival, Nikki Haley, won:
30% of self-identified “Republicans.”
43% of “somewhat conservative” voters.
74% of “moderate/liberal” voters.
[…] Just to be clear, Haley’s share of the Republican electorate—’those’ looking for an alternative—is a sizable portion of self-identified Republicans by any stretch in a general election that promises to be a nail-biter. That share is exponentially more crucial to a candidate who has never won more than 47% of the vote in either of his presidential bids. Yet Trump is absolutely insistent on subtracting Romney and Haley supporters from his coalition. […]
Over the weekend, “60 Minutes” aired a piece on Moms for Liberty, the conservative “watchdog” group that has inspired absurd book bans across the country. Two of the founders of the group, Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, sat for an interview with reporter Scott Pelley and had a difficult time answering pretty simple and direct questions.
“We love teachers. My children have had the best teachers. I’ve had the greatest teachers that have influenced and impact me. But there are rogue teachers in America’s classrooms right now,” Descovich told Pelley. Justice added, “Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology.”
Pelley asked, “What ideology are they being indoctrinated into?” Whether something short-circuited inside Descovich’s brain is hard to say, but after taking a breath and swallowing, she slowly answered, “Let’s just say … children in America cannot read.” Huh?
Pelley repeatedly pointed out that the two were being “evasive,” and when Justice attempted to pivot to a handful of books with sexual content that may be inappropriate for certain age groups, his report was quick to point out that “Most people wouldn’t want them in a lower school. But in a tactic of outrage politics, Moms for Liberty takes a kernel of truth and concludes: These examples are not rare mistakes, but a plot to sexualize children.”
There’s a reason these women don’t want to give clear answers to questions about their real positions on education: They aren’t popular opinions among most Americans. The midterm elections bore that out when the overwhelming majority of the group’s endorsed candidates failed to win school board races across the country.
[…] The two women also denied theirs is an anti-LGBTQ+ organization—a position that the historical record does not support. They admit the group’s social media accounts are managed by Justice, but when pressed by Pelley on repeated social media posts attacking librarians and others for being “groomers,” a term that right-wing extremists use as a blaring horn of an anti-gay dog whistle, Justice’s nonsensical response was, “Parents want to to partner with their children’s schools, but we do not co-parent with the government.”
Pelley pressed further, observing that “Grooming does not seem like a word that you want to take on?” Justice’s response was, “We did some polling” about “parental rights,” instead of owning up to her own inflammatory use of specific words.
The full segment focused on Beaufort, South Carolina, where two people’s complaints led to threats and a review of 97 books. Moms for Liberty, which is designated an “extremist” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is one of the main groups behind the so-called parental rights movement that manufactures rage about inappropriate literature being used in schools beset by “woke” ideology.
According to Pelley’s report, after a long, drawn-out process, only five of the 97 books ended up being banned (and it was discovered that one of the books being attacked had never appeared on a school shelf in the first place) while a few other books were moved up to middle school and high school libraries.
Enjoy the clear cowardice of two people who claim they want parents to have the right to choose what their children learn, but clearly want to control what other people’s children should learn. [video at the link]
Reginald Selkirksays
@22: but after taking a breath and swallowing, she slowly answered, “Let’s just say … children in America cannot read.” Huh?
Right. That’s because they lack reading material, because Nazi Moms for ‘Liberty’ has banned all the books.
NASA has canceled an over-budget, behind-schedule mission to demonstrate robotic satellite servicing technology in orbit, pulling the plug on a project that has cost $1.5 billion and probably would have cost nearly $1 billion more to get to the launch pad.
The On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 mission, known as OSAM-1, would have grappled an aging Landsat satellite in orbit and attempted to refuel it, while also demonstrating how a robotic arm could construct an antenna in space. The spacecraft for the OSAM-1 mission is partially built, but NASA announced Friday that officials decided to cancel the project “following an in-depth, independent project review.”
The space agency cited “continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges” for the decision to cancel OSAM-1…
Cambridge University historian Federica Gigante is an expert on Islamic astrolabes. So naturally she was intrigued when the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo in Verona, Italy, uploaded an image of just such an astrolabe to its website. The museum thought it might be a fake, but when Gigante visited to see the astrolabe firsthand, she realized it was not only an authentic 11th century instrument—one of the oldest yet discovered—it had engravings in both Arabic and Hebrew…
That’s about as lazy as anyone could be, birgerjohansson.
Three words, one obscure link.
No effort made to say what the supposed point is, how it is somehow novel or relevant, or by whom.
Just a fucking link to something I need to click just to find out any of that stuff.
So. Fucking. Lazy!
A video by some mob that identifies as “Secular Talk”.
28:24.
The blurb (when you click on “more”):
“The first time I ever really listened to Kyle Kulinski’s show was in the back of a cab last summer. The driver had his phone hooked up through the stereo and was pumping out an episode through the car speakers — loudly, as if looking to convert a captive audience.
“Do you like Kyle Kulinski?”
The driver, Ahmed, was a recent immigrant and apparently a die-hard fan of Secular Talk, the political talk show that Kulinski broadcasts on YouTube. I told him, yes, in fact. I do like Kulinski, had come across his show several years ago, and, all things considered, he seemed pretty good.
“He understands what we’re up against,” Ahmed said. “Like Bernie.”
But I was surprised to hear Kulinski’s name mentioned in the same breath as Bernie Sanders, particularly with such adoration. Because what I did remember about Kulinski’s show struck me as mostly capital-P “progressive” takes on the news — the left wing of the Netroots crowd more than the democratic socialism Sanders has popularized.
It’s an impression that wasn’t entirely incorrect.
“I have no time for philosophical, airy bullshit,” Kulinski tells me from his home in Westchester, New York. “I don’t want to hear about Lenin. I don’t want to hear about Marx. I just want a super plainspoken, straightforward agenda with a straightforward way of selling it.”
With over 800,000 subscribers and nearly 670 million total views on YouTube, selling a progressive agenda is clearly something Kulinski knows how to do — even Democracy Now, the long-standing flagship of progressive media, cannot match his reach on the platform. Chapo Trap House can certainly boast a wildly devoted fan base (and a not insignificant degree of media influence), but their audience is roughly half the size of Kulinski’s.
While Secular Talk might be more likely to be looped in with the progressive networks around Air America and Pacifica alums like Sam Seder than the more resolutely socialist world, Kulinski’s fiery rhetoric, razor-sharp class instincts, and knack for withering takedowns sets him apart from his peers. Judging by his rhetoric alone, he’s closer to a Eugene Debs than a Chris Hayes.
But unlike Hayes, Amy Goodman, or his friend Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks — who began airing Secular Talk on his web network seven years ago — the thirty-two-year-old Kulinski is virtually invisible in the mainstream media. Despite his enormous fan base, his show has never once been mentioned in the obligatory trend pieces on “the Millennial Left” pumped out by the prestige media. Nor has Kulinski’s name ever popped up at all in the New York Times, Vox, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, or the Washington Post, despite his leading role in cofounding Justice Democrats, the organization widely credited with sweeping Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of “the Squad” to power.
Just last week, his Wikipedia page was deleted. The reason? “There is very simply no [reliable source] coverage of this person,” according to one moderator. In new media, he’s king — the Sean Hannity of the Berniecrat left. In old media, he’s nobody.
I suspect there are a few reasons for that. There is nothing “cool” about Kulinski’s show. (As a friend put it, “‘Welcome to Secular Talk’ sounds like something you’d hear on Egyptian radio.”) His no-nonsense social-democratic politics won’t get him much cred with the Full Communism crowd. He records his show not in Brooklyn or Los Angeles, but in a studio he built himself in his modest Westchester home. His hair is too groomed and his taste in clothes too preppy to qualify as “Dirtbag Left.” Nor has he ever attended an n+1 release party. “Not only have I not attended one,” he says, “I have no idea what that means.”
And yet he’s astonishingly plugged-in for a young man in the suburbs. Wondering how Sanders ended up on the Joe Rogan Experience? Kulinski, a frequent guest on Rogan’s wildly popular show, introduced them. “You make the most sense to me,” Rogan told Kulinski on a recent episode. “You’re a normal person.”
Much like Sanders himself, Kulinski’s show has a massive audience that just doesn’t compute with our media’s understanding of “what the kids want” or even “what the left-wing kids want.”
It’s probably for the best — the very woke and very WASP-ish decorum haunting much of the media world is nowhere to be found in Secular Talk. “Corporate Democrats over-focus on identity as a trick to divert you from the issues that unite us all — class issues,” he said on a recent episode.
Ah yes, Credible Chris Christie Conveys Cruel Caution.
By somebody on some channel, with or without actual imagery.
(Gotta click to find out!)
lotharloosays
I browsed the blog of the bloodthirsty racist Jerry Coyne and found this lovely little gem (about starving kids in Gaza):
There are more serious problems of starvation due to fighting in Yemen and Somalia, but nobody talks about aid to those countries. Nor did we drop humanitarian aid on Dresden or Berlin (I’m excepting the postwar Berlin airlift, of course.) I approve of the U.S. relieving starvation, of course, but how are they going to keep the food out of the hands of Hamas?
He is lying when is says he is supporting “relieving starvation” of course. Everything in what Jerry Coyne writes screams of his hatred for the Gazans. It’s absolutely shocking and disgusting.
I used to read Coyne’s blog — but nowadays it is like reading Nick Fuentes or something from the KKK, so I don’t bother. I suspected this would be happening when I discovered how welcoming he was to people from the Slymepit.
It’s a shame, too. I used to recommend Why Evolution is True to students looking for a basic primer in evolution, but not any more. Nowadays I hand out Ken Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God — he may be a darned theist, but he’s still a decent human being, unlike some of my former New Atheist compatriots.
Amanda Marcotte
It’s become a tedious trope, the Beltway journalist who goes on a red state safari to ask Donald Trump voters if they still like Trump. It frustrates smart readers because invariably the answer is “yes” yet the rationale is typically incoherent babble. Even that would be fine, if these reporters dug an inch deeper, to get at the various bigotries that are actually driving the MAGA movement. Instead, most of them seem too in awe of redhats sitting in diners, as though they’ve just encountered a rare species of bird in the wild, to bother interrogating them in a way that reveals anything genuinely valuable.
If readers see the title “White Rural Rage: The Threat to Democracy,” they might think it’s more of the same. But this book, by former Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman and University of Maryland, Baltimore professor Thomas Schaller, is a very different animal. Waldman and Schaller believe that rural white people are functioning adults who have agency and are not the childlike ciphers of Fox News. As such, the book refreshingly holds rural white voters to account for their choices, and for willfully gobbling down right-wing propaganda. It calls on rural Americans to take responsibility for themselves, by asking harder question of what it would actually take to improve their communities.
Waldman and Schaller spoke to Salon about what rural America actually needs, and why Republican voters stubbornly refuse to admit it…
NATO member Albania, which has no fighter jets of its own, opened a rebuilt Soviet-era air base to serve NATO aircraft on Monday amid an increased threat from Russia, Prime Minister Edi Rama said.
NATO has spent over 50 million euros ($54.26 million) on the Kucova Air Base to bolster its presence in the region…
Poland has signed a deal to buy anti-tank grenade launchers from Sweden’s Saab in a deal worth around 6.5 billion zlotys ($1.63 billion), its Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Monday…
Saab are pretty good at making things that go bang. So is Bofors, but their corruption and perjury during a gun export deal to India has shamed them into changing the name of the company.
Teachers and other staff in the Houston Independent school district (HISD), which serves the fourth most populous city in the US, are calling for the state-appointed superintendent of the district to be removed amid a surge in resignations of employees, cuts to libraries and implementation of rigid school reform curriculum.
The Republican governor, Greg Abbott, announced last year that the state of Texas would take control over the Houston Independent school district in June 2023 and replace democratically-elected school board members with state-appointed ones. The move was criticized as part of Abbott’s agenda of expanding charter schools in Texas as one of his legislative priorities has been pushing a bill to expand vouchers for charter schools that failed to garner enough support to pass in 2023.
Floyd Mike Miles, the CEO of charter school corporation Third Futures Schools, was appointed superintendent of the Houston Independent school district last June by the Texas education agency. Miles previously served as superintendent of the Dallas schools district before resigning in 2015…
During the debate over the Republicans’ tax plan — to the extent that there was an actual “debate” — GOP policymakers insisted that they didn’t have to offset the costs of the tax giveaways. Party officials instead argued, with great sincerity, that tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations would magically pay for themselves through increased growth.
[…] Even Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, ostensibly one of her party’s more reasonable members, not only defended her party’s regressive Republican tax plan, she also insisted, more than once, that the tax breaks would pay for themselves.
They did not pay for themselves.
The New York Times reported […]
The corporate tax cuts came nowhere close to paying for themselves, as conservatives insisted they would. Instead, they are adding more than $100 billion a year to America’s $34 trillion-and-growing national debt, according to the quartet of researchers from Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and the Treasury Department.
To be sure, these findings aren’t altogether surprising. We’ve known for several years that the Trump-era tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations didn’t pay for themselves. We’ve also known for quite some time that this question has been tested and re-tested, and the results are always the same.
So why does the evidence matter? Several reasons, actually.
First, there’s the question of accountability. The Republicans who claim to care deeply about “fiscal responsibility” and balanced budgets insisted that their tax giveaways wouldn’t add to the deficit that they occasionally pretend to take seriously. The public, when assessing these policymakers’ work, deserves to know that the GOP officials got this important question wrong.
Second, credibility matters, too. Republicans — who are inexplicably enjoying a sizable advantage in polling on economic policy, despite the realities of recent decades — claim to know what they’re talking about. When compelling evidence to the contrary comes to the fore, it warrants attention.
Third, at the heart of Republicans’ thinking about economic policy isn’t just the discredited belief that giving tax breaks to the wealthy produces broad prosperity, but also that the party need not concern itself with paying for the giveaways. Ideally, when presented with decades’ worth of evidence disproving their core assumption, the party would reconsider this misguided belief.
But perhaps most important of all is the fact that GOP officials are eager to repeat their mistake. In fact, The Washington Post reported in January that Donald Trump has privately told his allies “that he is keenly interested in cutting corporate tax rates again,” despite the failures of his 2017 effort.
When Donald Trump came into office, he did so in an election that also gave Republicans a four-seat edge in the Senate and a whopping 47-seat advantage in the House. For two years, Republicans had nearly free rein to do whatever they wanted, and what they wanted was a massive tax cut for wealthy Americans and corporations.
Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan sold the package as a “middle-class tax cut,” but the truth was the bill got rid of medical deductions used by millions of lower-income Americans to make room for massive corporate tax breaks. Ryan and other Republicans predicted that the tax cut would more than pay for itself, generating $1 trillion in economic growth. Trump called it “rocket fuel” for the economy.
The so-called “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” passed with only Republican votes in the House and Senate, and almost from the beginning, it was clear that the bill was not what they had claimed. More than 60% of the savings went to people at the top of the income ladder. Revenues fell even more than the Congressional Budget Office had predicted before the law passed. Republicans behind the bill were forced to admit that it might never pay off, and Ryan was left bragging about a school secretary who was “pleasantly surprised” by a $1.50 weekly raise.
And now, after six years, the National Bureau of Economic Research has completed the most detailed, in-depth analysis of the results of the Trump tax cut. And what the nonprofit found was what seemed obvious before the bill was passed: It may have stimulated some corporate growth, but it ballooned the debt while producing a fraction of predicted benefits.
[…] Republicans leaned on a letter from nine conservative economists, which was published in The Wall Street Journal. That letter cited extremely hopeful predictions based on what it said “many economists believe.” These included a simplistic lower-taxes-equals-more-growth-equals-everybody-wins string of predictions that would have made Ronald Reagan proud. It focused on the idea that, by encouraging companies to invest more in the United States and do less business overseas, the tax cut would be revenue neutral. That is, the tax cut would generate as much new revenue through investment growth as it lost through the decreasing tax rate. Because conservative economic theory said so.
But Republicans did more than just promise that a massive tax cut for corporations would come without any cost to the government. They said that the average American would see a big bump in pay.
[…] Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers predicted the cut would translate into a $4,000 to $9,000 raise for the average American household within three to five years. [Fairy tales … lies … trumpian grift]
[…] Far from being revenue neutral, corporate tax revenue dropped by $100 to $150 billion per year, the NBER’s new analysis found. And when it came to the amount trickling down to workers, the result was more like an average of $750 per worker per year in the long run.
[…] There were no magic multipliers or huge stimulative effects that turned this money into something many times greater.
[…] the combination of reduced tax rates and changes in rules that allowed corporations greater flexibility in deducting expenses meant an incredible 41% decline in corporate tax collections.
[…] corporate tax revenues fell drastically, adding dramatically to the national debt. But corporations did end up with a lot more revenue—so that part of the prediction, which was probably the only part Republicans really cared about—was true.
[…] Kristin Welker is bad at her job. Yes, the person who was chosen to fill both sides of Chuck Todd’s clown shoes is, in fact, bad at it. Indeed, it’s remarkable to us how quickly our mind’s eye has changed, when we picture “lazy hack journalist,” how Welker has fully replaced Chuck Todd’s […] face. But she’s done it.
This weekend, Welker explained to us that Donald Trump allegedly tried to overturn the 2020 election. Allegedly. Clearly, she just didn’t want to get ahead of her skis and say something she couldn’t defend. As if we hadn’t all watched it happen right in front of us, over the course of months, on Twitter, in news reporting, on live TV on January 6 as the [people] who worship him scaled the walls of the Capitol at his urging, screaming “Hang Mike Pence!” in order to stop Vice President Mike Pence from allowing the electoral votes from the states to be counted.
Let’s watch this video of the journalist hard at work, shared by Aaron Rupar. [video at the link]
“ … Mister Trump’s claim that he’s immune from prosecution for ALLEGEDLY trying to overturn the 2020 election … “
Mister Trump. Allegedly. […]
Rupar encourages us to watch that video juxtaposed with Welker’s breathless coverage of the garbage Robert Hur report, which we read in its entirety instead of having interns do it for us […] so we know firsthand what a pathetic, try-hard piece of shit it is. We know that Special Counsel Hur desperately wanted to charge President Joe Biden with a crime, but he couldn’t find evidence of one that would stand up in a court of law. We know how it reads like it was designed by scientists to snake directly up Fox News hosts’ butts and tickle their giggle spots, with its fluffy insinuations about Biden’s feeble brain, but utterly lacks empirical data. [True. The Hur report does utterly lack empirical data.]
We know how Hur was — reluctantly, it seemed — forced to explain at length why the crimes Trump is charged with (the document stealing crimes, not the allegedly election-stealing crimes) are far more serious than any pissant BS he could string together about Joe Biden.
When we wrote about that report, we wrote that “Oh, the both-sides-gasm is going to be messy. But her emails but her emails BUT JOE BIDEN’S DOCUMENTS […]” To be completely 100 percent fair and truthful, we were thinking about Chuck Todd when we wrote that, because it’s easy to forget he’s gone to the Rainbow Bridge or whatever.
Ryan Goodman from Just Security compiled this thread on Welker’s coverage of the Hur report, starting with this screengrab: [screengrab at the link]
What are the ellipses in that graphic hiding? How hard are they working? Goodman explains the context, before the words about Joe Biden “willfully retain[ing] and disclos[ing] classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen”:
Hur report says only “evidence” of that. Plus Hur says it was not sufficient evidence. Hur says he also found evidence that Biden did NOT do so, and Hur says he cannot refute innocent explanations.
Oh. Well yes, it does say that, as we also know, because we read it, using the noodle God gave us.
Goodman shows how “Meet The Press” claimed Biden had actively and willfully given classified information to his ghostwriter, next to screengrabs from the Hur report saying that “the evidence falls short of proving that Mr. Biden did so willfully.” That’s on page 245, but he includes receipts from pages 10 and 248 too. “The evidence does not show … “ “The evidence does not establish … “
“Meet The Press” did not fucking read.
Goodman also shared the interview from that week’s show Welker did with Mitch Landrieu, which was captured and tweeted by Rupar. Unbelievably, Welker said the report was “quite firm in the fact that [Biden] mishandled classified documents, he just wasn’t indicted and criminally charged.” At which point Landrieu cut her off completely. “No no no no no no no no, I’m not going to accept that premise.”
And he explained why, from a legal perspective and, really, from a journalistic perspective, because nobody else in the camera’s frame was doing that.
It went on: [video at the link]
WELKER: He did say that classified documents were mishandled, and he said that national security could have been jeopardized …
LANDRIEU: Yes, but Kristin, he didn’t say “national security,” no ma’am, I’m sorry, he didn’t say national security was compromised …
WELKER: He said it could have been! …
LANDRIEU: … But it was not. And the facts and the law suggested that the president was not engaged in criminal activity, to be distinguished between the former president, who right now has 91 felony counts pending against him, in four different cases, so let’s just keep the facts right, and let’s not make false comparisons between the two, which unfortunately people do a lot of these days.
If Mitch Landrieu is not busy could he please move into the television and sit at the bottom of “Meet The Press” and loudly say “THAT’S BULLSHIT” and explain why, every time Welker pulls a Chuck Todd?
Just kidding, we wouldn’t wish that on our worst enemy and we like Landrieu just fine.
Darren Woods, the CEO of petrogiant Exxon Mobil, is very disappointed with You People for taking decades to even start doing something about the global warming caused by burning fossil fuels. Shame on you. You know, it’s really your fault that the world is unlikely to meet its Paris climate agreement goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, because for some reason you have all been dragging your feet.
In an interview with Fortune last week, Woods explained that consumers need to get their shit together and pay for the energy transition, no matter how much it costs.
“The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who’s willing to pay for it. […] The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions. That is ultimately how you solve the problem.”
Woods just wants to know when people will finally come to their senses and take some responsibility for climate change, huh? “When are people going to be willing to pay for carbon reduction?” he asked, adding that oil companies “have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon in it, but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that.”
Shame on them!
You people should really think about why you didn’t take serious action to transition away from fossil fuels when the world’s scientists started warning of the crisis in the late 1980s. It’s also entirely your fault that the four biggest publicly-traded oil companies brought in roughly $2 trillion in profits since 1990, to say nothing of the money accumulated by state-owned producers across the world.
Your inaction couldn’t possibly be related to the abundantly documented efforts of Exxon in particular to quash its own scientists’ research, going back to the 1970s, showing that continued fossil fuel use would lead to catastrophic warming in coming decades. Nor the millions of dollars Exxon and other oil companies spent funding fake science to raise doubt about the reality of human-caused global heating. Seriously, why didn’t Americans just toss out all the petro-funded politicians like Sen. James Inhofe, who gleefully tossed a snowball in the Senate to prove it was still cold in winter? Darren Woods is shocked at your gullibility.
As recently as 2021, you also probably should have stopped Mr. Woods from lying to Congress about his company’s history of funding climate denial, darn you. And why didn’t you dumb non-millionaires match the oil industry’s lobbying and litigation aimed at undermining Joe Biden’s climate program either?
Despite Woods’s disappointment in all of us for not reining him in, there are still plenty of unkind meanies who accused him of shirking his own industry’s responsibility for the climate crisis, like Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes, co-author of Merchants of Doubt […] who also cowrote a 2021 analysis of how Exxon obfuscated its part in the climate crisis:
“The playbook is this: sell consumers a product that you know is dangerous, while publicly denying or downplaying those dangers. Then, when the dangers are no longer deniable, deny responsibility and blame the consumer. […]
“For decades, they told us that the science was too uncertain to justify action, that it was premature to act, and that we could and should wait and see how things developed,” said Oreskes. “Now the CEO says: oh dear, we’ve waited too long. If this isn’t gaslighting, I don’t know what is.”
And indeed, Woods said in the Fortune interview that the world “waited too long” to develop cleaner energy sources, but that even so, Exxon “recognized the need to decarbonize,” and said the company even supports a carbon tax, OK?
Just everyone please ignore the Exxon lobbyist behind the curtain who openly bragged in 2021 about how “supporting” a carbon tax was great public relations, since it would never pass in Congress.
As for proven clean energy technology like wind, solar, and storage, which are becoming cheaper than fossil fuels, Woods explained that it’s nice and all, but just not an Exxon kind of thing, because the company doesn’t “see the ability to generate above-average returns for investors.”
“We recognize a need for that. We just don’t see that as an appropriate use of ExxonMobil’s capabilities,” he added.
Here, would you like some algae fuel to power jets? Oh, sorry, Exxon dropped that research too, after advertising for years that it would save the world.
In related news, while it faces dozens of lawsuits over its climate lies going back decades, ExxonMobil is also punching back with a lawsuit against investors who bought Exxon stock with the goal of influencing the company’s climate policy.
As NPR explains,
Investors in publicly-traded companies like ExxonMobil try to shape corporate policies by filing shareholder proposals that are voted on at annual meetings. ExxonMobil says it’s fed up with a pair of investor groups that it claims are abusing the system by filing similar proposals year after year in an effort to micromanage its business. […]
How dare the little people think that just by owning part of the company, they have some sort of say in how it’s run!
ExxonMobil is going after two investor groups, Arjuna Capital and Follow This, that have repeatedly introduced proposals calling for the company to
cut emissions faster from its own operations and from its supply chain, including the pollution that’s created when customers burn its oil and natural gas. That indirect pollution, known as Scope 3 emissions, accounts for 90% of ExxonMobil’s carbon footprint, according to Arjuna and Follow This.
After the company sued them in federal court in Texas in January, the investor groups withdrew the proposal and promised not to resubmit it, but the company is continuing the legal action to teach ‘em not to mess with their betters. ExxonMobil wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to crack down on pesky investors who keep resubmitting proposals the management doesn’t like. […]
“We want to cater to the shareholders who are real investors, who have an interest in seeing this company succeed in generating return on their investments,” he said. “We don’t feel a responsibility to activists that hijack that process […]”
Don’t the peons understand that they aren’t allowed to touch the levers of power just by buying access to those levers? Shame on them!
Now what do you people have to say for yourselves? You owe a big apology to Mr. Woods for making him accept a 52 percent salary increase in 2022, with a total compensation package of $35.9 million for the year. Now make it snappy […]
birgerjohanssonsays
Mr Woods is human garbage. Just like the tory government ministers.
.
First Defeats for Sunak’s Rwanda Safety Bill”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7VgPA26EGm8
2 million pound £ for each refugee Rwanda accepts!
Sweden should jump on the bandwagon right away! I mean, how much can it cost to teach new immigrants the language and give them an apprenticeship somewhere? Even if it costs 2 million SKR it will still be a 1000% profit! (1£=11 SKR)
And USA could absorb even more of those asylum seekers in Britain. Even if your education and job training costs are slightly higher, it would be a big boost for your economy. Sunak does not care how much it costs British taxpayers as long as he can show his voters he is getting rid of the (non-millionaire)* brown foreigners.
*Sunak himself is Indian-British, and richer than god)
birgerjohanssonsays
Palestinians ‘beaten and sexually assaulted’ at Israeli detention centres, UN report claims | Israel | The Guardian
A report by the United Nations has found ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel included sexual violence — including rape and gang rape — and that some Israeli hostages experienced such violence while in captivity in Gaza.
A federal appeals court upheld a ruling Monday that blocked Florida from enforcing a law, backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, that restricts how private companies teach diversity and inclusion in the workplace. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled Monday that the ‘Stop Woke Act’ ‘exceeds the bounds’ of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression in its attempts to regulate workplace trainings on race, color, sex and national origin.
The Dartmouth Men’s Basketball team voted 13-2 in favor of becoming the first-ever labor union for college athletes on Tuesday afternoon. The vote could present a huge shakeup to the National Collegiate Athletics Association’s (NCAA) model, which currently only allows college athletes to financially benefit from their role on teams through name, image and likeness.
A New Yorker article published on Monday delivers a portrait of President Joe Biden that might surprise many Americans. Despite the polls, despite endless headlines focused on his age, and despite pundits desperately clutching at whole strings of pearls, the Biden that emerges from the article is calm and confident.
When it comes to Biden’s strategy for the fall election, Bruce Reed, one of his closest aides, put it simply, “We live in abnormal political times, but the American people are still normal people. Given a choice between normal and crazy, they’re going to choose normal.”
That may be true. We can all hope that it is true. But a pair of new polls indicate that there could be a basic problem with counting on Americans to reject Donald Trump’s wild statements and authoritarian schemes: First, they have to know about them. Right now, between a steady diet of headlines making it clear that Biden is old and a relative silence when it comes to reporting Trump’s plans for 2025, Americans are in the dark about the stakes of this election.
And unless things change in the way the press reports on both Trump and Biden, the nation could sleepwalk into fascism without ever waking up.
On one hand, Biden’s breezy confidence and command during the New Yorker profile is reassuring. “First of all, remember, in 2020, you guys told me how I wasn’t going to win?” Biden told reporter Evan Osnos. “And then you told me in 2022 how it was going to be this red wave? And I told you there wasn’t going to be any red wave. And in 2023 you told me we’re going to get our ass kicked again? And we won every contested race out there. In 2024, I think you’re going to see the same thing.”
There are certainly reasons to think that Biden is correct. […] Trump has been consistently underperforming his polling numbers in Republican primaries. And a big part of what keeps former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s campaign at least semi-alive as we head into Super Tuesday is consistent reports of Republican voters who are unwilling to vote for Trump if he gains the nomination.
However, recent polls are both perplexing and concerning. In a CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday, the threat to democracy is a wash between Biden and Trump, with Biden taking only a 1-percentage-point edge when voters were asked who will better protect democracy and the rule of law. What’s more, 48% of voters don’t give Trump credit or blame for the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Worse, 56% of Americans either believe that Trump tried to stay in office through legal means or did not plan to stay in office at all. [JFC!]
[…] In late January, focus groups of swing voters seemed largely unaware of many of Trump’s extremist statements. As with the voters in the Save My Country survey, when these voters were told about Trump’s statements, they became alarmed and reported they were less willing to vote for Trump.
But they largely didn’t know about these statements. […]
The New Republic pins this on Democrats and the Biden campaign, saying, “the lack of voter awareness of Trump’s ‘dictator’ threats shows that the Biden campaign and Democrats don’t appear to have succeeded in making voters aware of the menace Trump poses.”
However, there’s a problem with that angle. The Biden campaign owns no television stations or streaming services. Unlike Trump, it doesn’t own a social media platform. It doesn’t even own a newspaper. The bully pulpit is only bully if someone holds up a microphone. The Biden campaign and Democrats are dependent on the press to get the message out about Trump’s threat to the nation, and the press is simply failing.
It’s not Joe Biden’s responsibility to inform the American public that Donald Trump has said he wants to be a dictator. Biden does not have the sole responsibility for reminding people that Trump crashed the economy, needlessly cost thousands of lives in a pandemic, burned every bridge with our allies, and then tried to hang onto power in a violent coup.
Biden will do that. He does that. But if it doesn’t get reported, it doesn’t matter.
That a great deal of Americans don’t know Trump is regularly dipping into Hitler quotes to talk about the purity of the nation’s blood is a direct failure of the media. That Americans don’t understand that the economy is miles better now than it was under Trump is a direct failure of the media. That the public doesn’t know Trump is regularly wandering off script to make nonsense statements and repeat major mistakes about the most basic issues is a direct failure of the media.
[…] Here are two stories from The New York Times this week. The first is headlined “Joe Biden’s Superfans Think the Rest of America Has Lost Its Mind.” It starts off talking about an elderly lady, her 16-year-old cat, and how Biden supporters like her “occupy a lonely position in American politics” because Biden is just not that inspirational. It finishes off by talking about how Biden needs to trim the hair on his neck. What do Biden’s fans think of the economy? The Times never asks them.
The second story is headlined “Majority of Biden’s 2020 Voters Now Say He’s Too Old to Be Effective.” The first sentence of that story begins, “Widespread concerns about President Biden’s age pose a deepening threat to his re-election bid, with a majority of voters who supported him in 2020 now saying he is too old to lead the country effectively …”
If the New York Times were pressing its thumb on the scale any harder, it would need a new scale. Possibly a new desk.
It’s fair to say that everyone is aware that Joe Biden is old. […]
Another story focused on that topic appeared on the front page of the Times on Monday. It’s not hard to predict that another story about Biden’s age will be on the front page tomorrow. There’s even an opinion piece from Tuesday titled “What Would Nancy Reagan Do?” that compares the prospect of Biden’s second term with the final years of the Ronald Reagan administration when Reagan was noticeably suffering from dementia. There is no sign that Biden is facing anything like dementia, but that didn’t stop them from running the article.
[…] the media has to truthfully tell the public what Trump is saying.
Expecting that from the press today … might just be crazy.
Donald Trump ramped up the fearmongering, dehumanizing rhetoric around immigrants during a Monday interview with Right Side Broadcasting Network host Brian Glenn. The conservative Glenn took time away from dressing in drag and being defended online by hypocrite girlfriend Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to smile and lob softball questions at the twice-impeached former president.
“They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums, you know?” Trump rambled about migrants crossing the border. “Insane asylums, that’s ‘Silence of the Lambs’ stuff.” That elicited a laugh from the audience gathered at his fraudulently self-appraised Mar-a-Lago property. Trump then added, “Hannibal Lecter, anybody know Hannibal Lecter? Well, we don’t want ‘em in this country.” [video at the link]
Flat-out xenophobia has been Trump’s bread and butter since he first announced his candidacy for president in 2015 and called Mexican immigrants criminals, drug dealers, and rapists. The Republican Party has since been emboldened to ramp up the dehumanizing language, isolationist policy prescriptions, and racism as a political talking point.
Now Trump is using offensive references to mental illness as a cudgel in his decade-long (and stale) quest to villainize immigrants and stoke fear about a trumped-up border crisis.
The U.S. is looking into setting up a maritime corridor to get aid into Gaza via sea amid a deepening humanitarian crisis, the Pentagon’s top spokesperson said Tuesday.
“In coordination with the U.S. interagency and international partners, we are actively reviewing options for a maritime corridor for humanitarian assistance into Gaza, including potential commercial and contracted options,” press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters. […]
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary’s president on Tuesday formally signed a bill approving Sweden’s NATO bid, removing the last obstacle after 18 months of delays that frustrated the alliance as it sought to expand in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
President Tamás Sulyok’s signature was needed to put into force a bill that was passed in Hungary’s parliament last month in a culmination of months of wrangling by Hungary’s allies to convince its nationalist government to lift its block on Sweden’s membership.
John Moralessays
whheydt, what, relevant news?
(How will my habenula cope?)
Last week, it was revealed that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had been buying up lots of land in Hawaii at an accelerating clip. Benioff, who is worth billions and billions of dollars, has procured approximately $100 million in land parcels throughout the Big Island via a series of nondescript LLCs. He’s been quite cagey about what most of this land is for and was more than a little bit hostile with the NPR journalist who broke the story about it. Now, in what really seems like an effort to save face, Benioff has announced he’ll be donating $150 million to regional hospitals.
On Tuesday, Benioff said that he would be donating millions to Hawaii’s healthcare system. The money will go to the Hilo Medical Center as well as Hawaii Pacific Health. Additional funds will go to UCSF Health in San Francisco. While the press release associated with the donation claims that Benioff’s gift was “developed over more than a year of collaboration,” it’s certainly convenient timing given the fact that Benioff just had some really bad press last week…
StevoRsays
Aussie live coverage of the Super-Tues primary elections here :
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez was indicted Tuesday on a dozen new criminal charges related to a years-long bribery scheme involving the governments of Egypt and Qatar.
The new charges come days after Jose Uribe, one of the New Jersey businessmen who was previously indicted alongside Menendez, his wife Nadine Menendez, and two others, agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with the investigation.
Among the new charges in the superseding indictment are conspiracy, obstruction of justice, public official acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and honest services wire fraud…
John Moralessays
Reginald, have you ever had one of those Philadelphia’s Bagels?
I never have, but I know damn well stuff other people claim is delicious seems disgusting to me.
For example, this business of putting honey/jam/molasses/syrup on meat and on fish.
Why you thought that was comment-worthy is something I consider comment-worthy.
(Obviously!)
John Moralessays
Nothing like boiling beer to impart deliciousness on a bagel, I suppose. For some.
(Me, I’d just eat the actual bagel and thus rescue it from the boiling beer)
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #67, John Morales @ #70…
I can’t see that doing the boiling step in beer would in any way improve a bagel, as opposed to using plain water.
John Moralessays
whheydt, it was so very, very obvious. No need to click. Hardly subtle.
For you, I did it anyway.
What is The Takeout?>The Takeout is a food and pop culture website from the folks who brought you The A.V. Club and The Onion.
Point being, at this point Reginald not only is ostentatiously ignoring me, but just posting random stuff with not even the fig leaf of opinion or of relevance to anything or even anything whatsoever other than a naked link. Fucking lazy.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey have advanced to the general election in the open primary for California’s open Senate seat, CNN projects, setting up an uphill battle for the state’s beleaguered GOP.
Schiff and Garvey were competing in two Senate contests Tuesday: one to fill the remainder of the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s term, from November until January; and another for a full six-year term beginning January 2025…
Joe Biden has suffered his first defeat from an unlikely quarter as he cruises towards the Democratic nomination.
His party’s voters in the US territory of American Samoa chose Jason Palmer, a Baltimore businessman who campaigned virtually and made investing in education his top issue.
He beat the president by 51 votes to 40 and they win three delegates each…
Mark Robinson, who easily won North Carolina’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, has the misfortune of having spent years on Facebook without thinking about his future political career. The current lieutenant governor of the state—and the first Black man to hold the position—was a furniture manufacturer who was launched into politics in 2018 when he gave a viral pro-gun speech at a city council meeting in the wake of the Parkland school shooting. Two years later he was elected to his current office. He will face Democrat Josh Stein, the state’s attorney general, in the general election in November. The race is expected to be extremely close…
Rep. Barry Moore has defeated Rep. Jerry Carl in a rare incumbent-vs.-incumbent Republican primary spurred by a Supreme Court decision forcing Alabama to adopt redrawn congressional districts, NBC News projects.
Moore’s Super Tuesday victory is a win for the House Freedom Caucus — the band of far-right, anti-establishment rabble rousers that frequently clashes with GOP leadership and whose super PAC backed Moore. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a former Freedom Caucus member, campaigned alongside Moore over the weekend in Alabama.
Carl, a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee and the Republican Study Committee, is more closely aligned with the business wing of the party…
Alabama Supreme Court Justice Sarah Stewart, who concurred with the conservative court’s controversial ruling equating frozen embryos with children, won the Republican primary Tuesday for state Supreme Court chief justice.
Stewart defeated former Republican state Sen. Bryan Taylor, the Associated Press projected…
It takes a lot of courage to run for President — that’s especially true in today’s Republican Party, where so few dare to speak the truth about Donald Trump. Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign. I know there is a lot we won’t agree on. But on the fundamental issues of preserving American democracy, on standing up for the rule of law, on treating each other with decency and dignity and respect, on preserving NATO and standing up to America’s adversaries, I hope and believe we can find common ground.
Reginald @77, bad news. Sorry to see the Alabama Supreme Court being so far rightwing … awful.
In somewhat related news, here is a followup to comment 78.
Commentary from Steve Benen:
[…] as the dust settles on the GOP’s presidential nominating contest, an old cliché about “Seinfeld” comes to mind: It was a race about nothing.
No meaningful debates that captured voters’ attention. No big questions demanding answers. No grand ideas or bold proposals. It was a contest in which Trump started as the frontrunner, faced rivals who spent months afraid to go after him in earnest, and won nearly every intraparty race.
Brendan Buck, an MSNBC political analyst former aid to two former Republican House speakers, wrote, “As the candidates preached about the high stakes of November’s election, Republican voters were offered little more than a charade.” […]
Common sense suggested that Mitch McConnell would never back Donald Trump, if for no other reason than to preserve his own dignity. And yet, here we are.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell waited until every other GOP presidential candidate exited the race, but now that his party has settled on a presidential nominee, the Kentucky Republican has endorsed Donald Trump’s candidacy. His statement read in part:
“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support. During his Presidency, we worked together to accomplish great things for the American people including tax reform that supercharged our economy and a generational change of our federal judiciary — most importantly, the Supreme Court.”
[see comment 49 to debunk McConnell’s claim about “tax reform that supercharged our economy.” Lies. He didn’t just change the federal judiciary: he destroyed it. McConnell and Trump worked together to do that.]
The fact that this isn’t surprising doesn’t make it any less pitiful.
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane.
It was during Trump’s first year in the White House that the new president looked to McConnell as someone who would simply take orders and make Trump’s problems go away. When the senator tried to explain how government worked, a “profane shouting match” soon followed.
But it was after Trump’s defeat that the relationship collapsed. McConnell had the audacity to accept the results of his own country’s elections and criticize Trump for failing to do the same, at which point the former president started condemning the GOP leader as a corrupt “hack.”
Things seemed to culminate on Feb. 13, 2021, in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s second impeachment trial, when McConnell delivered memorable floor remarks, condemning Trump’s “disgraceful dereliction of duty” on Jan. 6. The Senate minority leader added, “There is no question — none — that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. No question about it.”
In the same speech, McConnell called out Trump for his “crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole … orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.”
The Kentucky senator went on to raise the prospect of Trump facing civil and/or criminal penalties for his obvious misconduct.
[…] the former president waged an unsubtle campaign against the Kentucky Republican, all but begging GOP senators to replace the longtime lawmaker as their leader. He also said McConnell “has a DEATH WISH” for disagreeing with Trump’s legislative strategies, and went on to tell The New York Times, on the record, that he consider McConnell to be “a piece of s—.”
Trump was just as aggressive in going after the GOP leader’s wife, former cabinet secretary Elaine Chao, with racist taunts and dubious allegations of corruption.
Given all of this, common sense might suggest that McConnell would never back Trump, if for no other reason than to preserve his own dignity. And yet, here we are. [Snipped other examples of McConnell’s hypocrisy and/or self abnegation]
The senator’s list of concerns starts and ends with the Republican Party’s pursuit of power. In case that weren’t already obvious before, it’s obvious now.
Internet sleuths over the weekend picked up on Elon Musk’s private jet traveling to West Palm Beach, setting off speculation that the world’s richest man and Donald Trump might be meeting – at a time when Trump is in desperate need of cash, both to forestall the execution of hundreds of millions of dollars in civil judgments against him and to fund his presidential campaign.
The NYT has now confirmed that the two men did meet Sunday at Mar-a-Lago, a startling image of the current era: The South African immigrant-turned-billionaire-turned-right-wing-anti-immigrant-provocateur holding the purse strings for the anti-immigrant, would-be-authoritarian seeking to reclaim the presidency he failed to seize in an attempted coup.
I mean really, y’all. It’s hard to paint a grimmer picture of the 2020s.
It’s made more grim by the NYT’s own insufficient description of Musk’s politics:
Mr. Musk’s comments about immigration have grown increasingly alarmist. He has suggested that the President Biden’s immigration policies threaten the existence of America itself and have pushed American democracy to the brink. He has suggested that Democrats are “ushering in vast numbers of illegals” to cheat in elections. There is no evidence to support his claim of mass voter fraud.
Musk has been trafficking in The Great Replacement Theory for months now. It’s deeply racist. It animates vast swaths of the American right wing. In addition, Musk has elevated himself into a leading light for right-wing extremists, turning his Twitter/X into a hot bed of neo-fascist rhetoric – and he himself has personally promoted and ratified some of the most rancid elements of that rhetoric.
A private Trump-Musk meeting at Mar-a-Lago might in normal times be the stuff of left-wing fever dreams, the pro-Russian kleptocracy flexing its muscle in the gaudy 1920s villa built by the world’s then-richest woman whose third husband was the second U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union and who herself amassed a famously vast collection of Russian art.
“We asked people who identified themselves as supporters of Donald Trump for their take on some of Joe Biden’s more controversial actions and quotes,”Kimmel said. “But what we didn’t tell them at first. Is that what we said wasn’t from Joe Biden. It was actually from Donald Trump.”
A Kimmel staffer then asked a South Carolina voter, “What did you think when Joe Biden suggested that Covid could be cured by shining a bright light inside the body?”
“It is very sad that Joe Biden is clearly a dementia patient,” the voter replied.
Of course, it was Trump who infamously made that suggestion. When the voter was given that information, she immediately and drastically changed her tune about the validity of the comment.
“It depends what that technology is,” the voter said. “That’s a broad spectrum, because, you know, you have MRI machines and CT machines and, infrared and different things. So it just depends the context of that.”
Kimmel’s staffer then confronted another Trump fan about the following: There are accusations that Joe Biden cheated on his wife with a porn star after his son was born. And there’s actually a paper trail showing he paid the sexworker $130,000 to keep quiet about it.”
“And he he was making, I think, less than $100,000 a year at that time?” The voter said, adding “Now, how does he do that?”
When the voter was told that actually applied to Trump, he too pulled a 180.
“My father had affairs too, and I still respect him,” the voter said.
Commentary:
[…] While it is funny as hell, it is incredibly instructive. Note that these folks do a complete and total 180 instantly to get the outcome they want: bad Biden, good Trump. What does that tell you? These folks have no principles, no integrity, zip, zero, nada. One guy that is accused of an act is instantly unqualified as president, but the other guy does it and it is okie dokie 100%. All they have is blind, unwavering loyalty.
Okay, so a few red state fools show this behavior, big deal, right? No surprise there. But if you look around you find the exact same thing going on in Congress and in SCROTUS. Just look at Comer and Gym Jordan frothing at the mouth about Biden corruption (that does not exist) while ignoring the blatant corruption of Trump, Ivanka, and Jared; bad Biden, good Trump. Look at Moscow Mitch and his famous speech where he justified NOT impeaching Trump. He stated that he knew Trump was guilty as hell, but he pulled a lame excuse out of his ass to vote against impeachment. Look at SCOTUS ignoring hallowed “states right” to reach down into Florida and make Bush the president. Look at SCROTUS now, slow walking for Trump, speeding up to slap down Biden as Chris Hayes pointed out so well this week.
What’s the upshot of this? Dems should never , without extremely good evidence, expect serious policy discussions from Rs when they can play games instead. […]
But here is the biggest takeaway by far, and was first written about here by Thom Hartmann: Moses Mike will almost certainly try to give the 2024 election to Trump even if Trump loses. Again, look at the desired outcome you can see they want and expect them to fight for that against all evidence and reason. […]
At the same time, they were punishing victims for violating their special school code.
If you had $14 million to spend, what would you spend it on? Maybe you’d put it towards saving the world in some respect, or ensuring that you and everyone you care about would be secure for the rest of your lives or, you know, shoes and handbags (what?). You might choose to spend it on a lot of things, but probably not on “covering up campus sexual assault.”
But that is exactly what Liberty University is about to spend it on, in a roundabout way. The far-right hyper-Christian college founded by Jerry Falwell and headed by his son Jerry Falwell Jr. right up until he was kicked out following a scandal involving his fondness for watching his wife get plowed by a pool boy has agreed to pay a $14 million fine incurred for what the Education Department has deemed a “systemic and persistent” habit of violating federal laws on campus safety.
Specifically, the school violated the Clery Act, which requires schools that receive federal funding through financial aid programs to keep a crime log of incidents occurring within the last 60 days available to students, to issue timely safety warnings when crimes may represent a threat to students or faculty and, as of 2012, keep a record of the school’s crime statistics going back eight years — including statistics on crimes that were reported but deemed “unfounded” by the school’s faculty. Because we all know how that can go.
The law, enacted in 1990, was named for Jeanne Clery, a student who was raped and murdered at Lehigh University in 1986. The point of it is to notify students and faculty of potential dangers they face on campus in hopes of preventing them from becoming victims, but it doesn’t work so well when these crimes are swept under the rug.
This is the largest fine ever issued for a violation of the Clery Act, and if you’re wondering just how bad it really is — the previous record was set by Michigan State University, which was fined $4.5 million for its failure to respond to the accusations against serial child gymnast molester and convicted sex-offender Larry Nassar. Prior to that, the record was held by Penn State for its conduct regarding former assistant football coach/serial child molester Jerry Sandusky.
In Liberty’s case it wasn’t just one incident, but an ongoing pattern of incidents from 2016 to 2023. This follows a 2022 lawsuit from former female Liberty students regarding the school’s mishandling of sexual assault allegations and the fact that the women themselves were the ones who got in trouble after reporting sexual assault, should something they had done in the course of being assaulted violate the school’s honor code, called the “Liberty Way.” Yeah.
The report is more than 100 pages long and includes a number of disturbing incidents that the school did not think were important enough for anyone to know about, including bomb threats, the attempted kidnapping of a 14-year-old girl and multiple instances of sexual assault, stalking, and other disturbing crimes. Particularly unsettling is the story of a football player who managed to stay on campus (and play football!) through multiple allegations of sexual assault and stalking and an actual stalking conviction. Also the story of how the university deemed a report of rape “unfounded” because the victim “consented” after being threatened with a knife.
And incidents like this:
On October 13, 2013, Employee A showed up at one of his employee’s houses and gave the woman what he referred to as “medicine,” which caused her to fall asleep. When the woman woke up, Employee A was kissing her.
There were multiple reports of sexual harassment over several years against that particular employee, but instead of holding him accountable or warning students and faculty about the threat he posed … they gave him a promotion.
The Education Department ultimately found that during the period of 2016-2023, 93 percent of crimes that should have been logged were either deficient or missing. [chart at the link]
In addition to the $14 million fine, Liberty will also be required to spend $2 million on improving its campus safety situation.
But hey! At least the parents of these students will be able to sleep easy at night knowing that, while their children might not have been aware of potential threats to their safety like bomb threats, kidnappings, or sexual assault, the likelihood of them witnessing a drag queen read Goodnight Moon was practically nil.
Don’t let the door hit you in the quirky fashion sense.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) announced Tuesday that she won’t run for reelection this year, leaving the fall campaign to Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican loser Kari Lake, although the latter hasn’t said whether she will step down from pretending she won the governorship in 2022. […]
Sinema’s three-minute video announcement on Twitter offered exactly the fake-triumphant tone that has so endeared her to voters for the last few years: [video at the link also shows indulgence in both-sides nonsense]
Sinema bemoaned all the partisanship that frustrated her so much that she just had to make a big show of voting against raising the minimum wage, refuse to roll back any of Donald Trump’s tax cuts, limit the government’s ability to negotiate Medicare drug prices, and keep the filibuster in place instead of protecting voting or abortion rights, which we’ll assume are both far too partisan for her.
Not that she went into any of those details. Rather, she claimed that she was a martyr for decency and hard work and bipartisanship, and everyone else is corrupt: “Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year,” yadda yadda. [sheesh]
Now, it’s true that Sinema did get some useful things done: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) wrote on Twitter about how when they worked on the 2022 gun bill after the Uvalde massacre, and Sinema kept working on her priority of closing the “boyfriend loophole” that allowed domestic abusers to keep their guns if they weren’t married to their victims. Sinema was also a chief architect of the post-Dobbs “Respect for Marriage Act” that provides as much protection for same-sex unions as possible short of a constitutional amendment.
But good lord what a pile of other wreckage she left behind as she blocked key parts of Joe Biden’s first-term agenda. Let us briefly review some of her worst moments.
When Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan using the reconciliation process, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that one part of the bill, an increase in the minimum wage, couldn’t be included as part of the simple-majority vote, and would be subject to the filibuster. That effectively doomed it, since it could never get 10 Republican votes. Ultimately, eight Senate Democrats voted against the measure, including Sinema — but nobody remembers those other seven “no” votes, thanks to Sinema’s grandstanding thumbs-down and curtsy, as if she were channeling John McCain’s historic vote that saved Obamacare from the flames of Trumpism.
The gesture reeked of contempt for working people. We’re still disgusted.
[snipped telling details regarding funding she voted against, tax bills, and so forth]
Funny thing: While she was refusing any new taxes for the very wealthy, Sinema was also getting a lot of loving campaign-finance attention from big GOP donors.
While she was at it, Sinema also demanded cutbacks to Build Back Better’s provision negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs for Medicare, a limitation that remained when the provision came back as part of 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act. […]
The Republican National Committee is meeting on Friday in Houston to elect a new chair. But what the 168 members won’t be voting on, after all, is a pair of resolutions that would have put some daylight between Donald Trump and the committee.
Henry Barbour, the committee member from Mississippi who has been critical of the former president, drafted resolutions late last month that would have prohibited the party from covering Trump’s legal bills, as well as preventing the RNC and its leadership from supporting Trump as the nominee until he secures 1,215 delegates.
While the attorney fee resolution got some traction, neither draft garnered enough support from members by the deadline last week in order to be considered for a vote on Friday, according to a person with knowledge of the resolutions.
“It’s dead,” Barbour said of the legal fee resolution and relayed that it will not come to a vote on Friday. Barbour said he received co-sponsors from only eight of the 10 necessary states to bring the resolution to a vote.
Trump’s campaign advisers have said he will not tap the RNC for help with his legal bills, as Trump did previously, though some Trump critics say they aren’t buying it. […]
Donald Trump — who concluded his presidency by trying to subvert American democracy and has pledged an authoritarian vision if he returns to office — won all but one of the Super Tuesday primaries. His last remaining primary opponent for the nomination, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, is ending her campaign. And Fox News’ Tuesday coverage demonstrates that the right-wing propaganda network that served as Trump’s mouthpiece during his administration has fully returned to that servile role.
Fox reportedly once had a “soft ban” on Trump appearances, and for a while after that eschewed airing live interviews with the former president. But Trump was back in his favorite role on Tuesday morning, fielding softball questions (and spewing lies) over the phone with the hosts of Fox & Friends.
Fox host Neil Cavuto, one of the few people left at the network who even occasionally criticizes Trump, dumped out of a Trump speech to fact check his falsehoods just two weeks ago. But on Tuesday, anchor Bill Hemmer implicitly threw Cavuto under the bus, saying that if CNN or MSNBC refused to carry Trump’s speeches live in their totality, “take ‘news’ out of your name.”
[…] the network’s right-wing talkers nonetheless had opportunities to reassert their fealty to Trump as the votes rolled in. […]
“Donald Trump defies all conventional political gravity,” glowed Sean Hannity, who spent the final days of Trump’s presidency strategizing over how to successfully “land the plane” without further disaster. “The more they attack him, the more he seems to galvanize support around the country.”
Former Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch privately responded to the carnage of January 6 by saying that Fox would “make Trump a non person,” and instructed Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott that the network should not “mention his name unless essential and certainly don’t support him.” But a public break with Trump would threaten the network’s bottom line, and so Fox made little effort to loosen his grip on the GOP.
Instead, Fox spent the last three years purging the former president’s critics from the network and the party, hiring his former employees, promoting Fox’s Trump sycophants to more prominent roles, and demolishing avenues his primary challengers could have used to forestall his return to office. All this played out even as Fox paid a record defamation settlement for trying to support Trump’s 2020 election subversion plot by airing election fraud conspiracy theories.
Trump is unsatisfied by anything less than the uninterrupted adoration usually only found on a dictator’s state-owned TV channel, so he’s still badgering the network for even more support. In an unhinged Tuesday rant, he lashed out at Fox for hosting contributors Marc Thiessen and Karl Rove after Thiessen pointed out that Trump is less popular than President Joe Biden.
But make no mistake, Fox’s inevitable repositioning as a Trump propaganda network is here. Its primetime hosts, “straight news” anchors, contributors and correspondents will spend the next eight months diligently working to return him to office. And if Trump falls short of a win in November and attempts to subvert the election again, they’ll be right by his side, eagerly supporting his bid for power.
Everyone’s always “what about the poor farmers?” but what about the people who have to live amidst the filth they create? (Which is not to say that the farmers shouldn’t be helped to find better livelihoods.)
Let Trump’s legal fees eat their resources. This is the optimal outcome, especially since his lawyers are from the bottom of the barrel and fucks up everything.
There are “billionaires,” and then there are billionaires. Unfortunately, sometimes they share the same delusions.
[…] The New York Times confirmed that Donald Trump and Elon Musk met on Sunday in West Palm Beach as Trump desperately looks for a way to cover the $540 million he owes for a pair of recent legal judgments. Whether Musk has agreed to pick up the tab for Trump’s fines is unclear, but that he could do so for only about 1.2% of the check he wrote for Twitter shows the huge difference in wealth between the two men.
If democracy was already smoldering, Musk could provide Trump with a flamethrower.
Trump owes $454 million in fines and interest for business fraud in New York and $83 million for his defamation of writer E. Jean Carroll. Trump has been unable to get a judge to halt the payments.
In addition to repeatedly declaring that EVs don’t work, and threatening to end tax credits that encourage car buyers to pick EVs, Trump has previously attacked Musk, saying that he would have been “worthless” without government subsidies. [screengrab of Trump post]
“When Elon Musk came to the White House asking me for help on all of his many subsidized projects …,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in July 2022, “I could have said, ‘drop to your knees and beg,’ and he would have done it.”
That might seem like the kind of statement that might make Musk reluctant to open his wallet. However, not only has Musk been repeatedly spreading a laundry list of Republican conspiracy theories—including backing the “great replacement” claims of white supremacists and false stories that President Joe Biden is allowing millions of migrants into the country so they can vote in the next election—the second-richest man on the planet has several big reasons to support the Republican candidate.
Tesla has faced repeated issues with safety at its factories, with rates of violations that dwarf other auto manufacturers.
Tesla’s “self-driving” cars, which Musk has relentlessly promoted for a decade, are part of a growing investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that could result in a major recall and restrictions on Tesla’s system.
Tesla has been repeatedly sued over racial discrimination, including by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, overrunning an openly hostile and racist workplace.
Tesla has been targeted by the United Auto Workers, with the union’s president, Shawn Fain, pushing hard to organize workers there and at other nonunion automakers.
To help stop that last one, Musk has recently joined with the third-richest man on the planet in a plan to destroy the National Labor Relations Board. Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos may be rivals in space, but back on the ground, both of them are committed to keeping their workers divided and powerless.
What would keep Musk from agreeing to wipe out Trump’s little half-a-billion-dollar legal problem in exchange for a promise that, should Trump get back in the White House, he will take care of Musk’s issues with racism, safety, and those pesky unions?
Nothing. Sure, it may seem like a bribe—because it’s a bribe—but that’s unlikely to be an issue.
For both men, this could be what Trump might describe as a fantastic deal. Destroying government oversight was already on his agenda, and if the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 needs to be tweaked a little to keep the money flowing to Musk, that can surely be arranged.
In the distant past of 2017, Musk stepped down from a pair of Trump advisory councils in protest of Trump’s stance toward the climate crisis. But the Tesla guy has vanished down a long hallway of self-medication, paranoia, and white nationalism.
According to Tuesday’s New York Times article, Musk believes it’s “essential” that Biden lose the election. And Musk’s support for immigration conspiracy theories, which has recently included describing Biden’s actions as “treason,” might provide nice cover for handing a wad of cash to Trump. But there’s a long, long list of reasons why Musk could benefit from some dedicated neglect on the part of the government.
Musk is among the richest people in history. He wants to make his robots, spaceships, and brain chips without concern about regulations or safety. He wants to be free to discriminate against Black people and treat women like breeding stock. Trump can promise him all that and more.
The Tesla CEO might even choose to pad out the Republican Party’s empty coffers. But that’s pretty much the same thing as sending cash directly to Trump.
Should Musk actively campaign for Trump, he comes with his own set of fanboys who may not completely overlap with Trump’s … though it’s hard to believe that anyone who has stuck with Musk through his recent statements was not already going to check the “R” box on the ballot. […]
Don’t be surprised if Musk cashes that check. But he really should make Trump get on his knees and beg. [video of Trump attacking electric cars; and video of Musk promising robot axis for almost a decade]
There’s a lot of handwringing in the traditional media about the end of the Senate moderate, now that quasi-Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, along with Republican Mitt Romney, have called it quits. Axios calls it “a series of crushing blows to Senate bipartisanship, hollowing out a centrist core that has suffered under years of intensifying polarization.” Politico laments that “The filibuster is in big trouble” with “two of its staunchest defenders” leaving.
Good fucking riddance.
Between Sinema and Manchin, all hope of the nation having nice things during the first two years of President Biden’s term, when Democrats held a majority in both the House and Senate, was crushed. They blocked or watered down all the good, transformative policies Biden and fellow Democrats proposed for the country.
Now the two biggest impediments to actual progress will be gone—if Democrats keep the Senate.
A Democratic majority unimpeded by the obstructionist duo means that progress can finally happen. Democrats can restore and expand the Voting Rights Act, which Manchin and Sinema ultimately blocked. They can restore abortion rights, which the supposedly pro-choice Sinema blocked when Biden urged a filibuster carve-out for it. Democrats can raise the minimum wage and make massively wealthy private equity and hedge fund executives pay their damn taxes. Democrats’ vision for environmental justice can be realized. Comprehensive immigration reform would be that much more possible. A Democratic majority without Manchin and Sinema could even reform the Supreme Court.
And how important is nuking the filibuster? Outgoing Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell alluded to Sinema’s defense of it as her top achievement Tuesday while singing her praises after she announced her retirement.
“History will remember that with the Senate’s defining feature under grave threat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s wisdom and devotion to this body rivaled that of her most seasoned colleagues,” McConnell said.
That “defining feature” is a Jim Crow-era relic that McConnell—aided and abetted by Sinema and Manchin—used to defeat democracy, time and time again.
McConnell’s relentless destruction of the nation’s democratic institutions has played no small part in making this the most critical election since the Civil War. While the threats to the country are huge, the opportunity is even bigger.
Win the Senate. Nuke the filibuster.
A bit overly optimistic, but the article made some good points.
Barely an hour after Wonkette published its surely Peabody-award winning article “OK Dean Phillips, Time To F*ck Off” this morning, the news announced that Dean Phillips is indeed preparing to set sail on his fucking off ship, destination: out of our fucking faces.
Did Wonkette make that happen? Pfffffft, does Wonkette’s daily tabs post make the sun rise in the morning? No, and also no.
Occam’s razor and science suggest the weight of Phillips’s failures in his pathetic attempted spoiler run against President Joe Biden simply became too great to bear, it’s now too embarrassing to show his face in public, and some other kinds of boo hoo we haven’t even thought of yet:
“I’m going to suspend my campaign, and I will be right now endorsing President Biden. The choices are so clear … we only have two of them, and it’s going to be Donald Trump or Joe Biden,” Phillips said on Wednesday afternoon in a radio interview.
That’s damned fucking right.
It turns out it’s not a winning formula to buy into the media’s both-sides-ing hype about Joe Biden’s age and its horse-racing concern trolling about Biden’s inability to beat Donald Trump — notwithstanding how he’s beat the living shit out of Trump once, Democrats have beat the living shit out of Republicans in every race since 2017, and oh yeah, 2016 wasn’t even a victory for Trump, if you’re not impressed by victories that require reacharounds from the Electoral College, the FBI, and Russia.
And it turns out having a resume that says “gelato business” and “Dunning-Kruger Syndrome” isn’t a winning formula for mounting a primary challenge against an incumbent president, declaring you’re the only one who can save us, especially when you have pretty much no discernible personality.
Phillips tweeted yesterday that his wife Annalise “has always found I respond better to honey than vinegar when she asks me to drop something. Just sayin…” (An awkward and not at all charming tweet? Yes.)
Wonkette would like to proudly state for the record that we were never nice to him, not for one second, and we’re not going to start now, so stick that vinegar in your honey.
[…] the US Supreme Court issued another opinion: that Congress should give them an extra $19.4 million towards their own special Supreme Court Police force, aka $2.1 million more per judge, for even more protection than the 24/7 bodily kind they’ve already been getting from a staff of 400 US Marshals since June of 2022.
They are very special and supreme, of course. Assassinating judges, especially the Supreme Court ones, would be going full Colombia, and we never ever want to see it. Ever.
And, but also … that is a fuckton of money, especially when the judiciary’s request for extra security funding for the rest of the other 881 federal judges currently being threatened by Trumpist yokels amounts to an extra $39.5 million, or $44,835 each. Seems almost like a little bit of an eff yew to everybody else, even.
Since 2022 there have only been two arrests for threats to SCOTUS: a suicidal man from California, Nicholas Roske, who threatened to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh then had second thoughts and turned himself in, and a Florida man, Neal Brij Sidhwaney, who was arrested and charged with making a threatening phone call to John Roberts. Which is two too many! We would never begrudge anyone security from the mass of rabid loons stalking America’s streets and telephones.
But still, two. Compare that to the rising tsunami of threats and harassment against all the other federal judges: 224 threats in 2021, 300 in 2022, 457 in 2023. Or compare it to the threats to state judges and other civil servants since a certain rapist, insurrectionist fraud started howling […] at them as the entirety of his daily workout routine.
Can we even try to count that pile? Judge Arthur Engoron (more than 200 single-spaced pages of threatening voicemails, bomb threat to his house, threats to his wife and daughter, stalked by Creepin’ Jimmy O’Keefe at his gym), Judge Juan Merchan (dozens of harassing phone calls, emails and death threats), poll workers (Reuters has documented more than 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 14 states), Fulton County DA Fani Willis (more than 150 threats in two months) …
It is not the Supreme Court the loonies are big mad at.
But still, the judges, in particular the conservative ones, have been in a continual fit of pique that the leftist radicals are the baddies out to get them. The minute Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion of Dobbs oopsie-whoops-how’d-that-happen?-leaked to Politico in May of 2022, the Court barred foot traffic into the building and erected a seven-foot security fence around the building that stayed up for two months, anticipating Jan. 6 but with whooping throngs of marauding angry feminists, who never showed.
Protestors did have the gall to free-speech on public streets at Roberts’s and Kavanaugh’s houses after the decision, though, which made them so livid the Martial of the Court wrote a Karen letter to then-Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, demanding they be arrested:
[…] Being able to say stuff on a public street is pretty much the most basic of the free-speechy kind of speech there is. […]
Still, the Supreme Court immediately got $21 million for 42 extra deputy marshals for ongoing 24/7 protection, and Congress mandated justices’ families could get around-the-clock protection too. In 2023, they also got another $12.4 million in extra for security for themselves. […]
A Texas man was arrested Wednesday on accusations that he schemed to dupe George Santos into wiring him money with the false promise that he could get the criminal corruption charges against the disgraced congressman dropped.
Federal prosecutors said Hector Medina of El Paso concocted a fake identity as a fixer with connections to judges as he solicited a wire transfer from Santos, then a New York congressman facing his own wire fraud charges and scandal…
Trying to scam the scammer.
Reginald Selkirksays
@95 Dean Phillips drops out
It was probably his humiliating loss to Jason Palmer in American Samoa (@74) that finally crushed Phillips.
[…] here’s just one itty-bitty detail the Times didn’t mention: In both December and February, the majority of respondents agreed that Trump had in fact committed serious federal crimes — 58 percent in December, and 53 percent in February. In December, 33 percent said Trump hadn’t crimed, and that rose a little bit to 36 percent in February. That’s kind of fucked, is it not? Says Foser:
That’s right: In an article entirely about a poll question asking if people think Trump committed serious crimes, the New York Times never once told readers that most people think he did commit serious crimes. It instead portrayed the poll finding as good news for Trump, and quoted only respondents who said he did not commit crimes.
Well sure, maybe it was dishonest, but it was all “accurate,” at least if you pretend the topline numbers don’t matter.
In conclusion we do not like or trust The New York Times again today, the end.
A suspected attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden caused “fatalities” and forced the crew to abandon the vessel on Wednesday, authorities said, the first fatal strike in a campaign of assaults by the group over Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The attack on the Barbados-flagged bulk carrier True Confidence further escalates the conflict on a crucial maritime route linking Asia and the Middle East to Europe that has disrupted global shipping. The Iranian-backed Houthis have launched attacks since November, and the U.S. began an airstrike campaign in January that so far hasn’t halted the rebels’ attacks.
The attack killed two mariners and injured six more, according to two U.S. officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss details before they’re announced.
Meanwhile, Iran announced Wednesday that it would confiscate a $50 million cargo of Kuwaiti crude oil for American energy firm Chevron Corp. aboard a tanker it seized nearly a year earlier. It marks the latest twist in a yearslong shadow war playing out in the Middle East’s waterways even before the Houthi attacks began.
The attack Wednesday on the True Confidence came after it had been hailed over radio by individuals claiming to be the Yemeni military, officials said. The Houthis have been hailing ships over the radio in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since launching their attacks, with analysts suspecting the rebels want to seize the vessels.
The extent of the damage to the Liberian-owned ship remained unclear, but the crew fled the ship and deployed lifeboats — signaling a serious incident, a U.S. defense official said on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
A U.S. warship and the Indian navy were on the scene, trying to assist in rescue efforts, the official said. […]
Video of White House press conference is available at the link.
[…] A Washington Post report this week noted in passing that Trump is “perhaps the most flawed presidential candidate ever.”
He is facing 91 indictments spread over four trials, the first of which is set to begin in three weeks. He has been ordered to pay more than half a billion dollars in civil judgments against him. He has laid out what many critics call authoritarian plans for a second term, and at campaign rallies, he routinely makes inflammatory statements about minorities and immigrants.
This is, of course, just a tiny sampling for what could easily be a book-length list. Trump isn’t just a bad presidential candidate, he is arguably the worst imaginable candidate.
We are, after all, talking about a man who’s been credibly accused of being a career criminal. Someone who spent his adult life careening from failure to failure. Someone who oversaw a failed and corrupt presidency. Someone who’s been condemned by several high-profile members of his own team. Someone who lies uncontrollably about matters large and small.
Someone who tried to overturn the results of a free and fair American election. Someone who dispatched an angry mob to attack his own country’s Capitol in the hopes of claiming illegitimate power. Someone who was recently held liable by a jury for sexual abuse.
Someone who has gone from describing many Americans as “evil” to condemning them as “vermin” to equating them with the foreign enemies from World War II. Someone who echoes Adolf Hitler. Someone who has repeatedly said he wants to create a “day one” dictatorship in the United States.
A healthy political party in a stable democracy would take one look at such a candidate, avoid making eye contact, and run as fast as possible in the opposite direction.
In 2024, this same candidate faced credible primary challengers who proceeded to lose practically every primary and caucus — by wide margins — following a monthslong process in which he racked up endorsements from party officials at every level.
A broken political party can win elections, but that doesn’t make it sound.
[…] For at least two decades, the Republican Party has become increasingly hostile to anyone who didn’t hold to a very specific set of conservative beliefs. That requirement already cost Republicans the moderates and liberals who used to exist in their party.
The entry of Trump has upended the entire Republican platform, replacing it with the One Commandment: Obey Trump.
The party going to the polls in November is not McConnell’s party, or Romney’s party, or anything that would be recognized by any Republican candidate going back to Abraham Lincoln. It’s a classical authoritarian party, devoted to the rule of just one man—the one who says he’d beat Lincoln even if the 16th president teamed up with George Washington.
There’s no doubt that Trump’s cultish followers are enthusiastic to see their golden calf perched back on his altar, and Republican dissidents may wander home before November. But right now, the Republican Party appears to be split between those who want to see democracy only weakened and those who want to see it completely stripped away.
A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a 55-year-old federal agency created to help minority-owned businesses must now open its doors to every race, siding with a group of White plaintiffs who argued that the agency discriminated against them.
In a 93 page opinion rendered Tuesday, [Trump appointed] U.S. District Court Judge Mark T. Pittman ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency’s presumption that businesses owned by Blacks, Latinos and other minorities are inherently disadvantaged violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. He permanently enjoined the agency’s business centers, which have assisted minority-owned businesses in accessing capital and government contracts, from extending services based on an applicant’s race.
“If courts mean what they say when they ascribe supreme importance to constitutional rights, the federal government may not flagrantly violate such rights with impunity,” Pittman wrote. “The MBDA has done so for years. Time’s up.”
…the case is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit…
[The 5th Circuit is widely regarded as the most conservative Circuit Court in the country.]
When Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez died a decade ago, he left behind a novel he had written while struggling with dementia.
In his final days, he told his sons the book must be destroyed.
However they defied their father and, in what they have called an act of “betrayal”, have published the book…
Justifying their decision to publish, García Márquez’s son Gonzalo told BBC Radio 4’s Front Row that by the end, the author “wasn’t in a position to judge his work as he could only see the flaws but not the interesting things that were there”…
$$$$
Reginald Selkirksays
Cenk Uygur drops long-shot presidential bid
Uygur is not qualified due to not being a natural born citizen. I wonder if his situation would be affected by the most recent SCOTUS ruling. Would states require legislation from Congress to keep him from running?
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) filed a complaint with the Department of Justice inspector general on Wednesday, accusing special counsel Jack Smith of election interference by resisting attempts to delay his criminal prosecution of former President Trump…
I accuse Gaetz of election interference by filing this complaint.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were reviewing damage done to the coastal city of Odesa when a Russian ballistic missile struck nearby. Sources in the city indicated the missile landed within a few hundred meters of Zelenskyy. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian navy indicated that at least five people died in the attack.
The strike’s proximity to Zelenskyy’s motorcade has led some observers to label this an attempted assassination. However, capturing the historic Black Sea city has long been one of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s top goals for the illegal invasion of Ukraine, and missile attacks on the city have been frequent.
Barring additional evidence, it’s likely that this missile was not intended specifically to assassinate the Ukrainian president, but was only part of Russia’s ongoing campaign of indiscriminate attacks against civilian locations. Thousands of Ukrainians have died in their homes, businesses, and at gathering places like shopping malls.
The missile hit Odesa on Wednesday morning after Zelenskyy had just finished showing Mitsotakis facilities at the port that have served as the primary location for Ukrainian grain shipments and have frequently come under attack by Russia. Though Zelenskyy’s visit to Odesa was not announced, he and Mitsotakis had been in the city for several hours at that point and their location was known.
So it is possible that someone tipped off Russia to the visit, resulting in the near miss. It’s not possible to know for sure at this time.
The missile strike comes as the Russian military continues to press forward following Russia’s capture of the small city of Avdiivka on Feb. 18. For days following the withdrawal from Avdiivka, Ukrainian troops were forced to retreat in that area, and at other locations along the front.
However, over the past three days, there have been reports of Ukrainian success at setting up new defensive positions and slowing Russia’s advance. There are even some locations where Ukraine has reportedly counterattacked against overextended Russian troops, taking back positions that had been lost. [Tweet and images at the link]
Ukraine has made genius use of some of the weapons provided by the U.S. and others, but they continue to face a critical shortage of ammunition. Reuters reports that European allies are working around the clock to try to keep Ukraine supplied after “the stalling of U.S. military aid, which has been the backbone of international support.”
Meanwhile, the chief architect of that stall, House Speaker Mike Johnson, was sitting in the big chair this morning when the House chaplain delivered a very special prayer. [video at the link]
Johnson continues to block the Senate bill on Ukraine assistance and though he has reportedly opened the way for Republicans to craft their own Ukraine plan in the House, nothing has emerged so far.
Back in Ukraine, the commander of ground forces has announced goals for the coming year. However, Ukraine’s actions are hampered by a shortage of ammunition and threatened by a growing Russian force. It’s already too late for the United States to provide the level of assistance that would be needed for a major Ukrainian counterstrike in 2024, but unless the Johnson logjam is broken soon, Ukraine will have all it can handle fighting back against Russia’s advance.
————————
On Monday evening, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet got a little smaller. Again. [Tweet and video at the link: ⚡️Russian Sergei Kotov patrol ship of the Black Sea Fleet was destroyed last night by the Group 13 special Unit of Ukrainian Defense Intelligence.
As a result of the attack by Magura V5 naval drones, the Russian ship of project 22160 Sergei Kotov suffered damage to the stern, right and left sides.
The ship was damaged in Ukraine’s territorial waters, near the Kerch Strait.
The ship was worth about $65 million.]
——————–
Updated list of Russian losses.
It’s been weeks since private citizen Donald Trump killed Congress’ tough bipartisan border deal because he needed something to run on besides raining pestilence and woe upon his enemies, stopping Barack Obama from winning a third term, possibly invading Mexico, and restoring water pressure to the shower head in his semi-public stolen nuclear documents library. That was an outrage, of course, but Trump reasoned—perhaps correctly—that people are less likely to notice a little backroom political subterfuge than those imagined throngs of brown people lining up at the border, maliciously plotting to lower our crime rates and boost our economy.
Now NBC News has discovered that Republicans’ insincerity also extends to one of their favorite border bugaboos: the shipments of fentanyl that seep through our decidedly not-open southern border. Of course, the GOP loves demagoguing America’s fentanyl problem because 1) unlike most things they whine about, opioid addiction is actually a serious issue, 2) it excites both the “immigrants are scary” and “drugs are bad” lobes of the MAGA brain, and 3) Joe Biden is currently president, so they think they can hang the whole mess around his neck.
Of course, Republicans’ preferred narrative—that Biden has left the border wide open (he hasn’t) and that’s why fentanyl is pouring into the country—has never made a whit of sense. For one thing, the vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled through the country through legal points of entry. For another, U.S. citizens are far more likely to be convicted of fentanyl trafficking than noncitizens. But if there’s one sin Republicans can never be forgiven for, it’s interrupting Donny Trump Story Time.
But if the preferred MAGA narrative makes no sense, what is making the problem worse? The correct answer—as usual—is Republicans. According to NBC News, Customs and Border Protection has spent millions on state-of-the-art scanners to help them spot illegal shipments of fentanyl, but many of them are still sitting in warehouses because Republicans in Congress have refused to appropriate the funds needed to get them installed.
[S]ome of the equipment that has been purchased hasn’t yet been put into use, because Congress hasn’t allocated the funding needed to install it. The money to install the screeners was in the supplemental funding request Republicans blocked.
“We do have technology that’s in the warehouse that has been tested. But we need approximately $300 million [to] actually put the technology in the ground,” [acting CBP Commissioner Troy] Miller said. “It’s extremely frustrating.” […]
A CBP official speaking on background said the Biden administration’s “supplemental funding request would provide funding for civil works projects to allow for NII systems procured with previous-year funds to be installed.”
[…] Acting Commissioner Miller gave NBC News a tour of one port of entry in Nogales, Arizona—the state into which approximately half of all U.S. fentanyl shipments flow. Officers at this entry point have found fentanyl inside soda crates, in cars that carried young children, and “stuffed inside the water barrel of a commercial bus’ bathroom.” In fact, notes Miller, more than 95% of fentanyl found at the border is smuggled into the country in personal vehicles.
Customs and Border Patrol is hoping to make it easier to block those shipments by using these scanners, which employ AI technology to increase the speed and efficiency of searches. Miller noted that less than 5% of personal vehicles and just 20% of commercial vehicles are currently scanned, and he’d like to be able to boost those numbers to 40% and 70%, respectively, by the end of 2025.
But first he’d need Republicans to either get serious about the border or get out of Congress. The former is nearly impossible, so stemming the influx of fentanyl is up to those of us who actually care about solving—and understanding—our country’s problems.
“The vast majority of trade crossing the border is lawful. Over 98% has no violations of any U.S. laws. So they’re really looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack,” former acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan told NBC News. “So what AI can do is tell them if this image that the officer is about to review meets what’s supposed to be in that container.”
Of course, since the vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled through legal points of entry by Americans, it doesn’t matter how much easily sawed-through border wall is built, how many alligator moats are dug, or how many desperate refugees Republicans try to drown in the Rio Grande or shoot in the legs. The drugs will just keep pouring over the border—and nonsense will keep disgorging from Republicans’ mouths. […]
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are so hampered by their own egos and infighting that only 27 bills passed both chambers of Congress in 2023. And that’s if you count the Veterans Affairs clinics they named, plus commissioning a commemorative coin.
Just because Republicans at the national level can’t stop tripping over their own Johnson, that doesn’t mean that state legislatures can’t keep cranking out the pure, unfettered bigotry and revenge that fuels the GOP. From east to west, anywhere rural Republicans have a lopsided advantage over the blue residents of their state, the GOP is running the sausage factory at full speed.
The Republican legislative excavation machine never stops trying to set the bar ever lower, so here are five bills—either under consideration or freshly introduced—that would simply make the world worse.
1. Missouri’s proposed “social transition” la.
[…] House Bill 2885 would make it a felony for teachers to do anything to suggest they were tolerant of trans students, such as addressing students by their preferred pronouns. And that’s not the end of it.
Any teacher found guilty of the class E felony of “contributing to social transition” would have to register as a sex offender. Under Missouri law, that means they would never again be able to go near a public school, a park, or a long list of other areas. They’d absolutely lose their jobs. […]
As mentioned above, it’s also a felony. Meaning that it’s subject to up to four years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
2. Utah’s teachers-as-cops law.
Deciding that the best way to handle school shootings is by having more people shooting in schools is almost routine for red states at this point. Since the whole pretense of the National Rifle Association-backed party is that more guns equals more safety, it’s only natural that putting a gun in every school desk makes things better.
But Utah’s H.B. 119 goes above and beyond the usual AR-for-the-teacher law. This would give teachers and schools almost complete immunity from anything that happens when they fire their guns on campus. […]
3. Tennessee’s ban on … certain flags.
The home of faster, redder, and more bigoted legislation came through again by passing the anti-pride-flag bill H.B. 1605, which now must also pass the state Senate and be signed by the governor to become law. […]
However, the new bill does allow schools to fly flags that are official school flags, so school administrators, get busy. And think rainbow.
4. Georgia bill would jail librarians if they allow kids to check out LGBTQ+ books.
[…] Georgia legislators are just getting ready to put some teeth into their bigotry with Senate Bill 154.
This bill would jump right past civil prosecutions and allow librarians who distributed material deemed “harmful to minors” to face criminal prosecution. […] A second bill would require libraries to email parents if a student tries to check out a book on their proscribed list, so kids just trying to figure out who they are could find themselves outed to their parents by the school librarian.
And then the librarian could potentially go to jail.
5. Idaho says only imported terrorists count.
Idaho is home to some of the most militant of the militant fringe […]
Those concerned they could end up on a no-fly list can take heart from S.B. 1220. The bill would change the state’s definition of “terrorist” to omit the people responsible for most U.S. terrorism. Instead, it would limit the use of the term to those who commit violent crimes while connected to federally designated foreign terrorist organizations, such as the Islamic State group, which is commonly known as ISIS. […]
[…] Senate Bill 1220, an Idaho bill to change the state’s definition of terrorism.
[…] Since 1952 the nominees for President have been provided security briefings. This is a gesture (not a law) to ensure the smooth transition of power no matter the outcome of the election. This made sense pre-trump because you didn’t want a candidate to assume the job blind. However, those days are behind us.
[Trump] is a national security threat. Full stop. He has shown deference and adoration for the world’s most vile, corrupt and ruthless autocrats. He had multiple conversations with Vladimir Putin where he ordered his translator to destroy all notes. He took Putin’s side in Helsinki over our own intelligence agencies. He has repeated his desire to leave NATO. He has said publicly he would let Russia do what they want if his shakedown attempts didn’t yield higher financial investment from NATO countries.
[…] He has purloined countless top secret and classified documents and stored them in the shit rooms of his shit house in Palm Beach. Then lied about it. Then refused to give them back. He has spoken openly about jailing journalists, political opponents, people not sufficiently sycophantic to him. He has advocated for violence against any perceived enemies from judges on down to volunteer election workers. And now he owes nearly half a billion dollars in civil judgements, which he apparently can’t pay despite being a self proclaimed billionaire.
The old rules no longer apply. […] Trying to remain stuck in those halcyon days is foolish, naive and a clear and present danger to our country. That’s why President Biden needs to vehemently refuse to provide Trump with the daily briefing.
Although the media keeps attempting to push this narrative that Trump is a traditional candidate, President Biden must instead treat him as an enemy of the state. Anyone not blind or dumb enough to be a member of his cult can clearly see the threat he poses and he should not be granted any courtesies afforded past nominees. Treat him like the treasonous, corrupt, immoral pariah he is.
Arizona prosecutors in recent weeks issued grand jury subpoenas to multiple people linked to Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, a sharp acceleration of their criminal investigation into efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
The new steps, first reported here, are a sign that Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, is nearing a decision on whether to charge Trump’s allies in the state, including GOP activists who falsely posed as presidential electors in December 2020. […]
Mayes’ investigators are scrutinizing the so-called “alternate electors” who signed paperwork falsely claiming that Trump had won the state. Prosecutors in Georgia, Michigan and Nevada have already brought charges against pro-Trump fake electors in their states.
[…] this is the first we’ve heard of a Grand Jury’s being impaneled. That bodes well for the right side of history, as something like 90% of all grand juries wind up bringing charges against their targets. […]
On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson won the GOP primary to become his party’s nominee for North Carolina governor, presumably with the help of female voters.
But just four years ago, Robinson said he’d “absolutely” like to return to the days when the 19th Amendment didn’t exist ― when women didn’t have the right to vote.
“I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote,” Robinson said in a newly resurfaced video of his remarks at a March 2020 event hosted by the Republican Women of Pitt County.
birgerjohanssonsays
Re. “where women could not vote”.
It reminds me of Iran, and the obsession of the rulers to force women to wear something over the head.
I can understand if an archvillain wants slave workers for his uranium mines- that is normal archvillain behavior- but obsessing about headcscarfs is not profitable in any logical way.
For instance, if the GOP were rational villains they would dump the impopular abortion bans and go with some other culture war issue to trick low-income rubes to support them.
But they seem to be genuine True Believers in some aspects of their ideology. You know- morons! This is ultimately good, as we can see them tripping over their own feet in case after case.
Eventually, even something as ineffective and feckless as the Democratic party might stop them.
StevoRsays
It can be difficult to understand what connects free market devotees, white ethnostate militants, Christian Nationalists, tech bros and mere conservatives in the West. One concept that can help understand their rough alliance is traditionalism. In fact it draws together an international contingent that shares goals and enemies, shaping domestic and foreign policy against the interests of the majority.
The international rise of traditionalism became a quantum leap more obvious over recent weeks. Between calls for televised executions sponsored by Coke, the welcoming of the end of democracy, the beginning of the doom of American IVF and rampant Islamophobia in Britain, the eruptions are becoming louder. This week prospective US President Trump is welcoming the leader of Europe’s traditionalist illiberal movement, Viktor Orbán, at Mar-a-Lago.
@114: One concept that can help understand their rough alliance is traditionalism.
It’s a very warped sense of “traditionalism.” For example the “life begins at conception” thing. A zygote has not been considered a person by any culture in human history. This is a radical departure. The goal of controlling women is very familiar, but not the implementation.
The US Food and Drug Administration has expanded its investigation into tainted cinnamon products, and its experts now say that the lead contamination extends beyond the cinnamon applesauce pouches that were recalled in October.
The agency said Wednesday that expanded testing has identified several brands of ground cinnamon with elevated levels of lead…
The brands are:
La Fiesta, lot 25033, sold at La Superior SuperMercados
Marcum, best by 10/16/25 and 4/06/25, sold at Save A Lot
MTCI, sold at SF Supermarket
Swad, lot KX21223, sold at Patel Brothers
Supreme Tradition, best buy dates from 4/25 through 9/25, sold at Dollar Tree and Family Dollar
El Chillar, F275EX1026 and D300EX1024, sold at La Joya Morelense in Baltimore, Maryland
…
StevoRsays
Former President Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has made a number of promises on the campaign trail, including rolling back car pollution rules, building 10 new cities and appointing a special prosecutor to investigate President Joe Biden and his family.
While some of Trump’s plans are lacking in detail, here are some of the policies he says he would enact if elected for a second term.
The reason Trump is so different from a traditional candidate is that he’s not campaigning as a fresh new voice pulsating with optimism for the future or brimming with policy ideas to bring the nation together. He’s portraying America as a dystopian, failed state overwhelmed by lawlessness, urban blight and slipping toward World War III abroad. In a classic trope of dictators, he’s promising to flush out enemies within, vowing revenge on political foes and posing as a strongman while conflating his own personal, political interests with the nation’s.
“We’re a third-world country at our borders, and we’re a third-world country at our elections,” Trump said in a Super Tuesday victory speech at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort where he planned his return from political exile. His speech was packed with brazen lies, but it summoned a vision even more bleak than his “American Carnage” inaugural address in 2017. Trump defines this heart of darkness at the end of his campaign speeches with a dirge set against a foreboding soundtrack that thrills his most faithful supporters but turns ideals of American exceptionalism upside down.
Oh and also but on the other side of politics and I certainly hadn’t heard of him before :
Palmer, who’s never held political office, launched his ambitious bid for the White House in November. He’s currently a partner at New Markets Venture Partners, a venture capital firm, and previously worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft and Kaplan, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The 52-year-old acknowledges on his campaign website that his candidacy is a longshot bid “with very little chance of winning,” and claims his campaign is more focused on “ideas, solutions and changing the conversation.” He is running in the Democratic primary, he said on the site, “because (1) I’m a Democrat, and (2) we don’t want to play a spoiler role in this election.”
“This is the most important election of the 21st century, and it is extremely important to keep Trump from returning to office for a second term,” he said of former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination and Biden’s likely rival in November.
Anonymous social apps are in for a reckoning. Yes, again. This week, University of North Carolina (UNC) System President Peter Hans announced a plan to block the use of popular anonymous social apps on campus, including Yik Yak, Fizz, Whisper, and Sidechat. The ban would impact the 16 universities, like UNC Chapel Hill, NCSU, UNC Charlotte, and others, as well as one public residential high school that comprises the UNC system.
In remarks shared in a letter with the UNC Board of Governors, Hans explains the reason for the ban, noting that these small, hyper-local platforms have “shown a reckless disregard for the wellbeing of young people and outright indifference to bullying and bad behavior.”
The apps also turn a blind eye to other problems, like sexual harassment, racial insults, and drug dealing, he noted.
If you’re not familiar with these apps, you’re probably not the target demographic…
For two years, Steve Bannon has refused to pay the half-million dollars he owes his former lawyer. Now, his refusal to settle his debts has exposed him and his current attorney to potential sanctions…
Polito then took the relatively rare and aggressive approach of asking that New York Supreme Court Justice Arlene P. Bluth hit the right-wing influencer and his lawyer each with $10,000 sanctions—the highest allowable fine “for engaging in intentional dilatory litigation tactics.” …
The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty spoke to one of Donald Trump’s campaign strategists this week, who raised a point about the 2024 race that likely gives Republicans hope. “There’s nothing they can say about Trump that voters don’t already know,” the strategist said.
At first blush, the assertion makes sense. Trump was fairly well known before he launched his political career, but in the nearly nine years since, the Republican has become one of the most scrutinized figures in the world. The former president’s campaign team very likely assumes — with cause — that attitudes about the presumptive GOP nominee are locked in. Everyone knows him; everyone has an opinion on him; and after years of revelations and granular coverage, it’s going to be nearly impossible to persuade voters to change their minds about him.
At least, that’s one way of looking at the political landscape.
The other way is to appreciate the degree to which the Trump strategist has this entire political dynamic backwards.
Just this week, The New Republic’s Greg Sargent had an important report along these lines.
Some new polling from a top Democratic pollster finds mixed news for Team Biden on this front: Large swaths of voters appear to have little awareness of some of Trump’s clearest statements of hostility to democracy and intent to impose authoritarian rule in a second term, from his vow to be “dictator for one day” to his vague threat to enact “termination” of provisions in the Constitution.
For those who follow American politics closely […] Trump’s public rhetoric about creating a “day one” dictatorship and wanting to “terminate” parts of the U.S. Constitution are important parts of the Republican’s recent record.
But much of the country has no idea that the former president made these comments — at least not yet.
Similarly, recent YouGov polling found most Americans also don’t know about Trump’s E. Jean Carroll case, Trump’s fraud ruling in New York, or Trump’s anti-NATO comments. [Whoa! Really?!]
To be sure, the data opens the door to a spirited conversation about the perils of an uninformed electorate, and that discussion has merit. But in the short term, take another look at that quote from the Trump campaign strategist: “There’s nothing they can say about Trump that voters don’t already know.”
To which reality is responding, “Want to bet?”
Greg’s TNR report added:
The new polling also counters a well-worn refrain from skittish, nonconfrontational Democrats. They sometimes say Trump’s negatives are so well known — or “baked in,” as campaign jargon puts it—that there’s no sense in spending much time on his authoritarian outbursts, affection for political violence, and wide array of (alleged) crimes. Yet all this may in an important sense constitute new information for untold numbers of voters.
Greg spoke to veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who said, “Trump’s negatives are not baked into the cake at all.”
The opportunity for the former president’s critics seems obvious.
On Tuesday, during the Fox News daytime show “Outnumbered,” co-host Bill Hemmer angrily told CNN and MSNBC to “take the ‘news’ out of your name” because they’ve failed to air every moment of a multiply indicted, dictator-loving, self-described sexually assaulting presidential candidate’s screechy, lie-filled screeds about exterminating the liberal vermin who refuse to allow our country to heal from the tragic death of Ashli Babbitt.
After complaining about the “Trump derangement syndrome” the networks supposedly exhibited in the wake of the Supreme Court decision allowing Donald Trump back on the Colorado ballot, Hemmer whined that those networks refused to carry more than a few minutes of Trump’s recent primary victory speeches.
t must feel weird to be schooled on journalistic standards by a Fox News employee—even one who used to work at CNN. One imagines it would be a bit like a restaurateur getting a one-star Yelp review from a guy who sells roadkill and expired cans of Tab out of the back of his windowless white van.
But when you have 24 hours of airtime to fill and only 22 hours of regularly scheduled nonsense to fill it with, you have to riff a bit. Which means some of the nonsense inevitably comes off as somewhat less practiced and marginally more nonsensical. [video at the link]
Hemmer: “I just have one more thing here is that, during our primary coverage tonight, if Joe Biden as president of the United States decided he wanted to come out and take a speech, we would take his speech. We would have listened to what he has to say. But on primary night after primary night, our competition sometimes refuses to take the winner. South Carolina was a big deal, it was a big vote, it told us a lot about where the Republican Party is going this candidacy. One of our competitors took four minutes, another took 10. If that’s what you’re going to do, take news out of your name, because we should all be listening to these ideas and thoughts. And if Biden came out, we would take him and be fair to his message.”
Harris Faulkner: “Yeah, we do it all the time. … Sometimes we have to put words on the screen because helicopters are too loud for him or he’s having a moment. But we want to cover it; it’s news.”
Honestly, Fox was lucky it wasn’t required to take the “News” out of its name as part of its $787 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, which sued the network over the raft of election lies it floated in the wake of the 2020 election. But taking a news network to task over its attempt to end American democracy is pretty weak sauce. The real outrage is not letting a dictator-coddling, insurrectionist presidential candidate wax rhapsodic about his primary opponent’s tiny bird brain and the numerous times he’s been forced to show voter ID to buy his daily pain au chocolat loaf of Wonder Bread.
Of course, nothing could be healthier for democracy than preventing candidates for high office from repeating easily disprovable lies ad nauseam without fact checks, but then Fox has long demonstrated it has no use for democracy. But news? They’re all about news. After all, it’s right there in their name. And they’d never consider muting President Joe Biden if he were talking about deadly electric boats or whale-murdering windmills. […]
The Guardian, July 13, 2021:
The conservative-leaning network Fox News declined to air live President Joe Biden’s national address on voting rights, and instead only devoted a few minutes of coverage to the speech after it occurred.
On Tuesday, the network was the only major cable news channel in the US to not take the president’s address live; CNN and MSNBC both aired the speech in its entirety.
During his address, Mr Biden condemned the “big lie” spread by former President Donald Trump and a number of his allies – the false claim that Mr Biden “stole” the 2020 election, or that widespread fraud caused Mr Trump to lose.
So what did Fox run instead of Biden’s big speech? A discussion of Bill Gates’ divorce and a segment on possible COVID-19 vaccine side effects. You know … the news.
[…] Last month, Fox anchor Neil Cavuto cut away from a Trump speech when Trump started lying about the thing that had already cost the network $787 million.
So either Cavuto actually cares about democracy and good, responsible journalism, or he has loads of News Corp. stock options.
“[Trump] went on to talk about the 2020 election and how that was rigged,” said Cavuto. “This has been adjudicated many, many times—dozens of times. It’s been investigated by everyone and his uncle, no fewer than 44 investigations launched, some of them by judges that were picked by Donald Trump himself, that found no evidence of that in the seven battleground states where most of them were focused. … Donald Trump lost each and every one of those states, and no facts—or no history that he mentions on the stump right now—will change that.”
For comparison, here’s the cutaway (and fact-check) that Hemmer hated from MSNBC on Tuesday: [video at the link]
Meanwhile, as The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona writes, Fox News itself was long reluctant to carry Trump’s lies live, because they’re really fucking expensive, as Trump himself now knows.
Additionally, the network has only recently made it a habit once again of giving the president a live platform on its airwaves. For nearly two years, the right-wing network would only air taped interviews with the ex-president and didn’t carry his rallies uninterrupted as in years past, likely due to the defamation litigation his election fraud conspiracies wrought.
Translation: It’s dangerous to broadcast Trump’s provably false election lies, but it’s unpatriotic not to broadcast his other lies, because he’s the undisputed standard-bearer for one of our two major political parties, and dead whales are far less likely to sue news networks than are serially defamed voting machine companies. […]
The 46-year-old probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in its youth and inspired earthlings with images of the planet as a “Pale Blue Dot,” hasn’t sent usable data from interstellar space in months. From a report:…
A data wonk kind of diary here but thought it would be worth mentioning just to show how completely unreliable and off the mark the polling “science” has become lately, latest data point being the Republican primary results.
To make it clear, not saying here there was any deliberate move by the pollsters to throw off their results—there were many polls in many different Super Tuesday states yesterday and the usual cautions about how primary voting can be hard to predict—but it’s shocking how so extremely off the Tuesday primary polls were. This isn’t just any given poll but the 538 averages in general (Nate Silver always stressed the “8 different polls from at least 3 different pollsters” rule and still doing it) so just putting together the data form multiple polls didn’t help—it was truly garbage in and out here. […] 5 or even 10 percent swings might be understandable, but the eventual results were often more like 10 to 20 percent off as a rule, and in some states (most notoriously Vermont), off by more than 30 points.
And the kicker here? In an alarming recurring pattern, the Super Tuesday polling showed a huge systematic error favoring Trump, while his actual margin over Haley turned out to be much lower across the Super Tuesday states. […] Similar to the way Democratic candidates (and ballot initiatives) have been way overperforming what the polls seem to say. Of course, NYT/Siena being one of the worst since the 2022 mid-terms—with its bullshit prediction of a huge “red wave” in Nov. 2022 (one of the worst misses by any poll in years, in any election) and downplaying abortion, which turned out to be one of the two top issues for voters then, but it’s not the only one. As we’ll see below. […]
of the 6 Super Tuesday states that met 538 criteria for showing a 538 polling average, half of them were way off by double digits (one by more than 20%) and in all 3 cases, the 538 polling averages showed a terribly inaccurate systematic error bias in favor of Trump […] And again since these are 538 averages of multiple polls, it’s not just one poll that’s off or an outlier—the entire polling mechanism for Super Tuesday has been terribly inaccurate […]
[…] And Vermont? With the apparent 30% Trump lead in the polling? He lost the state primary to Haley by a little over 4%–meaning the primary polling in that state was off by nearly 35%, again showing a false level of support for Trump […]
It wasn’t just individual polls that were off or outlier polls that missed it on Super Tuesday, it was the full polling average in half of the states that 538 provided a polling average for. They were way, way off, […] And in being garbage, they showed a strong and hard to explain systematic bias giving Trump a much larger lead and level of support than he actually had when the Super Tuesday results were counted. […]
a lot of the US media is desperate to have a 2024 horserace to sell more ads, papers and clicks. And the perception of biased, completely inaccurate polls going to outrageously exaggerated levels in overestimating Trump (and Republicans in general for general elections and ballot initiatives)? It isn’t just some vague sense—it’s being demonstrated repeatedly since the middle of 2022, and going into the Super Tuesday primaries. […]
Campaign news tidbits, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* Despite the Republican National Committee’s position against debates organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates, Donald Trump declared yesterday that he’s prepared to debate President Joe Biden “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE,” regardless of who organizes the events.
* On a related note, a Biden campaign spokesperson responded soon after, “I know Donald Trump’s thirsty for attention and struggling to expand his appeal beyond the MAGA base — and that’s a conversation we’ll have at the appropriate time in this cycle. But if he’s so desperate to see President Biden in prime time, he doesn’t have to wait! He can join the tens of millions of Americans who will tune in to watch the State of the Union tomorrow night. [That’s now tonight for the SOTU] He might even learn a thing or two about bringing people together and actually delivering for the American people.”
[…] * Following reports that he’d met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Elon Musk said he’s “not donating money” to either major-party presidential candidate this year. The billionaire’s online statement did not address whether he intended to support any super PACs or outside groups working to elect the Republican ticket.
* As the 2024 general election campaign gets underway, Trump assured Club for Growth donors that he and the conservative group’s president are now “back in love” following months of conflict.
Lawmakers say Russia’s alleged use of Starlink terminals ‘poses a serious threat to Ukraine’s security, Ukrainian lives, and U.S. national security’
House Democrats opened an investigation of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, examining whether the company implemented adequate safeguards to prevent Russia from deploying its Starlink satellite internet service in its war against Ukraine.
Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) sent a letter Wednesday night demanding that the company report complaints about potential illegal acquisitions of Starlink terminals, including in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine. The lawmakers said they were alarmed by Ukrainian intelligence officials’ allegations that Russian forces deployed the company’s terminals in eastern Ukraine, potentially running afoul of U.S. sanctions.
The lawmakers warned SpaceX’s president, Gwynne Shotwell, that Russia’s alleged use of Starlink “poses a serious threat to Ukraine’s security, Ukrainian lives, and U.S. national security”
“We are concerned that you may not have appropriate guardrails and policies in place,” Raskin and Garcia wrote in a letter exclusively obtained by The Washington Post.
The probe underscores how vital Starlink service has been to Ukraine’s war effort, providing the backbone of its digital communications on the battlefield since Russia invaded the country two years ago. SpaceX supplied Starlink terminals to Ukraine following a plea from Ukrainian government officials within hours of Russia’s attack. The Defense Department purchased 400 to 500 new terminals for Ukraine in June 2023, the letter says.
Yet there are long-running concerns about the broad influence that SpaceX and Musk, the company’s CEO and founder, wield over the conflict.
Ukrainian officials have said Starlink gives troops an essential upper hand, providing a reliable internet connection that allows soldiers to respond to group text messages, stream drone feeds of enemy forces and coordinate artillery strikes.
Lawmakers are worried that Starlink could now provide a similar advantage to Russia, after Ukrainian intelligence officials said in a February blog post that Russian troops were increasingly using Starlink satellite communication systems. The blog post cited radio intercepts of conversations of troops operating in eastern Ukraine. Andrii Yusov, a representative of Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, told local media that Russia’s use of the technology was becoming “systematic,” according to the post. The same week, Ukrainian Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told the Wall Street Journal that Russia was using thousands of Starlink terminals in his country. […]
Musk has said reports that the company sells Starlink terminals to Russia are “categorically false.”
“To the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia,” Musk said in a post on X. Musk also tweeted that Starlink satellites “will not close the link in Russia,” replying to an X user’s question about whether the company would know if a terminal was activated in Russia.
[…] Ukrainian officials have suggested that Russian forces have obtained the terminals illegally, circumventing sanctions by buying them through intermediaries in neighboring countries, according to the lawmakers’ letter.
The lawmakers asked SpaceX what actions it has taken to eliminate security vulnerabilities that Russia could use to illegally acquire Starlink terminals, and they asked how the company is working with other U.S. regulators to prevent the illegal trade of satellite terminals. […]
[…] Xcel Energy said its facilities appeared to have been involved in the starting of the Smokehouse Creek fire, which has burned through more than 1 million acres of land in the Texas Panhandle.
Texas officials have said as many as 500 structures may have been destroyed in a string of wildfires, including the Smokehouse Creek fire, that ignited last month.
“Xcel Energy has been cooperating with the investigations into the wildfires and has been conducting its own review. Based on currently available information, Xcel Energy acknowledges that its facilities appear to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire,” the utility provider said in an update.
[…] “Xcel Energy disputes claims that it acted negligently in maintaining and operating its infrastructure; however, we encourage people who had property destroyed by or livestock lost in the Smokehouse Creek fire to submit a claim to Xcel Energy through our claims process,” the statement said.
“We will review and respond to any such claims in an expeditious manner, with a priority on claims from any person that lost their home in the Smokehouse Creek fire,” it added.
The Smokehouse Creek fire in Hutchinson County is about 44 percent contained, Texas A&M Forest Service said Wednesday. Texas officials said they are still investigating the cause of the fire, The Associated Press noted. […]
President Biden will announce during his State of the Union address Thursday that he’s directing the U.S. military to lead the construction of a port along the coast of Gaza on the Mediterranean Sea to boost the amount of aid getting to Palestinian civilians.
“We know the aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough and nowhere near fast enough. The president will make clear again this evening that we all need to do more, and the United States is doing more,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters.
The port would be able to receive large ships that can bring in food, water, medicine and other supplies into Gaza, which has been under fire for months as Israeli forces carry out shellings and military operations in response to Hamas’s attacks last October.
Biden will direct the U.S. military to undertake the mission alongside allies and humanitarian partners, a senior administration official said. The project will take “a number of weeks to plan and execute” and will involve forces already in the region or that will be there soon.
Senior administration officials said the project will not require any U.S. boots on the ground in Gaza. Instead, the plan involves U.S. personnel on military vessels offshore who will not be required to go ashore to install the port.
Initial shipments of supplies would come via Cyprus, enabled by the U.S. military and partners. Officials said the U.S. would work with the United Nations and other humanitarian partners to distribute aid across Gaza once it reaches the port. […]
A Fulton County ethics watchdog slated to hear complaints against District Attorney Fani Willis (D) on Thursday will no longer do so, according to an updated meeting agenda.
The Fulton County Board of Ethics was expected to hear two complaints against Willis after her romance with a special prosecutor on the election interference case involving former President Trump raised concerns of a conflict of interest.
The board determined it does not have jurisdiction over Willis, who is a state constitutional officer in her role, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. […]
Fulton County resident Steven Kramer filed one of the complaints, citing Willis’s relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade and questioning whether she improperly benefited from his hiring.
[…] The other complaint was filed by internet-based talk show host Gregory Mantell, who claimed in a Substack post that Willis has violated “at least six sections and even more subsections” of the Fulton County Ethics Code.
The Ethics board inquiry was cheered on by national leaders such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who posted on social media last month that she was looking forward to the hearing. [MTG’s involvement is a good sign that this part of the effort to disqualify Fani Willis is bogus, or at least trumped up.]
A Republican-led state Senate committee also probed Willis’s relationship with Wade this week over allegations the district attorney misused taxpayer funds. [Republicans … again. Sheesh.]
[…] The oversight hearing drew renewed attention to the district attorney’s relationship as the judge overseeing the 2020 election interference case weighs whether to disqualify Willis and her office from the historic prosecution.
Judge Scott McAfee said he expects to rule on the matter by the end of next week. The case could be thrown into limbo if he does boot Willis and the Fulton County district attorney’s office from it, as a local council would be tasked with picking a different district attorney’s office to take up the prosecution. […]
In most places, Super Tuesday was uneventful, as Joe Biden and Donald Trump continued their widely expected marches to their respective party nominations.
Texas was a major exception.
The Lone Star State’s Republican primary saw a political earthquake, including unprecedented incumbent losses. At least 12 legislative seats and three statewide elected judgeships shifted to the right. [Bad news!] The May 28 runoff election could bring additional aftershocks, including even a loss by state House Speaker Dade Phelan.
[…] Texas has a reputation as a conservative state, but it is overstated. Historically, Texas conservatism is “pro-business” or “pro-market.” It gravitates toward political and economic power being held by a small oligarchy that ruthlessly resists reform attempts.
Under this system, collusion between business and government has thrived, protecting the profits of incumbent businesses from competition. This domestic form of protectionism, combined with old-school political patronage in the state’s education system (especially in rural areas of the state), has created a remarkably stable established power structure over the decades […]
Texans don’t usually watch the workings of their state government closely — very few Americans do. This has permitted legislators to protect themselves for decades using an established playbook. First, they engage in typically three to five days of right-wing theatrics over each 140 day legislative session, passing enough bills on social issues to fill the back of a campaign mailer. Then they spend the rest of their scarce legislative time consolidating power on behalf of Austin’s oligarchs. [Not sure the phrase “Austin’s oligarchs” is appropriate.]
[…] Then came Paxton’s 2023 impeachment. A former legislator, Paxton had always been at odds with Austin’s oligarchs. This tension had already led to aggressive attempts to defeat him electorally in 2014 and 2022. When those efforts failed, they ambushed Paxton with corruption allegations. [It looked to me like those allegations were legitimate.] The Texas House followed suit and impeached Paxton over Memorial Day weekend.
[…] Paxton predictably beat the rap […] the political damage to those who had supported impeachment was by then already done. Paxton emerged from his acquittal stronger than ever, with a mandate to hold accountable those who had backed his impeachment and removal.
These three factors combined to raise the profile of the Texas Republican legislative primaries to a degree never previously seen. Voters were paying a lot of attention for once, and the results speak for themselves. […]
That little billionaire scamp Elon Musk is using Twitter, the social media platform he bought, ruined, and rebranded, to spread lies again. This time he’s spreading a rightwing conspiracy theory about immigration and insisting it means Joe Biden did TREASON. Of course, Joe Biden gets accused of treason at least 20 times daily by Republicans in Congress, so the impact of the accusation is a mite diluted.
As Judd Legum details in his Popular Information newsletter, Musk amplified a rightwing “news” tweet that lied about a completely legal immigration program, adding additional lies and an extra bogus claim about undocumented foreigners voting, even though nearly every bit of it was a lie. The punctuation appears to be blameless, maybe.
So here’s Musk’s retweet, all of which is bullshit. [Screengrab at the link]
Musk repeated a story from serial fabulist Colin Rugg, who co-owns wingnut news aggregation / aggravation site “Trending Politics.” Rugg claimed that Joe Biden has “secretly flown 320,000 illegal immigrants from Latin American airports to 43 U.S. cities” and called it “Treason.” Musk added his own spin:
“Treason indeed! Ushering in vast numbers of illegals is why Secretary Mayorkas was impeached by the House.
“They are importing voters. This is why groups on the far left fight so hard to stop voter ID requirements, under the absurd guise of protecting the right to vote.”
Let’s just clear up the lies one by one, shall we?
1: Rugg is lying about a completely not-secret “expanded humanitarian parole program” allowing immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to legally come to the US for two years and get work permits. The program is so “secret” that Joe Biden announced it at the White House on January 5, 2023.
“Parole” in the immigration context means “temporary permission to be in the USA.” It has nothing to do with the criminal sense of “parole,” no matter how loudly idiots on Twitter scream.
Secret programs aren’t generally listed on the White House website, nor are they announced by press releases (both from the White House and Homeland Security) that are then covered in the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Nor are secret programs included among the scrolling set of news alerts at the top of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services home page. [screengrab at the link]
2: People in the program have to have a US sponsor and pass a security background check. They apply using the “CBP One” phone app. (To avoid confusion: That app is also used to let people outside the US apply for appointments to claim asylum at the border, but the humanitarian parole program isn’t itself the same as asylum. Those granted parole can apply for asylum while they’re here, though.)
3: Musk’s claim that “they are importing voters” is of course bullshit too. Oh, we’ve been over that so many times. Noncitizen voter registration is vanishingly rare, and the few times it happens (almost always by accident) it’s easily detected. Noncitizen voting is pretty much nonexistent. Rightwing claims that it’s common, however, are endemic.
4: Despite some scary photoshops showing a vast armada of airliners supposedly full of illegal immigrants (again, these folks are here legally), Joe Biden isn’t shipping anyone to the US. Those who qualify for the program have to pay for their own flights on scheduled commercial airliners. No chartered flights or mass migration. [Correct! That’s a good debunking.]
If Musk got his wish in the tweet below, video of people in the program would simply show an international arrivals terminal at a US airport. You’d have no idea which travelers have what paperwork unless the camera zoomed in on it. [Screengrab at the link]
At least that tweet got flagged with a “community note” pointing out that it’s all lies, so hooray for that.
As Legum pointedly points out, “The reason why no one noticed all the planes chartered by the Biden administration is that they don’t exist.”
5: Musk also lied in a follow-up tweet that
“This administration is both importing voters and creating a national security threat from unvetted illegal immigrants.
“It is highly probable that the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11. Just a matter of time.”
[Oh FFS. Musk is attempting to pump up the fear factor. Fear is a very powerful emotion.]
Again, as Legum points out, those granted parole are indeed screened. They’re probably given more scrutiny than half the idiots with blue checkmarks on Twitter. [True!] And in case you needed the reminder, the 9/11 terrorists entered the US on ordinary travel visas, and we’ve completely revamped vetting of both tourists and immigrants since then. That was the whole point of creating the Department of Homeland Security and putting the immigration system inside it!
And finally, for all the whining that Traitor Joe Biden is doing Treason, humanitarian parole is entirely within a president’s powers under the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the DHS secretary to
parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case‐by‐case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States.
As Legum notes, every president since 1952 has used it when there have been natural disasters, wars, and other troubles that would make it dangerous for foreign nationals to go home. Except Donald Trump, of course.
So let’s add it all up: Musk and other rightwing crazies are all twisted into a knot over legally admitted immigrants who are screened, have sponsors in the US to help them, have permission to work, and who pay for their own flights. They can’t vote, and are probably less likely to blow up a federal building with a daycare in it than your average militia loon. […]
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) will start providing more hands-on support to open-source software developers as they work to better secure their projects, the agency first told Axios…
Driving the news: CISA hosted a two-day, invite-only summit this week with leaders in the open-source software community and other federal officials…
Zoom in: During the summit, CISA and a handful of package repositories — online forums where developers upload and share the applications they’ve built using these open-source languages — unveiled new initiatives to help secure open-source projects…
Myself @ 137
This is optimal. We need to see more bona fide insane candidates get nominated by the GOP.
Candidates under investigation for corruption and/or sexual assault would also be a plus but honest-to-god ceazy candidates rumning for the Republican party generate the most publicity.
This will give some slack to the campaign run by the Ineffective Party (D).
As one of the world’s foremost news analyzers, we are usually far too busy mocking Republican Congressman Ronny Jackson to pay attention to what his former Navy rank was. His fall from grace has just been so ridiculous: From seemingly normal White House doctor to Bush and Obama; to pill-pushing clown drunk White House doctor to Trump, seemingly spending most of his time examining the president memorizing his every flirty curve; and now the bottom rung of humanity’s ladder where he now sits as the conspiracy-theory-spewing Tiger King-cosplaying congressman […] of the Texas panhandle.
[…] Turns out, after that Pentagon Inspector General report came out in 2021 — the one that said Jackson was a drunken shitshow as White House doctor, sexually harassed subordinates, dosed on Ambien even while he was on call traveling with the president, and so much more! — the Navy in July of 2022 quietly stripped Jackson of his rank.
He is not the former rear admiral, AKA one-star admiral he once was.
He is now classified as a former captain.
His website still says “admiral” though, and the Washington Post says he didn’t respond to requests for comment. Wonder why he’s lying. (We haven’t seen a statement on either of his Twitter accounts yet either. That could of course change by the time you read this.)
If you are not a troop, next time you see one, ask them what’s more humiliating than being de-ranked, and then wait for their answer. That’s Ronny Jackson, the pathetic loser you see on Fox News with the wild eyes. That’s what he’s made of his life.
We spoke to a former Navy person who said considering what-all we know about Jackson — like for example, all the pill-pushing! — they are personally surprised the Navy didn’t go even harder on him, since our top-secret source said they once knew somebody who got hit with “trafficking” for bringing their friend a bag of weed. It sounds to us like they went pretty easy on him, considering what an embarrassment to the uniform he is.
Of course, at the time he was a sitting Republican congressman, as if that title confers honor and respect on a person […]
The Washington Post says the Navy’s demotion “carries significant financial burden in addition to the social stigma of stripped rank in military circles.” Currently, it’s a difference of $15,000 in annual pension, a gap the Post says will likely grow as pay raises are passed. So Congressman Drunky Pill-Pusher is also Congressman Poor, bless his heart.
And yes, in case you were wondering, it is highly inappropriate for Jackson to be omitting this Most Embarrassing Moment from his biography:
[Katherine L. Kuzminski, military policy expert at Center for a New American Security] said that it was inappropriate for Jackson to describe himself as a retired rear admiral. “While it is possible that others will mistakenly refer to him as ‘Admiral’ in perpetuity, he himself should not make that mistake,” she said.
Especially since people really are calling him “Admiral” all the time!
“Where’s the admiral, Ronny Jackson? Come on up here,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a retired Pennsylvania Army National Guard brigadier general, urged at a House Republican news conference in July 2023 as lawmakers discussed a defense spending bill.
Speaking at the August 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference — days after the Navy privately demoted Jackson — Trump also extolled his former physician.
“He was an admiral, a doctor and now he’s a congressman, and I said, which is the best if you had your choice? And he sort of indicated doctor because he loved looking at my body, it was so strong,” [eyeroll] Trump joked before pivoting to the reason for his affection for Jackson. “He said I’m the healthiest president that’s ever lived. … I said, I like this guy.”
Ronny Jackson should really correct all these people […]
We’ll be sure to remember to call him Captain Ronny though, in headlines, because here at Wonkette we always do our part.
Weeks of indirect negotiations appear to have stalled over Hamas’s insistence on a permanent cease-fire during or after any hostage releases, a demand that Israel has rejected.
More than 6,000 voters in a newly formed congressional district drawn to heighten Black voting power in Alabama received postcards with incorrect voting information ahead of Tuesday’s primary, alarming advocates concerned about the potential impact on a race seen as crucial to boosting Black representation and Democrats’ hopes to flip the U.S. House in November.
James Snipes, chair of the Montgomery County Board of Registrars, said 6,593 county voters received postcards listing the incorrect congressional district after the county’s election software misidentified some people living in the 2nd Congressional District as living in the 7th…
Gayle Borne has fostered more than 300 children in Springfield, Tennessee. She’s cared for kids who have rarely seen a doctor — kids so neglected that they cannot speak. Such children are now even more vulnerable because of a law Tennessee passed last year that requires the direct consent of birth parents or legal guardians for every routine childhood vaccination. Foster parents, social workers, and other caregivers cannot provide permission.
In January, Borne took a foster baby, born extremely premature at just over 2 pounds, to her first doctor’s appointment. The health providers said that without the consent of the child’s mother, they couldn’t vaccinate her against diseases like pneumonia, hepatitis B, and polio. The mother hasn’t been located, so a social worker is now seeking a court order to permit immunizations. “We are just waiting,” Borne said. “Our hands are tied.”
Tennessee’s law has also stymied grandmothers and other caregivers who accompany children to routine appointments when parents are at work, in drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics, or otherwise unavailable. The law claims to “give parents back the right to make medical decisions for their children.”
Framed in the rhetoric of choice and consent, it is one of more than a dozen recent and pending pieces of legislation nationwide that pit parental freedom against community and children’s health. In actuality, they create obstacles to vaccination, the foundation of pediatric care…
Doctors traditionally give caregivers vaccine information and get their permission before delivering more than a dozen childhood immunizations that defend against measles, polio, and other debilitating diseases.
But now, Tennessee’s law demands that birth parents attend routine appointments and sign consent forms for every vaccine given over two or more years. “The forms could have a chilling effect,” said Dr. Jason Yaun, a Memphis pediatrician and past president of the Tennessee chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“People who promote parental rights on vaccines tend to downplay the rights of children,” said Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy researcher at the University of California Law-San Francisco.
[…]
This year, legislators in Arizona, Iowa, and West Virginia have introduced related consent bills. A “Parents’ Bill of Rights” amendment in Oklahoma seeks to ensure that parents know they can exempt their children from school vaccine mandates along with lessons on sex education and AIDS. In Florida, the state’s surgeon general recently defied guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by telling parents they could send unvaccinated children to a school during a measles outbreak.
[…]
In Tennessee, anti-vaccine activists and libertarian-leaning organizations railed against the state’s health department in 2021 when it recommended covid vaccines to minors, following CDC guidance. Gary Humble, executive director of the conservative group Tennessee Stands, asked legislators to blast the health department for advising masks and vaccination, suggesting the department “could be dissolved and reconstituted at your pleasure.”
Backlash also followed a notice sent to doctors from Dr. Michelle Fiscus, then the state’s immunization director. She reminded them that they didn’t need parental permission to vaccinate consenting adolescents 14 or older, according to a decades-old state rule called the Mature Minor Doctrine. [Tennessee soon passed a law abolishing that doctrine]
In the weeks that followed, state legislators threatened to defund the health department and pressured it into scaling back covid vaccine promotion, as revealed by The Tennessean. Fiscus was abruptly fired. “Today I became the 25th of 64 state and territorial immunization program directors to leave their position during this pandemic,” she wrote in a statement. “That’s nearly 40% of us.” Tennessee’s Covid death rate climbed to one of the nation’s highest by mid-2022.
[…]
The Republican-led Kentucky Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to grant the right to collect child support for unborn children, advancing a bill that garnered bipartisan support.
The measure would allow a parent to seek child support up to a year after giving birth to retroactively cover pregnancy expenses. The legislation — Senate Bill 110 — won Senate passage on a 36-2 vote with little discussion to advance to the House. Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers…
Some Iowa House Republicans are attempting to bog down a bipartisan bill to legalize over-the-counter birth control by adding amendments that compare birth control to abortion, limiting how long a person can receive birth control under the bill, and adding penalties for pimps.
All the House Members who introduced the various amendments are on record as being extremely anti-abortion. They were all part of a bloc that introduced an even stricter abortion ban last year than the one Gov. Kim Reynolds signed after July’s special one-day legislative session…
After too many tourists have behaved like idiots, Kyoto’s Gion district announced a ban on visitors entering the narrow backstreets where geisha work and train. This decision, effective in April, aims to shield geisha and maiko (trainee geisha) from disruptive tourist behaviors, such as unsolicited photography and physical harassment…
Don’t kid yourself. Democrats were trying to encourage this behavior in Republicans before. They called it the “Pied Piper Strategy” in 2016. Remember what happened in 2016?
StevoRsays
Growing back in the Devonian period and Calamophyton trees – like leafless palms but fern and horsetail relatives :
Scientists have discovered the oldest fossilised forest known on Earth, a new study shows. It has been discovered on the high sandstone cliffs in South West England’s Devon and Somerset Coast and dates from 390 million years ago. Research from the Universities of Cambridge and Cardiff says they are the oldest fossilised trees ever found in Britain and the oldest known forest fossils on Earth.
^ Claruifying fix : If folks are intrested link to live youtube for the State of the Union address 2024: Watch LIVE as Biden gives speech – looks liek they are still a while off starting.
StevoRsays
In examining a pair of icy asteroids at the edge of the solar system, the James Webb Space Telescope is helping scientists understand the evolution of an ice giant: Neptune. These findings could also help reveal how ancient Earth grew saturated with water, the ingredient that ultimately led to the emergence of life.The binary asteroid system Mors-Somnus was recently discovered..(snip)….this research, conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Surface Compositions of Trans-Neptunian Objects (Disco-TNOs) program, represents the first time the surface composition of two parts of a small, binary pair of TNOs has been investigated. It’s also the first time, therefore, that their chemical compositions have been revealed.
The US Food and Drug Administration has granted a “breakthrough therapy” designation to a formulation of LSD shown to treat generalized anxiety disorder. The decision was based on clinical trials that showed the drug “exhibited rapid and robust efficacy” in reducing anxiety, “solidly sustained for 12 weeks after a single dose.” …
A tense meeting got underway in Dolton on Monday night as residents voiced their frustrations with the mayor and recent allegations against her.
“We don’t need anything else, saying what you’re claiming to do for the village. We need accountability. We need information on the finances,” one speaker said.
Mayor Tiffany Henyard is accused of using village money for personal reasons as Dolton’s unpaid bills have piled up. Henyard has denied the allegations.
During the meeting, Henyard vetoed a resolution passed by the village board to investigate her spending…
birgerjohanssonsays
Akira Toriyama has passed away at 68. While I haven’t watched any of his anime, I have certainly watched parodies of his Dragon Ball Z .
birgerjohanssonsays
Reginald Selkirk @ 153
The molecular biologist is presumably an expert in animating corpses and getting them to emulate life-like activities.
birgerjohanssonsays
I’ve travelled the world researching patriarchy – and found it is far from inevitable | Angela Saini | The Guardian
I’ve travelled the world researching patriarchy – and found it is far from inevitable | Angela Saini | The Guardian
As President Joe Biden mingled on the House floor following his State of the Union address Thursday night, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) delivered the official Republican response, a stern but bizarrely delivered rebuttal that focused heavily on immigration and the economy.
The freshman senator is considered a rising star in the party. But her speech’s intense tone—with an over-the-top dramatic cadence that was delivered in a kitchen—left political operatives and observers struggling to make sense of it…
The father of a U.S. Marine killed during the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan in 2021 was charged with a misdemeanor after he disrupted President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday.
Steve Nikoui, 51, attended the speech as the guest of Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL). He was removed from the chamber and arrested by Capitol Police after he interrupted Biden with shouts of “Abbey Gate”—the entrance at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, where a suicide bomber killed 170 civilians and 13 U.S. service members, including Nikoui’s son, Lance Corporal Kareem Nikoui…
Katie Britt, the junior Republican senator from Alabama, delivered the GOP’s rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s address on Thursday. Her impassioned, breathless speech — delivered at times in an ASMR-esque whisper from what appeared to be her kitchen — ended up feeling more like a rejected audition tape for a supporting role on “Grey’s Anatomy” than the hard-hitting political sparring favored by Biden’s Republican critics.
Into the late hours of the night, Rolling Stone was inundated, sometimes completely unprompted, with messages from longtime GOP operatives, right-leaning pollsters, conservative Capitol Hill staff, MAGA lawyers, and even some senior members of Trump’s own 2024 campaign absolutely torching Britt’s absurdly over-dramatic rebuttal.
“What the hell am I watching right now?” a Trump adviser asked, mid-Britt remarks.
Republicans in Iowa’s House of Representatives approved a bill Thursday that would criminalize the death of an “unborn person” — over Democrats’ concerns about how it might apply to in vitro fertilization, after an Alabama court found frozen embryos can be considered children.
Iowa’s law currently outlines penalties for termination or serious injury to a “human pregnancy,” but the proposed bill would amend the language to pertain to “causing of death of, or serious injury to, an unborn person,” defined as “an individual organism … from fertilization to live birth.” …
Reginald Selkirksays
@164:
… Earlier in the afternoon, House Republicans withdrew a bill that would require a father to pay child support starting at fertilization after Democrats pressed on the potential implications, including the possibility of a court order for risky paternity testing of a fetus.
Apparently this is the new thing in the anti-abortion movement; see also @143 for a similar bill in Kentucky. But these attempts highlight the fact that such laws have never existed in America, nor in any other culture in human history. Since Alito and his fellow god-botherers on the Supreme Court are more concerned with circumstances in the 16th century than what is happening today, such efforts will undoubtedly fail to impress.*
* This is sarcasm. I do not expect consistency from SCOTUS.
Three months after former Rep. George Santos’ colleagues expelled him for a staggering array of alleged crimes and ethical violations, he has apparently decided that man cannot live by Cameo alone—and he wants his job back.
At least, Santos is officially running for Congress again, allowing him to raise money from the public and, potentially, spend it on his legal defense.
Santos—an admitted liar who is currently indicted on 23 federal counts, including unemployment fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, stealing from his own campaign donors, and lying to Congress—timed his announcement for maximum disruption: In the middle of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address…
The unemployment rate has now been below 4% for 25 consecutive months — a streak unseen in the United States since the 1960s.
Expectations heading into this morning showed projections of about 198,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in February. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market managed to do much better than that. CNBC reported:
Job creation eased slightly in February though still topped expectations and pointed to a vibrant U.S. labor market, even though the unemployment rate moved higher. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 275,000 for the month while the jobless rate moved higher to 3.9%.
“Folks, I inherited an economy that was on the brink,” President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address. “Now our economy is literally the envy of the world. Fifteen million new jobs in just three years — a record. Unemployment at 50-year lows.”
Less than 12 hours later, the incumbent Democrat has new reasons to boast.
What’s more, in addition to the top-line data, we also learned that wage growth continued to outpace inflation. While the unemployment rate inched higher, the jobless rate has nevertheless been below 4% for 25 consecutive months — a streak unseen in the United States since the 1960s.
As for the politics, let’s circle back to previous coverage to put the data in perspective. Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the United States’ economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.35 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.
According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created over 15.5 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years.
In recent months, Republicans have responded to developments like these by pretending not to notice them. No one should be surprised if GOP officials keep the trend going today. […]
The president’s reelection team is rolling out new messaging that accuses the GOP frontrunner of harboring a “vendetta” against popular policies that have expanded health coverage, according to details first shared with POLITICO. The push will emphasize Trump’s vow to try again to repeal the Affordable Care Act if elected, a move that would put insurance for millions at risk and dovetail with Republican support for restricting abortion and eliminating caps on prescription drug costs.
New York Times:
[Biden speaking during the State of the Union address] “Folks, the Affordable Care Act, the old Obamacare, is still a very big deal. Over 100 million of you can no longer be denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. But my predecessor, and many in this chamber, want to take those prescription drugs away by repealing the Affordable Care Act. I am not going to let that happen.”
Commentary:
[…] Referencing the literally dozens of times congressional Republicans voted to repeal the ACA , Biden added, “We stopped you 50 times before and we will stop you again. In fact, I am not only protecting it, I am expanding it.”
One of the benefits of this messaging is that the White House really does have a compelling story to tell about a kitchen-table issue affecting families nationwide. Indeed, for proponents of the Affordable Care Act, all of the recent news surrounding the reform law and the system it helped create has been encouraging: The ACA is working well, it’s about as popular as it’s ever been, and the latest enrollment data was amazing.
Just as notable from an electoral perspective is the degree to which Donald Trump helped open this door. The former president, who largely ignored the ACA after leaving the White House, has repeatedly targeted Obamacare in increasingly explicit terms, and as recently as December, Trump posted a video to his social media platform attacking the late Sen. John McCain for not helping him “terminate” the ACA in 2017.
Trump soon after vowed to tear down the nation’s existing health care system and replace it with something he said would be “better” — though his assurances didn’t include any details.
What’s more, as we’ve discussed, some congressional Republicans are adding their voices to this debate. Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Axios in late November, “I think Obamacare has been one of the biggest deceptions on the American people. I mean just look at your health care premiums.” (Premium costs, in reality, have gone down, not up.)
The same report added that Republican Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, who’d likely chair the Senate Finance Committee if the GOP retakes control of the chamber, also said he’s open to repeal-and-replace plans.
[…] a recent national survey from NBC News found Democrats with a 23-point advantage over the GOP on health care — which brought Biden’s SOTU motivations into sharp relief.
[…] But there’s ample reason to believe the president will nevertheless be reminding voters that their health security would be at risk if Trump and his party succeed in the 2024 elections.
My name is Katie Britt, and I am the other senator from Alabama. I am delivering the Republican response to Joe Biden’s State of the Union, because optics, and I guess because I’m not Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Am I crying? I don’t know. [Sniff!] If I am, it’s because of brown people, as you will soon see. I represent white people, I think we can all agree on that.
I am a senator, but most importantly I am [Sniff!] the mother of Weathyrleigh and Rymbrandt, GO TO BED, RYMBRANDT!
Where was I?
I am speaking to you from my kitchen, which is where Republicans keep the women. My husband Wesley and I watched Joe Biden in the living room. But usually at this time of day, Wesley and I are in the kitchen, doing our marital worrying.
Because Joe Biden.
Joe Biden doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand that according to white conservatives’ feelings, the country is doing very badly, despite all the facts to the contrary. The country we know and love seems to be slipping away, this is a crying part because it’s a racist dogwhistle.
I was born a poor white girl in Enterprise, Alabama, and now I am in the Senate. I am an American success story! But also my life is a nightmare, much like yours. Why? Because border.
Some might say that I was part of the group that negotiated that bipartisan border bill with James Lankford and then proceeded to vote against it, but those people are MSDNC lesbians.
Now I will tell you an extremely graphic story about cartels raping sex-trafficked women, which is horrifying, and also somehow Joe Biden’s fault. I am telling you this story not because I actually care about the victims, but because racist Republicans need you to believe that every person who shows up at the border is a sex-trafficking cartel rapist, and also a fentanyl salesperson.
Next I will tell you about a white woman who was murdered by somebody from a country on the non-US American side of border. Whenever possible, our Birth Of A Nation party likes to highlight a white woman who was murdered by a minority, or might have been murdered by a minority, and talk about it incessantly. Sometimes we name a bill after her. Don’t worry, you don’t have to remember her name two weeks from now!
Sometimes it’s not even a white woman! It’s always a white person though.
Are these senseless, gruesome tragedies? Yes. [Sniff!]
Are Republicans exploiting these victims to further our xenophobic agenda, to appeal to Nazis and white nationalists — AKA our base AKA the good people on both sides — who believe in conspiracy theories about Jews paying minorities to invade the southern border to replace us? Also yes.
Joe Biden did not even admit tonight that he is responsible for all these murders, by personally releasing the illegal border crossers into our homeland.
Despite what Joe Biden says, or what the actual numbers say, white Republicans are more terrified of brown people than ever before, and that is the only crime rate that [sniff!] matters.
Now I will talk about foreign policy for a second, but I didn’t really think this part through, because it kind of sounds like I’m scolding Mike Johnson and Putin-supporting Republicans more than I’m scolding Joe Biden.
It’s Biden’s fault that the Houthis are attacking those ships, though, I’m almost sure of it!
Did I mention that China? And TikTok?
Anyway, just ask yourself, are you better off now that you were three years ago?
Well were you?
Why are you getting a calculator? Stop thinking too hard about exactly what was happening three years ago, or why today’s Republican talking point is “three years ago” instead of “four years ago” like Elise Stefanik said it yesterday.
America’s history has been written by women and men who got knocked down, then they got up again, you’re never gonna keep them down. They sing the songs that remind them of the good times. They sing the songs that remind them of the better times.
Oh, and that thing about how Republicans are taking away all your reproductive rights, even IVF? How would you feel if I told you that I love babies like soooooo much and then drop the subject entirely? Did I not just tell you about my children Mary-Wallace and Battleshyp?
Fellow white moms, are you feeling me? Are you picking up the vibes I am putting down? What if I say something about “moral arc of the universe” and “American greatness rests in the fact that we always answer that call”? Will you totally forget that my party stands against all those things and took your reproductive rights away, and also that Joe Biden said the same nice things 30 minutes ago, and much more authentically?
May God bless you, and may God continue to bless these United States of America, which are currently a hellhole, because of Joe Biden and his friends, the brown people who do the murders.
I see you, I hear you, and [dramatic whisper] I stand with you.
OK was that good enough or should I do it again? I can do it again! Should I cry more? When are callbacks? Are we going to get a call back either way? I can do a different song! Why are you asking me to leave? No! My mother is going to call the director and he is never going to work in this town again! Do you know who I am? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
Video is available at the link.
She mentioned praying … and God, of course.
From ABC News:
[…] Sen. Katie Britt called President Joe Biden a “dithering and diminished leader” and warned of a bleak American future under his presidency in the Republican rebuttal to his State of the Union address Thursday evening.
[…] She argued that “the country we know and love seems to be slipping away” and appealed directly to her fellow mothers, who she said are probably “disgusted” with Washington.
[…] It’s the third year in a row that Republicans have picked a woman to speak to the nation after Biden leaves the podium — and Britt’s remarks echo the same dark vision for the future under Biden and Democrats laid out by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2023 and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2022.
“For years, the left has coddled criminals and defunded the police — all while letting repeat offenders walk free,” Britt said in her response. “The result is tragic but foreseeable — from our small towns to America’s most iconic city streets, life is getting more and more dangerous.”
[…] “Mr. President, enough is enough. Innocent Americans are dying and you only have yourself to blame. Fulfill your oath of office,” Britt said. “Reverse your policies and this crisis and stop the suffering.”
Britt said “the free world deserves better than a dithering and diminished leader. America deserves leaders who recognize that secure borders, stable prices, safe streets and a strong defense are the cornerstones of a great nation.”
She did not mention Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, whom Britt endorsed in December. But she said the country is at a crossroads, and “I know which choice our children deserve – and the choice the Republican Party is fighting for.”
It was hard to watch. Lot’s of horror stories about cartels raping women, lots of blaming Biden for anything and everything … and no policy details from Republicans that would solve any issues.
birgerjohanssonsays
Health gains of low-traffic schemes up to 100 times greater than costs, study finds | Low-traffic neighbourhoods | The Guardian
From online comments about Katie Britt’s rebuttal speech:
This literally reminds me of this: if a Commander’s wife from the Handmaids Tale was forced to give a speech for the state.
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Katie Britt was giving Lifetime TV serial killer mom vibes.
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I’m so tired of watching spineless Republicans be the spokesmen and women for our party. And that’s how Britt came across in this cringey and phony response. A perfect picture of the current GOP!!!
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The theatrics!! Going from shakily crying to stern and and determined! Get this lady an Oscar.
Also someone should tell her it was the republicans who got the border bill they wanted and then killed it. Really nothing unexpected tho, reality is long gone from the right.
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Live! From NY,… it’s Saturday night! [That’s what I thought when I saw it. It was a skit from SNL. “And what size were the rooms where the Cartels raped the women? Answer: ‘Shoe box.’ And how many men raped that woman? Answer: ‘The cartel sent in one man after another all day long.'” And so forth …. on and on … ending with blaming Joe Biden]
——————————
Watched this live in the early hrs from the UK, & had to set aside my hot drink to avoid spillage. Truly one of the funniest things I’ve seen in many a year.
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I’ve seen better acting from an understudy in a grade school play. Painful to watch is an understatement!
It was creepy.
birgerjohanssonsays
It is so cute. He thinks he is a wordsmith.
“Sean Hannity Deploys New Nickname For Biden And Democrats Actually Love It” | HuffPost Latest News
Excerpt from David Corn’s take on the SOTU speech:
For over an hour on Thursday night, during the State of the Union address, President Joe Biden energetically presented a vibrant progressive agenda and repeatedly stuck it to Donald Trump. Yes, there were stumbles and linguistic slips, but Biden portrayed a vigor at odds with the caricatures that are constantly promoted by Trump and Biden detractors in the conservative media. Caricatures focusing on his age are then bolstered by seemingly endless coverage by the mainstream media. The president was aggressive from the git-go; Dark Brandon was in the room.
Biden opened strong, calling for congressional support for Ukraine and slamming “my predecessor” for bowing before Russian President Vladimir Putin and telling him to “do whatever the hell you want.” Biden then vowed, “I will not bow down.” Tying the fight against Russia in Ukraine to the battle to protect democracy in the United States, Biden pivoted to the Trump-incited insurrectionist riot on January 6, 2021, which occurred in the same room in which he was speaking. Staring at the Republicans present, Biden proclaimed, “My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth of January 6th.” He called on all in the chamber to say no to political violence. Democrats stood up and cheered; Republicans sat on their hands. Sitting behind the president, House Speaker Mike Johnson rolled his eyes.
In these initial minutes, Biden cornered the Trumpists: They were foes of democracy abroad and at home, a theme he returned to throughout the speech, as he relentlessly pounded “my predecessor.” MP “brags” about killing Roe v. Wade. MP, and “many of you in this chamber,” are “promising” to pass an abortion ban. During the Covid pandemic, MP “failed the most basic duty…the duty to care.” MP wants to end the Affordable Care Act and take away coverage for pre-existing conditions for a hundred million Americans. MP torpedoed the bipartisan immigration bill that included proposals from conservatives to bolster security at the border. MP did nothing on gun safety and after a recent school shooting in Iowa said that we should “get over it” and move forward.
[…] Biden still looks and moves like he’s 81 years old, but he was engaged and engaging, bantering with and goading the Republicans. Biden talked policy details like a pro. He was far more cogent than Trump ever is during his rambling rants at campaign rallies.
As expected, Biden highlighted positive economic indicators and cited a long list of his accomplishments: the infrastructure bill and the 46,000 new projects it has generated (including removing lead pipes and bringing broadband to rural communities), the CHIPS Act, the revival of manufacturing, reducing the price of insulin, tax credits that lower the costs of health care premiums, $12 billion in funding for women’s health research, a reduction the student debt burden for millions, cutting credit card fees, and a wide variety of climate change initiatives.
The speech also featured a lengthy wish list of progressive proposals: ending Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy, lowering the price of prescription drugs and capping the annual costs of such medicines, tax credits for first-time home buyers, increasing affordable housing, establishing universal access to pre-school, increasing Pell grants, raising taxes on billionaires and corporations, upping pay for public school teachers, boosting the minimum wage, enhancing voter rights, protecting transgender rights, banning assault weapons. (There was plenty more!)
Recognizing the rift within the Democratic party over his support of Israel, Biden noted the horrific loss of life in Gaza and told the Israeli government that “humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip. Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.” The US military, he said, would lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters for Palestinians. Meanwhile, he vowed to keep working for a ceasefire […]
Biden deftly used this opportunity to demonstrate that while he may have lost a step or two, he still has the desire and the moves—at least, some of them—to take on a wannabe autocrat and perhaps even save American democracy.
@169: For years, the left has coddled criminals and defunded the police…
Remind me again; which political party is coddling the most prominent criminal in the nation and threatened to defund the Department of Justice and disband the FBI?
birgerjohanssonsays
Now that one of the crazy Republican ladies seems to be leaving DC it is great that a new star is arising to amuse us all: Katie Britt.
Suggestion: Pretend to be concerned Republicans, write to her about the reports scientists are building “organoids” made from stem cells of aborted fetuses to repair the livers and kidneys of drug addicts.
Hint that the drug addicts getting fetal organ replacements are from Harlem, South Central or other mostly black places. She will buy it hook line and sinker and it will be hilarious.
birgerjohanssonsays
Addendum: Bring in Sasha Baron Cohen to give Katie Britt the Giuliani treatment.
Tell her the Jews implicated in digging a tunnel to a synagogue in New York have been revealed to have helped digging a tunnel under the border, to finance their shenagians.
Akira MacKenziesays
@ 167
The unemployment rate has now been below 4% for 25 consecutive months — a streak unseen in the United States since the 1960s.
I hope that’s true. Last week, it happened. After 13 years I was fired from my job. I won’t say I was the best worker; indeed, I had my share of problems. They told me it was because they simply had too many people, but I suspect that’s a fucking lie. I’m getting severance pay and I’m being let go in such a way that I can collect unemployment. However, I’m almost 50-years-old and I’m terrified that there will be no jobs for an old fart with mental health problems, especially after a certain beloved liberal,/b. icon rolled over and “ended welfare as we know it.” I haven’t even told my father yet for fear of what he’s going to do to me if he find out. In his tiny, 1950s world, people don’t get fired without a good reason and if I’m being laid off it’s because I wasn’t working hard enough to impress my former employers. I can’t win.
Oh well, can’t be helped. Just know that if I ever do drop off this blog, it will be because I can no longer afford Internet access and am either dying or dead in my spacious cardboard box behind the local liquor store. Thanks capitalism! You’ve claimed another victim.
@ 158
Awwww man, that sucks! I didn’t realize this until recently, but Toriyama did the character design for the Dragon Quest (aka Dragon Warrior for American NES players), my first video game RPG. Back the in the 00s, when I was working second shift for U.S. Cellular, I would often come home in the wee-hours of the morning and the only thing worth watching was the anime on Cartoon Network. DBZ was one of them. Yeah, it was silly, and repetitive, but it was just what I needed after a day of dealing with morons customers. During the pandemic lockdown, I rediscovered the series in a new way via Team Four Star’s fantastic “abridged” version which respectfully made it A LOT funnier. He will be missed by many around the world.
birgerjohanssonsays
“Scathing Atheist Damn Fine Fine Edition”
birgerjohanssonsays
My apologies for borking the link!
Akira MacKenziesays
Whoops. Sorry about the unclosed tag. Serves me right for bad mouthing one of the Holy Clintons, right?
Money talks: Between 9:00 p.m. and 10 p.m. eastern, the Biden campaign had the best hour of fundraising this election cycle. Between 10:00 p.m. and 11 p.m. eastern, Team Biden broke the record that it set an hour earlier.
NBC News:
[The Biden/Harris campaign] raised $1.5 million online in the 24 hours following Super Tuesday, marking one of its highest single-day hauls of the cycle so far.
In the 1960s, secret test flights of advanced government spy planes generated U.F.O. sightings. More recently, government and commercial drones, new kinds of satellites and errant weather balloons have led to a renaissance in unusual observations. But, according to a new report, none of these sightings were of alien spacecraft. The new congressionally mandated Pentagon report found no evidence that the government was covering up knowledge of extraterrestrial technology and said there was no evidence that any U.F.O. sightings represented alien visitation to Earth…
New York magazine’s Jon Chait noted what Trump was up to online during the State of the Union address:
The former president began posting manically on social media that his adversary, who he has previously labeled “sleepy” and also the mastermind of a plot to control the Ukrainian justice system for the benefit of his son, was on some kind of drug combination.
Around 10 p.m. eastern, Trump used his social media platform to declare, in reference to the man who defeated him in 2020, “THE DRUGS ARE WEARING OFF!”
As Chait added, a variety of Trump allies quickly peddled the same line.
For now, let’s put aside the fact that there have been some striking reports of late about rampant drug abuse in the Trump White House, making this an issue that Republicans probably ought to avoid.
Let’s also not dwell on the fact that Trump’s material is becoming stale and predictable, peddling the same absurd line in three consecutive presidential election cycles. [Trump also claimed that Hillary Clinton was on drugs.]
Rather, it’s worth appreciating the degree to which this nonsense reflects Trump’s anxiety.
GOP officials made the strange mistake of lowering expectations for Biden ahead of his national address. To hear the president’s partisan detractors tell it, the president was a frail and addled old man who’d struggle to stay awake and speak in complete sentences. What the public saw instead was a successful president delivering a fierce speech about his record, his vision, and his differences with his immediate predecessor.
In fact, Biden was so good that Trump and his cohorts want the public to believe the incumbent president must’ve been on something, as if there were no other possible explanations for his strong performance.
It’s one of the stranger and more unintentional compliments the Democrat will receive this year.
Well, that settles it. President Joe Biden can’t possibly win this thing.
Just like Republicans have been telling Americans all along, Biden is too aggressive, too energetic, too fiery, too feisty, too forceful, too loud, too partisan, and definitely too political.
Also, he talks too long, tells too many jokes, and too often goes off-script to spar with opponents. If all that isn’t bad enough, Biden wants to talk to members of Congress when it’s late and decent Republicans are very, very sleepy.
[…] Biden’s 2024 State of the Union speech clocked in at 1 hour, 7 minutes, and 17 seconds. That doesn’t make it the longest speech on record, but considering the clip at which Biden blasted through the material (about 6,400 words in the transcript, more in real life), he packed a lot into that space.
“I know I may not look like it,” said Biden, “but I’ve been around a while.” And in his time in Washington, Biden has clearly learned how to deliver a speech that absolutely confounds both his opponents and a media that had already scheduled plenty of lazy “Biden too old” editorials between now and November.
Three weeks ago, The New York Times was explaining how the age issue that they’ve been pushing 24 hours a day sticks to Biden so much more than to Donald Trump. “Mr. Biden’s voice has grown softer and raspier,” wrote reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien, and he “moves more tentatively than he did as a candidate in 2019 and 2020, often holding his upper body stiff, adding to an impression of frailty.”
When it comes to Trump, the same article explained that he “holds forth in speeches replete with macho rhetoric and bombast that typically last well over an hour, a display of stamina.”
After Thursday night, both The New York Times and the Republican Party are going to need a new playbook. The Joe Biden who stepped to the podium on Thursday and then stayed in the House chamber so long that the perpetually dyspeptic Speaker Mike Johnson, who dashed home to find his rapture-ready PJs, was not the Joe Biden they’ve been describing.
Biden’s forceful entry into the chamber on Thursday evening, his fast-forward, high-energy delivery, and his absolute eagerness to engage whenever Republicans booed or refused to applaud the most fundamental issue was an absolute joy. He came in hot, only seemed to grow in energy and confidence through the night, and came off the winner every time he sparred with just-say-no-to-everything Republicans.
In his speech, Biden was the happy warrior of American politics. If he had the occasional stumble, it was seemingly because he just could not wait to tell you not just about the things he had done, but also about all the things left to do in making American lives better.
Meanwhile, Johnson sat behind him like a bobblehead whose spring had been wrongly inserted, shaking his head so many times that he is likely spending this morning at the chiropractor. Out in the audience, Republicans intent on mocking Biden instead ended up being an self-parody—something that should have been obvious the moment Biden strolled down the aisle, saw Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s clown suit, and took her apart with no more than an expression. [Tweet and photo at the link]
Only a few minutes into the speech, Republicans were claiming that the guy they’d been describing as little short of comatose was too fast, too loud, and definitely too political. That last part was especially offensive to classy Republicans and the memory of Trump’s completely nonpartisan performances (I mean, it’s not as if Trump had a campaign rally at the White House).
In one night, Biden went from “Sleepy Joe” to “Jacked-Up Joe” as Republicans scrambled for a new handle on the president.
In his speech, Biden made some very gutsy announcements, such as laying out plans for an aid port in Gaza, forcefully talking about America’s role in expanding NATO and the need for Ukraine assistance, and putting abortion issues front and center while telling the Supreme Court to prepare to hear from American women.
If Republicans didn’t like what they were seeing, Americans watching the speech certainly did. […] potential voters in Arizona were turning up the live-reaction dials for Navigator Research, highlighting many parts of the speech that had them excited. A CNN quick poll found that 64% of those watching had a positive reaction to the speech, and after watching the speech, there was a 17-percentage-point increase among those saying that Biden’s policies will move the nation in the right direction.
Republicans were left sputtering over Biden’s display of vigor and command. Much of the press was left scrambling to find more synonyms for “energetic.” And viewers were largely left convinced that Biden had the right plan for America.
It’s hard to describe a more successful combination.
Meanwhile, down at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had promised to provide his own live commentary on the speech, but technical issues had him fuming on the sidelines for much of the evening. [LOL] When he did get his chance to talk, Trump became obsessed with the fact that Biden was occasionally coughing and convinced that the president’s rapid-fire delivery was the product of stimulants.
It’s hard to dispute that Trump may be the expert when it comes to a White House allegedly “awash in speed.” But as Biden’s speech moved toward its conclusion, Trump delivered a meme-worthy “Truth.” [Screen grab at the link]
If by that Trump means the drugs that kept America complacent while he speed-walked the nation toward an authoritarian regime, then he’s absolutely right.
In his speech, Biden told everyone to “wake up.” And maybe, just maybe, it worked.
birgerjohanssonsays
Methinks Trump is projecting. Maybe he thinks Biden scraped up the speed left behind by his presidential staff?
.
A perspective from Farron Cousins:
“Katie Britt Brutally Mocked For Worst State Of The Union Response Ever”
On Friday, Microsoft said Russian government hackers continue to break into its systems using information obtained during a hack last year. This time, the Russian hackers dubbed Midnight Blizzard have targeted Microsoft’s source code and other internal systems, the company said.
“In recent weeks, we have seen evidence that Midnight Blizzard is using information initially exfiltrated from our corporate email systems to gain, or attempt to gain, unauthorized access. This has included access to some of the company’s source code repositories and internal systems,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post…
birgerjohanssonsays
Goddammit. It is late in Sweden, I will not post anything else until I have had sleep and is able to handle links.
Reginald Selkirksays
@185: “Katie Britt Brutally Mocked For Worst State Of The Union Response Ever”
And just think of the competition! When was the last time you heard Bobby Jindal’s name mentioned?
Reginald Selkirksays
@183: Around 10 p.m. eastern, Trump used his social media platform to declare, in reference to the man who defeated him in 2020, “THE DRUGS ARE WEARING OFF!”
Are you sure that was a reference to Biden and not himself?
In January 2014, a meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere in the Western Pacific, as evidenced by apparent vibrational signatures of the event in a seismic station in Papua New Guinea. Last year, scientists declared rubble recovered from the ocean floor as the rejectamenta of that event (and some even speculated it was a form of alien technology*). But now, another team offers a different interpretation: the vibrations were caused by a truck on a nearby road, driving by at the same time the meteor plummeted through the atmosphere. What’s more, the rocky bits found on the Pacific floor were not from this meteor, the team concluded, which likely entered the ocean about 100 miles from the original search area…
Methinks Trump is projecting. Maybe he thinks Biden scraped up the speed left behind by his presidential staff?
Yeah, I thought the same thing. If Trump is claiming that Biden is on drugs it means that Trump is on drugs, or at least that Trump takes drugs before he appears in public.
Top advisers from Trump’s campaign will steer a party committee facing a dramatic fundraising shortfall.
[…] Trump, who is again likely to be the Republican nominee, commenced a fresh overhaul of the party’s central committee as it seeks to make up a fundraising gap and reverse the party’s disappointments in recent elections.
The Republican National Committee formally elected Trump’s choices of Michael Whatley and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law who was accompanied at the meeting by her husband, Eric, as its two highest-ranking officers at a meeting here Friday. The RNC’s operations will be run by a top adviser to Trump’s campaign, Chris LaCivita.
Whatley, who chaired the North Carolina GOP, has long been outspoken about allegations of voter fraud. He was a member of George W. Bush’s legal team during the 2000 recount. After being elected Friday by a unanimous voice vote, Whatley pledged to expand efforts to deploy poll watchers, workers and judges as real-time monitors wherever ballots are cast and counted. […]
On Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court denied Kari Lake’s request to toss a defamation suit brought by Maricopa County Recorder (and fellow Republican) Stephen Richer, who’s pursuing damages over accusations of fraud related to Lake’s failed 2022 gubernatorial bid.
While the U.S. Supreme Court has now delayed the trial over Donald Trump’s 2021 coup attempt until the second Wednesday after the heat death of the universe (or perhaps the third Wednesday, assuming Harlan Crow bumps Clarence up to first class), it is refreshing to know there are still some consequences for serially lying about a free and fair election.
Rudy Giuliani […] found that out earlier this year, after he was ordered to pay $148 million for defaming two Georgia poll workers, in part by claiming they were passing suspicious USB drives around during the ballot-counting process “like vials of heroin or cocaine.”
Now it’s ex-teleprompter reader, Arizona not-Gov., and GOP Senate candidate Lake’s turn to face the consequences. And it looks like she could be in serious trouble. For realz this time.
In an opinion piece for The Arizona Republic, columnist E.J. Montini recounts how Lake got herself into this mess—and notes how difficult it may be to get herself out.
In his lawsuit, Richer’s attorneys outline instances in which they say Lake not only spouted false allegations about election rigging against Richer (and Maricopa County supervisors) but continued to spread them even after courts “found ‘nothing’ to substantiate” Lake’s claims of intentional misconduct and said her accusations were “quite simply, sheer speculation.”
The lawsuit contains many instances in which Lake repeats the accusations, stating them as fact, as when she’s quoted saying, “Richer and (Maricopa County Supervisor Bill) Gates … printed a 19-inch image, the wrong image on the ballot, so that the tabulators would jam all day long. That’s exactly what happened. They did not want us to notice this. They didn’t want us to notice it.”
The lawsuit also notes how Lake claimed that Richer inserted 300,000 invalid ballots into the county’s vote to keep her from winning the election.
In his own opinion essay for The Arizona Republic, Richer stressed that both of those specific allegations were “completely false.”
“Not only would I obviously never do the things that she accuses me of, but also as a matter of Arizona law and election administration processes, I don’t even have responsibility for—or jurisdiction over—the printing of ballots on Election Day,” Richer wrote. “Lake has continued to repeat these falsehoods, despite multiple court rulings that found her attacks to be unfounded.”
Richer also noted that he’s received death threats from Lake’s followers, which forced him to strengthen his security measures while “still watching over my shoulder.”
Of course, this hardly bodes well for Lake’s U.S. Senate bid. When quasi-Democrat and life-sized absinthe fairy Kyrsten Sinema announced Tuesday that she was bowing out of the race to spend more time with her private equity cash, the Senate race suddenly became a two-person contest between Lake and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego—who, significantly, is not being sued by a member of his own party for defamation.
Unfortunately for Lake, she’s in this mess in part because of the specificity of her allegations. She didn’t just continually bleat that her election had been stolen; she accused Richer of engaging in specific, deliberate—and easily disproved—acts of subterfuge. […]
Law & Crime:
Finding that Lake’s remarks were not merely “imaginative expression or rhetorical hyperbole,” the judge noted that specifics surrounding ballot image size and the number of allegedly illegal ballots are matters that can be proven true or false. [Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Jay] Adleman then refused to pause discovery, leading to Lake’s appeal — and eventual denial.
For his part, Richer is confident he can prove that Lake’s statements were deliberate lies and that he was personally harmed:
Words matter.
Anyone who followed any of the court cases, anyone who paid any attention to the news, anyone who knew even a smidge about how elections work, should have known these HIGHLY SPECIFIC, easily falsifiable, claims were, in fact, false.
And those false claims — broadcast to millions of people, often while seeking donations — had, no surprise, a very material impact on me and mine.
So whither Lake? Will she share the fate of her moral lodestar and nonconquering hero, Donald Trump, who’s currently on the hook for over $83 million after being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll? And is there any way she can keep voters from running away screaming as this lawsuit continues to hang over her head?
For Richer to settle, he’ll need an apology and “a number”—meaning wads of cash that Lake probably doesn’t have at her disposal. […]
The Senate voted on Friday to advance a $460 billion package of six spending bills to fund an array of federal departments ahead of a partial government shutdown deadline at midnight.
The 63-35 vote to advance the legislation sets up a vote on final passage sometime later Friday or possibly Saturday.
“We’re not going to allow the government to shut down,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) vowed to reporters last month.
McConnell voted Friday to advance the bill but the two Republicans vying to replace him as Senate GOP leader — Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) voted against moving it forward. [Well that’s a bad sign.]
Thune and Cornyn are jockeying for the support of conservatives who wanted to block it in order to gain leverage to force votes on several border- and immigration-related amendments, such as a proposal sponsored by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) to require the census to count the number of non-citizens and illegal aliens.
Fourteen Republican senators voted to advance the legislation while one Democrat voted no.
The legislation, which passed the House 339-85, is in line with the spending caps deal reached between former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and President Biden last year.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Schumer reaffirmed the spending deal, which sets a $1.65 trillion spending top line and includes $69 billion in adjustments that were part of a “side deal” to raise the federal debt limit in 2023.
The package would fund military construction, water development and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Energy, Interior, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development. […]
Democrats touted a number of “key wins” such as full funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, which benefits 7 million women and children nationwide.
They also pointed to funding for hiring new air traffic controllers, rail safety inspectors and a rejection of proposed cuts to environmental and conservation programs.
Republicans also got several policy wins in the package, such as an amendment sponsored by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to prevent the Department of Veterans Affairs from flagging veterans who need help managing their financial affairs to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System and preventing them from buying firearms.
[…] Appropriators acknowledged they had to cut popular programs because of the stricter spending caps pushed by House Republicans.
“It was a really, really, really hard budget. Nobody’s going to like our Interior budget because we had to cut, we had to cut a lot,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the ranking member on the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee.
[…] it moves half of the annual funding bills closer to the finish line.
Once the current set of funding bills reaches Biden’s desk, senators will focus on passing the remaining six appropriations bills funding the Departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and other priorities by March 22.
[…] Schumer and Johnson initially set deadlines of Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 to pass the two tranches of funding bills. Those dates were later postponed to March 1 and March 8 and then pushed back again to March 8 and March 22. […]
Conservative senators could still cause a partial shutdown by filibustering the bill. We’ll see.
The bond was needed to prevent Carroll’s attorneys from trying to seize Trump’s assets while he appeals a New York jury’s $83 million defamation verdict.
Attorneys for […] Trump filed official notice Friday they’re appealing the $83 million defamation verdict awarded to writer E. Jean Carroll — and that they’ve posted the $91 million bond needed to keep her from collecting while the appeal plays out.
The lawyers asked the judge in a court filing for an order approving the $91,630,000 bond and staying execution of Carroll’s judgment.
The terms of the bond — and how much money or collateral Trump put down — are unclear. The source of the bond is the Federal Insurance Company, a corporation authorized to transact business in New York. They are based in Chesapeake, Virginia and New Jersey and the company appears to be a subsidiary of Chubb Insurance Company. The document is signed by the former president.
[…] The filing came as a surprise because Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly asked the judge for more time to post the bond and to reduce the amount. The bond was needed to prevent Carroll from moving to collect on the judgment during the pendency of the appeal, which could take months or even years. It’s greater than the amount of the actual verdict to account for New York’s 9% annual interest rate.
The automatic stay of the judgment was set to expire Monday, at which point Carroll’s attorneys could have moved to start collecting the money she was awarded […]
Carroll called the development “stupendous” in a Substack post. She wrote that while her attorney Roberta Kaplan “is strong enough to yank a golden toilet out of the floor at Trump Tower and toss it through the window, this bond saves Robbie the trouble of showing up with US Marshals on Monday to do so.”
[…] Trump is facing a similar — and larger — issue in New York state court, where he was hit last month with a $464 million civil fraud judgment.
Trump’s attorneys have asked an appeals court to reduce the size of the bond he has to post in that case, a request that was rejected by the judge who heard the case. “To account for post-judgment interest and appeal cost, a surety will often set the bond amount at 120% of the judgment or more,” Trump attorney Clifford Robert wrote in a filing to the appeals court. That would total well over $500 million.
A single judge from the state Appellate Division last month denied Trump’s request to reduce the size of the bond to $100 million, but set an expedited briefing schedule for Trump’s stay motion. That leaves open the possibility that a full panel of judges could act before Trump has to file the bond.
The current deadline for him to file is March 25 — the same day jury selection is set to begin in Trump’s criminal trial in New York state court. […]
So, Trump did not use his own cash to put up the money.
Federal regulators have long decried drug-containing products that appeal to kids—like nicotine-containing e-cigarette products with fruity and dessert-themed flavors or edible cannabis products sold to look exactly like name-brand candies.
But a less-expected candy-like product is sending thousands of kids to emergency departments in the US in recent years: melatonin, particularly in gummy form. According to a new report from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, use of the over-the-counter sleep-aid supplement has skyrocketed in recent years—and so have calls to poison control centers and visits to emergency departments.
Melatonin, a neurohormone that regulates the sleep-wake cycle, has become very popular for self-managing conditions like sleep disorders and jet lag—even in children. Use of melatonin in adults rose from 0.4 percent in 1999–2000 to 2.1 percent in 2017–2018. But the more people have these tempting, often candy-like supplements in their homes, the more risk that children will get ahold of them unsupervised. Indeed, the rise in use led to a 530 percent increase in poison control center calls and a 420 percent increase in emergency department visits for accidental melatonin ingestion in infants and kids between 2009 and 2020…
It’s not often that cat photos are accepted as currency. But for the month of March, public libraries in Worcester, Massachusetts, will wipe certain fines from your account if you submit any picture of a cat.
Branches in the Worcester Public Library (WPL) system don’t charge fees for overdue books, but they do charge for lost or damaged ones. The call for cat pictures is a way to keep those bills from preventing patrons from using the library…
“Felines for Fee Forgiveness” is part of March Meowness, a month of cat-centric programming that includes a screening of the 2019 movie Cats, a cat-eye makeup tutorial, a “de-stressing” hour of playing with shelter cats, DIY crafts, and more events…
Five people were killed and several injured after a parachute landing a humanitarian airdrop failed to open, bringing a pallet crashing down into a crowd of people waiting for food north of Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp…
Polish film-maker Vita Maria Drygas’s new documentary, Danger Zone, follows ‘dark tourists’ such as Andrew Drury into conflict areas. They talk about adrenaline, desperation – and interviewing Shamima Begum
Cath Clarke Fri 8 Mar 2024 21.00 AEDT
In 2014, Vita Maria Drygas was filming in a war zone. She had travelled to the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to pick up footage for a documentary when she spotted a handwritten advert offering “cheap” tours of the frontline. “It was a mindfuck,” says the 39-year-old Polish director over a video call from Warsaw, with quiet intensity.
She found the idea of people buying tickets to the frontline, like a theatre production, profoundly shocking: “It was impossible. I didn’t believe it.” At first, she assumed that the advert was a sick joke or maybe a Russian provocation. But back in Poland, digging around on the internet, she discovered the hidden world of war jollies: “A huge branch of tourism that is very underground.”
She spent the next seven years making a documentary, Danger Zone, following a handful of tourists on holiday in some of the most dangerous places on the planet. There is Eleonora, an Italian living in Las Vegas who travels to Afghanistan. On an army base, she swaps her Birkenstocks for combat boots to fire ammo, and poses for a selfie holding a rifle. We also meet Rick, an American tour operator who organises bespoke trips to conflict zones that can cost $20,000 (£16,000) a week.
According to Ireland’s Constitution, a woman’s place is in the home.
Irish voters will decide Friday — International Women’s Day — whether to change the 87-year-old document to remove passages the government says are outdated and sexist. The twin referendums are on deleting a reference to women’s domestic duties and broadening the definition of the family.
While many women and men support the amendments, others say the proposed changes are confusing and could have unintended consequences…
But what if it has unintended consequences… and they’re good?
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #203…
Doing so would be contempt of court in that he would be violating the judge’s order. Whether the judge would land on him with both feet, or just slap his knuckles remains to be seen.
Reginald @203, Trump will probably find some way around the restrictions. He would not reveal the juror’s names himself. He would have someone else reveal them. Or perhaps he would simply set up circumstance that would lead to the names being leaked. Nobody should trust Trump with the names of those jurors.
The live viewership for Mr. Biden’s State of the Union speech will probably exceed last year’s television audience of 27.3 million, according to early figures released by Nielsen on Friday.
Florida Senate Republicans on Thursday refused to confirm the Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich to serve on an ethics commission—a rare break from Gov. Ron DeSantis’ requests from the legislature, which has operated at his behest in recent years.
Senators cited fears of a conflict of interest in denying Descovich the role on the Florida Commission on Ethics, with one unnamed lawmaker expressing concerns about “whether or not her employment constitutes lobbying before the legislature,” Senate spokesperson Katie Betta told the The Daily Beast…
Beware the Russians. This reporting is from The New York Times:
Into the depleted field of journalism in America, a handful of websites have appeared in recent weeks with names suggesting a focus on news close to home: D.C. Weekly, the New York News Daily, the Chicago Chronicle and a newer sister publication, the Miami Chronicle. In fact, they are not local news organizations at all. They are Russian creations, researchers and government officials say, meant to mimic actual news organizations to push Kremlin propaganda by interspersing it among an at-times odd mix of stories about crime, politics and culture.
Iowa Republicans passed a personhood bill in the state House on Thursday night that would make it a felony to ‘cause the death’ of an ‘unborn person,’ putting the conservative Midwestern state directly into the national battle over protections for in vitro fertilization.
Eight Senators and 43 Representatives have announced their intentions to step down from their current post in 2024, with some running for different elected positions and others leaving politics altogether. Some of those could still run for their current seats if they do not win primary elections.
Not enough space here for the entire list, follow the link if you’re interested.
At least five people have been killed and an unknown number injured by aid packages dropped from aircraft into Gaza today, the enclave’s civil defense has said. A U.S. official rejected reports that U.S. airdrops were to blame, saying all U.S. “aid bundles landed safely on the ground.”
The Pentagon denied that U.S. air drops of aid were responsible for any civilian casualties in Gaza after the enclave’s civil defense said the five people were killed today by “aircraft incorrectly dropping aid.”
At a Department of Defense press briefing this afternoon, Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that reports of U.S. airdrops resulting in civilian casualties on the ground are false “as we’ve confirmed that all of our aid bundles landed safely on the ground.”
John Moralessays
#212 is interesting.
KGsays
Recognizing the rift within the Democratic party over his support of Israel, Biden noted the horrific loss of life in Gaza and told the Israeli government that “humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip. Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.” The US military, he said, would lead an emergency mission to establish a temporary pier in the Mediterranean on the Gaza coast that can receive large ships carrying food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters for Palestinians. – David Corn in Motherjones quoted by Lynna, OM@173
Yeah… no. Whatever the good points of Biden’s speech (I haven’t watched it), this should not fool anyone. There is a perfectly good port at Ashdod, within easy reach of the Gaza Strip. Far more aid could be funneled through Ashdod than through a “temporary pier” – but the Israeli authorities will not allow it, because a key part of their strategy is to starve the Gazan population – a clear war crime. Biden has the leverage to force a halt to Israeli war crimes, but refuses to use it.
John Moralessays
Biden has the leverage to force a halt to Israeli war crimes, but refuses to use it.
Yes, but it would wreck the longstanding but unspoken partnership between Israel and the USA if he did that.
The defence research and economics partnership, the geopolitical partnership, and whatnot.
Boring old realpolitik, sure, but that’s how it is.
A bundle of depleted batteries from the International Space Station careened around Earth for almost three years before falling out of orbit and plunging back into the atmosphere Friday. Most of the trash likely burned up during reentry, but it’s possible some fragments may have reached Earth’s surface intact…
This involved a pallet of batteries from the space station with a mass of more than 2.6 metric tons (5,800 pounds)…
Early Friday, the reentry prediction from US Space Command narrowed to a window of six hours and then to four hours. Space Command later confirmed in a Trajectory Impact Prediction (TIP) message that the pallet decayed from orbit, or reentered the atmosphere, at 2:29 pm EST (1929 UTC)…
“A couple minutes later reentry and it would have reached Fort Meyers” in Florida, posted astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. But instead it re-entered the earth’s atmosphere “over the Gulf of Mexico between Cancun and Cuba,” Friday afternoon. “This was within the previous prediction window but a little to the northeast of the ‘most likely’ part of the path.”
Attackers have transformed hundreds of hacked sites running WordPress software into command-and-control servers that force visitors’ browsers to perform password-cracking attacks.
A web search for the JavaScript that performs the attack showed it was hosted on 708 sites at the time this post went live on Ars, up from 500 two days ago. Denis Sinegubko, the researcher who spotted the campaign, said at the time that he had seen thousands of visitor computers running the script, which caused them to reach out to thousands of domains in an attempt to guess the passwords of usernames with accounts on them.
“This is how thousands of visitors across hundreds of infected websites unknowingly and simultaneously try to bruteforce thousands of other third-party WordPress sites,” Sinegubko wrote. “And since the requests come from the browsers of real visitors, you can imagine this is a challenge to filter and block such requests.” …
Caitlin Clark broke the NCAA Division I record for 3-pointers in a season by a man or woman, finishing with 24 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists on a poor shooting night to lead No. 4 Iowa past Penn State 95-62 in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals on Friday…
I find it confusing that some records only cover the regular season, and others include playoffs. And this is the conference playoffs, which are distinct from the NCAA post-season tournament (aka March Madness).
A New Jersey politician is facing calls to step down from his own party after he was accused of falsely claiming to have been a Navy SEAL.
Sussex County Commissioner William Hayden, a Republican and fervent Trump supporter who is in his first term, was called out by the Sussex County Republican Committee in a scathing statement last week.
“Commissioner Hayden has not been forthright regarding his military service and has demonstrated a lack of integrity in dealings with his supporters and colleagues since his election,” the committee said, accusing him of having “tarnished” the GOP’s reputation…
They had me going there right up until the last line. What is the GOP’s reputation these days?
Indiana Republican Sen. Todd Young told the media on Friday, days after former President Trump’s commanding Super Tuesday performance, that he will not be endorsing the former president.
“Nothing’s changed from my standpoint,” Young told CNN after WWEV 44 News reported that Young will not support Trump due to the former president’s position and comments on Russia’s war in Ukraine…
That brings the total of Republicans who are running for re-election who do not support Trump to at least one.
The Danish pharma company behind blockbuster weight loss drugs are developing an even more promising drug: Amycretin.
I am cautiously optimistic. The previous drugs – wegowy, ozempic,- all list nausea as one of the side effects and I doubt I would manage to stick to such a weight-loss regime (I have bad experiences with side effects of other medicines).
BTW weight-loss drugs get pushback because some see it as a moral failing to lose weight without the hard-to-stick-to ‘normal’ weight loss regimes.
The thing I find interesting is the phrase “circular reporting”. This seems politically useful right now.
‘UAP programs either do not exist, or were misidentified authentic national security programs unrelated to extraterrestrial technology exploitation,” AARO acting Director Tim Phillips told reporters at a briefing.
“We assess that claims of such hidden programs are largely the result of circular reporting in which a small group of individuals have repeated inaccurate claims they have heard from others over a period of several decades.”’
A trove of documents obtained by TPM reveal the society’s inner workings.
A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a “national divorce.”
It sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but it’s real. The group is called the Society for American Civic Renewal (the acronym is pronounced “sacker” by its members). It is open to new recruits, provided you meet a few criteria: you are male, a “trinitarian” Christian, heterosexual, an “un-hyphenated American,” and can answer questions about Trump, the Republican Party, and Christian Nationalism in the right way. One chapter leader wrote to a prospective member that the group aimed to “secure a future for Christian families.”
[…] a shadowy network occupying the commanding heights of business, politics, and culture, open only to a select, elite few, committed to reshaping the United States to align it with the group’s radical values.
The men TPM has identified as behind this group — and they are all men — have a few things in common. They’re all a certain kind of devout Christian traditionalist. They are white. They have means, financial and social, and are engaged in politics.
[…] Its existence was known and has been previously reported on by The Guardian, but the details of the group’s mission, membership criteria, board, and internal communications remained outside of public view. Beginning late Thursday, some of the leading members of the group identified by TPM through our reporting came forward publicly to acknowledge their memberships in the organization and published an internal document that TPM had already obtained. […]
TPM’s reporting has identified as SACR members the president of the influential, Trump-aligned Claremont Institute, Harvard Law grads, and leading businessmen in communities scattered across America.
[…] It is, the group’s leaders say, merely another in a long line of fraternal organizations that try to foster civic engagement. But there’s a lot that’s almost zany about the group’s aims and activities. An Idaho chapter sought to fight back against marriage equality by making stickers representing traditional marriage to compete with the rainbow, pro-LGBTQ-rights symbols which adorned coffee shops in the area. In another episode, that chapter supported a quixotic bid to court wealthy conservative donors into funding a website focused on unearthing the spread of DEI in Idaho. The man who incorporated the national umbrella group is an Indiana shampoo tycoon who refers to himself as “maximum leader” and blogs about Rhodesian anti-guerilla tactics and how the must-read dystopian fiction novel for white supremacists, The Camp of the Saints, is actually a vision of America’s present. [Yikes!]
Group members hold a distinct vision of America as a latter-day ancient Rome: a crumbling, decadent empire that could soon be replaced by a Christian theocracy. […] a traditional understanding of patriarchal leadership in the household […] More practically, members must be able to contribute either influence, capability, or wealth in helping SACR further its goals.
“Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm,” a mission statement reads.
[…] It’s a vision of society which doesn’t just extend back before the Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage or before the sexual revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s, before the Civil Rights movement or even before World War II. It goes back further, beyond living memory: to the late 19th century, before the Progressive Era opened the floodgates to what the group regards as a long corruption of America’s founding principles.
Unmasking A Secret Society
TPM first began reporting on SACR in January. Though the group’s membership rolls are secret, some of its activities are out in the open. It maintains a website, all in crimson, in which it advertises its “mark,” and calls on members to rebuild the “frontier-conquering spirit of America.”
An early reporting breakthrough came when we were able to identify a Boise State University professor and Claremont official named Scott Yenor as a possible member of SACR because he appeared on incorporation papers for the group’s Boise lodge. Yenor is a character in his own right, attracting public attention for a November 2021 blow-up when he suggested that elite professions like law and medicine stop recruiting women into their ranks. [LOL. Telling detail.]
Because Boise State is a public university, TPM was able to obtain via public records requests in January and February a trove of Yenor’s office emails that mention SACR. […]
The trove reveals SACR’s core mission: to create a mini-state within a state, composed entirely of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christian men. It’s explicitly patriarchal, demanding that group members assume a dominant role at home, and celebrates the use of force and existence of authority. […]
Using the Yenor email trove as a starting point, TPM was able to confirm that Yenor is a SACR member, to identify other members of SACR, including prominent people like the president of the Claremont Institute, and to map other chapters of SACR around the country and locate incorporation papers for them, which yielded the identities of other potential SACR members.
The Yenor emails also included a mission statement for SACR, membership criteria, and copies of prayers used by the group in different settings. […] [Screen grab at the link] some key figures in the group began to reveal their memberships publicly in advance of the anticipated news coverage.
Nate Fischer, a member in Texas, posted a tweet Thursday evening warning of an imminent story from The Guardian and outing himself as a member. […]
The prospect of impending news stories — and Fischer’s tweet — spurred other group members to also reveal themselves on Twitter into Friday. That included Ryan P. Williams, president of the Claremont Institute and a SACR board member, and Andrew Beck, a brand consultant.
[…] When asked why SACR documents show that it aims to staff an “aligned future regime” with members, Williams said that the new regime would be a “U.S. Constitutional order brought much closer to its origins after about a century of what we regard as its corruption and undermining by progressivism, which I regard as anti-constitutionalist in its roots and its evolution.”
[snipped more blather from Williams]
Howdy Doody Men
SACR stands out in the pantheon of right-wing extremists not necessarily due to the exclusivity of its membership — there are militias and groups across the country which are men only and Christian only, either de facto or by rule.
What sets SACR apart is that its members come from and are recruited from the upper crust of American society. They are wealthy — independent wealth is a requirement for membership […]
SACR offers a redoubt for powerful people who take the culture war extremely seriously and believe in their bones that hemorrhaging church membership, the Obergefell decision on same-sex marriage, and the ebbing status of Christian men in American society are an existential threat to their vision for America, and who have the means to build a society on a different path.
[…] In an interview, Williams told TPM that SACR emerged from conversations between himself, self-described “industrialist” Charles Haywood, and others around Claremont in 2020. Skyler Kressin, an Idaho accountant, and Fischer, also participated. […]
Haywood, a University of Chicago-educated attorney, incorporated SACR and sits on its board .[…]
Haywood has laid out an elaborate cosmology of America’s place in time, and his own place in America, through hundreds of blog posts he’s written on his website, The Worthy House. To Haywood, American government is a house of cards waiting to be blown over — run by a cabal that he describes as the “brawndo tyranny,” referring to the energy drink from the 2006 cult classic movie Idiocracy. Haywood says he can see what will likely come next: a new feudalism, an archipelago of local “armed patronage networks,” a vision inspired by the groups white settler farmers formed in southern Africa as Blacks struggled for majority rule. [Yikes … again]
On the blog where he explains these ideas, Haywood refers to himself as “maximum leader.”
In October 2022, Haywood appeared on a podcast […] the idea that a strongman is needed to solve America’s problems. […] he “wholeheartedly” endorsed “national divorce” as a solution to the country’s problems.
Since selling his shampoo manufacturing firm in September 2020, Haywood has mobilized. His nonprofit, the Howdy Doody Good Times Foundation, began to contribute to the Claremont Institute. [Sheesh]
Howdy Doody has contributed money to SACR as well. Over the following year, a chapter in Dallas, Texas, and three in Idaho were founded. Haywood has said that additional chapters exist […]
[…] Fischer, a venture capitalist who leads the group’s Dallas chapter, graduated from Harvard Law. Fischer has described leading a private equity career investing in apartment complexes distressed after the 2008 financial crisis.
[…] Claremont came into national consciousness in 2021 because it was where Trump co-defendant and co-conspirator John Eastman [!], the attorney who played a key role in the 2020 election subversion effort, works as a senior fellow. [photo at the link]
[…] “The phrase cold civil war is chosen deliberately,” Williams told TPM. “I hope it remains cold indefinitely.”
[…] “Our belief is that the country’s track is unsustainable, and the only way to secure a future for Christian families is to keep and take back space now closed to Christians.”
Who is un-SACR?
Who is excluded, in some sense, reveals more about SACR than who is allowed in.
The group bans anyone who is not Christian: Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others. But it goes further than that and bars “non-trinitarian” Christians; Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and others cannot be SACR members. [Screen grab at the link]
[…] Women are not allowed in SACR, whatever their faith. [!] The group emphasizes a traditional role for the man in the household, a robust and muscular exercise of temporal authority by men, and the forceful application of male dominion in civic affairs. [screen grab at the link]
A “SACR Membership Criteria & Recruiting Guide” obtained via TPM’s public records requests shows questions that the group puts to prospective members.
– What are your thoughts on the Republican Party?
– What are your thoughts on “Christian Nationalism”?
– Comment on the Trump presidency and what it entails for the future.
– Describe the dynamic of your household in terms of your role and that of your wife.
– Describe your church community and your and your family’s involvement there
[Screen grab at the link]
Other criteria for membership include faithfulness […] a traditional understanding of patriarchal leadership in the household, and an acceptance of traditional Natural Law in ethics more broadly. [“Handmaid’s Tale” in real life.]
Finally, members are asked to possess one of these three qualities: influence, capability (“any skill conducive to the technical work of productive entrepreneurship; lawfare; cybersecurity”), or wealth. [screen grab at the link]
[…] Fischer posted a copy of a mission statement and objectives already previously obtained by TPM on Twitter Thursday evening. The group has public and non-public descriptions of its purpose and goals. In an “internal” version of the mission statement, SACR says “we are un-hyphenated Americans and we believe in a particular Christianity that is not blurred by modernist philosophies.” [Yep. that’s the secret, internal version.]
Why the big secret?
Perhaps the most startling element of SACR is one of its long-term objectives. Per the mission statement obtained by TPM, SACR aims to have its members form the government of an “aligned future regime.”
[…] “That is, men who ‘grow up in the system.’”
[…] the group would “promote marriage publicly through a pro-marriage sticker” to be spread around the Boise region.
The same group held events with speakers, including self-described Christian nationalist writer Aaron Renn. At one point, emails show, Yenor pitched an Idaho news website to Claremont funders called Action Idaho, saying that SACR would take care of back-end work for the venture.
[…] After The Guardian published its initial story on the group over the summer, a small controversy erupted among evangelicals who regarded Haywood’s views as dangerous and the prospect of a certain strain of Christianity taking control of the government as troubling.
Fischer hit back in a podcast appearance, describing SACR as a “big-tent thing where men get together.” […] “There’s no sort of great secrecy associated with it. There’s a little degree of confidentiality because there’s guys there who are at companies where even being associated with a group that is all men would be seen as suspicious.”
[…] The SACR website speaks to the deeply held grievance and sense of a lack of masculine purpose which animates the group. […]
At the end of the day, SACR’s members are not oppressed. Claremont is free to publish whatever it likes — it’s widely seen as tremendously influential on the right generally and in MAGA circles specifically. SACR chapters can meet; Haywood can blog — in fact, on Tuesday he wrote an encomium to The Camp of the Saints, a 1970s French novel in which a horde of Indian immigrants overwhelms, degrades, and exterminates the white West.
“The goal of the Left was always total expropriation of white people and then, if at all possible, their extermination, a goal made explicit by many powerful people in 2020,” Haywood wrote. “How, given this history, should white Americans respond?”
[…] South Africa, with its visions of white settlers driven away from status and wealth, appear consistently in Haywood’s writings, and in Fischer’s as well. […]
The grievance, perceived loss of status, and lack of metaphysical meaning that these men feel are very real, to them. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
“Some Chiefs fans needed amputations after frigid playoff game, hospital confirms” | Kansas City Chiefs | The Guardian
Never forget wind chill. Never underestimate cold.
So… the klan without the hoods.
—————————
Under his eye.
May the womb open.
Blessed Day (indeed)!
———————————-
I wonder if one of the perks of membership is providing private banking services to the speaker of the US House of Representatives.
———————–
The Southern Poverty Law Center needs to mark SACR as an extremist, Christofacist, seditionist organization. Immediately.
——————————-
I figured that rich, white “Christian” guys would be looking for a way to secure their dominance.
——————————-
So, in the effort of the GOP to turn the United States into “White Christian Nationalist” country, there are some already deciding which denominations constitute Christianity.
——————————–
It would appear that the attack on Democracy and the Republic from the Right is far more organized than we imagine.
With the infiltration of members of these societies in all levels of government, the fight to keep America as America is going to be far harder than imagined.
———————————–
The radical right sees now as their last best chance of installing permanent white Christian conservative one party rule.
———————————
I want to see a DNC ad that has every quote from all the republican fascists about their true beliefs of where precisely women belong (or, not belong) in Society. Fresh hell about undoing the 19th Amendment, allowing women to vote, etc.
——————————-
“Most of all, we seek those who understand the nature of authority and its legitimate forceful exercise in the temporal realm,” a mission statement reads.
————————————
“Claremont Institute, Harvard Law grads“
Eastman and Chesebro
————————————- Other goals include providing “preferential treatment for members, especially in business,” and to both “coordinate allied fraternal networks” and “defend fraternal networks … against attacks by those opposed to civic renewal, and strongly deter such attacks.”
————————————
SCAR is on the radar at ProPublica
————————————–
I can only assume that Clarence doesn’t call himself African-American? So he’s not a “hyphenate”. What a weird carveout of society they have come up with.
————————————–
Would love to see a follow-up article where the wives are interviewed. I wonder if they realize their husbands identify as the “dominant” partner in their marriage, and that are wives are supposed to be subservient.
———————————–
It’s a hyphenated thing…like Italian-American, Irish-American, African-American, Israeli-American. The only ethnicity eligible is white…which has never been an ethnicity.
———————————–
Call it corporate Christianity
————————————
Fat Donnie is just a symptom. This kind of fascist far right religious bullshit is the problem.
————————————–
So, it’s sort of Opus Dei meets Handmaid’s Tale meets Illuminatus trilogy, with a nice icing of prosperity gospel and plain ol’ christian triumphalism.
——————————
a list of these guys who say they are persecuted and have no power when in fact, they are at the top of the power pole and incredibly wealthy.
I don’t usually dunk on NPR, because they are a real journalistic outfit that typically produces quality reporting. This is not one of those times. In an effort to be more dumb than one of the New York Times’ many pieces asking Trump supporters at a rural diner on what Biden needs to do, Tamara Keith decided to base her article around just one person who is undecided this election.
The title of the article was such a parody that the infamous New York Times pitchbot Twitter account published it as a satire headline, but it was all too real…
I encourage you to read the article, which is here. I had to check to see that it wasn’t satire. The article is all about a 52-year old executive consultant/former nurse named Karen Seagraves. She claims the most important issues to her are her retirement, her son’s safety in the military, and reproductive freedom. Yet she still can’t decide between Trump and Biden. [Tweet at the link]
Again, this is not a joke.
SNL literally did a skit on this back in the Bush years. The undecided voter asked Bush (Will Ferrell) where he stood on global warming, a woman’s right to choose, and fighting the big oil companies. Even after Bush told her that she should vote for Gore if those were her issues, she proclaimed, “I still can’t decide!”
First off, I don’t need to get into why Biden would be a better choice for reproductive freedom because most people aren’t braindead. As for financial security in retirement, Trump promised he would gut Social Security and Medicare in his second term.
Trump’s FY18, FY19, FY20, and FY21 budgets each asked for billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security programs. Trump also promised to permanently eliminate the taxes that fund both Social Security and Medicare.
Finally, as for the military, Trump has no respect for those who serve, calling them “suckers and losers.” He told a soldier’s widow that “he knew what he was getting into;” and his bungling got soldiers killed in Niger and almost started a war with Iran. This really is a no-brainer.
Yet Seagraves remained undecided even after the State of the Union speech. She agreed with everything Biden said, but then said he was just too “vanilla” for her. That was her complaint. Sure, Trump literally said he wants to terminate the Constitution and would be a dictator on Day One, but at least fascism isn’t boring.
Seagraves actually said that she wished she could combine bits and pieces of Biden and Trump to form the “perfect president.” Tamara Keith, being the horrible journalist she is, never once asked what she found so appealing about Donald Trump. Nowhere in the story is it ever mentioned what Seagraves thinks Donald Trump would do for her that Biden wouldn’t. Never once is she asked why she’s still undecided.
Even more maddening is Keith’s framing of Seagraves’ stupidity as some sort of a principled stance. The subheading in the story reads “She votes based on issues, not the party or the candidate.” Keith writes how important it is to focus on the “issues” as if Biden supporters are only supporting him because of partisan reasons—not because the entire foundation of our democracy is at stake.
Yet that’s not even the worst of it. You see, Seagraves’ indecisiveness, according to Keith, is all Biden’s fault.
While Seagraves is just one voter — not a representative sample of the electorate — her experience shows that Biden’s campaign has a lot of work to do.
Seriously, what the hell is Biden’s campaign supposed to do with someone like her? I’d love for Tamara Keith to explain this to me. Of course, Keith never follows up on this. All she had to do is ask what Biden, or even Trump for that matter, would have to do to win her vote. That simple question might have at least jolted Seagraves’ cognitive dissonance. But the story ends just as stupidly as it began.
She wanted more depth, instead of a speech that just hit all the bases.
“Like sometimes you say to yourself, ‘I’m never going to get that hour of my life back,’ you know? I just have that feeling,” she said.
There you have it. An entire article drawing conclusions from one extremely vapid voter. This kind of self-satirizing would be rejected at any decent high school school newspaper, yet it was published by NPR and written by the president of the White House Correspondent’s Association. I can’t think of a better example of failed journalism, as this once again epitomizes the media’s broken approach to this critical election. [SNL video “The Undecided Voters”]
Journalist Jonathan M. Katz has created a TikTok video about his investigation of Sen. Britt’s anecdote about speaking to a sex trafficking victim, implying that she had been repeatedly raped as a 12 year old upon being recently taken to the United States. Katz found that the person in question, Karla Jacinto Romero really was abducted into sexual slavery when she was 12, but it happened in Mexico 15-20 years ago. In 2015, she courageously spoke to Congress about the horror she went through. Senator Britt dishonors her by using her story as part of a lie. This Raw Story article has the links Katz found in his research and his video explains the whole thing.
[…] Britt continued: “The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoebox of a room, and they sent men through that door, over and over again, for hours and hours on-end.”
At this point, Katz suggests Britt is intimating that the rapes were committed in the U.S. when she states the following: “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a third-world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s past time we start acting like it. President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable. And it’s almost entirely preventable.”
Taking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall praised Katz for catching Britt “in an out and out lie.”
Katz’s digging turned up some proof the victim didn’t experience the attacks on American soil, but he also found that the timeline proved Biden wasn’t even in office.
These events didn’t happen in the United States,” said Katz. “These crimes didn’t take place in the United States. Or even near the border. They took place in Mexico.”
And they also took place, according to Romero’s recounting before Congress, between 2004 and 2008.
Biden didn’t become Vice President until 2009. The president at the time when Romero was kidnapped and ultimately rescued was George W. Bush.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was in Washington DC on Friday. But the controversial autocrat wasn’t making an official state visit. Indeed, President Joe Biden had intentionally declined to extend a White House invitation to a man who has pursued a vision of “illiberal democracy” and cracked down on press freedom since taking power in 2010. Instead, Orbán was in town to participate in a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation, a Christian conservative think-tank.
The authoritarian leader was introduced by failed GOP presidential candidate and aspiring authoritarian Vivek Ramaswamy, who has become a regular at the Hungarian embassy in DC over the past year. Orbán posted a slick video of his Washington visit on social media, including a clip of Heritage president Kevin Roberts gushing that Orbán has “a lot of fans here in the United States. You have a lot of people who are intrigued by policies you enacted.” [video at the link]
According to information distributed by the prime minister’s press office to Hungarian media after the panel discussion, “The participants said the world needed a new movement to fight for justice, tradition, families and ordinary people. At the event held behind closed doors, PM Orbán was asked about the successes of Hungary’s conservative family and economic policies, the war in Ukraine, US-Hungary relations, President Donald Trump, and his personal political beliefs.”
One thing the Heritage Foundation panel didn’t seem to discuss, which might have been relevant at this particular moment, was Orbán’s extensive support for in vitro fertilization (IVF). As Republicans in the US have been working to make the popular fertility treatment illegal, the Hungarian government has encouraged the procedure as a way of trying to reverse declining birth rates among white citizens.
As Abby Vesoulis explained in Mother Jones last year, “The Hungarian government has taken over IVF clinics and subsidized the treatment cost down to $0 from $20,000-plus.” Of course, it’s not available to lesbians, writes Vesoulis. The policy is designed to produce “not just Hungarian nationals, but children from married, heterosexual, middle-income and up Hungarian nationals with stay-at-home moms.”
The Heritage Foundation has opposed IVF treatment and cheered the Alabama Supreme Court decision in February that shut down IVF clinics in the state by declaring that embryos created through the procedure are “children.”
Emma Waters, a senior research associate at Heritage, wrote a Newsweek column after the decision declaring, “Embryonic children in Alabama will now be treated with the level of love and care that any parent would want for their child. As Justice Mitchell’s majority opinion makes clear, there exists no ‘unwritten exception’ in the law that takes away the legal status of ‘unborn children who are not physically located ‘in utero’…at the time they are killed.’”
After the Heritage Foundation event, Orbán stopped in at the Hungarian embassy in DC to meet with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist and host of the War Room podcast. And then he headed to Mar-a-Lago to hobnob with Trump at his Florida resort. The pair of aspiring strongmen reportedly discussed “strong and secure borders” and then Trump treated the autocrat to a concert by a tribute band that played cover songs by Earth, Wind and Fire. [video at the link]
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” Trump told the concert audience. “He’s a noncontroversial figure because he said, ‘This is the way it’s gonna be,’ and that’s the end of it. He’s the boss.”
At a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, Biden condemned the meeting, saying that Orbán “stated flatly he doesn’t think democracy works and is looking for dictatorship.” He added: “I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it.”
tomhsays
Re: #233
The Washington Post also parses all the details on this story and give Britt “Four Pinocchios” with its fact checker.
birgerjohanssonsays
“The president at the time when Romero was kidnapped and ultimately rescued was George W. Bush.”
Lock him up! Lock him up!
birgerjohanssonsays
Rebecca Watson.
Study: Guns, Germs, and Steel was Wrong
[…] In an exclusive new exposé, internet culture hub The Daily Dot shines a spotlight on the fringe Christian dominionist Seven Mountains Mandate and its social media platform, the Nexus Mountain Network. The platform has secured the memberships of several candidates running for high office across the country.
The Daily Dot notes that Seven Mountains Dominionism exhorts Christians to “conquer the seven domains of family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government”—and now it has its own social media platform to help make that happen.
Think of it as sort of a Facebook for fundies.
Midwifed out of the New Apostolic Reformation, a network of self-appointed prophets and apostles founded in the late 1990s that gathered around the late C. Peter Wagner, the Seven Mountains Mandate is championed by Lance Wallnau, a self-described Christian Nationalist prophet in Keller, Texas who was one of Wagner’s mentees.
Wallnau brought the idea to prominence through his 2013 book “Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate.” Various religious scholars and journalists say that Wallnau was among the earliest Christian leaders to support Trump and remains his most ardent defender. They’ve also observed that believers of the Seven Mountains Mandate participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attempt to overturn the 2020 election: several New Apostolic Reformation luminaries spoke at the Jan. 5 Freedom Plaza rally and at least two defendants arrested at the riot shared posts about the Seven Mountains.
Now this Christian Nationalist movement has its own social media platform, the Nexus Mountain Network, to spread the Seven Mountains Mandate and serve as the digital connective tissue for acolytes working to establish God’s Kingdom in America.
Among the members of the Nexus Mountain Network are three recent candidates for Congress, including two who won their primary elections. The outlet also identified a candidate for lieutenant governor, three state legislature candidates, and a “handful” of former candidates for office who are currently members of the network.
And, oh yeah, North Carolina’s Robinson has his own ties to Seven Mountains, though he’s not yet a member of Nexus.
During an interview with Nexus Mountain Network founder Chad Hawley, Robinson insisted, “This is a Judeo-Christian country founded on Judeo-Christian principles.” Robinson also claimed that “in order for us to keep this nation strong I believe that Christians have to be at the forefront of leading in the nation.”
In other words, Robinson thinks the only way to keep this country from going to shit is to literally force a sizable portion of its population to defecate outside. And if you could strip voting rights away from more than half of us, that would be cool, too. Because GOP Jesus isn’t fucking around anymore. He needs to take this country back from … erm, devout Catholic Joe Biden.
And in case you aren’t sufficiently appalled yet, you’ll be happy to learn that these people are both deadly serious and seriously influential.
In 2022, Wallnau declared that “Jesus was promised nations for His inheritance, not just churches!” Meaning they want to take over the country, have gotten tired of waiting for God to return to establish His kingdom, and are counting on Cheesus Christ, Crotch-Groping Superstar to do it instead.
And don’t look now, but they’ve already started enacting their agenda.
One judge on the Alabama Supreme Court, which recently declared that embryos are real people […] is a Seven Mountains adherent. And MAGA Mike Johnson—the House speaker who would follow Jesus anywhere, so long as they eventually land on “terrifying theocratic dystopia”—also has ties to the movement.
And then there’s Marge. [video of Marjorie Taylor Greene with Lance Wallnau]
Meanwhile, some of the movement’s detractors are suitably alarmed. Matthew Taylor, whom The Daily Dot describes as one of the top religious scholars of the New Apostolic Reformation, noted that the movement is “a political theology of Christian supremacy, which uses prophecy to claim that God is commanding all Christians to strategically take over the high places in society so as to Christianize that society.”
Taylor has seen the movement metastasize in recent years, much as MAGA has come to encrust the GOP.
“The Seven Mountains Mandate concept started on the true fringes of American Christianity,” Taylor told The Daily Dot. “When Wallnau formulated it, he was a run-of-the-mill pastor in Rhode Island, but through the … entwinement with Christian Trumpism, it has rapidly moved from the margins to the center of religious right organizing in the U.S. and globally.”
Yes. Yes, it has.
And that, dear friends, should scare the shit out of all of us.
President Joe Biden on Saturday signed a $460 billion package of spending bills approved by the Senate in time to avoid a shutdown of many key federal agencies. The legislation’s success gets lawmakers about halfway home in wrapping up their appropriations work for the 2024 budget year.
The measure contains six annual spending bills and had already passed the House. In signing it into law, Biden thanked leaders and negotiators from both parties in both chambers for their work, which the White House said will mean that agencies “may continue their normal operations.”
[…] The votes came more than five months into the current budget year after congressional leaders relied on a series of stopgap bills to keep federal agencies funded for a few more weeks or months at a time while they struggled to reach agreement on full-year spending.
[…] The House Freedom Caucus, which contains dozens of the GOP’s most conservative members, urged Republicans to vote against the first spending package and the second one still being negotiated.
Democrats staved off most of the policy riders that Republicans sought to include in the package. For example, they beat back an effort to block new rules that expand access to the abortion pill mifepristone. They were also able to fully fund a nutrition program for low-income women, infants and children, providing about $7 billion for what is known as the WIC program. That’s a $1 billion increase from the previous year.
[…] The bill also includes more than 6,600 projects requested by individual lawmakers, with a price tag of about $12.7 billion. The projects attracted criticism from some Republican members, though members from both parties broadly participated in requesting them on behalf of their states and congressional districts. Paul called the spending “sort of the grease that eases in billions and trillions of other dollars, because you get people to buy into the total package by giving them a little bit of pork for their town, a little bit of pork for their donors.” […]
Conservative lawmakers rejected a host of new culture wars proposals in the legislature.
The bill banning rainbow flags from public buildings in Florida sounded like a sure bet.
State Rep. David Borrero (R), the legislation’s sponsor, argued that it was needed to prevent schoolchildren from being “subliminally indoctrinated.” That rationale echoed other measures championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as part of his “war on woke.”
But instead of sailing through the Republican-dominated legislature, the DeSantis-backed bill died a quick legislative death, making it only as far as one subcommittee.
It wasn’t the only culture war proposal from conservative lawmakers to end up in the bill graveyard during the session that ended Friday. One rejected bill would have banned the removal of Confederate monuments. Another would have required transgender people to use their sex assigned at birth on driver’s licenses — something the state Department of Motor Vehicles is already mandating. A third proposed forbidding local and state government officials from using transgender people’s pronouns.
[…] the fact that the bills failed, even with public support from DeSantis, marks a change from the days when the GOP supermajority in Tallahassee passed nearly everything the governor asked for.
[…] The Sunshine State is the birthplace of conservative parental rights group Moms for Liberty, the original law restricting LGBTQ+ discussion in classrooms, one of the strictest abortion laws in the country and legislation that has led to the banning of more books than in any other state in America.
But the pushback is growing.
Parents and others have organized and protested schoolbook bans. Abortion rights advocates gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot in Florida in November. A bill that would have established “fetal personhood” stalled before it could reach a full vote.
Judges are also canceling some of DeSantis’s marquee laws, including the “Stop Woke Act.” A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled Monday that the law “exceeds the bounds” of the Constitution’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
Primordial Planets
This 36-minute podcast discusses things like when the first planets hospitable for life might have emerged.
A federal agency in charge of cybersecurity discovered it was hacked last month and was forced to take two key computer systems offline, an agency spokesperson and US officials familiar with the incident told CNN.
One of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s affected systems runs a program that allows federal, state and local officials to share cyber and physical security assessment tools, according to the US officials briefed on the matter. The other holds information on security assessment of chemical facilities, the sources said…
You will absolutely think I am making this up, because if it were fictional it would be too on-the-nose, but: Elaine Chao, a shipping billionaire and Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law, drowned yesterday by accidentally backing her Tesla SUV into a pond — the rescuers couldn’t break the windows to get her out and the car stopped working once it was submerged, so the doors wouldn’t unlatch. Here’s a source.
KGsays
Biden has the leverage to force a halt to Israeli war crimes, but refuses to use it. – Me@214
Yes, but it would wreck the longstanding but unspoken partnership between Israel and the USA if he did that.
The defence research and economics partnership, the geopolitical partnership, and whatnot.
Boring old realpolitik, sure, but that’s how it is.
(Imagine Trump at the helm!) – John Morales@215
No, it wouldn’t: the USA has successfully halted Israeli aggression before – under Ronald Reagan. Biden could and should interfere in Israeli politics to oust Netanyahu, who has a vital personal interest in continuing the slaughter in Gaza – as soon as it ends, Netanyahu knows he’ll be out. Biden can simply make those substantial aspects of aid (financial, military and diplomatic) that are within his powers to withhold, conditional on Netanyahu’s removal.
Of course Trump would be worse than Biden – if I had a vote, I’d vote Democratic in November. What I’m pointing out is that Biden could do the right thing – by ceasing to enable war crimes – and probably benefit from it politically and increase US influence in the Middle East. But from an irrational attachment to Israel, he doesn’t.
birgerjohanssonsays
KG @ 244
Yeah, I remember the time Reagan got though with Israel.
birgerjohanssonsays
The Planetary Society every year offers journeys and or cruises to interesting places, preferably coinciding with any solar eclipse.
I assume they also offer activities in relation to the solar eclipse a month from now. If any American is reading this, you migh check out their website.
This year the path of full eclipse will be Trump-free. Also, the path of the eclipse will first pass through Mexico, and you know what he thinks about everything coming from there.
KGsays
Continuing my #244:
Having got rid of Netanyahu, Biden – whose replacement(s) would know they owed their positions to him, and that he could turn the same measures on them – would likely be able to push through an Israeli ceasefire and de facto abandonment of the impractical goal of eliminating Hamas, in return for the remaining Hamas hostages’ freedom (together with that of Palestinian prisoners). There are, BTW, Palestinians in Israeli prisons who could compete politically with Hamas, notably Marwan Barghouti.
See, Middle East problem solved! (Not really, but some sort of peace and emergency aid to Gaza might result, and last through to the election at least.)
birgerjohanssonsays
Home Office breaks pledge to fund sex-crime research after Everard murder | Crime | The Guardian
Exclusive: Paper by UCL professor says ‘wobbly’ space-time could instead explain expansion of universe and galactic rotation…
StevoRsays
Via space dot com :
Scientists may only get to have either the Giant Magellan Telescope or the Thirty Meter Telescope. The problem? Both are already in the works. … (Snip).. Yet, both telescopes are already in the middle of construction, both are equally important and both are actually supposed to work together to fulfill a wide-eyed dream for astronomers.
So much money gets wasted on wars and other things. Surely we can do both here?
Also a good, thought-provoking op-ed here :
So we ask in early 2024: Where will humanity, and the moon, be by the next lunar standstill in the early 2040s? ..(snip)..Because of the changes wrought by human activities since 1959, historians recently argued that the moon has entered a novel phase of its geologic history in which human modification of its surface will vastly outpace the rate of evolution due to natural influences alone. Astronauts returning to the moon in coming years face a world over six decades into this new era, dubbed the “Lunar Anthropocene”.
Bumble has lost a third of its Texas workforce in the months since the state passed the controversial abortion SB 8 (Senate Bill 8), also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, over a year ago. This new data point was shared by Bumble’s Interim General Counsel, Elizabeth Monteleone, speaking on a panel this afternoon at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. The panel focused on the “healthcare crisis in Post-Roe America” and featured women who had both sued and spoken out about the need to have doctors, not politicians, involved in their healthcare decisions.
What’s more, Monteleone noted that Bumble is no longer requiring employees to join the business in its Austin location, even though the dating app maker is headquartered there…
Reginald Selkirksays
@243:
According to your own source link,
It was Angela Chao who died, not her sister Elaine, who is married to Mitch McConnell.
It didn’t happen yesterday, it happened February 11, 2024.
There is nothing in your source about inability to break the windows. Rather
The Journal reported that some friends and a property ranch manager came outside shortly after the call. Due to the remote location and terrain of the ranch, some emergency responders had to get out of their vehicles and walk to the site of the incident, according to the report.
By the time the vehicle was towed out of the water, Chao was taken out of the vehicle and found unresponsive, The Journal reported…
Reginald Selkirksays
@243: If you want a source for the ‘inability to break the windows’ bit, try those reliable source, The Daily Mail or Metro
Firefighters with ESD No. 2, headquartered in the city of Blanco, responded to the scene after midnight, the newly released report shows. They arrived at the ranch shortly before 12:30 a.m., the report shows — about 27 minutes after they were called.
Some rescuers had already arrived, including medics from ESD No. 1, who reached the scene within nine minutes of being called to the scene, the county’s EMS chief said.
“The deputies were in the water standing on what they believed was the vehicle, trying to gain access to the possible victim inside the vehicle,” wrote fire Lt. Royce Penshorn in the report. An EMS responder told him one vehicle was “completely submerged” with one person inside.
A two-person crew searched the pond’s bank for other victims and set up lighting as the rescue efforts continued. The deputies remained in the water, trying to extract Chao, as additional EMS units arrived. A tow truck also arrived to try to pull the vehicle out, but its chains could not reach it from the pond’s bank, Penshorn said in the report.
Two deputies stood on the submerged vehicle and requested tools to break the vehicle’s windows, the report says. An EMS crew member and a firefighter went into the water with the tools to get into the vehicle. They used “several tools” to get into the vehicle, including a pike pole and a Halligan bar, a multipurpose tool used by firefighters to force an entry.
Rescuers pulled the patient from the vehicle at about 12:56 a.m., said Benjamin Oakley, the EMS chief. EMS responders delivered “advanced life support” for 43 minutes to try to resuscitate her…
The very same MAGA voters who call Nikki Haley a RINO (Republican in Name Only) fail to see or are willfully ignorant of the fact that Donald Trump is himself RADAR (Radical Autocrat Disguised as Republican).
Indeed, the entire “Freedom GOP” appears to be geared so.
Just look at the candidates stepping up to take Mitch McConnell’s Senate minority leader position or poised to run the RNC. Take warning GOP voters, RADAR is Radioactive.
Two men from Texas are accused of stealing calculators worth $20,000 from seven stores across Minnesota, believed to be part of a larger theft ring responsible for a quarter million dollars in stolen calculators nationwide…
… graphing calculators…
KGsays
I’ve now watched Biden’s SOTU speech. Pity about the extensive deployment of unconfirmed Israeli claims and the worthless “temporary pier” nonsense in the section on Israel/Pelestine; and the reference to an “illegal” (which he has now said he regrets). Otherwise, what impressed me most were the times he mis-spoke – specifically, how quickly and appropriately he generally corrected himself – and the ad libs, both of which demonstrated that he was not just following a script. He only seemed to genuinely lose his thread once, at the start of the border/”illegal” passage. He’s quite clearly not demented, and that will be obvious to anyone who watches the speech, whatever they choose to say. His performance made me think it more likely he will win in November, particularly if Trump agrees to debates.
Reginald Selkirksays
@257 “particularly if Trump agrees to debates.”
I hope he doesn’t do that. There is no point in debating someone who lies with every breath.
birgerjohanssonsays
Reginald Selkirk @ 258
A good thing would be if he refers to his wife as “Mercedes” again, in a TV program watched by undecided voters. Or if he doubles down on trying to pronounce words he can no longer pronounce. Senile dementia is horrible but Trump is even worse – let the world witness his decline.
.
“Dark Matter might form Stars that can Explode” -Sabine Hossenfelder is not impressed by physicists that have fallen in love with theories that are as obsolete as trickle-down politics.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=F-4ikKPEFAU
KGsays
Reginald Selkirk@258,
I disagree: I think the constrast in degree of lucidity would be striking. Of course there are many Trumpists for whom this will be invisible or irrelevant, but bizarrely, there are still undecided voters, including those who might or might not vote at all.
(CN) — A new firearm regulation in Washington state will take effect after a federal judge on Friday struck down a trade organization’s attempt to block it.
The order from U.S. District Judge Mary Dimke dismissed a federal lawsuit from the National Shooting Sports Foundation challenging the constitutionality of Washington state’s Senate Bill 5078 or the “Firearm Industry Responsibility and Gun Violence Victims’ Access to Justice Act.”
The act — signed by Governor Jay Inslee on Apr. 25, 2023 — ensures that firearms manufacturers and sellers face liability if they fail to establish, implement and enforce reasonable controls in the manufacture, sale, distribution and marketing of firearms. Failing to do so would violate the state’s Consumer Protection Act and public nuisance law.
The new law also allows those injured or killed as a result of illegal firearms industry conduct to pursue damages under state law, offering a potential bypass to the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act passed in 2005. That law gives gun manufacturers and dealers immunity from civil suits for crimes committed with their products.
The foundation sued [state Attorney General Bob] Ferguson over SB 5078 the same day Inslee signed it into law, claiming the 2005 act preempted the new law and that SB 5078 unlawfully regulates firearm industry members outside the state’s borders.
[…]
Dimke disagreed with the timing and basis of the claim, however, explaining that the foundation never showed its members would continue conduct violating the law once it went into effect on July 23, 2023.
“Instead, NSSF relies on the fear that its members will be subject to liability for otherwise lawful conduct,” Dimke wrote. “There must be a further allegation that its members ‘intend to engage in conduct arguably proscribed’ by the law at issue.”
Dimke also tossed out the foundation’s claims the law violated the First and Second Amendments by regulating the promotional speech of lawful firearms and infringing on its members’ right to keep and bear arms. Notably, the foundation’s members are gun manufacturers, distributors and retailers.
Overall, the judge reasoned that the foundation’s complaint lacked enough specifics about how the law would impact its members’ constitutional interests. Dimke also said the Second Amendment only concerns the foundation’s members to the extent that their conduct implicates the individual right to keep and bear arms. It does not, Dimke wrote, “independently protect a proprietor’s right to sell firearms.”
[…]
Pierce R. Butlersays
KG @ # 257: … particularly if Trump agrees to debates.
At this point, Trump wants debates and Biden prefers to play coy.
Looks to me like Biden knows he has the superior position, and continues to play his hand accordingly.
While Senator Katie Britt has gotten a lot of flak for her performance (and it was a performance), something else was going on. People have commented on her presentation — they way she emoted, the way she sounded, ‘the woman in the kitchen talking about her kids’ context.
Tom Sullivan at Digby’s Place picked up on some videos that make her performance even creepier when you understand where she is coming from, and what she is messaging. Sullivan found several videos that contrast the way she speaks normally with the way she spoke that night. This video from Jess Piper explains exactly what kind of dog whistle Britt was blowing — the Fundie Baby Voice: [tweet and video at the link]
Piper plays several video clips from other women beside Britt to show what it sounds like, and then explains what it means to people who recognize it.
“…I was born and raised an evangelical, a fundamentalist. That is called the fundie baby voice. It means you’re submissive. It means you’re a good woman. It means you’re kind and you support your husband. The better you are at the baby voice, the better woman you are.”
Sullivan has several other clips that compare and contrast how Britt speaks when she’s not playing the role of the ideal fundie woman with her act the other night. Here’s one. [tweet and video at the link]
We now know Britt is also a liar. Digby links to a report that has found her tearful, angry report blaming Biden’s policies for a horrendous sexual ordeal is taken completely out of context to create a false impression. The incident was real — but it didn’t happen in America. It happened years ago in Mexico — while George W. Bush was President. Britt framed it to make it sound like it happened in America on Biden’s watch. Jonathan Katz did some digging and found where it had come from. [video at the link]
[…] Everyone is drawing parallels with “The Handmaid’s Tale” and the way women have been reduced to breeder slaves in it. The abuse of women under patriarchal religions/governments isn’t a bug — it’s a feature, as repeated sex scandals involving assorted churches and sects demonstrate on what seems a daily basis.
[…] The uncomfortable truth is that there are those among us who are working to turn America into a theocracy. They are in places you might not suspect, and not all of them are out in the open. There’s “the Family” and “the Seven Mountains” movement. One of the warning signs that you are dealing with one of these groups is their belief that America is a dystopian hellhole sunk in moral decay, a country that has abandoned ‘morality’ and spiritual ‘values’. The fact that they have embraced a man with the character of Donald Trump as a leader shows you just how full of sh*t they are.
[…] While we are on the subject of Fundies and their wicked ways, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has a report from Josh Kovensky: Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’.
If you have never heard of the Society for American Civic Renewal (the acronym is pronounced “sacker” by its members), it’s because they’ve been trying to stay under the radar. Now that they are getting uncovered, they are attempting to manage the news coming out about them. [See comment 229]
[…] The thing is, there’s something about people who have managed to accumulate wealth, whether in business or by other means (like inheritance) that practically breeds hubris. The prosperity gospel preaches that wealth is a sign that God has especially favored you, and you are privileged to rule over others by virtue of that wealth.
[…] Marshall links to an earlier report by the Guardian — US businessman is wannabe ‘warlord’ of secretive far-right men’s network — but TPM has been able to uncover much more about the group and who is in it since the Guardian article appeared 6 months ago. Supporting TPM is vital — especially when you see how well the msm is doing.
[…] If these people succeed, America as a democracy won’t have a prayer.
It’s later than we think, and not just because we moved the clocks ahead.
The same insurance company, Chubb Group LLC, that guaranteed Trump’s $91.63 million surety bond also insures oil and gas extraction and transport in Russia. The company recently backed Nord Stream 2, the natural gas pipeline built by Gazprom, a majority Russian state-owned fossil fuel company.
No dots are connected yet, but we may need an investigation to see if Trump is now even more in debt to the Russians. There are many caveats attached to this speculation.
Federal Insurance Company is a NY-based subsidiary of Chubb, and it is Federal Insurance that guaranteed the bond. Chubb is actually incorporated in Zürich, Switzerland. It operates in 55 countries, so really the whole financial picture is obscure. More information is needed.
It may simply be that appeals bonds are a big business opportunity and Chubb may have gotten sufficient collateral from Trump to make guaranteeing the bond worth their while. It’s also possible that Putin leaned on Chubb with something like offers of favorable contracts in Russia. It’s also possible that Chubb guaranteed the bond because it had a co-signer like Elon Musk, Saudi billionaires, or well, anyone with more money than Trump.
Reginald Selkirksays
Caitlin Clark leads Iowa to a Big Ten conference championship, beating Nebraska 94-89.
You know she set some new records.
Transcript and video (about 9 minutes long) are available at the link.
Excerpt:
[…] The Democrats are renominating an incumbent president who’s been a very successful president. Not the world’s most popular president, but successful. Lot’s of bipartisan legislation, all the stuff he wanted to get done he has gotten done.
We have this best in class economic recovery post-covid of all the big countries in the world. Everything he’s set out to do, he’s done. Joe Biden got in there saying, “Listen, I’m going to be the President for everybody and expect all my big legislative stuff to be bi-partisan,” and that is exactly what he’s done. So the Democratic Party is like marching down the middle lane of Normalville, right?
The Republican Party is engaged in a different project. And there is a reason that nobody in the Republican Party cares that the Republican controlled congress isn’t making any policy, say. There is a reason nobody knows what Donald Trumps policy is on Gaza, say. There’s a reason nobody in the Republican Party is contesting what is going on with Joe Biden because they have a different idea what we should be doing on infrastructure. There is just no governing talk happening at all in the Republican Party. It is instead that America is a disaster, America is in decline, America is being laughed at, America is humiliated, and there must be extreme measures taken to fundamentally change the course of the country or we’re all going to die.
[…] I mean when Trump used violence and fraud and intimidation to try to throw out election results and stay in power anyway, the response of the Republican Party was not to be horrified. For the most part, the response of the elected and leading Republicans was to figure out how they could help him get away with it. McConnell, when he orchestrated the acquittal of Trump in the Senate so Trump would not be banned from ever holding federal office again because he said the courts will take care of it. The courts will not save us here.
[…] The Republican Party will not save us here. We cannot wait for the Republican Party to wake up. Nothing is going to happen inside the Republican Party other than efforts to get Donald Trump what he wants, which is to get rid of our form of government. The only way the country gets saved is if Republicans are blocked by the democratic process because Democrats win instead. That’s the only thing left to save us.
[…] You may need to leave that Republican Party now in order to work with the rest of Americans who disagree with you on a lot of different things, but want our country to stay a democracy. We are just in that extreme a place. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
For a change, here is some good news.
British conservatives are getting desperate.
March 8 (Reuters) – The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the Oct. 7 attacks.
The assertions are contained in a report by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reviewed by Reuters and dated February 2024 which detailed allegations of mistreatment in Israeli detention made by unidentified Palestinians, including several working for UNRWA.
UNRWA communications director Juliette Touma said the agency planned to hand the information in the 11-page, unpublished report to agencies inside and outside the U.N. specialised in documenting potential human rights abuses.
“When the war comes to an end there needs to be a series of inquiries to look into all violations of human rights,” she said.
The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members.
Israel is a terrorist state.
Jeansays
Israel is a terrorist state.
That needs to be said over and over until people get it. And it has nothing to do with Judaism so it’s not an anti-Semitic statement.
The neighborhood around the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is largely controlled by gangs.
The U.S. military said Sunday that it had flown in forces to beef up security at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti and allow nonessential personnel to leave.
The aircraft flew to the embassy compound, the U.S. Southern Command said, meaning that the effort involved helicopters. It was careful to point out that “no Haitians were on board the military aircraft.” That seemed aimed at quashing any speculation that senior government officials might be leaving as the gang attacks in Haiti worsen.
[…] In many cases, nonessential personnel can include the families of diplomats, but the embassy had already ordered departure for nonessential staff and all family members in July. The personnel ferried out of the embassy may have simply been rotating out, to be refreshed by new staff.
The statement Sunday said that the United States remains focused on aiding Haitian police and arranging some kind of U.N.-authorized security deployment. But those efforts have been unsuccessful so far.
Haiti’s embattled prime minister, Ariel Henry, traveled recently to Kenya to push for the U.N.-backed deployment of a police force from the East African country to fight the gangs. But a Kenyan court ruled in January that such a deployment would be unconstitutional.
Henry, who is facing calls to resign or form a transitional council, remains unable to return home. He arrived in Puerto Rico on Tuesday after he was unable to land in the Dominican Republic, which borders Haiti.
On Saturday, the office of Dominican President Luis Abinader issued a statement saying that “Henry is not welcome in the Dominican Republic for safety reasons.” The Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, has closed its land border.
[…] The statement described the security situation in Haiti as “totally unsustainable” and said that it “poses a direct threat to the safety and stability of the Dominican Republic.”
The statement predicted “the situation could deteriorate even further if a peacekeeping force is not implemented urgently to restore order.”
Caribbean leaders have called for an emergency meeting Monday in Jamaica on what they called Haiti’s “dire” situation. They have invited the United States, France, Canada, the United Nations and Brazil to the meeting.
Members of the Caricom regional trade bloc have been trying for months to get political actors in Haiti to agree to form an umbrella transitional unity government.
Caricom said Friday that while regional leaders remain deeply engaged in trying to bring opposition parties and civil society groups together to form a unity government, “the stakeholders are not yet where they need to be.”
[…] Guards from the National Palace accompanied by an armored truck tried to set up a security perimeter around one of the three downtown stations after police fought off an attack by gangs late Friday.
Sporadic gunfire continued Saturday, and one woman writhed in pain on the sidewalk in downtown Port-au-Prince with a gunshot wound after a stray bullet hit her in the leg.
The unrelenting gang attacks have paralyzed the country for more than a week and left it with dwindling supplies of basic goods. Haitian officials extended a state of emergency and nightly curfew on Thursday as gangs continued to attack key state institutions.
But average Haitians, many of whom have been forced from their homes by the bloody street fighting, can’t wait. The problem for police in securing government buildings is that many Haitians have streamed into them, seeking refuge.
“We are the ones who pay taxes, and we need to have shelter,” said one woman, who didn’t give her name for safety reasons.
Another Port-au-Prince resident, who also did not give his name, described Friday’s attacks.
“They (the gangs) came with big guns. We have no guns and we cannot defend ourselves. All of us, the children are suffering,” said the man.
birgerjohanssonsays
Starship Flight 3 might take place on Pi day, March 14th, providing a bit of distraction from the awful current political situation.
[…] “Democrats have been given the greatest messenger against Mark Robinson, and that’s Mark Robinson,” said Paul Shumaker, a North Carolina Republican strategist.
Democrats, for their part, believe Robinson could turn off enough state voters with his words that it could propel Stein to victory as North Carolina’s first Jewish governor.
“Mark Robinson is an in-state mirror to Donald Trump,” said Jess Jollett, executive director of Progress North Carolina. “We are going to work everyday to make it very clear to voters that the choice is stark.”
Robinson rose to prominence in 2018, after giving a speech in defense of the Second Amendment. In his speech, Robinson claimed that law-abiding gun owners are “the first ones taxed and the last ones considered and the first ones punished” when mass shootings happen. [Almost every additional detail that we learn points to Mark Robinson as being as bad as, or worse than, Trump.]
His speech went viral, and soon after, in 2019, he began his campaign for lieutenant governor. He won that campaign, becoming the state’s first Black lieutenant governor.
[one mitigating factor to point out] While Robinson did say “I absolutely want to go back to the America where woman couldn’t vote,” he went on to say, “Do you want to know why? Because in those days, we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans. And they are the reason why women can vote today.” [misleading re-write of history, but not as bad as implying that women should not have the right to vote]
Trump formally backed Robinson at a rally in Greensboro earlier this week, referring to him as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
“I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two,” the former president said.
But it’s not clear Robinson will do well with Black voters.
Since launching his bid for the governorship, Robinson has described Black voters who vote for Democrats as “slaves” and claimed that “so many freedoms were lost during the Civil Rights Movement.”
“Black folks don’t respond to those types of comments,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter.
“Folks get highly insulted and highly motivated, even when it’s a Black person making those comments,” he added.
[…] Despite Robinson’s identity as a Black man, Albright doesn’t think he’ll do well with Black voters. He points to the disappointment Black voters seem to be expressing with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who suspended a bid for the White House last year and has since been campaigning for Trump.
[…] Democrats plan to tie Robinson and Trump together.
[…] Robinson is a stanch anti-abortion advocate. […]
That needs to be said over and over until people get it. And it has nothing to do with Judaism so it’s not an anti-Semitic statement. – Jean@271
While microraptor is certainly right (I was chanting that massage at a demo on Saturday), Jean’s response reveals a fundamental misunderstanding. Antisemitism is not about Judaism. Antisemites generally don’t give a shit whether a Jew believes or disbelieves in any god, or observes the practices of Judaism such as attending synagogue and following kosher food laws. Jews were exterminated in the Shoah whatever their beliefs and practices, they are hated and excluded by antisemites today irrespective of their beliefs and practices. Modern antisemitism developed in the 1800s on the basis of racist pseudoscience, on which its more poisonous variants still overtly rely.
birgerjohanssonsays
Redefining Human History: Scientists Uncover Advanced 1.1 Million-Year-Old Tools in China
Republican party leaders in Catoosa county, in the north-west corner of Georgia, ran prospective GOP candidates through a battery of ideological questions, permitting some to run in the party primary while denying others.
Local political purity tests have been discussed by both Republican and Democratic party officials for years, but this is the first time a county’s political body has actually attempted the feat.
Perhaps that’s because of the punishing backlash now facing the six executive committee members of the Catoosa county Republican party after a lawsuit from disqualified candidates: fines of $1,000 an hour, times four for the number of Republican candidates the county’s GOP body refused to put on the ballot, times six for each of the executive committee members. That’s $24,000 an hour for the whole group until they comply with a judge’s order to put the candidates on the ballot…
President Vladimir Putin’s foreign intelligence service on Monday accused the United States of trying to meddle in Russia’s presidential election and said that Washington even had plans to launch a cyber attack on the online voting system.
Putin, who is almost certain to win the March 15-17 presidential election, has warned the West that any attempts by foreign powers to meddle in the ballot would be considered an act of aggression…
Why, is interfering in another country’s elections a bad thing?
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar conceded defeat Saturday as two constitutional amendments he supported that would have broadened the definition of family and removed language about a woman’s role in the home were headed toward rejection…
Kansas Republicans were condemned as “vile and wrong” after attendees at a fundraising event beat and kicked a martial arts dummy wearing a Joe Biden mask…
Footage posted to social media showed attendees at the Johnson county Republican event kicking and beating the dummy, which was wearing a Biden mask and a T-shirt displaying the slogan “Let’s Go Brandon”, a rightwing meme mean to disparage Biden…
I guess today’s version of “conservatism” doesn’t include respect for elders.
Reginald Selkirksays
@285: I left out the laugh line:
“We are Republicans, and we are better than this.”
Built and flown by Stratolaunch, the massive Roc aircraft took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in California on Saturday. The airplane flew out over the Pacific Ocean, where it deployed the Talon-A vehicle, which looks something like a mini space shuttle.
This marked the first time this gargantuan airplane released an honest-to-goodness payload, the first Talon-A vehicle, TA-1, which is intended to fly at hypersonic speed. During the flight, TA-1 didn’t quite reach hypersonic velocity, which begins at Mach 5, or five times greater than the speed of sound.
“While I can’t share the specific altitude and speed TA-1 reached due to proprietary agreements with our customers, we are pleased to share that in addition to meeting all primary and customer objectives of the flight, we reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5 and collected a great amount of data at an incredible value to our customers,” said Zachary Krevor, chief executive of Stratolaunch, in a statement…
About a month after the Jan. 6 attack, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson scoffed at those alarmed by the riot. “This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me,” the Wisconsin senator said. “I mean ‘armed,’ when you hear ‘armed,’ don’t you think of firearms?” [I don’t actually. “Armed” means you are carrying something that can be used as a weapon, a flag pole for instance. But, yeah, guns fit the “armed” category.]
In the months and years that followed, GOP lawmakers such as Arizona’s Paul Gosar and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene also questioned whether the insurrectionists had guns.
As recently as last week, Donald Trump himself used his social media platform to insist, while responding to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, “The so-called ‘Insurrectionists’ that he talks about had no guns. They only had a Rigged Election.”
Such rhetoric has long been foolish, but the GOP voices who’ve questioned whether the rioters were armed looked quite a bit worse late last week. NBC News reported on John Emanuel Banuelos, who allegedly fired two gunshots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and who was arrested by federal authorities on Friday.
Last month, Jan. 6 rioter Derrick Evans, who is now running in a Republican House primary in West Virginia, published previously unseen video that appeared to show that Banuelos actually fired his weapon twice outside the Capitol that day. Online “sedition hunters” who have aided the FBI in hundreds of arrests of Capitol rioters — and who first sent Banuelos’ name to the FBI in February 2021 — quickly surfaced additional footage that confirmed that Banuelos was the man who appeared to have fired the weapon.
NBC News’ report added, “While numerous rioters were armed with guns on Jan. 6, none were known to have actually fired their weapons; Banuelos is the first to be charged with doing so.”
That distinction is relevant. Despite Republican talk about the rioters not being armed during the pro-Trump violence, the facts have been evident for quite some time. Remember this Washington Post report from nearly two years ago?
The full picture of how many among the crowd were armed before the riot occurred is unclear, but court records, trial testimony and accounts from police officers and rioters have supplied growing evidence that multiple people brought firearms to Washington for Jan. 6, 2021. Six men were arrested that day for having guns in the vicinity of the U.S. Capitol, and a seventh who arrived after the riot ended was arrested the following day.
The same report noted one Jan. 6 defendant explaining at his trial that from his vantage point on the west side of the Capitol, he counted eight firearms carried by five people. Other rioters have been charged with taking guns onto the Capitol grounds.
A New York Times report highlighted a series of other specific Jan. 6 rioters who were found to have carried firearms during the attack.
But according to an unsealed federal criminal complaint, at least one pro-Trump rioter didn’t just have a gun during the Jan. 6 assault, he also allegedly fired a gun during the Jan. 6 assault.
As best as I can tell, none of the Republicans who peddled the lie about “unarmed” insurrectionists have expressed any regret for having been so wrong.
After Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law, was officially and unanimously elected as part of the team to run the Republican National Committee, she said:
“This isn’t just about right versus left, Republican versus Democrat. It’s about good versus evil.”
It was just a few weeks ago when Gov. Chris Sununu told Politico, in reference to Donald Trump and the Republican Party, “It won’t be his party forever. Right? It just won’t. … Let me put it a different way: A–holes come and go. But America is here to stay.” A few days ago, the New Hampshire Republican nevertheless endorsed Trump’s candidacy.
Until last Thursday evening, it’s safe to say that many Americans were blissfully unaware that Alabama even had another senator. For all anyone knew, the Cotton State had just elected Tommy Tuberville twice and called it done. Then Sen. Katie Britt appeared on America’s televisions following the State of the Union address, projecting her best mom-who-would-definitely-take-out-your-kid-so-her-daughter-could-be-head-cheerleader vibes.
Since appearing on America’s televisions, Britt’s drama club delivery has been the subject of a baffled response from Republicans as well as a vast number of social media memes. Those memes now include actor Scarlett Johansson dropping by “Saturday Night Live” to deliver a dead-on parody. [video at the link]
But the biggest problem with Britt’s SOTU response wasn’t just the disturbing level of scary-mom emoting on a kitchen set. By far the biggest problem was in what she said.
During her speech, Britt told a brutal story of a woman who had been a victim of sex trafficking. The Alabama senator heavily implied that this story had happened in America under President Joe Biden’s watch. However, journalist Jonathan Katz quickly disassembled Britt’s story and found the real woman behind the claims.
Britt’s story was based on the tragic abuse suffered by Karla Jacinto Romero, who told her story to Congress in 2015. As it turns out, the horrific events that she survived happened in Mexico between 2004 and 2008—almost two decades ago and a nation away from what Britt suggested in her speech.
Britt’s spokesperson responded to questions about the story by insisting, “The story Senator Britt told was 100% correct,” then claiming without evidence that there were more victims of trafficking than ever because Biden’s policies have “empowered” the cartels. Except Romero wasn’t taken by any cartel.
Britt then appeared on Fox News to explain away the false connection to Biden in the least convincing way imaginable.
Fox News: Did you mean to give the impression that this horrible story happened on President Biden’s watch?
Britt: No … I very specifically said, this is what President Biden did during his first 100 days. Minutes after coming into office, he stopped all deportations. He halted construction of the border wall, and he said I am going to give amnesty to millions. Those types of things act as a magnet to have more and more people here.
This is a really lengthy way of saying yes, she meant for people to think Romero’s experience was Biden’s fault.
But there’s someone who thinks Britt’s story is very unfair. And that someone is Karla Jacinto Romero. “I think [Britt] should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude,” Jacinto told CNN.
Romero complained that politicians like Britt are more interested in generating publicity than solving a problem. “I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image,” Romero said. “They only want a photo—and that to me is not fair.”
I will post Mark Sumner’s take on other subjects separately.
Bucks County Beacon beats out national media on Trump’s agenda
It’s hard to say that the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” is hiding in plain sight because it’s not hiding at all. The radical conservative group is the intellectual and legal heart of MAGA, driving policies, drafting legislation, and training the shock troops that are ready to take over the executive branch if Donald Trump retakes the White House.
And, as the Bucks County Beacon reveals, the project for a second Trump term includes a connection that should be shocking enough to dominate national news. The connection is to a Christian nationalist extremist who wants a fundamental—and fundamentalist—restructuring of the government. A document he edited is described as such:
The manifesto, titled “The Statement on Christian Nationalism”, begins with a definition of “Christian Nationalism” that strives to implement a Scripture-based system of government whereby Christ-ordained “civil magistrates” exercise authority over the American public.
————————– The influential secret feeding talk of a second Civil War
While Christian nationalists are preparing to rip apart the legal and administrative structure of the nation, a Saturday report from Talking Points Memo looked at a group that’s not only expecting America to collapse but also doing what it can to erode the foundations. That group revolves around Christian nationalism.
A secret, men-only right-wing society with members in influential positions around the country is on a crusade: to recruit a Christian government that will form after the right achieves regime change in the United States, potentially via a “national divorce.”
The group is known as the Society for American Civic Renewal, and it’s not just a Christian nationalist group. As far as Talking Points Memo was able to identify the members, it’s also an all-white group with very strong ideas about race and sexual orientation. The kind of group that usually goes under the descriptive term “neo-Nazi.”
Only this secret society isn’t meeting at some isolated ranch or gathering in a dingy basement. They are seemingly embedded in both the Republican Party and powerful institutions. TPM reports that it has identified members including “the president of the influential, Trump-aligned Claremont Institute, Harvard Law grads, and leading businessmen in communities scattered across America.”
—————————————- The one point on which Liz Cheney and Donald Trump Jr. agree
In “Jaws,” the famous line is “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” For Republicans, what’s clear is that they’re gonna need a new party, because they’re no longer welcome in the one they thought they controlled. [Tweet and video of Cheney is available at the link: “There’s a lot that has to be done to begin to rebuild the Republican Party, potentially to build a new conservative party…But…that has to wait until after the 2024 election because our focus has got to be on defeating Donald Trump.”]
And Trump’s people are waiting to show any Republicans who remain to the nearest exit. [Tweet and video of Junior speaking: “That Republican Party no longer exists. The moves that happened – that’s the final blow. People have to understand that MAGA is the new Republican Party. That is conservatism today.”]
———————————– Trump defames writer E. Jean Carroll. Again.
For those who have been holding a stopwatch and waiting for the inevitable, it’s time to press the button. In a weekend speech, Trump referenced the $91 million bond he had to pay to appeal the case, but he did more than just complain about the money. [Tweet from Lisa Rubin at the link: During a long speech at his rally, attended by @nbcnews, he referenced the $91.63 million bond he posted yesterday to stay enforcement of the $83.3 million judgment Carroll obtained—and said it was “based on false accusations made about me by a woman that I knew nothing about, didn’t know, never head of, I know nothing about her.”]
[Trump said even more than that. So, yeah, he defamed Carroll again.]
————————————- Why a lot of single-use plastic recycling is just a scam
If you’ve been around YouTube very long, you may have encountered Joe Scott, whose “Answers with Joe” video series has been providing effective and entertaining deep dives on issues for years, earning 1.8 million subscribers in the process.
In the video posted on March 4, Scott goes into a February report from ClimateIntegrity.org to explain why much of the plastic that we encounter day to day isn’t recycled, or even recyclable, no matter what symbol appears on the bottle. [video at the link]
Mark also reported on a new drug cocktail that may change the outcome for cystic fibrosis patients.
[…] as The Atlantic reported this past week, a new drug cocktail has changed the outcome for many cystic fibrosis patients, allowing them to live not just weeks and months but decades. It’s not a cure, but it’s an amazing change for those facing this disease.
President Biden on Monday rolled out his sweeping, $7.3 trillion budget request for 2025, with a set of ambitious partisan proposals aimed at raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.
The president calls for trimming the nation’s deficits by $3 trillion in the next ten years, while doubling down on pitches to increase the corporate tax rate, enact a minimum tax on billionaires, quadrupling the stock buybacks tax, and others.
The proposal […] is a key tool for the president as he hits the campaign trail and can serve as a guide for Democrats as Congress begins to look at funding for fiscal year 2025, which begins in the fall.
The budget leans into measures the White House says are aimed at cracking down on “wealthy tax cheats,” targeting parts of former President Trump’s signature 2017 tax plan that Democrats have panned as tax cuts for the wealthy. The budget request also supports extending tax cuts for Americans making $400,000, but with additional reforms.
[…] The White House has also been stalwart about protecting Social Security and Medicare, while Trump on Monday argued “there is a lot you can do” when it comes to entitlement programs.
Biden responded with a post on X, writing “Not on my watch.”
[…] While lawmakers are still working to tie up funding for fiscal year 2024 this month, the president’s request provides a glimpse into where Democrats could be pressing for bigger increases when Congress begins its work for fiscal year 2025 funding in the coming weeks.
Some of the biggest increases proposed in the budget plan include jumps in funding for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) when compared to fiscal 2023 levels, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Energy. It also highlights proposed increases to offices like the Small Business Administration and the Transportation Department compared to fiscal 2021 levels.
White House officials on Monday sought to paint Biden’s proposal in stark contrast to congressional Republicans’ efforts, just days after the GOP-led House Budget Committee advanced its own budget proposal.
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young told reporters that Republicans’ “rosy economic projections” don’t “fit reality.”
[…] “Republicans hide behind high-level talking points about balancing. Well, who are you hurting in the meantime?” Young said on Monday.
Jeansays
KG @276
I may well not know the origin of antisemitism but my point was that I wanted to preempt any reply from those who conflate criticism of Israel and antisemitism.
Having said that, saying that antisemitism is not about Judaism but about how people treat Jews is somewhat paradoxical because you can’t have Jews without Judaism (at least at some point in the past). Hating people for who they are or identify as, or even look like the may be, is rarely due to the belief and action of the hated individual.
So my comment may have been badly stated. But saying something like: “my judgement about Israel has nothing to do with the jewishness of the individuals making the political and military decisions” does not seem much better either.
WASHINGTON (CN) — Peter Navarro, a former senior adviser to Donald Trump, has been ordered to report to prison March 19, which would make him the first member of the former president’s inner circle to spend time in prison for actions related efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison in January on contempt of Congress charges stemming from his refusal to provide documents or testify before the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
He has since appealed his conviction to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, contending that he was protected by executive privilege…. which U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta barred Navarro from using as a defense at trial.
Mehta, a Barack Obama appointee, had ruled that Navarro failed to provide any evidence that Trump had actually invoked that privilege for Navarro. Nonetheless, he would have had to appear before the congressional committee to claim the privilege on a question-by-question basis.
After sentencing, Mehta rejected Navarro’s request for an administrative stay to delay his sentence.
[…]
Donald Trump’s attorneys want the judge overseeing his criminal case in New York to take the trial off the calendar until the US Supreme Court decides whether the former president can claim “immunity” from prosecution in a separate case.
Jury selection for a criminal trial on charges connected to hush money payments to an adult film star ahead of the 2016 presidential election is scheduled for 25 March. It is the first criminal proceeding against the former president – and the first ever against any former president – among the four criminal cases he faces in four jurisdictions…
In a filing on Monday, Mr Trump’s attorneys argued that statements that Mr Trump made on Twitter and to news networks about his former attorney Michael Cohen in 2018 “implicate the concept of official acts for purposes of presidential immunity,” but the filing does not address the alleged repayment scheme that is central to the case – which took place months before Mr Trump entered the White House…
Ukraine conducted drone strikes on an aircraft plant in the southern Russian city of Taganrog overnight on Friday, reports say.
The Beriev Aircraft Plant is reported to be refurbishing and modernizing A-50s, Russia’s crucial spy planes, after Ukraine shot down two of the valuable but scarce aircraft, the think tank the Institute for the Study of War said…
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a bill banning the consideration of legacy to public universities, making the commonwealth the second state to end admission advantages through family connections.
These ties to alumni and donors cannot be taken into consideration for application under the terms of House Bill 48, which the Republican Youngkin signed on Friday.
So this means that family connections will no longer be of any help to applicants to such prestigious institutions such as the University of Virginia and William & Mary…
Several French government agencies were hit by “intense” cyberattacks beginning Sunday night.
The attacks’ impact on most services has been reduced and access to agencies’ websites restored, the prime minister’s office said in a statement Monday…
A couple of months ago, while on the campaign trail in Iowa, Donald Trump had plenty to say about President Joe Biden, though there was one line of attack that stood out: Trump thought it’d be appropriate to take aim at the Biden’s childhood speaking impediment.
Just hours after Biden’s remarks on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, the former president told supporters, “Did you see him? He was stuttering through the whole thing. He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy. ‘He’s a threat to d-d-democracy.’”
The rhetoric wasn’t just cheap, it was also false: At no point in Biden’s Jan. 6 remarks did he struggle with the word “democracy.”
But Trump’s line generated some laughter from his supporters, which no doubt contributed to the former president returning to the attack over the weekend. The Washington Post reported:
Former president Donald Trump mocked President Biden’s stutter at a campaign rally in Rome, Ga., on Saturday, the latest in a series of insults he has hurled at his rival but one that disability advocates regard as a demeaning form of bullying. Trump asked the crowd sarcastically if Biden would “bring the country t-t-t-together” while talking about Biden’s State of the Union address.
As a video clip of the comments showed, this, too, sparked some chuckles from the Georgia crowd. [video at the link]
For the record, Biden did not actually struggle with the word “together” during his national address, though that’s hardly the most important detail.
[…] “Trump is a crass man of poor character” has been a familiar headline for many years, and few seriously dispute the fact that the former president lacks anything resembling honor or dignity. For that matter, Trump’s embrace of offensive nonsense, which he seems to enjoy peddling to his unsuspecting followers, also isn’t exactly new.
But this specific line of attack from Trump stood out for me for a couple of reasons.
The first is the fact the Republican’s fractured relationship with human decency is especially evident when it comes to those with disabilities.
[Yes. And Trump is encouraging his cult followers to denigrate disabled people.]
In 2015, for example, the late conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, who used a wheelchair, offered some mild criticism of Trump. The then-candidate responded by labeling Krauthammer “a guy that can’t buy a pair of pants.”
A year later, Trump mocked New York Times reporter Serge F. Kovaleski’s disability.
While in office, according to his own White House chief of staff, Trump didn’t want to be seen with disabled military veterans.
After leaving office, Trump publicly mocked the injuries the late Sen. John McCain sustained while he was a prisoner of war. Now he’s taking aim at Biden’s stutter.
[…] But let’s not overlook an underappreciated angle to this: Trump’s audience.
Writing in The Atlantic, John Hendrickson, who has described himself as a lifelong stutterer, noted, “More than Trump’s ugly taunt, one thing stands out to me about these moments: the sound of Trump’s supporters laughing right along with him. This is a building block of Trumpism. The man at the top gives his followers permission to be the worst version of themselves.”
If the GOP candidate’s followers gasped in repulsion when Trump went after those with disabilities, he’d stop — not because it’s morally repulsive, but because he often uses his audience as a political barometer of sorts, letting him know what he can and can’t get away with.
But like a schoolyard bully who gets worse after being egged on by his friends, the former president taunts those with disabilities because he likes the cheap laughs he receives.
It’s a vicious circle: Trump uses repulsive rhetoric, which his crowds like, which causes him to use more repulsive rhetoric. It’s precisely why we probably haven’t heard the last of his comments about Biden and stuttering.
[…] “He will not give a penny in the Ukraine-Russia war,” said Orbán. “That is why the war will end.” In other words, Orbán and Trump are promising to starve Ukraine of any ability to defend itself, ensuring that a democratic nation of nearly 37 million (as of 2023) people falls to an authoritarian dictatorship.
“It is obvious that Ukraine cannot stand on its own feet,” Orbán said on Hungary’s M1 TV. “If the Americans don’t give money and weapons, along with the Europeans, then the war is over. And if the Americans don’t give money, the Europeans alone are unable to finance this war. And then the war is over.” For Orbán, Putin, and Trump, this is a good thing.
[…] As The Washington Post reported, Trump bragged that Orbán is a “non-controversial” leader. Not because he has the respect and support of all parts of the Hungarian population, but because he has aggressively shattered Hungary’s democratic system and replaced it with one where he’s the unchallenged ruler.
“He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it,” said Trump.
As Vox reported in 2018, Orbán achieved that status in a way that should be controversial everywhere.
Over the course of his eight years in power, Prime Minister Orbán has chipped away at the foundations of Hungarian democracy. It has been replaced with an authoritarian regime that wields a cynical interpretation of the law as a weapon; the country is governed by rules … that can seem reasonable on their face but actually serve to undermine essential democratic freedoms.
[…] Trump’s Hitler praise and willingness to hand over a democratic nation to his authoritarian pal isn’t the first step along a path. America is already far down this road.
Trump wants absolute power. His friends have a plan to use that absolute power. They have a model to follow. And if the Ukrainian people are forced into a diaspora while Putin makes a tour of Kyiv, Orbán and Trump will be happy to ride along in the parade.
[…] By this time next week, Trump will have enough delegates to be declared the presumptive Republican nominee—and at no point in the race did anyone appear who had a credible chance of taking it from him.
[…] When Republican voters in 14 of 15 states on Tuesday went to vote for who they believed best represented their party and should run the whole of government, they chose the man who launched the most consequential insurrection against the government since the Civil War.
Because that is who they are, and we all ought to be very damn tired of anyone who claims otherwise.
[…] There is no question that Trump fomented the violence. There is no question that he assembled a mob for the explicit purpose of thwarting Congress’ counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, turning the mob—which Trump knew was armed—on the Capitol at precisely the day, hour, and minute needed to accomplish that goal.
There is no “No, but” when it comes to supporting the architects of an attempted coup. There is no “Well, I don’t approve of his attempt to nullify an American election rather than admit his own defeat but I sure like him on policy grounds,” because there is no policy more substantive than promising to keep the government intact even if it personally makes you sad. There is no backsies on a violent coup. There’s no coupon you can present to try a little coup, just a wee one mounted by a bunch of addled conspiracy cranks and egged on by a disinformation campaign orchestrated by your own phalanx of crooked coup-backing advisers.
No, if you vote for Trump, you are voting for the man who attempted to topple the United States government. And that is who every Trump voter is […]
Some will pretend not to believe you. Some will throw every conspiracy theory they’ve ever heard at you, claiming the coup attempt was staged by government agents or globalists or dirty hippies and that Trump was completely innocent, as he sat on his ass in the White House, watching his mob beat police officers and break windows, and did not a damn thing to stop it.
But mostly, you will get the more honest response: “I don’t care.” Or the even more honest response: “And he was right to try.” The two versions are functionally identical—anyone who says one also means the other. There is a very large percentage of Republicans who believe that America should be run by a fascist dictator if the choice is between that or religious and social inclusiveness, and that notion is finding purchase throughout the institutions of conservatism.
[…] They like Trump. They want Trump, and when presented with candidates who are not facing 91 criminal charges, not found to have committed sexual assault, not proven to be a lifelong tax and bank cheat, and not the ratbastard personification of malice, they will not bite.
[…] Our democracy is in very big trouble, here in 2024. And there is not a single incentive for any Republican in power to steer us away from danger.
Media Matters’s Eric Hananoki recently uncovered social media posts from the Republican nominee to be state superintendent of public instruction in North Carolina, Michele Morrow, which appear to show she’s deep-in for QAnon. […]
The incumbent Morrow beat, Catherine Truitt, was already conservative and also backed by Moms For Liberty, but found herself out-wackadooed […]
Ha, God Awful Movies once again has Cara Santa Maria as guest masochist reviewing a horrible film. She must have a patience made of iron. 🙂
.
Study: “No, an anti-racist program in schools doesn’t stress out kids” https://phys.org/news/2024-03-anti-racist-schools-doesnt-stress.html
Automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia, and Hyundai, have been collecting detailed driving data from millions of Americans through internet-enabled connected-car apps. The data, which includes information on speed, hard braking, and rapid accelerations, is shared with data brokers like LexisNexis. These brokers then provide the information to insurance companies, which use it to personalize coverage and set rates, The New York Times reported Monday. While automakers and data brokers claim to have drivers’ consent, the partnerships are often obscured in fine print and unclear privacy policies. The practice raises concerns about privacy and transparency, as some drivers may be unaware that their driving habits are being tracked and shared with third parties…
Archeologists in Turkey say they have discovered the world’s oldest known bread, dating back to 6600 BC.
A largely destroyed oven structure was found in an area called “Mekan 66,” where there are adjoining mudbrick houses, at the archeological site of Çatalhöyük in the southern Turkish province of Konya, according to Turkey’s Necmettin Erbakan University Science and Technology Research and Application Center (BİTAM).
Around the oven, archeologists found wheat, barley, pea seeds and a palm-sized, round, “spongy” residue, it said in a press release Wednesday.
Analyses determined that the organic residue was 8,600-year-old, uncooked, fermented bread…
Coming Friday to a U.S. Supreme Court near you: “Explosive” new evidence in Kari Lake’s bid to outlaw Arizona’s vote counting machines.
No, really.
“This is big, everybody,” MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell announced Saturday, on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “This is what we’ve been waiting for.”More likely, this is what he’s hoping will sell a few pillows to pay for all those defamation cases he’s facing from Dominion Voting Systems et al – three at last count — but I digress…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he intends to press ahead with an invasion of the city of Rafah on the southern border of the Gaza Strip in defiance of United States President Joe Biden, who has warned such an offensive would be a ‘red line.’ Amid signs of increasing frustration with Netanyahu, the U.S. president told MSNBC on Saturday that he opposed an escalation of the conflict into Rafah, and that he could not accept ‘30,000 more Palestinians dead.’”
New York Times, with excerpt summarized by Steve Benen:
Elon Musk runs a charity with billions of dollars, but his philanthropy “has been haphazard and largely self-serving — making him eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses.”
I find it very hard to make sense of what the likely outcomes are. But I wanted to point your attention to a series of developments in the Biden-Netanyahu relationship and the U.S.-Israel relationship that could escalate dramatically very soon. First there’s this article in Haartez which says the U.S. might suspend the sale of offensive weaponry to Israel by later this month. (Unfortunately the piece is paywalled.) The tripwire is a national security memorandum Biden signed last month which gives Israel until March 25th to provide the U.S. with written assurances that weapons sales from the U.S. will only be used in accord with international law and that it will pledge to facilitate and not obstruct aid deliveries into Gaza.
That’s the calendar tripwire.
I have a hard time making sense of how real that threat is. But the Haaretz article, reported from Washington, suggests it’s very real. Over the weekend, in a conversation with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, Biden said that an invasion of Rafah was a “red line” for him. So the President has now made a threat he can’t easily back down from, though just what he’s threatening isn’t entirely clear.
Biden had alrady upped the ante in his SOTU speech, in his hot mic comments after the speech and then further in his interview with Capehart. The key line that got Netanyahu’s attention was Biden saying that Netanyahu is now hurting rather than protecting Israel. This is part of a broader White House messaging tactic, trying to distinguish between its support for Israel, which it says is ironclad, versus Netanyahu, which is fading. […]
Poll after poll has made clear that Netanyahu’s political standing has never recovered from the shattering impact of October 7th. He hasn’t necessarily gotten less popular recently. But the reluctance to hold major public protests against him has disappeared. He’s able to remain in power by a brittle but still holding consensus that the country can’t go to elections in wartime. Biden’s message is that Netanyahu’s continuance in office is hurting Israel’s security.
This morning Netanyahu went on the attack, in an interview with Fox News, saying that Israel is united behind him, […] Netanyahu also repeatedly made the claim that disagreements between the U.S. and Israel only help Hamas.
As you can see there’s lots of positioning on both sides. […]
Netanyahu has pushed Biden to the breaking point over the last few months. It’s not only the war itself, or perhaps not even primarily that. He has absolutely rejected all of the U.S.’s post-war planning proposals and been at best passive and indifferent to the humanitarian situation in Gaza. All together these have put Biden in a tough position domestically and internationally. Netanyahu has taken everything Biden has given, which is a ton, and stiffed him on almost everything. So over and above the policy imperatives, Biden has a lot of interest in some level of breach with Netanyahu. […]
Netanyahu said over the weekend that he’s going to break through Biden’s red line in Rafah. But an actual look at the situation on the ground suggests that’s not happening.
[…] It’s not that Israelis are necessarily devoted to Biden, or that they support Biden’s views on Gaza or two states. But the damage and loss of trust in Netanyahu is just too great. […] Picking a fight with Biden in which he casts himself as the only leader willing to stand up to his meddling is kind of the only card he has left to play.
[…] it’s true that the continuation of the Israel-Hamas war is highly divisive for the Democratic coalition […] What’s often left out of that debate is that the political risks on the other side of the equation are at least as great and probably substantially greater. These are the challenges of leading a coalition party. It’s often presented as though the political calculus with Gaza is obvious and easy. It’s not. […]
Behind all of this politicking is what is certainly one of the White House’s key goals: driving Netanyahu from power. The question is whether that is a goal in itself or simply a welcome byproduct of a broader shift in policy. It’s probably best seen as a distinction without a difference. He’s a problem on every front and while they would still have major disagreements with any plausible Israeli government, key parts of the current fracture are tied specifically to Netanyahu and his far right political coalition. […]
As I said, not really clear to me where this is going. A full suspension of offensive weaponry would be a massive move, with all sorts of implications. It’s a bit hard for me to imagine Biden is quite ready to do that. But all sorts of things seem to really be on the table.
Donald Trump’s newly installed leadership team at the Republican National Committee on Monday began the process of pushing out dozens of officials, according to two people close to the Trump campaign and the RNC.
All told, the expectation is that more than 60 RNC staffers who work across the political, communications and data departments will be let go. Those being asked to resign include five members of the senior staff, though the names were not made public. Additionally, some vendor contracts are expected to be cut.
In a letter to some political and data staff, Sean Cairncross, the RNC’s new chief operating officer, said that the new committee leadership was “in the process of evaluating the organization and staff to ensure the building is aligned” with its vision. “During this process, certain staff are being asked to resign and reapply for a position on the team.”
The overhaul is aimed at cutting, what one of the people described as, “bureaucracy” at the RNC. But the move also underscores the swiftness with which Trump’s operation is moving to take over the Republican Party’s operations after the former president all but clinched the party’s presidential nomination last week.
Commentary:
[…] The Trump campaign is “looking to MERGE its operations with the RNC. Key departments, such as communications, data and fundraising, will effectively be one and the same.”
Posted by readers of the article:
Make them resign and then not re-hire them. Don’t think you can collect unemployment if you resign.
—————————–
Actually, at this point in our nation’s history, this mass firing is good for democracy — the current republican party is anti-democratic. If it’s at all effective, it might destroy our democracy. So it needs to melt like the Wicked Witch. Hopefully then responsible conservatives — people with whom we disagree but who are reasonably honest and reasonably principled and reasonably sane, might create a new party.
————————–
If the ‘old’ hires become the ‘new’ hires they will have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
—————————-
This is almost a preview of what Agenda ‘25 has in store for the federal workforce.
—————————-
With the same business acumen the tRumps brought to casinos, NY Real Estate, airlines, bottled water, steaks, higher education, and so much more, I’m sure the RNC has a bright future.
——————————-
A friend of mine said that she thinks Trump will own the RNC until he dies. Her argument is that, after losing in 2024, he’ll turn right around and declare himself a candidate for 2028. Because Trump owns all of the state Republican party chairs and leadership (three from each state that vote for RNC leadership), he’s essentially insulated himself from any coup against his people in the RNC. Essentially, any state non-Trumper people that want to move on from Trump will never get near the leadership positions required to accomplish that. Which lets Trump do what he wants with the RNC and its money.
I think she’s totally on to what’s happening here. Trump’s literally taking over the RNC to pay his bills and do whatever the hell else he wants to. And even if/when the big fat cat donors go running for the exits after a Trump loss (and losing the House and the Senate again), Trump will still have control of the party apparatus to turn it into a small donor grifting operation.
If you don’t look at what’s happening to the RNC as a political operation and instead a hostile grifting takeover, it actually makes a lot of sense.
YouTube link to Rachel Maddow discussing the rightwing culture war against Bud Light which Trump promoted … and yet, Trump decided he loves Bud Light now. Why? Money.
Trump promoted rightwing boycotts of Bud Light right up until the point that he did a 180. Lobbyists for the parent company announced a $10,000 a plate fundraiser for Trump. On the same day, Trump posted that “Anheuser -Busch is a Great American Brand …” and so forth, blah, blah.
Maddow examined the same kind of relationship between Trump and TikTok. He hates it. He tries to ban it by executive order when he is president. Now he loves it. TikTok is giving Trump money.
Details in the video.
birgerjohanssonsays
JWST And Hubble Agree on The Universe’s Expansion, And It’s a Major Problem : ScienceAlert
I’m not sure why you’re so defensive. Your point that criticism of Israel’s government (I’d add, or even of its existence) is not per se antisemitic is completely valid. But it was seriously undermined by the way you expressed it. Understanding the nature of modern presudoscientific antisemitism, acccording to which Jewishness is an intrinsic racial characteristic not a matter of religious belief or observance, is vital to combatting it, while not allowing Zionists to weaponise it in defence of apartheid Israel.
StevoRsays
“NASA’s press release utilizes a practice of selective historical reading,” the open letter reads, pointing to the agency’s insistence that the original Webb was unaware of the firing of Clifford Norton, a NASA budget analyst who was canned in 1963 after being arrested for making a “homosexual advance” on someone. At the time, Webb was head of NASA.
The argument — which makes sense, if you think about it — is basically that Webb was either aware of the institutionalized homophobia in a way that didn’t survive in existing documentation, or unaware of a key dynamic at the workplace he was in charge of. Neither option is flattering.
“Because we do not know of a piece of paper that explicitly says, ‘James Webb knew about this,’ they assume it means he did not,” the experts wrote. “In such a scenario, we have to assume he was relatively incompetent as a leader: the administrator of NASA should know if his chief of security is extrajudicially interrogating people.”
“We are deeply concerned by the implication that managers are not responsible for homophobia or other forms of discrimination that happens on their watch,” they continued, noting that such a stance is “explicitly anti-equity, diversity and inclusion” that puts “responsibility on the most marginalized people to fend for ourselves, and it is in conflict with legal norms in many US jurisdictions.” …
Your point that criticism of Israel’s government (I’d add, or even of its existence) is not per se antisemitic is completely valid. – Me@323
I should clarify that: it is not in itself antisemitic to say that Israel should not exist as a Jewish ethnostate, but should be replaced, along with the occupied territories (West Bank and Gaza) by a single, secular state where Jews, Palestinians and others all have equal rights (i.e. to advocate a “one-state solution”, as opposed to the “two-state solution” rhetorically advocated by leaders currently enabling Israeli war crimes, among others). It is antisemitic to hold all Jews responsible for the acts of the Israeli state, or to advocate driving Jews out of the Israel-Palestine area, for example.
birgerjohanssonsays
East Asian skull implying near relationship wirh anatomically modern humans.
..I assume the Dali skull lacks teeth and is too old at nearly 300kyear to extract useful DNA from ordinary bones?
Months in jail and thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees—those are the consequences Alabamians and Arizonans could soon face for selling cell-cultured meat products that could cut into the profits of ranchers, farmers, and meatpackers in each state.
State legislators from Florida to Arizona are seeking to ban meat grown from animal cells in labs, citing a “war on our ranching” and a need to protect the agriculture industry from efforts to reduce the consumption of animal protein, thereby reducing the high volume of climate-warming methane emissions the sector emits…
Internet personality Andrew Tate has been detained in Romania and handed an arrest warrant issued by British authorities, his spokesperson said. Mr Tate, 37, and his brother Tristan Tate were detained on Monday evening on allegations of sexual aggression in a UK case dating back to 2012-2015, spokesperson Mateea Petrescu said. She said the Bucharest Court of Appeal is set to make a “pivotal decision” Tuesday on whether to execute the warrants issued by UK’s Westminster Magistrates Court.
Four women had reported Mr Tate to the UK authorities for alleged sexual violence and physical abuse, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute him. The alleged victims then turned to crowdfunding to cover their legal costs as they pursue a civil case against him. “We handed over our evidence about the horrific acts of violence we endured and waited for action. But four years later we were told the UK authorities would not prosecute him,” they state on their campaign page. “It’s our one remaining route to hold him accountable.”
Recent observations of Betelgeuse, a star located in the constellation Orion, have created a mystery about the red supergiant. They suggest it is spinning much faster than a star its size should be able to.
Now, a team from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, led by Ph.D. student Jing-Ze Ma, may have an explanation for why Betelgeuse appears to be spinning so utterly fast. Perhaps, the researchers say, it’s actually an illusion created by the star’s violently boiling surface.
Ma and colleagues think the star’s bubbling surface could be mistaken for rotation — even by the most advanced telescopes. This mistake could lead to observers believing Betelgeuse, which is located between 500 to 600 light-years from Earth, appears to be rotating faster than should be possible for a star of such enormity.
Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom operation reportedly intends to spend $62 million this year to register and turn out evangelical Christian voters.
From the article:
A prominent evangelical advocacy organization plans to significantly ramp up political spending in the 2024 election with one goal in mind: returning Donald Trump to the White House
Faith & Freedom, a conservative-leaning organization, intends to spend $62 million registering and turning out evangelical voters, texting and calling supporters, and door-knocking — $10 million more than it spent four years ago. The group is expected to, among other things, hand out 30 million pieces of literature in 125,000 churches — many of them in battleground states.
“In terms of home visits and voters reached at the door, to my knowledge it’s the largest effort on the right outside of the Republican National Committee ever,” Ralph Reed, a longtime Republican strategist and Trump ally who oversees the organization, said of the direct voter contact enterprise.
The investment underscores the degree to which the white evangelical community has allied itself with Trump […]
The organization has begun registering voters in Wisconsin and Georgia and plans to further ramp up its voter contact effort in mid-July. The group plans to deploy 10,000 staff members and volunteers, in addition to church liaisons who will help register evangelicals to vote. It will also distribute literature that will compare and contrast Trump and Biden on issues that are central to the religious community, such as abortion, Israel and education policy.
Reed said the effort is particularly focused on turning out the 1 million newly-registered evangelical voters, and also the 7.8 million evangelicals Faith & Freedom have identified as low-propensity voters.
Reed said the bulk of the spending would be done through Faith & Freedom, which identifies as a 501(c)(4) outfit, and some of it would be done by Americans of Faith, a 501(c)(3) group. Groups classified as 501(c)(3) are barred from advocating for or against any candidate, but can engage in certain get-out-the vote or voter education activities. 501(c)(4) groups do not face many restrictions on political speech, but must still refrain from directly advocating for or against a candidate. […]
Trump is the first ever candidate to effectively tell the electorate, “Vote for me and I’ll deliberately release violent criminals back onto the streets.”
At a campaign event in New Hampshire, shortly before the state’s Republican presidential primary, Donald Trump heard from a supporter who urged him to “free” Jan. 6 criminals. “We will,” the former president replied.
As for when, exactly, the presumptive GOP nominee intends to take such a step, the answer is coming into sharper focus. NBC News reported overnight:
[…] Trump said Monday that one of his first acts as president if he wins in November would be to “free” those charged and convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. “My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
So, a few things.
First, while it’s true that Trump has been talking about pardoning suspected and convicted Jan. 6 criminals for quite a while, this latest online missive broke new ground: The Republican intends to issue these pardons among his “first acts,” suggesting it’s one of his top priorities.
Second, Trump will apparently be quite busy early on a prospective second term. Don’t forget, he’s repeatedly said he wants to create a “dictatorship” on “Day One” of his return to the White House.
Third, it continues to be deeply weird to see Trump push the “drill, baby, drill” nonsense given that under the Biden administration, domestic energy production is at an all-time high.
Fourth, Trump might very well be the first presidential candidate in the history of American politics to be running on a platform that effectively says, “Vote for me and I’ll deliberately release violent criminals back onto the streets.”
[…] There is arguably no greater example of the Republican’s hostility toward the rule of law.
As 2023 got underway, and the new Republican majority in the House got to work, among the earliest priorities for the party was a new, GOP-friendly investigation into the Jan. 6 attack. The endeavor would be led by Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, in his capacity as the chair of the House Administration’s subcommittee on oversight, who faced some awkward questions about a controversial Capitol tour the day before the riot.
After launching his own Jan. 6 probe, among the Georgia Republican’s first steps was exonerating himself.
In the months that followed, Loudermilk said he intended to determine “what really happened” on Jan. 6, indifferent to the fact that we already know what really happened.
It was against this backdrop that the GOP-led panel released some findings this week. Axios reported:
A Republican-led House committee on Monday released a report attempting to undermine the work of the Jan. 6 select committee. The report pushes back against the select committee’s focus on former President Trump, as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee reasserts his grip over the Republican Party. … It’s the culmination of more than a year’s worth of investigation by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who was targeted by the panel directly for information related to the insurrection.
For his part, Donald Trump was delighted with the developments. Others were far less impressed.
Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who served as the bipartisan committee’s co-chair, said via social media, “If your response to Trump’s assault on our democracy is to lie & cover up what he did, attack the brave men & women who came forward with the truth, and defend the criminals who violently assaulted the Capitol, you need to rethink whose side you’re on. Hint: It’s not America’s.”
Similarly, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chaired the select committee, slammed the GOP’s latest effort as “dishonest,” while a senior Democratic congressional aide told Axios the Loudermilk-authored report was “yet another attempt to rewrite the history of January 6th and whitewash the events of that horrible, bloody, and violent day.”
In terms of the details, the Republicans on the House Administration’s oversight panel released a one-page summary of their initial findings, as well as an accompanying 81-page report with more details. There are really only a half-dozen core claims, so let’s take them one at a time.
1. “The Select Committee Was Designed To Promote A Political Narrative”
According to the GOP-led panel, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “refused to appoint minority members chosen by the minority” to the select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. We know for certain that this claim isn’t quite right: While it’s true that Pelosi rejected some of the members chosen by Republican leaders, she was willing to accept other Republicans chosen by their party’s leaders for the panel.
2. “Cheney Was Vice Chair, A Position Reserved For A Democrat.
According to the GOP findings, Cheney “was not the minority ranking member but served as Vice Chair of the Select Committee — a position under House Rules for a member of the same party as the Chair.” That’s true, though I’m at loss as to understand why this is intended as criticism: Democrats gave a Republican congresswoman even more authority and influence than originally planned? Shouldn’t the GOP see this as a good thing?
3. “The Select Committee Deleted Records And Hid Evidence.”
This is a claim the former president has touted with great enthusiasm, but it still isn’t true.
4. “The Select Committee Promoted ‘Star Witness’ Hutchinson’s Testimony.”
According to the GOP-led panel, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson sat down with investigators and “substantially revised her story” and “significantly changed” her testimony over time. That’s true, but we already knew that: Hutchinson was more forthcoming with investigators after she changed lawyers and was no longer represented by counsel who was being paid by Team Trump.
5. “Hutchinson’s Sensational Story About Trump Lunging At Steering Wheel In SUV After Speech At The Ellipse Was Directly Refuted By Driver Of The SUV.”
This element appears to have generated a lot of coverage overnight, but it’s not exactly groundbreaking. Nearly two years ago, Hutchinson relayed a dramatic story that she’d heard about Trump’s conduct in an SUV on Jan. 6, while Republicans apparently heard a different version of events from a Secret Service agent. If this is the best GOP members can come up with to concoct a Jan. 6 counternarrative and undermine the select committee, it’s not much.
6. “The Select Committee Colluded With Fani Willis.”
According to the House Republicans, the Fulton County district attorney “wrote to the Select Committee seeking assistance with her prosecution of President Trump.” I haven’t the foggiest idea why this should be seen as controversial. Congressional investigators cooperate with law enforcement all the time. It’s been normal for many, many years. Who cares?
After a year of investigating, Loudermilk and his GOP colleagues have clearly failed to deliver the goods. Those looking for a compelling rewrite of the reality-based version of Jan. 6 will have to look elsewhere.
The House Judiciary Committee, led by Republican Jim Jordan, is holding its latest hearing Tuesday to investigate President Joe Biden for … something. Anything.
This hearing features former special counsel Robert Hurt, selected by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate classified documents found at Biden’s home. In his report, Hur concluded that Biden had cooperated with officials and wasn’t subject to changes.
However, Hur also infamously included lines such as one saying that Biden presents as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Many of Hur’s statements fed into the Biden-so-old narrative that the Republican Party—and the national media—seem determined to make the “but her emails of 2024.”
Hur reportedly left the Department of Justice recently and will be testifying as a private citizen. How this will affect his testimony is unclear.
Excerpts from the live coverage:
Chairman Jim Jordan jumps right in with the “old” bit from Robert Hur’s report. […]
Ranking member Rep. Jerry Nadler, New York, follows with his opening statement, pointing immediately to the part of the report that was particularly damning for Donald Trump–the comparison between how Biden and Trumped handled classified information. He’s reading the extensive section from the report talking about how Trump kept records in his bathroom. […] Biden had the mental acuity to navigate this situation. Donald Trump did not.”
Ooooh, Nadler brings his own video. A montage of Trump saying he doesn’t remember people from his administration, how long he was married to Marla Maples, thinking he beat Obama and the total nonsense he spouts at his rallies. Man, that was a brutal Trump video.
[…] Now Robert Hur is up for his opening statement. Starts with his resume, speaking about how is family immigrated from Korea and his love for the country. Says he has done his job with complete impartiality.
[…] Rep. Kelly Armstrong from North Dakota detailing all the places they found documents and calls Biden the “defendant” and also keeps talking about the “crime.” Biden is not a defendant, by the way. Because this guy that they’re interviewing, the DOJ special counsel, said “We did not, however, identify evidence that rose to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” Armstrong is pushing really hard to try to get Hur to say Biden is a criminal.
Now Nadler is up with his questions. Points out that Hur did not find evidence that rose to the level of prosecution. “You can’t be a ‘little bit’ charged for a crime. You’re charged or you’re not.” Hur admits that yes, there was not enough to charge him. […]
Nadler continues with the Trump comparison. Did Biden lie or direct his staff to lie? No. Did he attempt to hide documents or get his staff to do it? No.
“Donald Trump is charged” with his mishandling of documents, and “President Biden is not being charged” because Hur could not prove he committed a crime.
[From Aaron Rupar: “President Biden testified to Hur that he doesn’t even own individual stocks and gave $1 million in book proceeds to charity.”]
[…] Jordan reads that Biden had “strong motivation” to hold onto the documents because he was writing a book. “How much did Biden earn for writing that book? …. $8 million.” So now Biden isn’t old, he’s greedy.
[…] Raskin hitting again the contrast between Trump and Biden, and making Hur reiterate his findings distinguishing the two. […] Raskin’s statement is excellent and too fast to transcribe. [See https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1767570408314655058 for the video]
[…] Comer apparently tried to make the case that Biden directed some kind of cover-up or something. Hur wouldn’t go along with him.
[…] Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, reiterates that the interviews occurred in the hours after the crisis in Israel and Biden cooperated and gave hours to the interview. She’s detailing the process and procedure of the investigation, establishing the thoroughness of the investigation and Hur’s conclusions.
[…] Oh joy, now it’s Rep. Matt Gaetz, competing with Jordan in the yelling. He’s trying to get Hur to say Biden lied to him. Gaetz keeps repeating the phrase “senile cooperator theory,” and “the elevators not going to the top floor” and whether Biden is being “crafty.”
So Gaetz is now saying that “old Biden” is just an act to cover up his evil-doing. Now he’s trying to say that the Chinese own the Penn Biden Center?
[…] Democrat Steve Cohen, Tennessee, now up, commending Hur and the DOJ for doing its job. He’s getting Hur on the record to say that Attorney General Merrick Garland was fair and impartial in allowing Hur to conduct the investigation. Hur agrees.
[…] Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson, Georgia, laying out Hur’s conservative, Federalist Society credibility, as a Trump US Attorney. Pointing out that Garland appointed him as special counsel on this matter, and that Garland did not direct him in his investigation. He’s doing a good job of establishing the credibility of Garland and of Hur, establishing again—with Hur—there is no “two tiers of justice” as Republicans insist.
[…] Van Drew is calling Biden “cognitively impaired” but crafty in establishing his legacy. They’re not doing a very good job making their case.
Now we’ve got Rep. Adam Schiff of California, blasting Hur for including the bits about Biden’s memory. “You could have written the report just focusing on the documents, but you included the words about Biden’s memory … creating a political firestorm.” Schiff has a big poster of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bathroom full of boxes behind him.
He’s hitting Hur hard on the gratuitous inclusion of the memory stuff, which Schiff says is “prejudicial and subjective,” and deliberately included in the report for Republicans to use. […]
[Freedom Caucus maniac Andy Biggs of Arizona] is going with the “evil mastermind” narrative for Biden. They really are not on the same page here.
[…] Swalwell pulls out a bit from the transcript, where Hur tells Biden he seems to have a “photographic” recall of the house—not sure of the context—and points out that was not included in the report, then includes another video compilation of Trump mangling the English language.
[…] Jayapal is the first woman to question Hur, and is the only lawmaker he has talked over, interrupted, and man-splained to.
[…] Jayapal making him repeat the words from his report that there was not sufficient evidence to convict.
[…] Democrat Ted Lieu, Calif., is now up and focusing again on the contrast with Trump’s behavior—lying to investigators, trying to hide documents, etc.
Really, what did Republicans think in calling this hearing? Did they really think no one would notice that part of the report, the part that damns Trump?
[…] GOP Rep. Tom Tiffany, Wisc. going back to Jordan’s questions about how the White House tried to get the parts about Biden being old edited out of the document (which didn’t happen) as another opportunity to talk about how old Biden is.
[…] No subtlety from GOP Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, Wisc.: Is Biden senile? Hur is not going to go there.
[From Tim Miller: ““What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30,” he said, naming the correct day, according to a transcript of the exchange reviewed by The Washington Post. Not a good look for Hur.”]
Yeah, I agree with your points and statements. I should have simply said in my initial post: “And please don’t conflate criticism of Israel and antisemitism” and leave it at that.
On Monday, Donald Trump appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and declared that TikTok shouldn’t be banned in the United States.
“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger,” he said, “and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people.” This is the exact opposite of Trump’s 2020 position that TikTok should be banned in the United States as a Chinese spying operation. His administration was unsuccessful in getting TikTok removed from app stores, and his executive order attempting to ban the app faced legal challenges and was never enforced.
Trump’s dramatic reversal comes only a couple of weeks after meeting with billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass. Yass’ company, Susquehanna International Group, has a 15% stake in ByteDance—the company that owns TikTok. Shocker! When CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin asked Trump about his meeting with Yass and subsequent turnabout on TikTok, Trump claimed Yass “never mentioned TikTok.”
Campaign finance reports have shown a recent and precipitous decline in Trump’s fundraising. The news that Trump’s tap might have run dry comes at a terrible time, as he faces a contentious presidential campaign and owes roughly $542 million in legal debts due to defamation and fraud judgments against him.
Politico reports that Trump spoke glowingly of Yass—who has previously been a critic of Trump—at a Club for Growth retreat in February, calling Yass “fantastic.”
Yass and Club for Growth spent millions to promote failed presidential candidates like Gov. Ron DeSantis and billionaire autocrat-in-training Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump’s positioning for a little pay-to-play action isn’t guaranteed, but he does have a successful history of transactional presidenting.
Trump’s flip-flop on TikTok also comes during a week when Republican leadership in Congress is set to move against the wildly popular app by proposing legislation that would force the company to be sold or face a ban in the U.S. The lack of integrity at the top of the MAGA food chain is leading to some very awkward moments.
StevoRsays
A former Boeing worker who warned of production defects — ignored by the company — has been found dead in the US state of South Carolina. John Barnett had been employed by Boeing for more than three decades, working on the factory floor until he retired in 2017. Mr Barnett filed a whistleblower claim against Boeing alleging the company retaliated against him for repeatedly reporting defects.He had recently been giving evidence against the aircraft manufacturer in a lawsuit in the city of Charleston.Mr Barnett died from what appeared to be a “self-inflicted” injury, according to the Charleston County Coroner’s Office.It has added Charleston City Police Department is the investigating agency and “no further details are available at this time”.
[…] What appears to be different in this reorganization is not just that Trump has moved to make sure the RNC is even more tightly under the control of his loyalists. With this latest election, the party organization is ceasing to exist as a stand-alone entity. Politico reports that Trump’s campaign intends to “merge” its operations with the RNC and that key departments such as communications and fundraising “will effectively be one and the same.”
[…] the Republican Party’s finance and digital media teams are being relocated to Palm Beach, Florida. By no coincidence at all, that’s also the location of Trump’s campaign headquarters.
Lara Trump recently promised to spend “every single penny” of the RNC’s cash on Trump. Having the finances of the RNC merged with the Trump campaign and relocated to a headquarters a few miles from Mar-a-Lago certainly seems to make that easier.
[…] generated some pushback from Republicans who thought that RNC funds should be going to win elections, not repay attorneys defending Trump in his litany of criminal and civil trials.
Much of the funding for Trump’s legal defense has already been sourced from his campaign organization and his leadership PAC. Now it would seem those organizations are going to have improved access to any money that remains in the national party’s coffers.
[…] This is more about dissolving the remaining walls between the party and Trump. It’s about making clear that there is no difference between being a Republican and being a blind follower of Trump. And there’s certainly no difference between donating to the Republican Party, and donating directly to Trump.
Faced with mounting legal troubles and a sputtering special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) deal, former president Donald Trump reportedly turned somewhere unexpected last year to offload his flailing social media platform, Truth Social: X owner and Tesla technoking Elon Musk.
News of the reported offer comes from the Washington Post, which cited two unnamed people with knowledge of the conversation as its sources. The talk reportedly happened during summer 2023, though the Post didn’t specify when precisely the discussion took place…
Last month, Politico published a story focusing on Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director during the Trump administration and current president of the extreme-right Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank pushing Donald Trump to adopt “Christian nationalism” in his potential next administration. The group also encourages Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act immediately upon regaining power in order to deploy U.S. military forces on possible protests and demonstrations against him.
Vought has an advisory role in the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, and Vought is close enough to Trump that he is “frequently cited as a potential chief of staff,” notes Politico. The notion of Trump returning to office with a chief of staff already frothing to put soldiers in the streets to enforce Trump’s authority would be alarming enough, but Vought’s ties to even more extremist voices are what’s getting attention from Politico and other outlets.
To that end, journalist Jennifer Cohn has uncovered some remarkable documents authored by Center for Renewing America visiting fellow William Wolfe, who Vought has specifically called out as someone he was “proud” to work with “on scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism.”
Cohn reports that she and the Bucks County Beacon have discovered a document allegedly edited by Wolfe claiming to be a draft “Statement on Christian Nationalism & the Gospel.” The manifesto, which claims Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers as one of its authors, attempts to define what “Christian Nationalism” means—and envisions how it would work in practice.
So what’s the vision laid out by Vought’s “proud” contributor in “scoping out a sound Christian Nationalism,” and by the document’s other authors and editors? It’s an absolutely batshit plan for full theocratic rule.
The manifesto, titled “The Statement on Christian Nationalism”, begins with a definition of “Christian Nationalism” that strives to implement a Scripture-based system of government whereby Christ-ordained “civil magistrates” exercise authority over the American public. […]
The manifesto then states that, pursuant to Scripture, these “civil magistrates” have “lawful authority to punish civil crimes like assault, murder, rape, theft, fraud, man-stealing, and false witness, and to ensure proper due process through the civil courts, payment of liability for verifiably proven harm, and proportionality of punishment.” (Emphasis added.)
So the short version of what Christian nationalism means, according to the people promoting Christian nationalism as conservatism’s preferred path during a second Trump turn, is the installation of “Church”-ordained civil magistrates who will be given governmental power to punish crimes ranging from murder and rape to “man-stealing.” And only those magistrates will be able to mete out punishments, apparently, because other civil authorities will be stripped of the power to enforce any laws except those recognized by “Christian Orthodoxy.”
Under the heading, “Big Picture,” the manifesto claims to “affirm that this Christian Nationalist project entails national recognition of essential Christian Orthodoxy (Article II) as a Christian consensus under Jesus Christ, the supreme Lord and King of all creation, and the establishment of the general equity of the Ten Commandments as the foundational law of the nation.” (Emphasis added.)
The manifesto also claims to affirm that, “All truth, claims and ethical standards must be tested by God’s final Word, which is Scripture alone.” (Emphasis added.) […]
The manifesto further denies “the authority of rulers to squelch civil disobedience if [in the authors’ opinion] the free and necessary worship of and obedience to the True One God is being hindered.” (Sounds like January 6.)
[…] after several weeks of Vought’s extremist allies pissing about in performative outrage over whether Vought’s and their own versions of “Christian Nationalism” count as extremist or not, it appears we have our answer.
The self-described Christian nationalists defining the term don’t envision some ambiguous version of “religious freedoms” that need to be protected. Instead, they are demanding our nation’s government be torn down and replaced with a version in which their preferred “Church” will ordain public servants who will enforce Christian theocratic law and “squelch” any Americans who engage in “disobedience” against their plan, which is written in plain English.
It’s a plan for violence-minded theocratic rule that’s little different from the one Iranians are victims of. […]
Donald Trump has surrounded himself with extremist allies who are gleefully insisting that if reelected, he has full authority to reshape the government in their vision and eliminate dissenters through military force. It is fascism, pure and simple.
[…] And Republican voters and elected officials throughout America are signing up to enthusiastically endorse those plans.
An Illinois appellate court ruled Wednesday that Chicago voters will be able to decide whether the city should raise a one-time tax on high end properties to fund homelessness prevention.
The unanimous decision from a three-judge panel reverses Cook County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Burke’s ruling, who last month sided in favor of real estate groups and properties owners opposed to the tax and invalidated the ballot measure. The reversal is a major win for organizers behind the so-called Bring Chicago Home campaign and Mayor Brandon Johnson, but it may not be the end of the legal fight if real estate groups appeal the decision. The March 19th primary election is less than two weeks away.
“I’ve said all along that the people of Chicago should determine how we address the unhoused crises in Chicago,” Johnson said at an unrelated press conference Wednesday afternoon. “Organizing in this city is a major part of what has helped transform our city over the course of decades. That history is still intact. I’m encouraging everyone to vote in this upcoming election cycle.”
Alex Jones (grifter and indicted liar) is fighting with Trump (grifter and indicted liar):
Trump was angry over Biden’s claim that the “pandemic no longer controls our lives,” and that the vaccines that “saved us from Covid are now being used to help beat cancer.”
In a post to Truth Social, Trump declared, “YOU’RE WELCOME, JOE,” adding in all caps, “NINE MONTH APPROVAL TIME VS. 12 YEARS THAT IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU!” ✂️
“I love Trump but this is BS!” Jones wrote on a post to X. “The so-called vaccine is a biological weapon! Good news is people are awake and not even 45 can sell it.”
Jones followed up this weekend with an extended rant on his show where he attacked Trump’s post and gave him a warning.
A longtime Mar-a-Lago employee who is a central witness in the investigation into former President Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents is now speaking publicly because he believes that voters should hear the truth about his former boss and the case before the November election.
Brian Butler, who is referenced as “Trump Employee 5” in the classified documents indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith, told CNN in an exclusive interview that he doesn’t believe the criminal case against Trump is a “witch hunt,” as the former president has claimed.
Butler gave testimony to federal investigators that informed crucial portions of last year’s criminal obstruction charges against Trump and his two co-defendants, Walt Nauta, a personal aide to Trump, and Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at Mar-a-Lago who had been Butler’s closest friend until recently.
From Mediate:
So, this type of witness is gold for prosecutors and there’s a few reasons for that. First of all, this person has insider access. He’s literally inside the room… He’s there when boxes are being loaded onto the plane. And one of the challenges for prosecutors here is explaining exactly where these documents were moved, and when, and by whom. And this person can give us exactly why.
Second of all, he’s a person who appears to be unbiased. He doesn’t seem to have any reason to have an axe to grind with Donald Trump… He’s a longtime two decades-long employee of Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. Just based on the snippet that we just saw, he does not appear to be angry or resentful towards Donald Trump.
And finally, if you look at his testimony and you look at the indictment, he appears to be well-supported, corroborated by documents, by certain text chains that are referenced in the indictment, and by testimony of some of the defendants themselves, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliviera. So this is really the kind of witness that you want to build around as a prosecutor.
Today [March 11], more than a dozen leading young voter groups announced their endorsements of the Biden-Harris campaign and new initiatives to support its reelection efforts. The organizations include Blue Future, College Democrats of America, Democratic Youth Coalition, Dream For America, Grassroots Dem HQ, High School Democrats of America, Jr. Newtown Action Alliance, NextGen PAC, Path to Progress, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Students Demand Action, Team ENOUGH, Voices of Gen-Z, Voters of Tomorrow, and the Young Democrats of America.
Never before have this many young voter groups come together to back a presidential ticket this early before the election. […]
Together these organizations will hire hundreds of young organizers, mobilize over 1,000 campus, local, and state chapters/affiliates, and over 500,000 volunteers, reach over 26 million people on social media, and make over 155 million direct voter contacts across the country.
Young voters delivered for the Biden-Harris campaign in 2020. They returned to the polls in 2022 and 2023 to vote for key ballot initiatives and candidates who stand for their values. […]
What can you do?
– Join the Truth Brigade. GNR writer, Mokurai, is a member and brings us updates in the comments — check it out!
– The ACLU plays a key role in filing lawsuits that often stop voter suppression. Get involved with them at this link.
– The League of Women Voters work year-round to combat voter suppression through advocacy, grassroots organizing, legal action and public education. You can get involved with them at this link
– Volunteer with Black Votes Matter at this link. They have on the ground work in 10 states and people from other states can write postcards, phone bank, fundraise, and text.
– Spread The Vote works to get voters IDs before voting begins. You can volunteer with them at this link.
– CALL YOUR SENATORS and let them know that voting rights are at the top of your agenda!
[…] HERE’S HOW TO CONTACT CONGRESS:
U.S. House of Representatives:* Telephone: 202-225-3121
* Website: http://www.house.gov/
Anti-Kremlin militants claimed to have successfully crossed into Russia on Tuesday and seized control of a village, while Moscow said it had successfully fought off the attempted incursions.
Ukraine insisted that the armed groups were made up of Russian citizens, with Andriy Yusov, a spokesperson for Ukrainian military intelligence, claiming the fighters were attempting to “free their country from the Russian Putin dictatorship,” the Kyiv Independent reports. Russia’s Defense Ministry flatly accused the groups of being “Ukrainian militants” who tried to enter Russian territory in the Belgorod and Kursk regions “with the support of tanks and armored combat vehicles.”
The Freedom of Russia Legion, one of the organizations involved in the attack, claimed on Telegram to have taken control of the village of Tyotkino in Russia’s Kursk region on the Ukrainian border. It also released a video that it said showed Russian troops fleeing the village and abandoning heavy equipment…
We haven’t heard anything about these folks for quite a while.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and potential Donald Trump running mate wants America to know how thrilled she is with her brand-new veneers.
The staunch MAGA Republican on Monday night shared a bizarre, nearly 5-minute long video promoting the services of a Houston-area dental practice that left social media users scratching their heads.
“I’m the governor of South Dakota, and [I] had the opportunity to come to SmileTexas to fix my teeth, which has been absolutely amazing,” Noem says in what amounts to a nearly five-minute-long infomercial. “… The team here was remarkable and finally gave me a smile that I can be proud of, and confident in, and that really is a gift that I think is going to be incredibly special to have. You know, I think that I chose the team here at SmileTexas because they’re the best.” …
I think her message is “dental care in the state I govern, South Dakota, is substandard.”
The neutral theory was first proposed by Mootoo Kimura in 1968 (Kimura, 1968). The following year, a similar idea was published in a seminal paper by Jack King and Thomas Jukes (King and Jukes, 1969)…
These two papers kicked off a radical change in the way scientists looked at evolution leading to an attack on adaptationist thinking that culminated a decade later in the Gould and Lewontin spandrels paper—arguably one of the most important papers in evolutionary biology in the second half of the 20th century (Gould and Lewontin, 1979)…
You might think that the enormous success of neutral theory and the importance of random genetic drift would have silenced any opposition. The only holdouts to this new (1968) way of thinking about evolution must be scientists who missed the revolution. There are lots of those types of scientists but they can’t possibly defend the idea that natural selection is the only game in town.
So why is there still an ongoing neutralist-selectionist debate? Two recent papers point out that for some scientist the issue still hasn’t been resolved…
Many Republicans plan to skip the House GOP retreat as they grumble about both the location and the idea of spending time with one another, with tensions still running high inside the party in the wake of their unprecedented speakership drama.
Fewer than 100 Republicans have RSVP’d to attend the retreat, which is less than half of the entire conference, according to a GOP source familiar with the attendance sheet.
The retreat is scheduled to take place Wednesday and Thursday in West Virginia…
birgerjohanssonsays
“Mars’ gravity affects Earth’s climate and seas, study finds” | Space
Deep-sea sediments show 2.4 million year cycle of orbital influence.
A U.S. Appeals Court ruled on Tuesday that under Texas law, a father can deny birth control from his teen daughter, but may have also saved Title X services in the process.
The plaintiff, father-of-three Alexander Deanda, claimed that Title X, a program which provides funding for medical care to patients under 18, was violating a Texas law which gives parents the right to consent to their teenagers obtaining contraceptives. According to the complaint, neither Deanda nor his daughters have sought the services at Title X clinic.
The case was brought by Jonathan Mitchell the state’s former solicitor general, who was behind the state’s six week abortion ban.
Federal regulations forbid clinics in the Title X program from notifying the parents or requiring their consent. Similar challenges to Title X have been denied on the grounds that requiring this approval violates a minor’s right to privacy…
whheydtsays
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #356…
Riffing off and old joke about the older birth control practices…there’s a name for people like Alexander Deandra…grandfather.
The White House will provide $300 million in additional weapons to Ukraine, officials announced Tuesday, as more funding remains held up in Congress by Republican leaders.
The emergency package, announced by the White House, will be funded by “unanticipated cost savings” from contracts the Pentagon had brokered to replace weapons previously provided to Ukraine, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters. The aid will include artillery shells, anti-armor weapons, cluster munitions, antiaircraft Stinger weapons and other arms, as well as spare parts, U.S. officials said.
“It is assistance that Ukraine desperately needs to hold the line against Russian attacks and to push back against the continued Russian onslaught in the east and in other parts of Ukraine,” Sullivan said. […]
“But this does not change the fact that we urgently need Congress to pass DOD’s supplemental request,” Ryder said. “Today’s … package, while providing urgent capabilities to Ukraine’s forces, is nowhere near enough, and the only way to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs is for Congress to swiftly pass the supplemental.”
Ryder, asked why the Pentagon did not disclose before now that this money was available for Ukraine, said defense officials identified the amount only in the last few weeks. […]
The embattled prime minister of Haiti, the Caribbean country whose capital has been overwhelmed by violent gangs, said Tuesday that he would resign. In a short speech posted to Facebook, Ariel Henry said his government would dissolve once a transitional council had been set up, following a week of ‘systematic looting and destruction of public buildings and private buildings.’
School hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ people have sharply risen in recent years, climbing fastest in states that have passed laws restricting LGBTQ student rights and education, a Washington Post analysis of FBI data finds. In states with restrictive laws, the number of hate crimes on K-12 campuses has more than quadrupled since the onset of a divisive culture war that has often centered on the rights of LGBTQ+ youth.
[…] A Twitter account run by the “Bruin Republicans at UCLA” has been posting a great big load of racist rhetoric since at least last week […]
The group, which bills itself as the “premiere right wing political organization on campus,” says it prides itself on “offering conservative students an outlet for their opinions and a niche for their values.” What values? According to recent posts, that appears to be normal conservative values like rejecting the First Amendment and democracy itself, because the most important value of all for these creeps can be stated with 14 words.
Update: In reply to quite a few skeptical comments, yes, “Bruin Republicans” is a real group at UCLA, notorious for having invited that jerk Milo Yiannopoulos to campus a few years back (he cancelled) and also a former member of the group was arrested for entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021. [examples of Bruin tweets are available as screen grabs at the link]
[…] They’ve really been on a tear lately, starting with this embrace of the “Great Replacement Theory” Saturday, and digging in deeper with subsequent posts to defend the first one. [Tweet]
That reads:
We would be against immigration even if the immigrants never committed any crimes.
Conservatives love stories like Laken Riley’s because it gives them an excuse to be anti-immigrant.
Can’t immigration be bad just because it facilitates the ethnic replacement of white Americans?
Oh, but the group’s audition for a writing job for Tucker Carlson certainly didn’t stop there. The account went on to explain that yes, white people really are being replaced, because just look at Los Angeles, they claim:
In 1970, 6 out of every 7 people in Los Angeles were white
In 2024, 2 out of every 7 people in Los Angeles are white
This is called ethnic cleansing in every other part of the world
But in America they call it diversity”
Worth noting, however, that 1970 was the year the Census Bureau introduced the category “Spanish Origin” — and that in the same year, the majority of persons who selected that category also chose “white” as their race; in 1980, that category was further broken into “White, Spanish Origin” (1,120,014 Angelenos) and “White, not Spanish Origin” (3,953,603), so the Racist Bruins were fudging their own pretended supremacy for 1970.
Hilariously, the account complained that there’s nothing at all “radical” about pushing white replacement theory because the “average American 100 years ago would agree … completely” with race-based opposition to immigration. And by golly, they have a point, because that was the heyday of the second KKK, the embrace of scientific racism and “eugenics,” and, driven by books like The Passing of the Great Race (1916), the adoption in 1924 of openly racist immigration laws.
You might as well point out that the average Berliner of 1936 would have found nothing wrong with the tweet either. Speaking of, the Bruin Republicans account claimed Sunday — with another old racist saw — that the US is uniquely foolish about letting its whiteness be diluted, claiming that
Other countries have some level of immigration and manage to keep their ethnic demographics constant
When America does immigration, half the white people disappear in half a century and people on Twitter call you “Hitler” if you say it’s not normal
We should also point out Jamison Foser’s observation on Bluesky that “‘half the white people disappear’ is a super-interesting way of saying ‘all the white people are still there but now there are also other people.’”
Or maybe not, because two hours later the account was approvingly retweeting the vile Andrew Tate, who complained that
Europe is done.
Western Europe is 0% European anywhere.
White girls get raped and murdered by migrants every day and the news won’t show it.
To that, the Young Republicans added, “It’s happening to America too,” although you should also remember they aren’t going to fearmonger about crime, just about non-white people (who are innately criminal, but that’s not their point).
Eventually, the account explained that it’s really a very simple logical fact: If it’s not white, it’s not America, duh. Like so:
How can you fully separate the identity of the people from the identity of the nation? How can America be just a nation of flexible ideas?
America doesn’t need to be dominated by “Old Stock Americans” but at a certain point you have to admit you can’t just switch out everybody!
And here you thought we were bound by some sort of grand ideas about consent of the governed, the popular vote, and the Constitution, when in fact, all that matters is whiteness; the other stuff is just for show. [screengrab from Bruin Republicans post showing: Three conservative patriots: Putin, Trump and Xi Jinping]
By Monday, the account was getting even weirder, alternating between worshiping the troika of good nationalists Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping, praising Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad as “one of the most unfairly villainized men of the 21st century” because he stood up to “the neoliberal world order and the LGBT agenda,” and lamenting that even “new wave far right populists in Europe” were a great disappointment because they haven’t actually ended immigration to protect their white people. Then they became fascinated by stories of “cannibalism” by some Haitian gangs, proving that all Haitians are cannibals. (In fact, Haiti is in the midst of collapsing right now, today, cannibals or no. We can guess why the Bruin Republicans think that is.)
Now, as I say, this went on for a while without any apparent condemnation from GOP officialdom, although it appears rightwing Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen wasn’t too happy with the Bruin Republicans, asking Sunday, “WTF is wrong with you?”
Ben Shapiro also weighed in this morning, making the scale flutter slightly and defending the honor of his alma mater: [Tweet at the link]
And then while I was writing this story, I clicked on a tweet to copy it and the whole account ceased to be, so go figure. Looks like the woke mob on Elon Musk’s Twitter censored them! […]
The Biden administration chalked up another win in federal court for the Inflation Reduction Act’s provision allowing Medicare to negotiate prices of prescription drugs with manufacturers — something people begged for for decades, and Biden made law. A Trump-appointed federal judge in Connecticut dismissed AstraZeneca’s challenge to the constitutionality of the law, noting that the pharma giant “has no legitimate claim of entitlement to sell its drugs to the Government at any price other than what the Government is willing to pay; its due process claim fails as a matter of law,” so there, tough boogers.
It was the Biden administration’s second court win on the issue after a similar lawsuit was tossed out of federal court in Texas last month. AstraZeneca’s diabetes, kidney disease, and heart failure drug Farxiga — whose cable-TV ads forego a full jingle for a tasteful three-note signature chime — was among the first 10 medications the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) chose for the price negotiations process; the negotiated price will go into effect starting in 2026. But that doesn’t mean the drug companies are happy about it; they’ve filed 10 federal lawsuits aimed at keeping the price negotiation program from continuing. [10 lawsuits!]
In his March 1 opinion, District Court Judge Colm Connolly explained that since AstraZeneca voluntarily chose to participate in the Medicare market, its “‘desire’ or even ‘expectation’ to sell its drugs to the government at the higher prices it once enjoyed does not create a protected property interest,” so it doesn’t have standing to sue.
As Connolly explained, once CMS publishes its list of the costliest drugs for Medicare patients, manufacturers can either agree to negotiate the “maximum fair price” they’ll be paid, or they can choose not to, although the law provides them a powerful incentive to negotiate a maximum fair price with CMS: If a manufacturer of a selected drug wants to continue to participate in Medicare, it must either agree to negotiate a maximum fair price for that drug or pay an excise tax of at least 65% and up to 95% on all (i.e., both Medicare and non-Medicare) sales of the drug.
AstraZeneca and other manufacturers have complained that “choice” amounts to a Godfather-like offer they can’t refuse, but Connolly said that while the “opportunity to sell products to more than 49 million Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries” is quite an incentive to accept the negotiation process, it is “not, as AstraZeneca contends, ‘a gun to the head.’ It is a potential economic opportunity that AstraZeneca is free to accept or reject.” [smile]
[…] As Eric Gardner notes at More Perfect Union, AstraZeneca was doing pretty well selling Farxiga to Medicare during the 13-month period prior to its being selected as one of the first drugs for negotiated pricing:
During that time, Medicare paid AstraZeneca over $3 billion for Farxiga, which helped the London-based pharmaceutical giant record $3 billion in profit last year. […]
“The whole point of the [drug negotiation] program is to lower the prices of selected drugs that lack generic competition and account for a disproportionate share of Medicare’s expenses,” Connolly wrote, noting that the company lobbied Congress to not pass the IRA in 2022. “Understandably, drug manufacturers like AstraZeneca don’t like the IRA. Lower prices mean lower profits.”
But again, there’s nothing in the Constitution that says prescription drugs are a special sacrosanct category for which federal agencies must pay top dollar. As in civilized countries that actually have universal healthcare […] negotiated pricing is what you accept if you want to be in the game.
[…] during his State of the Union address last week, Joe Biden touted the Medicare drug cost negotiation program as one of his top achievements, and called on Congress to expand it so that when it’s fully rolled out, Medicare can negotiate the prices of as many as 50 prescription drugs each year, instead of the 20 currently allowed by the IRA.
Volkov had tear gas sprayed in his eyes and was beaten with a hammer, his colleagues said.
Leonid Volkov, former chief of staff to the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has been brutally attacked outside his home in Vilnius.
“They broke the window in his car and sprayed tear gas in his eyes, after which the attacker began to beat Leonid with a hammer,” wrote Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokesperson, on X — the site formerly known as Twitter — shortly after 10 p.m. local time.
Yarmysh retweeted graphic pictures from another account that appear to show Volkov with a wound on his leg and damage to his car. [photos at the link]
Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis, confirming the attack, tweeted: “News about Leonid’s assault are shocking. Relevant authorities are at work. Perpetrators will have to answer for their crime.”
Another photo, posted on Telegram, appeared to show Volkov being moved into an ambulance.
Navalny died Feb. 16 in a Russian prison, and was buried March 1. Russia holds a presidential election March 15-17. […]
Fox News has aired images of Jhoan Boada flipping off the media in at least 66 segments since his arraignment.
On January 27, blurry CCTV footage in New York City’s Times Square captured two police officers being beaten up by a large group of men while they were trying to arrest someone. A few days later, Fox News began flooding its airwaves with footage of a suspected perpetrator, Jhoan Boada, 22, flipping his middle fingers to a media gaggle. Fox leveraged those images of Boada to add outrage to its ongoing campaign smearing migrants as criminals.
The only problem? Boada had nothing to do with the crime.
From February 1, the day after Boada was released following his arraignment, through March 10, Fox News aired footage of him or alluded to Boada in at least 84 segments, including 66 segments showing images or b-roll of the 22-year-old. [That’s one helluva lot of misleading segments!] Notably, Fox’s supposed “news-side” shows aired nearly as many images (31) of Boada as the network’s opinion-side programs (35).
Fox News seemingly has not yet corrected or updated its on-air reporting since Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg officially exonerated Boada on March 1. Meanwhile, images of Boada continue to be misappropriated across the right-wing media ecosystem, including in a pro-Trump political ad titled “Joe Biden’s middle finger.”
Prime-time host Jesse Watters’ February 1 segment illustrated Fox’s prevailing narrative about Boada’s release, saying: “A gang of migrants broke into the country, pummeled two NYPD officers, and while walking out of jail without bail, flipped the double bird to the country that let them in. The two birds heard around the world. The symbol of the Biden presidency right there.” Watters concluded that “America’s biggest enemies” are now “sending brigades of migrants with smiles plastered all over their faces because they know there’s no resistance.” [video at the link]
Jhoan Boada had nothing to do with the attack on police officers in Times Square in January. But Fox News’ misleading coverage of that story as part of its manufactured fearmongering campaign against Biden’s border policy risks exacerbating the threats migrants already face in the United States and the broader immigration system. […]
birgerjohansson, a short by whom about what? What’s the point?
Clickbait, is what it is. Whatever it may be, it will indubitably be bullshit.
Your stream of consciousness little dropped nuggets regarding your watching habits is about as interesting as my opinion of it. But hey, we can both indulge in that, no?
(Also, have I told you what #shorts are all about? Why yes! Yes, I have)
birgerjohanssonsays
John Morales @ 369
I thought the witch-hunting-short fit nicely with the values expressed by certain House members.
But here is a more substantial item. Research from…one of those states I thought was giving up on modern science. But maybe non-leech phsrmaceutical science has not been purged yet?
If this stands up to peer review it is pretty big.
@ 370
My bad – the Republicans have not quite taken over Michigan yet, so their Universities are still teaching heliocentric astronomy.
KGsays
Jean@339,
Kudos.
birgerjohanssonsays
Jean @ 339
Listening to Fox News, I believe that conflating those things is written into the US constitution, you know, alongside ‘presidents have immunity’.
.
It seems USA and Britain have surprisingly similar cultures.
The biggest donor to the conservative party went on a ‘problematic’ rant. Here are comments from the podcast A Different Bias.
I do not know if hydrogen will become a viable part of the energy landscape, but the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has come up with a method for membrane-free water splitting into hydrogen and oxygen, making it safer and simpler. Adding hydrogen to carbon would be the next step. https://scitechdaily.com/producing-hydrogen-energy-new-method-is-safer-simpler-and-more-efficient/
A Japanese company’s first orbital launch attempt ended in a dramatic failure just seconds after liftoff on Wednesday.
The 18-meter-long, four-stage Kairos solid rocket lifted off from Space Port Kii in Kushimoto, western Japan at 10:01 p.m. EDT March 12 (0201 GMT or 11:01 a.m. Japan time on March 13). The flight ended abruptly seconds after it rose off the launch pad when the flight termination system triggered, resulting in the rocket exploding.
The attempt to become the first Japanese private launch company to reach orbit resulted in debris strewn across the launch site. A post-launch press conference stated that no damage was caused and no personnel injured. Fires visible in the immediate aftermath were soon extinguished…
A U.S. Congress-mandated group cut short a fact-finding mission to Saudi Arabia after officials in the kingdom ordered a Jewish rabbi to remove his kippah in public, highlighting the religious tensions still present in the wider Middle East.
Speaking to The Associated Press, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom sought to distance the order over his skullcap from what he described as progress made in the kingdom under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on quietly allowing different faiths to worship privately…
Romania’s president said Tuesday that he will enter the race to become the next leader of the 32-nation NATO military alliance, emphasizing his country’s proximity to Ukraine and the threat from Russia.
President Klaus Iohannis wants to succeed Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who has been NATO’s top civilian official since 2014 and has made clear he will not be staying…
…
“Ohhhh, Aaron bouta become the VP.. That’s why he ain’t been answering my text messages,” Gardner wrote on X late Tuesday night along with a thinking face emoji…
The wild turn of events caused shock around the sporting world, with former Jet Damien Woody posting on X, “Man we are an unserious country.”
WFAN host Shaun Morash called it the “most Jets story of all time” and suggested that “If he’s ‘welcoming overtures,’ even if it’s at five percent, he’s not all-in on quarterbacking the Jets.” …
A judge on Wednesday dismissed six counts in the Georgia criminal election interference case against former President Donald Trump and five other defendants, ruling that an indictment failed to sufficiently explain the basis for those charges.
But other criminal counts against Trump and the defendants remain after the order by Judge Scott McAfee.
The dismissed counts had accused Trump and the others of the crime of solicitation of violation of oath by public officer.
The counts related to efforts by the defendants to get members of Georgia’s legislature and the secretary of state to delegitimize the election victory of President Joe Biden over Trump in the state’s 2020 contest.
Defense lawyers for Trump and the others argued, among other things, that the indictment charging them with that specific count did “not detail the exact term of the oaths that are alleged to have been violated,” McAfee noted in his order…
An 80-year-old man in Montana pleaded guilty Tuesday to two felony wildlife crimes involving his plan to let paying customers hunt sheep on private ranches. But these weren’t just any old sheep. They were “massive hybrid sheep” created by illegally importing animal parts from central Asia, cloning the sheep, and then breeding an enormous hybrid species.
Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 80, owns and operates the 215-acre “alternative livestock” ranch in Vaughn, Montana where he started this operation in 2013, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Alternative livestock includes hybrids of mountain sheep, mountain goats, and other large mammals which are often used for trophy hunting by wealthy people.
An unnamed accomplice of Schubart kicked off the decade-long scheme by illegally bringing biological tissue from a Marco Polo sheep, the largest sheep in the world, from Kyrgyzstan into the U.S. in 2013, according to prosecutors.
…The sheep are endangered and protected by both international treaties and U.S. law. Montana also forbids the import of these foreign sheep or their parts in an effort to protect local American sheep from disease.
Once Schubart had smuggled his sheep parts into the U.S., he sent them to an unnamed lab which created 165 cloned embryos, according to the DOJ.
“Schubarth then implanted the embryos in ewes on his ranch, resulting in a single, pure genetic male Marco Polo argali that he named ‘Montana Mountain King’ or MMK,” federal authorities wrote in a press release…
By the time Schubart had his Montana Mountain King he used the cloned sheep’s semen to artificially impregnate female sheep, creating hybrid animals. The goal, as the DOJ explains it, was to create these massive new sheep that could then be used for sports hunting on large ranches. Schubart also forged veterinarian inspection certificates to transport the new hybrid sheep under false pretenses, and sometimes even sold semen from his Montana Mountain King to other breeders in the U.S…
When Russia’s Vladimir Putin talks about his war in Ukraine, he generally maintains a ridiculous pretense about wanting peace talks. This week, however, the authoritarian leader didn’t bother. NBC News highlighted a striking quote from his latest interview with Russian state television, which was released this morning.
“For us to negotiate now just because they are running out of ammunition is somewhat ridiculous on our part,” Putin said, referring to severe ammunition shortages Ukraine has experienced as new U.S. military aid remains stalled in Congress and Kyiv’s European counterparts have struggled to supply the ammunition that has been promised.
In other words, Putin maintained the pretense about negotiations when Ukraine — the country Russia invaded without provocation — was in a position of greater military strength. But with congressional Republicans in the United States balking at renewed support for their ostensible allies in Kyiv, Putin no longer sees the point.
Why pursue talks, the argument goes, with an enemy that’s running out of ammunition?
All of which helped set the stage for a related question directed at Capitol Hill: Will congressional Republicans ever step up in support of Ukraine?
Yesterday afternoon, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who’s spent much of his career avoiding trying to steer events in the lower chamber, offered some fresh advice for House Speaker Mike Johnson. “I want to encourage the speaker to allow a vote so that the House can speak,” the Kentucky Republican said, referring to the bipartisan Senate bill that’s been pending for weeks.
By all appearances, Johnson will continue to ignore this advice, which means proponents of Ukraine aid will have to explore alternative strategies. It’s against this backdrop that Politico reported:
House Dems are launching a discharge petition, a legislative maneuver that can force a bill to the floor if a majority of lawmakers sign on. But the move faces long odds in the House, with some Democrats expected to oppose the legislation over concerns about supplying unrestricted aid to Israel, and Republicans also resistant to sending Ukraine aid and wary of bucking their leadership.
The effort is being spearheaded by Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern who told reporters the initiative will play a role in “hopefully increasing the pressure on the speaker of the House to do what he should do.”
[…] In the meantime, as a Washington Post report added, McGovern’s effort is designed to bring the Senate bill to the House floor for a vote, but there’s also a separate measure, spearheaded by Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, seeking signatures on a Ukraine aid package that includes additional U.S. border reforms.
As of a few minutes ago, McGovern’s discharge petition had 177 signatures. The Fitzpatrick-led effort has 14 signatures. The goal is 218 signatures.
It’s a process that Putin will likely be keeping an eye on. Watch this space.
Nikki Haley received more than 77,000 votes in Georgia’s Republican primary race Tuesday despite dropping out of the race six days prior.
The former South Carolina governor secured 77,761 votes — about 13.2 percent of the vote — in Georgia’s GOP presidential primary contest […]
Trump still handily won the Georgia primary Tuesday night with about 84.5 percent of the vote. But his level of support among moderates will likely be a key factor in the general election. […]
You can tell what kind of campaign for president Robert F. Kennedy Junior is running. He is considering New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers as the Vice Presidential pick. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine candidate. Aaron Rodgers is an anti-vaccine football player.
Kennedy is currently polling at about 9%. That’s enough to spoil the race and to hand the presidency to Trump.
[…] Britt, in her remarks, also went after President Joe Biden’s immigration policies by referencing a horrific story about a woman who’d been raped and sex-trafficked by Mexican cartels starting at the age of 12. What the senator neglected to mention is that the story was 20 years old and had nothing to do with Biden.
Given an opportunity to apologize or express some degree of contrition for having misled the public, Britt instead pretended that she’d done nothing wrong, reality notwithstanding.
Nearly a week after creating this mess, the Republican and her political operation are taking an additional unfortunate step: As The Daily Beast reported, Britt launched a fundraising campaign based on her fiasco.
After a State of the Union rebuttal that even some in her own party felt embarrassed by, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) is trying to use that backlash to her advantage, writing in a fundraising email Tuesday that her “heart is broken” for those she said she was speaking on behalf of.
“[A]s I watch the dishonest leftist media and the liberal elites making a mockery of everything I’ve dedicated my entire life to protect, laughing at the destruction of the American Dream, disrespecting how our country has descended into a dystopian nightmare for countless families … I’m disgusted,” Britt’s financial appeal read. [JFC!]
“And I know you are too, Friend. So I’m counting on you to send message [sic] with me!” the fundraising letter added.
[…] Britt misled the public. She got caught. She now wants supporters to send campaign contributions to effectively reward her for a debacle of her own making.
[…] A significant number of GOP voters will effectively conclude that if the senator is facing criticisms from media outlets for misleading the public, she probably deserves some money.
The result creates a twisted set of incentives: Republican politicians are being told that their controversies can be lucrative, which has the unfortunate effect of encouraging them to create more controversies.
[…] Nearly a year ago the Republican National Committee launched an attack video targeting President Joe Biden that included AI-created images. A few months later, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign targeted Donald Trump using “deepfakes” generated by artificial intelligence.
In January, someone used artificial intelligence to impersonate Biden for a robocall. As recently as last week […] Trump supporters were caught using artificial intelligence to generate images of the former president “appearing friendly with nonexistent Black people.” [Particularly egregious]
Such tactics, naturally, have generated some confusion. Voters have new reasons to be skeptical of what they’re seeing and hearing, unsure whether it’s legitimate or created by a computer.
It’s uncertainty that Donald Trump is apparently eager to exploit. Consider this item the former president published to his social media platform overnight:
“The Hur Report was revealed today! A disaster for Biden, a two tiered standard of justice. Artificial Intelligence was used by them against me in their videos of me. Can’t do that Joe!”
Right off the bat, let’s note that former special counsel Robert Hur’s findings were not a “disaster” for the incumbent Democratic president. Let’s also note that the idea of “a two-tiered standard of justice” has been thoroughly discredited.
Right off the bat, let’s note that former special counsel Robert Hur’s findings were not a “disaster” for the incumbent Democratic president. Let’s also note that the idea of “a two-tiered standard of justice” has been thoroughly discredited. [Tweet and video at the link: Nadler put together a brutal supercut of Trump gaffing and shorting out.]
The point, obviously, was unsubtle. If Biden’s occasional slips are going to be perceived as disqualifying, Democrats effectively suggested, then the public ought to know about Trump’s occasional slips, too.
The former president could’ve simply ignored all of this and hoped that the clips went unnoticed. Instead, he drew fresh attention to the video montage and claimed that Democrats relied on “artificial intelligence.”
But this was, and is, the dumbest of all possible strategies. The videos of Trump’s cognitive slip-ups are entirely real. They were not manipulated with A.I. or through any other means.
By pushing this defense, Trump is simultaneously (a) lying, (b) drawing attention to videos he should hope voters don’t see; and (c) implicitly suggesting that the clips are so humiliating that they couldn’t possibly be real, except they are, in fact, genuine and unaltered.
[…] Fielded March 9-12, the poll finds that 63% of Republican voters say either that they want the RNC to cover Trump’s legal bills, or that they don’t care if it does. Only 26% of Republican voters oppose using the national party’s funds to cover the cost of Trump’s legal tab. […]
The consequence of having an authoritarian party ruled over by a single corrupt family at the behest of a single corrupt candidate is that all the money goes to one person. Trump is a money pit that the RNC can feed but never satisfy. Everyone else will go hungry.
The judge in Fulton Count hearing the sweeping criminal case brought by Fani Willis refused to dismiss 35 charges against Trump and his co-defendants. The most important charges against Trump and his co-defendants which involve violations of the Georgia RICO statute we’re sustained in this ruling.
But the Judge did dismiss six of the charges on technical grounds, which will enable the prosecutor to re-file them if they need to. Those charges alleged that Trump had illegally urged elected officials in Georgia to violate their oaths of office.
Spoiler: Probably fine. Might even be a loss for Trump in the grand scheme of things.
News came down this morning in the Georgia RICO election-stealing case against Donald Trump and everyone he’s ever met. Charges dismissed, but just some of them? Seems like important charges? Is this bad? And does it say anything about the likelihood the same judge, Scott McAfee, will remove District Attorney Fani Willis from the case for aggravated workplace romance?
Here’s Some Legal Shit
Most of the case is fine. But McAfee threw out six charges, three of which include Trump, which he found to be too vague, to the point of being “fatal” — as in, they wouldn’t be likely to win at trial because of flaws in the charges. Of course, this now means Trump is only facing 88 felony charges across all his cases, which means he is even more exonerated than he was yesterday! You betcha.
These are the counts McAfee threw out:
– Against “multiple defendants” for hitting up members of the Georgia state Senate to violate their oaths of office and appoint fake electors, on two occasions (two counts);
– Against Trump for hitting up the Georgia state House speaker to violate his oath of office and call a special session to appoint fake electors;
– Against Rudy Giuliani and another defendant, Ray Stallings, for hitting up members of the Georgia state House to violate their oaths of office and appoint fake electors;
– Against Trump and Mark Meadows, for trying to get Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office and find him 11,780 votes;
– Against Trump for, many months later, in September 2021, hitting up Raffensperger to violate his oath office and decertify the election in Georgia.
Note that each one specifically mentions defendants soliciting officials to “violate their oath of office,” because that’s precisely what McAfee’s ruling — and the filings from the Trump side that brought this on — hinge on. You can read the ruling and wade as deeply into the legalese as you’d like, but in general, McAfee found that the charges that defendants solicited these people to violate their oaths of office — both to the Georgia and United States Constitutions — were not specific enough to allow defendants to prepare an adequate defense.
Here is McAfee, with some of our own emphasis added:
The Court’s concern is less that the State has failed to allege sufficient conduct of the Defendants – in fact it has alleged an abundance. However, the lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned’s opinion, fatal. As written, these six counts contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission, i.e., the underlying felony solicited.
If that’s confusing, please don’t let it derail your day. He’s saying the indictment just wasn’t written good and smart enough, legal words-wise, on these counts — i.e., that Willis didn’t outline well enough how defendants were asking these officials to violate their oaths to state and federal constitutions. On these grounds, defense lawyers asked for what’s called “special demurrers” on these counts, and McAfee granted them.
So What’s That Mean?
Well, the RICO conspiracy case is still intact, for one. That’s count one of the indictment, which isn’t remotely affected by this, as McAfee makes excessively clear. (Notably, though, the count McAfee dismissed that includes Mark Meadows leaves Meadows only charged in the RICO.) Remember, the RICO count involves what are called “overt acts,” which are not the same as these other individual counts, and Willis only has to prove one of them. (She listed 161.)
Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, said that the ruling does not weaken the state racketeering charge that remains, and that is central to the case. That charge is based on “overt acts” that are detailed in the indictment, and the judge was explicit in stating that Wednesday’s order does not affect these acts.
Ten of the charges against Trump are still intact, and that includes all kinds of conspiracy and false statements charges, on top of the RICO.
Willis could appeal this ruling or, if she wants to, she’s free to correct the problems laid out by the judge with these six counts, and refile them. She has six months to do so, if she wants. That would, of course, cause delays, but she might decide it’s worth it for one reason or another. (The trial probably wasn’t going to happen until 2025 anyway.)
This also suggests, according to several smart lawyers on Twitter, whose logic seems pretty solid, that McAfee may not be likely to remove Willis, since that decision is also in front of him. “Here, take six months to fix this if you want and also I fire you?” Psssssssh.
So that’s what happened. This is some technical shit, but it’s shit that, left unresolved, would provide loopholes for Trump’s counsel to drive a few Mack trucks though, at least on those counts.
So Should We Freak Out?
Dunno, are you feeling jumpy? Go outside and play with some dogs or something.
birgerjohanssonsays
Sabine Hossenfelder is skeptic about the claims nade about quantum computers. She is cautiously optimistic about this ‘D-wave’ device.
The swift rebuke shifts attention to the Senate, where the bill faces significant political barriers and constitutional concerns.
The House overwhelmingly passed a measure Wednesday to force TikTok to split from its parent company or face a national ban, a lightning offensive that materialized abruptly after years of unsuccessful negotiations over the platform’s fate.
The legislation, approved 352 to 65 with 1 voting present, is a sweeping bipartisan rebuke of the popular video-sharing app — and an attempt to grapple with allegations that its China-based parent, ByteDance, presents national security risks. The House effort gained momentum last week after President Biden said he would sign the bill if Congress passed it.
But its fate now rests in the Senate, where some lawmakers have expressed concern it may run afoul of the Constitution by infringing on millions of Americans’ rights to free expression and by explicitly targeting a business operating in the United States.
[…] Though TikTok is incorporated in the United States and has headquarters in Los Angeles, its ties to Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance have long triggered fears the app could be weaponized by Chinese government officials to snoop on Americans or shape their political views. The company says it has never shared U.S. user data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked, and its critics have yet to present evidence to the contrary. It has also disputed claims of any foreign interference or influence. […]
A Gillette man who filed a $24 million lawsuit against the city and mayor for not letting him give enough atheistic invocations at city meetings has lost his appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Bruce Williams sued Gillette Mayor Shay Lundvall last spring on claims city leaders wouldn’t let him deliver a proportion of invocations before council meetings matching the proportion of Wyoming atheists.
Williams gave one invocation per year for at least nine years. In three of those years, some Gillette City Council members walked out during his invocation, court documents say.
Williams also alleged the city council required him to cite the Pledge of Allegiance at the meetings. He asked a district court judge to block the city’s recitation of the pledge until Congress removes the words “under God” from it.
District Court Judge Stuart S. Healy III dismissed Williams’ lawsuit, saying the city and mayor have sovereign immunity from being sued – barring certain exceptions – but that Williams didn’t show any of the known exceptions when he filed his complaint.
Patients who went on to develop long COVID showed more problems with regulation of blood iron levels, including anemia, as soon as 2 weeks after acute infection, suggesting low iron levels may play a role in the chronic condition, according to a new study in Nature Immunology.
The study was based on blood samples from 214 patients collected via the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease. All participants provided multiple blood samples during and after a COVID-19 infection for 12 months.
The researchers found that long COVID was associated with how quickly inflammation and low iron levels regulated after acute infection. People who took a longer time to demonstrate regulation, and had more severe initial infections, were at an increased risk of long COVID…
Street parking was already scarce in Hoboken, New Jersey, when the death of an elderly pedestrian spurred city leaders to remove even more spaces in a bid to end traffic fatalities.
For seven years now, the city of nearly 60,000 people has reported resounding success: Not a single automobile occupant, bicyclist or pedestrian has died in a traffic crash since January 2017, elevating Hoboken as a national model for roadway safety…
While Hoboken’s plan has numerous components, including lower speed limits and staggered traffic lights, daylighting is often credited as one of the biggest reasons its fatalities have dropped to zero.
Ryan Sharp, the city’s transportation director, said when roads need to be repaved, Hoboken takes the additional step of cordoning off the street corners to widen curbs and shorten crosswalks. It’s already illegal to park at an intersection in Hoboken, but drivers often do anyway if there aren’t physical barriers…
Might be good news, though too small a step for those who think the justice system needs a major overhaul:
The Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for federal courts, announced Tuesday that it would take action against the judge-shopping that has let right-wing litigants funnel cases to friendly, often Donald Trump-appointed judges.
“The policy addresses all civil actions that seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, ‘whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief,’” the conference said in a press release. “In such cases, judges would be assigned through a district-wide random selection process.”
It will apply to “cases involving state or federal laws, rules, regulations, policies, or executive branch orders.”
For the past few years, those who want to challenge Biden administration policies have often sought out divisions with one or two ideologically-aligned judges, all but guaranteeing their desired outcome. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, most infamous for his ruling against the abortion drug mifepristone, has become the poster boy for this practice.
Kacsmaryk and his ilk have worsened the problem with their willingness to hand down nationwide relief, rather than narrowing it to the plaintiffs before them. […]
“I’m absolutely delighted that courts have recognized the importance of this issue,” Amanda Shanor, assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told TPM. “They appear to have adopted a policy that will address some of the major, most egregious and troublesome forms of judge shopping.”
But even evangelists of judge-shopping reform had some reservations about the press release, which did not link to any policy text and was devoid of details, including about how it would be enforced.
[…] “The real question is whether the statutes authorize the Judicial Conference itself to promulgate this rule, as distinguished from recommending to the judicial councils of the circuits that they promulgate a rule,” Arthur Hellman, a professor emeritus and expert in federal courts at the University of Pittsburgh’s school of law, told TPM.
Other experts think the Conference can promulgate its own policy, but worry about how aggressively it’ll be enforced. Shanor and Alice Clapman, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights Program, have put forward their own proposal for a more ironclad and enforceable new federal rule to the Judicial Conference’s Rules Committee, which is still pending.
[…] While the details of the policy have yet to take shape, the Judicial Conference’s announcement reveals that it sees judge-shopping as significantly damaging to courts’ legitimacy.
[…] Prompting internal change from judicial institutions can be slow going, and was likely helped along by how blatant the judge-shoppers have been. The practice has produced headline cases including the challenge to mifepristone, which will be argued before the Supreme Court later this month.
The practice has also become commonplace beyond laymen activist litigants.
[…] Senate Democrats noted in a letter last summer that the state of Texas habitually avoids filing its anti-Biden administration lawsuits in Austin, preferring more dependable courtrooms like Kacsmaryk’s.
The new policy seems to sweep wide, encompassing both federal and state laws. Still, it wouldn’t root out all judge-shopping. Clapman and Professor Katherine Macfarlane, an expert in civil procedure at Syracuse University’s College of Law, both pointed TPM to a case brought by anti-abortion activists meant to bankrupt Planned Parenthood, unrelated to any federal or state action. Such private party action would be harder to rulemake against.
[…] legislative attempts to address the problem have been nonstarters due to a combination of the Senate filibuster, lack of Republican support and lukewarm Democratic enthusiasm outside a select few.
“Some of the more egregious examples we’ve seen, like the mifepristone litigation and challenges to Biden’s immigration policies, would certainly be covered by this solution,” Clapman said.
A large and powerful landslide crashed through a neighborhood in Sherman Oaks, California, Wednesday morning, leaving two homes severely damaged.
The incident was reported around 3 a.m. in the 3700 block of North Ventura Canyon Avenue near Rand Drive.
[…] the land gave way under a home above Ventura Canyon.
The slide slammed into two homes below, shoving piles of dirt through the structures and cracking at least one of the swimming pools.
[…]Firefighters at the scene were using pumps to drain the pool of the home above the slide to reduce weight on the infrastructure.
One of the homes damaged by the slide was under renovation and had to be red-tagged.
Three adults were inside the other two homes, which were yellow-tagged and evacuated.
“We’re looking to hopefully get those folks back into their homes at some point this morning,” Weireter said.
Building and safety inspectors were at the scene with Los Angeles Fire Department personnel trying to determine if any other homes in the neighborhood were at risk. […]
[…] With Trump about to turn the RNC into his personal ATM and donors abandoning the party in droves, Republicans could enter the heat of the 2024 campaign season unable to compete in a host of critical swing races. That’s going to be a real problem, because GOP candidates have a lot of ground to make up if they want to hold onto their jobs.
Polling from January finds that American voters oppose most of Trump’s far-right policies. Somewhere between 20 percent and 30 percent of Republican voters now say they would not vote for Trump under any circumstances. Trump’s popularity among women has fallen by 5 percent according to a new Quinnipiac poll, in no small part due to his repeated verbal attacks on his sexual abuse victim, writer E. Jean Carroll. Problems like that take a lot of campaign money to solve — money that likely will instead be redirected into the pockets of Trump’s criminal defense attorneys.
One RNC donor, Peter Henlein, voiced many Republicans’ outrage at the new arrangement in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “After a lifetime of donating to every GOP nominee and multiple down ballot candidates every cycle….I’m out,” Henlein wrote. “I donated to help win elections, not to maintain the lifestyle of a billionaire.”
The MAGA movement’s final purity purge may prove to be one too many. It’s worth asking how competitive a national party can be when its platform excludes everyone from Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) in the moderate wing to Buck on the hard right, from conservative establishment royalty like former Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) to anti-government insurgent Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.). It’s getting awfully hard to be a Republican in good standing, and even the former faithful are starting to feel the burn.
Republicans have built themselves a party whose sole purpose is to appease and gratify Trump. In the process, they’re quickly losing appeal to anyone else […]
The MAGA movement, once so skilled at enforcing loyalty, is cracking. What’s left of the Republican Party is cracking with it. The sooner it shatters, the better.
An NBC News analysis shows Britt has brought up the same victim, who was trafficked under the Bush administration, at least five times this year to criticize Biden’s border policies.
[…] An NBC News review of her remarks over the last year shows it’s an anecdote she’s used often to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies, though the victim she references was trafficked through Mexico roughly two decades ago.
During her response to the State of the Union, the freshman senator spoke about her visit to the U.S.-Mexico border in 2023 and told a graphic story involving rape and sex trafficking to criticize President Joe Biden’s border policies.
“When I first took office, I did something different. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartel at the age of 12. She told me not that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped,” Britt said during her address on Thursday. [video at the link]
“We wouldn’t be ok with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it,” she added.
It was later reported by an independent journalist that the woman in Britt’s speech was Karla Jacinto Romero and that she was trafficked in Mexico, not the United States, when Republican George W. Bush was president. […]
NBC News has found that prior to the State of the Union response, the junior Alabama senator had referenced Jacinto Romero’s story at least five separate times over the last year in press conferences and cable news interviews to criticize the Biden Administration for its border policies, implying that Jacinto Romero’s trafficking and rape occurred under the Biden Administration.
[Details of each instance are provided at the link.]
Although Britt has never named Jacinto Romero in the multiple times she referred to her story, a spokesperson for her office confirmed to The Washington Post that the woman cited in her State of the Union response address was Jacinto Romero.
Asked by NBC News about her repeated re-tellings of the story in connection to Biden’s immigration policies, Britt issued a statement targeting the media.
“It’s past time for the media to stop covering for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign and start talking about the immense, very real human suffering that’s occurring right now under his policies,” she said.
“The cartels are making record-shattering profits from human trafficking. Historic numbers of migrants are dying at the border. And between brutal murders and fentanyl poisonings, far too many Americans are being killed. That’s the story the media doesn’t want to tell,” she added.
[…] Speaking to CNN, Jacinto Romero said she felt that Britt told an inaccurate story of her experience.
During an interview on Fox News Sunday, Britt did not acknowledge that she misrepresented Jacinto Romero’s experiences, and declined to say why she chose a case that did not happen under Biden’s presidency to highlight what she referred to as the administration’s failed border policies. […]
Vitaly Robertus, 54, Vice President of the Russian oil and gas firm Lukoil, has been found dead. He is the fourth Lukoil top manager to die since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Chicago Department of Public Health said Wednesday that everyone who is eligible for vaccination at the temporary shelter housing migrants at the center of a measles outbreak has now been vaccinated.
The city learned that it had its first measles case since 2019 last week. Illinois is one of 17 states that have seen measles cases so far this year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The first case in Chicago was unrelated to the shelter.
So far seven migrants at the crowded shelter in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood – four children and three adults – have tested positive for measles…
Jets QB Aaron Rodgers says that the Jets need to, quote, “Flush the B.S.” next year if they want to be successful. “Anything in this building that we’re doing individually or collectively that has nothing to do with real winning needs to be assessed.” …
January 9, 2024
A Wall Street veteran is mounting a long-shot challenge to US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s June 25 Democratic primary, marking the first intra-party battle she’s faced in four years.
Martin W. Dolan, 66, who spent 30 years working for Jefferies Financial Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and other financial firms, formally registered a campaign committee this week to run against Ocasio-Cortez. He now begins a month-long sprint to gather the necessary signatures to land a spot on the ballot for the 14th congressional district, which includes parts of northern Queens and the Bronx…
Akira MacKenziesays
@406
Will we actually raise taxes now? Hell no! Just because Reaganomics failed doesn’t erase the fact that most people are greedy shits (and they all aren’t rich) who don’t want to pay their dues.
Things aren’t going to get any better until the upper class is gone.
Not only did Donald Trump bring up Hillary Clinton’s emails again Wednesday night, but the former president—eight years after he made that issue central to the 2016 campaign—still doesn’t seem to have a grasp on the scandal that helped him become president.
On Newsmax, where friendly host Greg Kelly suggested Trump is protected by “the hand of God” and lobbed softball questions like whether he is “lonely,” the former president went into a diatribe about his then-Democratic opponent that sounded quite familiar.
Clinton “used all sorts of acid testing and everything else,” Trump said, in reference to the former secretary of state deleting emails that were stored on her work server, and which her staff had deemed private in nature. “They call it BleachBit, but it’s essentially acid that will destroy everything, you know, within ten miles. I mean, what she did was unbelievable. Nothing happens to her.”
First lady Jill Biden is teaming up with singer Christina Aguilera in a social media message urging voters to support abortion rights in elections this fall…
As RFK Jr. ponders which celebrity to tap as his VP, another third-party presidential ticket seems to be running out of steam.
No Labels, the self-proclaimed centrist organization with dark money funding, had one of its national leaders abruptly resign Wednesday.
Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R), who served as one of the group’s national co-chairs, informed the organization he was quitting to spend more time with his family, according to the Wall Street Journal. The departure arrives a day before No Labels was set to debut a committee for selecting its presidential candidate. McCrory began working for the organization a year after his failed 2022 Senate campaign and had said he was on the road volunteering for the group…
The Kremlin has fired its top naval commander, the biggest fallout yet from a series of devastating attacks by Ukraine on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, according to a Ukrainian and a Western official.
Ukraine sank 15 Russian ships over a period of six months.
Sen̓áḵw, an 11-tower development […] will be the densest neighbourhood in Canada, providing thousands of homes for Vancouverites who have long been squeezed between the country’s priciest real estate and some of its lowest vacancy rates.
[…]
Because the project is on First Nations land, not city land, it’s under Squamish authority, free of Vancouver’s zoning rules. And the Nation has chosen to build bigger, denser and taller than any development on city property would be allowed.
[…]
There’s also been a persistent sense of disbelief that Indigenous people could be responsible for this futuristic version of urban living. […] The fact is, Canadians aren’t used to seeing Indigenous people occupy places that are socially, economically or geographically valuable
[…]
the return of Sen̓áḵw to the Squamish people was only achieved after decades of court battles. […] a particularly and literally towering example of this sovereignty in action, one rising up from the heart of a major city. […] Sen̓áḵw won’t be finished until around 2030.
birgerjohanssonsays
Starship 3rd launch attempt today. The launch window begins at 1200 GMT / 7 am local time.
birgerjohanssonsays
MeidasTouch:
“Ron DeSantis trashes Libs of TikTok for misinformation”
The launch of the third Starship test was nominal.
The first stage flew back to the lsunch site but failed at am altitude of ca. 1 km.
The second stage/Starship entered the intended path and flew on a ballistic trajectory over Africa.
Contact was reacquired on the other side of the world after 40 minutes.
Contact with Starship was lost during descent over the Indian Ocean at an altitude of 65 km and a velocity of slightly more than 7 km/s.
It is assumed to have failed re-entry at this point.
The objective of the launch was to test the first and second stages during launch.
The failure of the first stage to perform a soft landing and the failure of Starship/the second stage during re-entry were expected.
A judge in the UK High Court has declared that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, marking the end of a years-long debate. From a report:
“The evidence is overwhelming,” said Honourable Mr. Justice James Mellor, delivering a surprise ruling at the close of the trial. “Dr. Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin white paper. Dr. Wright is not the person that operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Dr. Wright is not the person that created the Bitcoin system. Nor is Dr. Wright the author of the Bitcoin software,” he said.
…
[…] the RNC isn’t just moving personnel out, it’s also bringing new personnel in. NBC News reported on the party hiring two new lawyers to lead its legal efforts.
Republican lawyer Charlie Spies will serve as the RNC’s chief counsel, the source said. … Christina Bobb, who has served on the Trump campaign’s legal team and is a prominent figure in pushing the GOP’s unfounded claims of a stolen 2020 election, will serve as senior counsel for election integrity, the source said.
At first blush, this might not seem especially notable. After all, it’s an election year; recent history reminds us that court fights are likely; so it stands to reason that the major parties would add staff to their respective legal departments.
But in this instance, it’s not quite that simple — because Bobb is not just another Republican lawyer. A Washington Post analysis summarized:
She has a robust pedigree, at least as far as Trump is concerned. Soon after the 2020 election, she began working with Giuliani and others to elevate baseless or later-debunked claims about the results in various states having been tainted by fraud. She was involved in the “audit” of votes in Arizona, working with Trump campaign official (and Georgia co-defendant) Mike Roman. She wrote a book, published in January 2023, cataloguing familiar (and baseless or debunked) criticisms of the results. It’s all there, from Antrim County to State Farm Arena to True the Vote. (The book’s forward was written by Stephen K. Bannon; Jim Hoft of the conspiracy-promoting site Gateway Pundit wrote a blurb.)
Really, that’s just a sampling. Bobb talked in 2022 about a plot to overturn the 2020 election results and possibly reinstate Trump to the White House. A year later, the lawyer raised the possibility of someone “intentionally” having released Covid as part of a scheme to interfere with Trump’s re-election effort.
A year after that, she suggested that it shouldn’t much matter whether a presidential candidate was found guilty of insurrection.
Complicating matters, in 2022, a leading Justice Department official went to Mar-a-Lago with a few FBI agents in the hopes of retrieving documents Trump improperly took and refused to voluntarily give back. As part of that meeting, as regular readers might recall, it was Bobb who signed a certification statement, indicating that the former president had fully complied with a grand jury subpoena and no longer had any classified materials at his glorified country club.
That statement, we now know, wasn’t true: As the FBI discovered during a search two months later, Trump still had plenty of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Bobb later told investigators that she did not draft the statement she signed and blamed the mess on another Trump attorney.
In other words, the lawyer who will help oversee the Republican National Committee’s “election integrity” efforts is a “Big Lie” proponent and election conspiracy theorist who played a prominent role in a scandal that led to one of Donald Trump’s many felony indictments.
Former President Trump has ruled out “some people” who he “didn’t think behaved properly” from contention for his vice presidential slot, he said Wednesday.
“I probably have, a couple of people that you may know very well,” Trump said in an interview on Newsmax’s “Greg Kelly Reports” when asked whom he is excluding from consideration as his running mate. The interview was highlighted by Mediaite.
“Some people that I didn’t think behaved properly,” Trump continued. “Yeah, I think I’ve ruled some people out, but I’ve ruled a lot of people in. We have a lot of great people in the Republican Party, and they’ll do a terrific job, I think, but certainly I have people that I wouldn’t want as a vice president.” …
Go ahead, let your mind boggle over what Mr. “Grab ’em by the pussy” would consider improper behavior.
The far-right House Freedom Caucus crawled out of the tea party movement’s carcass in 2015 with the goal of obstructing every piece of legislation that could help Americans. The extremist bloc has mushroomed since, and now permeates state legislatures across the country.
Much like we’ve seen at the federal level, Freedom Caucus offshoots at the state level have resulted in the same infighting, ludicrous proposed legislation, and obstructionist tactics so loved by Congress members like Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz.
The State Freedom Caucus Network’s website lists the state legislators who are proud to be the GOP’s agents of chaos at the local level. [map at the link]
Not every Republican is a fan, including South Carolina state Rep. Micah Caskey.
“They are a ‘let’s govern by bumper sticker’ entity. I have a general contempt for what I see as the lack of integrity and honesty with which they approach legislating,” he told Politico.
Before we hoist Caskey up on our shoulders as a voice of reason, it is important to point out that one of his big beefs with South Carolina Freedom Caucus members is that their extremist ideology and penchant for hard-line absolutism lead to fewer conservative policies moving through the Republican-controlled state Legislature.
Freedom Caucus cohorts have been especially active in Missouri, Arizona, and Idaho in early 2024, and their members have attempted some truly unhinged maneuvers:
Missouri state Sen. Denny Hoskins is pushing an “Anti-Red Flag Gun Seizure Act” that would ban any federal orders or court orders of protection that include confiscating someone’s firearms.
Arizona state Sen. Justine Wadsack, a true gun lobby sycophant, has offered up a bill that would allow anyone in her gun-fetish-friendly state to arrest shoplifters.
State Sen. Tammy Nichols, who co-chairs the Idaho Freedom Caucus, has championed a very important piece of historic legislation that would amend the state’s existing specialty license plates law to “establish a Don’t Tread on Me license plate.”
In Missouri, state Rep. Justin Sparks has offered up HB 2621, which would prohibit Missouri’s medical schools from collaborating with clinics outside of the state on abortion-related training. I guess the “freedom” here is the freedom to not have reproductive rights?
Missouri state Sen. Nick Schroer’s bill would allow senators to duel one another—in the Senate chambers!–legally.
Not only is the duel bill absurd, it is ahistorical. Yale historian Joanne B. Freeman tweeted, ”You know…back in the day, they were smart enough to take dueling OUTSIDE. The draft that I saw suggests doing it in the chamber. This doesn’t show guts or bravery or manhood—if it’s supposed to. It shows utter stupidity.”
[…] Trump isn’t just a grifter. He is a vampire. He spends his life attempting to squeeze people for whatever dimes he can, whether it be through sales of mail-order meat or bottled water or the right to live in large buildings with his name plastered across them in the largest possible letters. It’s not enough for the RNC to be loyal to him, and it’s not enough for the RNC to function as his personal campaign arm. He wants all the money he can get, and installing Walmart Ivanka [Lara Trump] as co-chair of the committee is the best way to ensure the RNC won’t think twice about forking over even more cash for his bills.
And Republican voters? They seem just fine with it. They couldn’t be a more willing group of suckers.
South Dakota is so rarely found on the leading edge of the far out, the wiggy, the California-esque. But it has now staked its claim.
First to Outlaw Abortion This Century. The state legislature of South Dakota, in all its wisdom and majesty, a legislature comprised of sons and daughters of the soil from Aberdeen to Zell, have usurped the right of the women of that state to decide whether or not to bear the child of an unwanted pregnancy. THEY will decide. Women will do what they decide. …
In South Dakota, pharmacists can refuse to fill a prescription for contraceptives should it trouble their conscience, and some groups who worked on the anti-abortion bill believe contraception also needs to be outlawed. Good plan. After that, we’ll reconsider women’s property rights, civil rights and voting rights.
CHEERS to going crazy irrational!!! Let’s hear it for secular holidays—Yaaay!!! Today is 3/14, and at 1:59 this afternoon the world will erupt in slide-rule giddyness for Pi Day. Jet Propulsion Laboratory geeks speak, you listen:
Fred Calef, a geospatial information scientist at JPL, uses pi to make measurements—like perimeter, area and volume—of features on Mars.
“I use pi to measure the circularity of features, or how round or compact they are,” said Calef. “Craters become more elliptical if the projectile hits the surface at a lower angle, so I use pi to measure how round a crater is to see if it impacted at a low angle.”
“We use pi every day commanding rovers on Mars,” said Hallie Gengl, a rover planner for the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, “Everything from taking images, turning the wheels, driving around, operating the robotic arm, and even talking to Earth.”
I admit I got mostly Cs and Ds in math, so I think I’ll stick with regular pie today, thanks. Humble. With 3.141592653 scoops of ice cream.
P.S. Happy birthday to pi fan Albert Einstein. He once said, “He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.” Wild guess: not a MAGA cult fan.
CHEERS to MAGAs in disarray. The old saw that says Republicans march in total lockstep has been turned on its ear in the age of the Trump crime syndicate, which functions moment-to-moment and turns on any member who doesn’t do what he or she is told by Hair Fuhrer. As we’ve seen many times recently in Congress, for example, cultist allies will turn on each other for something as petty as wearing their red hat slightly askew or saying “Good morning” to a Democrat. With paranoia and power-mongering raging across the party, this is predictable:
Many Republicans plan to skip the House GOP retreat as they grumble about both the location and the idea of spending time with one another, with tensions still running high inside the party in the wake of their unprecedented speakership drama.
Fewer than 100 Republicans have RSVP’d to attend the retreat, which is less than half of the entire conference, according to a GOP source familiar with the attendance sheet.
And speaking of retreats, Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado says he’s fleeing the House this month, much earlier than expected. He says he wants to spend more time with his anything else.
[…] The sounds of a healthy reef could be used to encourage coral larvae to recolonize damaged or degraded reefs, according to a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science on Tuesday. Underwater speakers that play the sounds of a healthy reef, such as fish calls, were found to help coral larvae settle at rates up to seven times higher. […]
In their first days of life, coral larvae make a permanent decision of where they will settle and metamorphose into adults—swimming or drifting with the currents in an effort to seek the right conditions to settle. The sounds of the reef are important settlement cues, the paper found. Corals are immobile as adults, so the larval stage is their only opportunity to select a good habitat. […]
Reef populations will need all the help they can get to recover from climate change-induced stressors, [marine biologist Nadege] Aoki said.
[…] the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said this week that it’s prepared to spend $200 million to mobilize working-class voters in support of Biden and the Democratic ticket.
If American voters are looking for a sharp contrast between the parties on reproductive rights, I have some good news for the electorate.
Two weeks ago, for example, Donald Trump dangled the prospect of a national abortion ban, which he’s prepared to consider if voters return him to the White House. Today, in contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris will become the first official ever elected to national office to visit an abortion clinic.
[…] Away from national spotlight, the political machinations are every bit as notable. Politico reported a couple of days ago, for example, that prominent opponents of reproductive rights are pushing Republicans to oppose protections for in vitro fertilization, and the same day, Axios reported that House GOP leaders invited leading anti-abortion activists to join the Republican conference for its annual retreat.
[…] The idea that the GOP has a “brand problem, not a policy problem” when it comes to abortion is not altogether new — there was some related chatter along these lines last year — but it’s an assertion that’s difficult to take seriously.
In fact, I more or less assumed that Republicans would know better by now. In August 2022, for example — a couple of months after Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade — Democrats flipped Alaska’s U.S. House seat. A week later, in a New York congressional special election in which the National Republican Congressional Committee effectively guaranteed success, Democrats celebrated another key win.
The 2022 midterms, meanwhile, were a history-defying success story for Democrats, thanks in part to the focus on reproductive rights, and on Election Day 2023, the party scored big wins in Kentucky and Virginia. (In Virginia, in particular, GOP officials were certain they’d finally figured out how to properly deal with the abortion issue. They lost soon after.)
And did I mention the Wisconsin state Supreme Court election? And the abortion rights votes in Ohio and Kansas? Because they’re directly relevant to this conversation, too.
To hear some Republicans tell it, these defeats can be chalked up to poor messaging. Voters would be more comfortable with GOP officials imposing governmental restrictions on Americans’ reproductive rights, the argument goes, if only the party could come up with compelling rhetoric on the subject. It’s an idea rooted in the assumption that abortion bans could theoretically be popular — or at least politically palatable — with the right sales pitch.
Between the latest election results and the latest polling, Democrats will be very fortunate if Republicans move forward in the coming months with these misguided assumptions.
In 2022, Elise Stefanik condemned a spending bill for advancing a “far-left radical agenda.” In 2024, she’s taking credit for one of the bill’s investments.
Partway through President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last week, he touted federal investments in initiatives made possible by Democratic legislation, and added a brief dig at some of his Republican detractors.
“By the way, I noticed some of you who’ve strongly voted against it are cheering on that money coming in,” the president said, adding, “If any of you don’t want that money in your district, just let me know.”
Biden’s comment was an acknowledgement of a phenomenon that pops up more often than it should: GOP lawmakers have a habit of voting against Democratic legislation, only to turn around and take credit when the Democratic legislation makes investments in their states and districts.
Take this week, for example. House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik issued this press release touting news in her upstate New York district.
In case you missed it, today, North Country Now reported that Congresswoman Elise Stefanik secured $1.8 million in funding for a Water District Development Project in the Town of Massena through the Consolidated Appropriations Act. This funding will be used to provide public water service to the residents of Massena who are currently inadequately served by failing well systems.
It was accompanied by a social media message in which the GOP congresswoman said how “proud” she was to announce the federal investment in her community.
A day later, there was some discussion about the funding for the local project coming by way of the Inflation Reduction Act, which Stefanik opposed and condemned.
But that apparently wasn’t quite right: The funding came from a different Democratic bill — which Stefanik also opposed and condemned. […]
When the legislation in question reached the House floor, Stefanik said the spending would advance the Democrats’ “far-left radical agenda,” adding that House Democrats had “proven” that “their priorities are not for hardworking Americans.”
Stefanik went on to argue in December 2022 — the last full month before Republicans would take over the House — that in the new Congress, GOP members would “rein in reckless spending.” It came on the heels of a related statement in which the congresswoman declared, “We need to absolutely stop the spending.” […]
Britain this week showed off a new laser weapon that its military says could deliver lethal missile or aircraft defense at around $13 a shot, potentially saving tens of millions of dollars over the cost of missile interceptors that do the job now.
Newly released video of a test of what the United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry calls the DragonFire, a laser directed energy weapon (LDEW) system, captured what the ministry says was the successful use of the laser against an aerial target during a January demonstration in Scotland…
… What changed since 2008 is a vivid example of a larger upheaval in American politics. The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still say raw milk is dangerous and the state dairy lobby sent lobbyists to the Iowa Capitol to defeat Schultz’s bill. But Iowa has flipped — it’s a Republican state now, from the presidential vote to the governor’s office to the near-supermajority Legislature — and that flip has occurred alongside even larger shifts in national politics, spurred on by the rise of Donald Trump. With Trump has come a new GOP electorate, one more rural, more working class, less ideological and generally more distrustful of lobbyists, big business and “the experts.” And that has been a big help for a cause that is bucking just about every one of those groups.
Long a fringe health food for new-age hippies and fad-chasing liberal foodies, raw milk has won over the hearts and minds of GOP legislators and regulators in the last few years…
146 awards will support 102 Tribes and 9 Tribal organizations to strengthen preparedness, resilience in the face of climate change.
The Department of the Interior today announced that more than $120 million from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda will fund 146 projects to help Tribal communities plan for and implement projects to tackle severe climate-related environmental threats to their homelands.
This investment from the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and annual appropriations will help Tribes proactively plan for and adapt to these threats and safely relocate critical community infrastructure, where necessary. It is the largest amount of annual funding awarded to Tribes and Tribal organizations in the history of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Tribal Climate Annual Awards Program, with 102 Tribes and 9 Tribal organizations receiving funding.
[…] “The most severe impacts of climate change fall disproportionately on communities that are least able to prepare for and recover from them,” said White House Senior Advisor to the President and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Tom Perez. “The Biden-Harris Administration is making unprecedented investments to ensure Tribal communities have the resources to develop effective community-driven climate resilience strategies.”
[…] This historic funding also advances the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice40 Initiative, which sets the goal that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.
Manhattan prosecutors said they will not oppose a 30-day adjournment of former President Trump’s upcoming hush money trial after receiving thousands of new documents in recent days.
The U.S. Attorney’s office has turned over 73,000 pages of records since March 4, almost half of which were produced on Wednesday, court filings show. Prosecutors indicated more records are expected to be turned over by next week.
“Based on our initial review of yesterday’s production, those records appear to contain materials related to the subject matter of this case, including materials that the People requested from the USAO more than a year ago and that the USAO previously declined to provide,” prosecutors wrote.
“[T]he People are ready for trial on March 25. Nonetheless, in light of the distinctive circumstances described below, the People do not oppose a brief adjournment of up to 30 days to permit sufficient time for defendant to review the USAO productions”
Allison Russell, she is this ridiculously talented Grammy-winning singer/songwriter who does this country/folk/Americana thing, she was part of a band called Birds of Chicago, she’s worked with Jason Isbell, she’s worked with Brandi Carlile, she’s fucking great. She also participated in the Black Opry, which is … UH OH! Hold on to your shrinking nuts, MAGA, she’s a Black country star! Turns out there were a bunch of them even BEFORE Beyoncé personally murdered all the Republican white supremacist feelings by doing some country-fied music! (RELATED: Did Bey record “Jolene” for her record and is Dolly Parton excited about it? Sounds like it!) [embedded links are available at the main link]
Brandi Carlile, mentioned above, she is the ridiculously talented singer/songwriter who appears to be best friends with every artist she ever meets, including when she meets her heroes like Joni Mitchell and Elton John. (See: that Grammy performance. Also see: that she and Elton apparently just made a record together.) If we start typing about Brandi this will just be a post about Brandi, because — if you may spare us a self-referential moment — we have personally been listening to her for well over a decade, since the beginning, seen her in the smallest rooms, and we could not be more thrilled that her career has taken this turn.
Gloria Johnson, she is a Tennessee politician — she’s from Knoxville — who hasn’t bothered to make any records, is she even Tennessean? But she is running against Marsha Blackburn for the Senate, and Marsha Blackburn is a piece of shit, so that’s cool. Oh, also she was one of the Tennessee Three, the ones who famously got in trouble for speaking when the white men were speaking, to draw attention to gun violence. (That’s not the official reason the white supremacists gave, but fuck them.) Her two colleagues Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were expelled from the Tennessee House. (They later found their way back in, thanks to VOTERS.)
When Johnson was asked why the other two were expelled and she was not, she said, “I’ll answer your question; it might have to do with the color of our skin.”
Anyway, what do these three have in common?
Well, Russell got together a whole bunch of her best musical friends, including Carlile, and they made a song called “Tennessee Rise,” and the proceeds are going to Gloria Johnson’s campaign, and just in general to support social justice in the state. (That’s also where you can donate, should you be interested.)
Together, this lineup is calling itself the Tennessee Freedom Singers, and oh what a lineup it is. [complete list available at the link]
We regret to inform white MAGA men that a number of those are Black woman country artists and they are all awesome and you can all go fuck yourselves.
Here’s the song, which is really great, and was written by Russell and her husband, JT Nero. […] [video at the link, lyrics at the link]
By the way, we live in Tennessee, and we hadn’t heard about this, but apparently this isn’t the first time Russell has found herself having run-ins with the embarrassing pig Republican politicians of the state Lege. Look what happened when she won her Grammy earlier this year:
During a routine legislative session, two resolutions were proposed in the Tennessee House to honor both Russell and the band Paramore for their Grammy wins. However, House Republicans objected to the resolution honoring Russell while allowing the one for Paramore to pass. The objection moved the resolution to honor Russell off the legislature’s consent calendar, sending it back to a legislative committee. Due to the consent calendar rules, there was no debate over what objections the Republican lawmakers may have had with honoring Russell. It is not clear if the resolution will ever be approved.
The Republicans’ decision prompted Paramore’s lead singer, Hayley Williams, to call the move “blatant racism.” […]
“Unfortunately, there’s a pattern of behavior that’s pretty blatant,” Russell said. “Whether their issue with me is that I’m Black, or that I’m queer, or that I’m an immigrant to the U.S., I don’t know. Maybe none of the above, but one can speculate that has something to do with it.”
She’s not sure, but says it could have been because she committed the sin of speaking up for Justin Jones, one of the Black representatives of the Tennessee Three who was expelled.
How dare she, right?
Anyway, all these people are cool, Alison Russell is cool, Brandi Carlile is cool, Gloria Johnson is cool, fuck Marsha Blackburn, the end.
Damage to at least three subsea cables off the west coast of Africa is disrupting internet services across the continent.
The West Africa Cable System, MainOne and ACE sea cables — arteries for telecommunications data — were all affected on Thursday, triggering outages and connectivity issues for mobile operators and internet service providers, according to data from internet analysis firms including NetBlocks, Kentik and Cloudflare. The cause of the cable faults has not yet been determined…
An invasive, dog-killing parasite is now lurking in Southern California. In new research this week, scientists say they’ve confirmed the newfound spread of the flatworm Heterobilharzia americana to the area. The parasite is not thought to be a danger to humans, but it could become an emerging threat to pets and animals living along the lengthy Colorado River, the researchers say…
It’s going to be a little harder to find porn in the Lone Star State. Pornhub is no longer available to Texas residents thanks to a lawsuit from the state’s attorney general.
Horny Texans saw a very unsexy message when visiting the previously mentioned porn sites on Thursday.
“As you may know, your elected officials in Texas are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” the message reads. “Unfortunately, the Texas law for age verification is ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous. Until the real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in Texas.”
Pornhub’s sexy step-sister sites Redtube, Brazzers, and YouPorn are also showing the same message. Aylo, Pornhub’s parent company, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the ban…
Bernie Sanders, the nefarious propagandist for the Soviet Union, has done it again. This time, the Senator from Vermont has introduced a bill that would drastically reduce Americans’ working hours while maintaining their current levels of income. The legislation cites concerns about new forms of automation currently sweeping the country (i.e., AI) as the impetus for the bill.
Sanders’s new Thirty-Two-Hour Workweek Act—which could just as easily be called the Three-Day Weekend Act—would create a four-day workweek in the U.S., while mandating new overtime pay minimums to ensure that companies are adequately covering workers’ cost of living. In fact, the proposed law would bar employers from paying employees less than they are currently being paid, despite the reduction in working hours…
Back in 2023, we reported that NASA had lost telemetry and thus alignment, steering controls, and usable research data from its historic Voyager 1 probe as it drifted deeper into space, leaving its fate uncertain— but today, a new NASA blog post gives us some more hope for the Voyager. The agency now has a full readout of the ship’s FDS memory, which could hopefully lead to a fix.
NASA never actually lost communication with the device. Usable research data and most controls have simply not been working for months, though— which is particularly problematic when even sending signals to the Voyager in the depths of space can take as long as 22.5 hours, 45 hours once you count the round trip. If the issues with Voyager can’t be fixed, it will indeed be lost to the cosmos, permanently, though not before having made human history in the process.
So, why is Voyager 1, the probe also known as the farthest human-made object from Earth, in such a position where it could be permanently retired 45 years after its launch in 1977? The date of that original launch should give a hint: the primitive equivalent to RAM inside the Voyager’s onboard Flight Data System (FDS), finally flipped or corrupted. Truthfully, the fact it’s even lasted this long drifting through the stars is kind of a miracle in and of itself.
So, on March 1, NASA decided to send a “poke” to Voyager 1. The “poke” was a command that pushed the FDS through different sequences in hopes of finding the offending bits. The response, received on March 3rd, was mostly the same indecipherable data stream as before, but with a new signal in an unrecognizable format…
John Moralessays
RUSSIAN Oil Refineries Close After Second Day of Drone Attacks as Ukraine Targets Russian Oil Income
Ukraine has launched a SECOND consecutive day of DRONE ATTACKS against Russian Oil Refineries located IN RUSSIA. These attacks show that Ukraine is now looking to target longer range attacks on infrastructure in Russia to reduce the amount of revenue that Russia is earning from Oil Exports. In this video I provide more details on the latest attacks, look at the BRAVE1 Program that Ukraine has introduced to finance technological developments, review the impact on Oil Prices and discuss the potential impact on both Russia’s Oil & Gas Industry and the Russian Economy.
Re: John Morales @ #446…
I would presume that Ukraine intends to do more than curb Russian oil exports. They probably want to impact the fuel supplies that the Russian Army relies on. No fuel and tanks, APVs, trucks, etc., etc. don’t move. Hard to move artillery ammo to where the guns are sited without trucks…
John Moralessays
whheydt, I think a salient aspect is that Ukraine is taking the war to Russia in a way Russians can’t ignore.
The fiction of the ‘special military operation’ is more than threadbare, by now.
—
In other developments:
Ukraine has Lithuanian Prime Minister Šimonytė on the Russian threat and European security | DW News
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė was in Berlin Thursday for defense and security talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Support for Ukraine’s war with Russia and German plans to station troops in Lithuania were on the agenda. After the meeting DW News spoke to Prime Minister Lithuanian Šimonytė.
The top-hatted “drinking bird,” once a fixture in science classrooms for demonstrating the basics of thermodynamics, is making a surprising comeback — as the inspiration for a new clean-energy generator that could one day power your watch and phone.
Scientists in Hong Kong and China have used the famous toy, also known as the “Dippy Bird,” to develop an engine capable of using the power of water evaporation to generate electricity, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Device.
The new method works by converting the energy produced by the bird’s characteristic back-and-forth movement into electrical power…
The U.K. on Wednesday said it would ban foreign governments from owning newspapers and magazines in the country, fueling an international debate about overseas influence on both traditional media and social platforms such as TikTok.
The decision follows concern over the proposed takeover of The Telegraph newspaper and The Spectator magazine by a United Arab Emirates-linked firm backed by Emirati Vice President Sheikh Mansour…
Since sabotaging the economy on his way out the door, Steven Mnuchin, the former secretary of the Treasury Department under Donald Trump, has made relatively few appearances in the media.
He hasn’t written an exposé on his time in the White House. He hasn’t joined the sad parade of hangers-on who appear at Trump rallies. Instead, Mnuchin busied himself collecting a big check from Saudi Arabia and using it to help start a $2.5 billion private equity fund. But other than buying into an entertainment company and testifying in support of a Trump ally suspected of making off with confidential information, Mnuchin seems largely to have stayed out of the news.
Now he’s back in a big way, heading up a conveniently timed effort to purchase the popular video app TikTok a day after the House passed legislation that would force the social media app’s Chinese owners to divest or withdraw from the U.S. market.
As CNN reports, Mnuchn is putting together an investment group to buy the app—and its user base of 1.5 billion accounts—from Chinese company ByteDance.
In an interview with CNBC, Mnuchin declared that the app is “worth a lot of money.”
Which is true. Elon Musk famously paid $44 billion for a user base roughly one-third the size of the one held by TikTok. While it’s clear that Musk overpaid, it’s likely that TikTok, with its younger user base and reputation for starting trends, will go for a higher amount.
Mnuchin had a reported personal net worth of around $400 million in 2019, and even the total value of his investment fund isn’t going to come close to covering a check to ByteDance. Whatever Mnuchin’s bid for the app may be, he’ll need to gather other investors.
But whatever the price may be, one thing is sure: TikTok will be sold a lot cheaper if the legislation making it through Congress is signed.
That legislation gives ByteDance only six months to either sell off TikTok or be shut out of the U.S. market. That brief window means that if ByteDance does choose to sell the app, it will be doing so under duress and probably with a limited set of suitors. And it knows that if it does not sell the app, it will be losing access to one of its most lucrative markets.
Mnuchin stands a much better chance of being able to come up with a potential buyout deal under these conditions. He’s also likely to get TikTok a lot cheaper than if he had walked up to ByteDance before this legislation was introduced and tried to strike a deal.
It’s probably going past the boundaries of reasonable speculation and edging toward conspiracy theory to suggest that forcing ByteDance to divest themselves of TikTok at fire-sale prices is the intention of the legislation now heading to the Senate. It’s more likely that the biggest part of the push against TikTok came simply because it was a convenient target of demonstrating strength against the Chinese Communist Party. H.R. 7521 was originally sponsored by Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher. He also chairs the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, which was formed in January 2023.
But even if making TikTok available for a Trump ally to snap up at a bargain price wasn’t the intention, it could well end up being the effect.
Trump has his own platform, Truth Social, which is currently being roiled by a lawsuit between Trump and the founders. With only about 607,000 active users, Truth Social is a relative pipsqueak, but it provides Trump with a friendly space to launch his rants.
Musk, who recently met with Trump, frequently spreads conspiracy theories about immigrants, and uses the site formerly known as Twitter to spread a particular form of racism. That site has over half a billion active users.
Should Mnuchin gain control of TikTok, that would place Trump allies in control of a significant portion of major social media platforms.
[…] there’s a serious threat that authoritarian white nationalism will have much greater power on those sites.
As Musk has demonstrated at X, the hand at the helm sets the rules for what can and cannot be said, which ideas get promoted, and which users get silenced. It’s easy to understand why Mnuchin and his wealthy friends would like that level of control over TikTok.
Maybe someone other than Mnuchin will buy TikTok, but whoever makes the winning offer to ByteDance is going to be someone with deep pockets. And considering the discouraging lack of interest displayed by any progressive billionaires in rescuing foundering traditional media outlets, no one should count on them popping up this time, either.
The money raised is being donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians, a charity helping to provide shelter, food and urgent medical aid in Gaza. Kasparis continued: “I personally was a little bit worried that the auction was a bit silly for the cause, but we thought, if it raises money, that’s the most important thing.
birgerjohanssonsays
I enjoyed this exclamation I found at Youtube.
“It’sThe End of the Tories as We Know Them (and I Feel Fine)”
Adding caffeine can enhance the efficiency of fuel cells, reducing the need for platinum in electrodes and significantly reducing the cost of making them, according to researchers in Japan…
…
Now, Walmart is piloting a project with the San Francisco Bay area startup Unspun to test whether it can manufacture the retailer’s in-house brand of chinos in the US using a technology called 3D weaving. The experiment is part of a push to nearshore Walmart’s supply chain and cut down on emissions and waste associated with textile production…
In a groundbreaking announcement at the 55th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in The Woodlands, Texas, scientists revealed the discovery of a giant volcano and possible sheet of buried glacier ice in the eastern part of Mars’ Tharsis volcanic province near the planet’s equator.
Imaged repeatedly by orbiting spacecraft around Mars since Mariner 9 in 1971—but deeply eroded beyond easy recognition, the giant volcano had been hiding in plain sight for decades in one of Mars’ most iconic regions, at the boundary between the heavily fractured maze-like Noctis Labyrinthus (Labyrinth of the Night) and the monumental canyons of Valles Marineris (Valleys of Mariner).
Provisionally designated “Noctis volcano” pending an official name, the structure is centered at 7° 35′ S, 93° 55′ W. It reaches +9022 meters (29,600 feet) in elevation and spans 450 kilometers (280 miles) in width. The volcano’s gigantic size and complex modification history indicate that it has been active for a very long time. In its southeastern part lies a thin, recent volcanic deposit beneath which glacier ice is likely still present…
A Fulton County judge ruled Friday that District Attorney Fani Willis and her office may remain on the 2020 election case involving former President Donald Trump and his allies if Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor who was in a romantic relationship with Willis, steps aside.
In a 23-page decision from Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, the court concluded that “the prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the state selects one of two options. The district attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office, and refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for reassignment. Alternatively, [special assistant district attorney] Wade can withdraw, allowing the district attorney, the defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case.” …
Excerpts from a longer discussion of Trump’s frequent references to cutting Social Security and Medicare, and his frequent attempts to back track while not making sense:
[…] Trump now wants voters to believe he’ll “never” take steps to undermine Social Security and Medicare, but as a candidate in 2016, he made identical campaign promises, which he proceeded to break.
“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump declared in 2015. “Every other Republican’s going to cut, and even if they wouldn’t, they don’t know what to do because they don’t know where the money is. I do. I do.”
Once in office, he changed direction. As a Washington Post report summarized last year, “His avowed stance, however, is at odds with Trump’s own record as president: Each of his White House budget proposals included cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs.” […]
Why should voters who care about Social Security and Medicare take note? In part because Trump is making promises that he’s very likely to break, and in part because of the broader political circumstances.
As The New York Times’ Paul Krugman explained in his latest column, “Trump gives no indication here that he really knows what he’s talking about. What that could mean in practice, however, is that if he gets back to the White House, he’ll do for Social Security and Medicare what he did in his almost successful attempt to replace Obamacare: leave the drafting of legislation to right-wing ideologues who do understand how the programs work — and who want to gut them.” […]
Former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon has a new addition for the right-wing conspiracy theory world. During an interview with former Breitbart editor Raheem Kassam on “Bannon’s War Room podcast,” the two men talked about the obstacles facing Trump this election season, including the psychological operator Taylor Swift.
If you don’t know, according to conspiracists, Taylor Swift is not-so-secretly being used by deep-state forces hellbent on reelecting President Joe Biden. Bannon plussed-up the conspiracy theory by implying that Swift’s successful tour’s dates were not coincidental. Cue dramatic sting!
BANNON: This is the Taylor Swift situation. I don’t believe in coincidences. Her tour, which is the biggest tour, I think, in music history, stops on 20 August and doesn’t pick back up until mid-November, early to mid-November. To be fully available after Labor Day to do whatever. And she’s pretty adamant. She got involved in the ‘22 midterms, and Taylor Swift, with TikTok in back, is a formidable presence. And anybody that doesn’t believe that, I don’t think is looking at the demographic and the power she has with that demographic.
Kassam took this hot potato of an idea, slowly responding, “Yeah, there’s a lot there. Yeah,” and then gave his own retelling of the Bannon conspiracy theory:
You’ve got to read between some of these lines here. Remember, she was so—she was so slammed in getting all these tour dates jammed in, especially around the Super Bowl. They actually say she got sick, but she kept performing afterwards. So she hasn’t had a break, even though she was sick. But she will take a break on the couple of months run-up, right up until the election. I wonder what could be happening then? I wonder who she might be going up on stage with every couple of days? You know, we saw those—we saw that. Hey, put the dots together, ladies and gentlemen.
[video at the link]
Ladies and gentlemen, connect the dots!
Bannon’s revelation really throws doubt onto the intelligence of the secret “deep state” puppet masters trying to rig the upcoming presidential election. Instead of letting Taylor Swift speak directly to tens of thousands of her fans as a captured audience every night on tour, according to Steve and Raheem, she’s going to go on … stump speeches with President Joe Biden. [LOL]
Swift’s success in getting her fans to register to vote has really broken the brains of conservative pundits everywhere.
Donald Trump graced the conspiracy-spouting Newsmax with his doughy rage on Wednesday, and let’s just say the interview won’t be tamping down on speculation that his wordsmithing abilities—which were always spotty to begin with—are now crumbling before our very eyes.
Speaking with interviewer Greg Kelly, Trump waxed philosophic about why Hillary Clinton, um, apparently set off a weapon of mass destruction when “acid testing” her phones?
And the rest of the interview was just as bizarre. [video at the link]
What a masterful performance. From Kelly’s ultrasycophantic “Is it lonely at the top?” framing to Trump’s incoherent, barely-stream-of-consciousness answers, this really does capture the full feel of living in an authoritarian country where nobody is allowed to point out that Dear Leader fell off his rocker years ago and everyone must nod enthusiastically, no matter what absurdities come out of his word-hole.
There’s the portion in which Trump claims he has been treated worse than any other president ever:
I don’t care, Andrew Jackson or anybody else, nobody has tr—when you think of the fake things, nobody’s been treated like Trump, in terms of badly. Russia Russia Russia, Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine, everything was a scam.
Nobody’s been treated like Trump in terms of badly, he says. That’s a bit too long to embroider onto a hat, but it would probably make a decent bumper sticker slogan.
“Trump 2024: Nobody’s Been Treated Like Him In Terms Of Badly.”
We should note here that multiple presidents have been assassinated while in office but that hardly counts as hardship compared to the rudenesses Trump has endured, says Trump, in terms of Badly.
But things go completely off the rails after that masterful turn of phrase. And you have to admire the resolute look plastered on Kelly’s face as the host appears to slowly realize he’s sitting next to an absolute wackadoo who may or may not, at any point in the interview, suddenly demand the right to flay him and eat his face.
But by the way, they released Hillary Clinton. She hammered her phones. She used, uh, all sorts of acid testing on everything else, they call it, uh, bleach bit, but it’s essentially acid that will destroy everything, you know, within 10 miles. I mean what she did was unbelievable.
He’s right—it is unbelievable. It’s also complete gibberish. Just off-the-wall bizarre, from “acid testing” to “hammered” to supposed zones of destruction.
Nothing happens to her. Nothing happens to Bill Clinton, he took it out in his socks, you know there was a famous socks case, which he actually ended up winning
.
There are so many things wrong with that sentence that there’s no room to list them all, but there were no classified docs in the Bill Clinton case, nobody took anything out in their socks, and Trump’s version of events appears to be a case of full-on mushbrain.
Now, Donald Trump has never been an honest man, or a particularly coherent one. His memory has always been selective and, let’s just say, wildly imaginative. But at some point we have to ask ourselves whether his recent performances stretch into something measurably worse than what we’ve seen in previous years. [video at the link]
Those supercuts of Trump’s recent gaffes were so humiliating for Donald that he was quick to lie to his Truth Social fans that “Artificial Intelligence was used by them against me in their videos of me.” Nope, those were all real, genuine Trump performances, according to an analysis by Gizmodo.
It’s a mystery why Trump’s fans still consider him a macho strongman figure who’s smarter than anyone else on the planet, but maybe this stuff sounds like genius-level oration to the average MAGA voter. The rest of us, though? We’re a bit worried about you, Donald. Your ability to string coherent thoughts together appears to be doing not well, in terms of badly.
The awards are being handed out by a foundation chaired by a Trump donor.
On Wednesday, the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation announced the 2024 recipients of the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award. The winners: businessman Elon Musk, right-wing media kingpin Rupert Murdoch, lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, felonious Wall Streeter turned philanthropist Mike Milken, and actor Sylvester Stallone. The Foundation hailed these “iconic individuals” for their “extraordinary achievements.”
Veteran corporate lawyer Brendan Sullivan, who was Oliver North’s attorney during the Iran-contra scandal and who now chairs the RBG Award, noted, “The honorees reflect the integrity and achievement that defined Justice Ginsburg’s career and legend.” And the chair of the foundation, Julie Opperman, a big Republican donor and the widow of publishing titan Dwight Opperman, who once was CEO of Thomson Reuters, remarked that that the award embraces “the fullness of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy.”
Attaching Ginsburg’s name to Musk, who has amplified racist and antisemitic posts and ideas on X, and Murdoch, whose Fox News purposefully spread Trump’s disinformation about the 2020 election and has repeatedly deployed falsehoods to challenge and undermine the values that Ginsburg fought for her entire life, seemed an odd and inappropriate choice. That’s what Ginsburg’s family believes.
It has released a statement denouncing the awards:
The decision of the Opperman Foundation to bestow the RBG Women’s Leadership Award on this year’s slate of awardees is an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her legacy is one of deep commitment to justice and to the proposition that all persons deserve what she called “equal citizenship stature” under the Constitution. She was a singularly powerful voice for the equality and empowerment of women, including their ability to control their own bodies. As it was originally conceived and named, the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award honored that legacy by recognizing “an extraordinary woman who has exercised a positive and notable influence on society and served as an exemplary role model in both principles and practice.” This year, the Opperman Foundation has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.
The Justice’s family wish to make clear that they do not support using their mother’s name to celebrate this year’s slate of awardees, and that the Justice’s family has no affiliation with and does not endorse this award.
The statement noted that the Ginsburg family—the Supreme Court justice died in 2020—”fully supports the sentiments expressed” in a letter Trevor Morrison, a professor of law at New York University and a former clerk for Ginsburg, sent to Julie Opperman on Friday. He wrote that he was “appalled” by the news of these awards. Morrison pointed out:
Justice Ginsburg’s extraordinary legacy is one of a deep commitment to justice and to the proposition that all persons deserve what she called “equal citizenship stature” under the Constitution. She was a singularly powerful voice for the equality and empowerment of women, including their ability to control their own bodies. Beyond those substantive values, Justice Ginsburg had an abiding commitment to careful, rigorous analysis and to fair-minded engagement with people of opposing views.
It is difficult to see how the decision to bestow the RBG Award on this year’s slate reflects any appreciation for—or even awareness of—these dimensions of the Justice’s legacy. I will not single out any awardee individually, and I do not mean to raise the same objections about each of them. But I do mean to register in the strongest terms my concern that not everyone on this year’s slate reflects the values to which the Justice dedicated her career, and for which the Justice is rightly revered around the world.
According to Morrison, the foundation did not consult Ginsburg’s family about the awardees. He informed Opperman that Ginsburg’s two children, Jane and James Ginsburg, “have indicated to me that, unless the original award criteria, as accepted by Justice Ginsburg, are restored, they very much want their mother’s name to be removed from the award.” He added, “Each of this year’s awardees has achieved notable success in their careers, and each may well deserve accolades of one form or another. But the decision to bestow upon them the particular honor of the RBG Award is a striking betrayal of the Justice’s legacy.”
Julie Opperman according to Federal Election Commission filings, is a major Republican donor. In 2016, she donated $50,000 to Rebuilding America Now, a super PAC founded by Paul Manafort and Tom Barrack—two top Trump advisers—to support the Trump presidential campaign. That year, she also donated $2,700, the legal maximum, directly to the Trump campaign. In 2020 Opperman contributed $200,000 to Republican campaigns and PACs, including a $100,000 donation to the Take Back The House 2020 PAC and $92,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The awards are to be handed out April 13 at a gala to be held at the Library of Congress that will be part of an “exclusive three-day event for 100 invited guests,” which, according to the foundation, “is the “most anticipated” in Washington, DC. “With guests arriving from across the country and from around the world,” gala chair Amy Baier said, “we aim to make this as memorable an event for them as we are for these outstanding honorees.” Yet with the Ginsburg family absent, it will be little more than a high-rent farce and an insult to her legacy.
By any fair measure, 2020 was a nightmarish year. Americans confronted a deadly contagion. And a recession. And the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. And higher crime rates. And social unrest.
For Republicans, this is politically inconvenient. GOP officials keep trying to tell voters that they’re worse off now than they were four years ago — reality notwithstanding — but it’s impossible look back with a sense of nostalgia for the final year of Donald Trump’s term. It was, after all, one of the worst years many Americans have ever experienced.
With this in mind, the Republican National Committee is having to get creative. This week, for example, the party’s frequently mocked social media account pushed back against President Joe Biden’s claim that crime rates have fallen during his White House tenure — by comparing the status quo to 2019, instead of 2020. [Tweet and video at the link]
So, a few things.
First, it’s curious to see a political party focusing on crime rates while nominating a suspected felon for the nation’s highest office.
Second, the truth is that violent crime rates really have fallen in every year of Biden’s presidency. That’s not a matter of opinion; it’s a matter of quantifiable data. A recent NBC News report added that the murder rate in the United Sates in 2023 plummeted “at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded.”
Third, it’s been genuinely bizarre to watch Republicans play calendar games in recent years. Throughout Biden’s term, prominent GOP voices have blamed him for school closings in 2020, unemployment benefits in 2020, crime rates in 2020, fentanyl deaths in 2020, and even developments inside the Justice Department in 2020, seemingly indifferent to the fact that Biden was a private citizen in the final year of Trump’s tenure.
But this latest RNC effort puts a mind-numbing twist on the strategy. Instead of pretending Biden was the president in 2020, the party this week decided to skip over 2020 as if it didn’t happen.
I fear it’s only a matter of time before Republicans decide it’s easier to tweak the old Ronald Reagan adage and start asking, “Are you better off now than you were five years ago?”
Campaign news tidbits, as summarized by Steve Benen:
* CNN reported that Michele Morrow, the Republican nominee to oversee North Carolina’s public schools, “has a history marked by extreme and controversial comments, including sharing baseless conspiracy theories and frequent calls for the execution of prominent Democrats.”
* Remember when Donald Trump said donors who contributed to Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign would be “permanently” barred from Trump World? He didn’t mean it: USA Today reports on the former president’s outreach to his former rival’s financial supporters.
[…] * Right around the time that House Speaker Mike Johnson was imploring his members not to campaign against their own GOP colleagues, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida was in Texas, hoping to rally support for Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales’ primary rival.
* As New Jersey’s filing deadline approaches, indicted Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez is reportedly considering running for a fourth term as an independent. In related news, a federal judge ruled this week that the senator cannot claim legislative immunity in his criminal case.
* Though it seems difficult to believe, Eric Hovde, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Wisconsin, reportedly suggested in 2017 that alcohol should only be available to people who brew or distill it themselves.
* And as the questions about South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s video for a dentist in Texas continue, the Republican governor is now facing a lawsuit related to her efforts.
Kristi Noem was just monetizing her elected office, like Trump. It is now all grift all the time.
Associated Press: The first ship to use a new sea route approaches Gaza with 200 tons of aid.
Video at the link.
A ship carrying 200 tons of aid approached the coast of Gaza on Friday in a mission to inaugurate a sea route from Cyprus to help alleviate the humanitarian crisis in the enclave five months into the war between Israel and Hamas.
The ship, operated by the Spanish aid group Open Arms, left Cyprus on Tuesday towing a barge laden with food sent by World Central Kitchen, the charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés. It could be seen off Gaza’s coast Friday morning.
Israel has been under increasing pressure to allow more aid into Gaza. The United States has joined other countries in airdropping supplies to the isolated region of northern Gaza and has announced separate plans to construct a pier to get aid in.
Aid groups said the airdrops and sea shipments are far less efficient ways of delivering the massive amounts of aid needed in Gaza. Instead, the groups have called on Israel to guarantee safe corridors for truck convoys after land deliveries became nearly impossible because of military restrictions, ongoing hostilities and the breakdown of order after the Hamas-run police force largely vanished from the streets. The daily number of supply trucks entering Gaza since the war began has been far below the 500 that entered before Oct. 7.
Earlier in the week, Israel allowed six aid trucks to enter directly into the north, a step aid groups have long called for.
World Central Kitchen operates 65 kitchens across Gaza from where it has served 32 million meals since the war started, the group said. The aid includes rice, flour, lentils, beans, tuna and canned meat, according to World Central Kitchen spokesperson Linda Roth.
It plans to distribute the food in the north, the largely devastated target of Israel’s initial offensive in Gaza, which has been mostly cut off by Israeli forces since October. Up to 300,000 Palestinians are believed to have remained there despite Israeli evacuation orders, with many reduced to eating animal feed in recent weeks. The aid is a tiny fraction of what is required, but the shipment was intended to pave the way for other larger shipments, officials working on the route have said.
A second vessel being loaded with even more aid will head to Gaza once the aid on the first ship is offloaded and distributed, Cyprus’ Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said. He declined to specify when the second vessel would leave, saying it depends in part on whether the Open Arms delivery goes smoothly. […]
Details concerning bloodshed associated with previous deliveries of aid are also provided in the Associated Press report.
President Biden on Friday used a joint appearance with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to urge lawmakers to pass assistance for Ukraine as it faces an uncertain path forward in the House.
Biden, speaking at the annual Friends of Ireland luncheon to mark St. Patrick’s Day, expressed his appreciation for Ireland’s commitment to providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine during its war with Russia and to the people of Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas conflict.
I’m committed to continuing to do our part,” Biden said to the room of bipartisan lawmakers, which included Johnson.
“I’m confident the vast majority, and excuse me for saying this, but I think a vast majority of members of Congress are willing to do their part. And I continue to urge every member in this room to stand up to Vladimir Putin. He’s a thug,” Biden added, at which point those in the room, including the Speaker, applauded.
Biden called on the House to send him the national security supplemental that passed the Senate last month in a 67-32 vote. The legislation included $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, as well as funding for Israel and for humanitarian assistance in Gaza. But Johnson has yet to bring it up for a vote in the House.
“It sends a clear message that America stands up for freedom and we bow down to no one. To no one in the world,” Biden said.
Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach of Ireland, echoed Biden’s calls to provide aid to Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion, which began in February 2022.
“Ukraine must not fall, and together we need to stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes,” Varadkar said. […]
BTW, Mike Johnson blathered on a bit, but one couldn’t really tell what he was promising to do, nor what he will do. “Processing through all the various options right now.”
Baby-cheeked Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) remains adorable in his apparently sincere belief that the gasbags of Oklahoma elected him to the United States Senate in order to solve problems. Like the American immigration system, with its impenetrable bureaucratic mazes and its inability to absorb huge numbers of migrants trying to cross America’s southern border.
Buddy, no! When they first elected you in a special election in 2014, it was so you could stop the Kenyan Muslim usurper Barack Hussein Obama from implementing sharia law by fiat. Then in 2016 they sent you back so you could help Donald Trump, Our Lord of the Burnt Umber Crayon, own the libs. And in 2022 you were re-elected to stop the Biden Crime Family from getting rich by selling America’s Strategic Panda Reserves off to China or something, we don’t know, your party says a lot of things that can’t be understood […]
Thanks to this misunderstanding, Lankford spent months trying to find some fixes that might at least alleviate some of the strain that has the whole immigration system bulging at the seams […] But the bill he produced after months of hard work and negotiations was killed by Donald Trump and Lankford’s cross-Congress colleagues in the House for the obvious reason that they can’t solve a problem in an election year. Or any other year.
Now Lankford’s folly has earned him another black mark, as the Oklahoma County Republican Party last weekend officially censured him for the crime of daring to try to be constructive
[…] “It’s really because he’s said he’s willing to allow 5,000 illegals … per day,” Warner [county party chair, Ken Warner] said. “That was part of the border bill. … That was one of the things in there.”
What do you call something that’s not true … a lie … this … was … that!
This was the second time a GOP organ in Oklahoma has censured Lankford for daring to work on the problem that the entire GOP has practically blown its lungs out screaming about for the last couple of years. The first effort, in January, was ruled null and void because the vote was taken by a small number of Republicans at an unofficial meeting and “definitely does not represent the voice of all Oklahoma Republicans.”
The most hilarious part is that the bill was a conservative bill. Lankford had managed to get the GOP nearly everything it wanted and the support of a Democratic president, who spent a chunk of his State of the Union address last week praising some of the bill’s provisions while Lankford sat in the audience and nodded along in affirmation.
And the party still told him to fuck off into the sun.
[…] we loathe giving Lankford any credit for anything, because he is otherwise terrible. Just this week he publicly lied that chemical abortions aren’t safe and also opposed IVF access for veterans because he’s worried about “human cloning.” You have to go back 11 years to when Wonkette’s editrix was blowing a gasket as Lankford blamed the Sandy Hook school massacre on … welfare moms doing fraud.
[…] William Saletan remarks over at The Bulwark:
The GOP’s betrayal of Lankford marks a new stage of its degeneration. The party isn’t just shunning members who try to hold Trump accountable, as Romney did, or excommunicating those who defend the Constitution, as Cheney did. It’s attacking a lawmaker for trying to do the most basic part of his job: solving a problem.
Ah, see, that’s where Saletan is wrong. It is no longer a basic part of the job of a lawmaker to try and solve problems. The job is now, and has been for some time, [getting] Donald Trump back into office by any means necessary.
James Lankford is up for re-election in 2028. So he has plenty of time to finally get that last part through his dainty skull before he has to decide if he’ll run for another term. Assuming we still have elections in 2028.
Israel is exploring using international private security contractors to protect humanitarian aid deliveries in Gaza, according to one former and two current U.S. officials.
Israeli officials have broached the idea in recent weeks with senior officials from the Biden administration, which is shipping the components of a floating dock to Gaza so it can deliver aid by sea. Some U.S. officials are reluctant, however, to have American troops or security contractors on the ground in Gaza, the officials said, and are especially wary of having Americans provide armed security.
The officials said the Israeli government has approached several security companies already, but declined to specify which ones. The Israelis also brought up having other countries pay the hefty costs of the contractors, the officials said. [Of course they did.]
[…] Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month that during a recent visit to the region he saw 2,500 aid trucks held up outside the gates, waiting to bring supplies to Gaza.
[…] the Pentagon still does not have a full plan for how the U.S. operation will be carried out, including details on who will provide security on the shore.
The general plan is that over about 60 days, more than 1,000 U.S. troops and civilian personnel will set up a floating dock and portable pier system that will be anchored to the shore in Gaza. Then they will ferry food and aid to shore on small boats, without actually setting foot on shore, according to the Pentagon. Once in place, this system could deliver as many as 2 million meals to Palestinian civilians every day.
The Biden administration has told the Israeli government that it expects the Israelis to provide security for the temporary U.S. military pier, but defense officials say the plan for security on the shore is still a work in progress. The Pentagon insists the U.S. military will not have boots on the ground in Gaza for security and is talking to other U.S. allies in the region about roles they can play.
[…] The Biden administration expects the Israelis to provide some broad perimeter security and to deconflict Israeli military operations near the shore, but the U.S. expects to call on other allies to help as well, the U.S. officials said. At least one scenario has soldiers moving the aid along the pier without being armed, but instead having armed cover from security forces in boats, according to two U.S. defense officials.
The use of private contractors to provide security during U.S. government operations has repeatedly sparked controversy. Private security contractors working for the U.S. government were accused of shooting civilians or using excessive force in several incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2007, contractors working for Blackwater who were protecting a State Department convoy fired on a crowd in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. Seventeen civilians died. Four contractors were convicted in U.S. courts on charges related to the deaths, but were later pardoned by President Donald Trump.
[…] Another unanswered question is who would distribute the aid to the Palestinian civilians once it is ashore. The U.N. has warned that a quarter of Gaza’s 2.2 million residents are on the brink of famine.
[…] U.S. officials said they will not be directly involved in the distribution. A senior administration official said it’s hard to imagine a large-scale distribution without the involvement of United Nations agencies like the World Food Program and U.N. Relief and Works Agency, known as UNWRA, adding that the most effective distribution in Gaza has been by the U.N. There could be a role for American and international nongovernmental organizations as well, the official said.
[…] After a few months, the U.S. expects to hand off the maritime humanitarian mission to commercial companies, the two U.S. officials said, explaining that this is beginning as an emergency operation but can be sustained by civilian companies over time.
For now, the European Union, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the Republic of Cyprus, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and the United States will be involved in various aspects of the maritime effort, including inspections, financial commitments, construction and continued flow of deliveries once the port is built, the officials said.
…
On Thursday, Montana health officials published an outbreak analysis of poisonings linked to the honeycombed fungi in March and April of last year. The outbreak sickened 51 people who ate at the same restaurant, sending four to the emergency department. Three were hospitalized and two died. Though the health officials didn’t name the restaurant in their report, state and local health departments at the time identified it as Dave’s Sushi in Bozeman. The report is published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The outbreak coincided with the sushi restaurant introducing a new item: a “special sushi roll” that contained salmon and morel mushrooms. The morels were a new menu ingredient for Dave’s…
Reginald Selkirksays
@467: “The honorees reflect the integrity and achievement that defined Justice Ginsburg’s career and legend.”
Ouch.
Pierce R. Butlersays
Reginald Selkirk @ # 477: @467: “The honorees reflect the integrity and achievement that defined Justice Ginsburg’s career and legend.” Ouch.
“Reflect” in a high-distortion funhouse mirror way, as embellished by drunken vandals.
birgerjohanssonsays
Robert Reich: “Seriously, again, how dumb is Trump?”
Stable Genius keeps repeating mistake that cost him 91 million $.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/seriously-how-dumb-is-trump
In a tug-of-war between greed and stupidity, the latter keeps winning. It is as if the frontal lobe of his brain has checked out, he can’t stop himself from blurting out things that he should know will have costly consequences.
This is Family Guy stupid.
BTW, as nuclear weapons remain in huge numbers and Russia even intends to develop new ones, people need to be aware that the stability offered by Mutual Assured Destruction is illusory as it ignores the danger of mistakes.
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov and Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov are two names every schoolchild should have to learn.
Independently of each other, they saved the world from nuclear war.
Most of the former Republican presidential candidates did something predictable upon ending their candidacies: They endorsed Donald Trump. There are exceptions — former Ambassador Nikki Haley has not yet spoken up — but Sen. Tim Scott, Gov. Ron DeSantis, Gov. Doug Burgum, Vivek Ramaswamy each wasted little time throwing their support behind the former president.
After the former president no longer had any intraparty rivals, other former Trump skeptics, including Gov. Chris Sununu, Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. John Thune, and Gov. Brian Kemp, did the same thing.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, however, left people guessing about his intentions — until this afternoon. [Tweet and video at the link]
“It should come as no surprise,” the Indiana Republican said on Fox News, “that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year.”
Well, it comes as some surprise.
“Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years,” he added, “and that’s why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign.”
Almost immediately after Pence ended his own 2024 candidacy, Trump declared at a campaign event, “[Pence] should endorse me. You know why? Because I had a great, successful presidency and he was the vice president.” The former president added that he might not get such an endorsement, however, because “[p]eople in politics can be very disloyal.”
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, Pence’s loyalties to Trump were practically limitless. I’m often reminded of a June 2018 gathering at FEMA headquarters, where Trump sat at the head of the table, took a water bottle, and moved it to the floor. Moments later, his vice president mirrored the move, putting his water bottle on the floor, too.
It was emblematic of a larger truth: For four years, Pence was obsequious to the point of embarrassment. He enabled Trump. He covered for Trump. He went along with outlandish Trump expectations — at one point even staying at a Trump-owned property in Ireland, literally on the other side of the country from Dublin, where he had official meetings.
But it wasn’t enough. For Trump, nothing ever is.
Indifferent to Pence’s years of loyalty, Trump put his former vice president in danger on Jan. 6, defended rioters’ “hang Mike Pence” chants, blamed Pence for the violence at the Capitol, and taunted his former vice president as a “delusional” coward and bad person.
It’s against this backdrop that Pence, joining an amazing number of former members of Trump’s cabinet, concluded that he simply cannot support his party’s presumptive nominee.
The practical implications are limited — it’s not as if much of the GOP base still looks to the Hoosier for electoral guidance — but the symbolic significance is extraordinary: Trump is so dangerous that his own former vice president and former handpicked governing partner won’t endorse his candidacy.
The former president’s tantrum is likely to be fierce, but if he wanted Pence’s backing, he probably should’ve tried to earn it.
If you’re looking for an encapsulation of just how much of a mess the House Republican conference is, go no further than this headline from The Washington Post on Friday: “A majority of House Republicans retreat from their retreat.” It seems the one thing the majority of them can agree on is just how much they don’t want to have to deal with each other. Or maybe they just didn’t want to be subjected to more of House Speaker Mike Johson’s sermons.
Johnson was able to get less than half of his conference to show up at what was supposed to be the House GOP’s big strategy retreat this week. Participation was so pathetic that they had to scrap day two, which was supposed to be devoted to discussing policy and strategies for expanding the majority in this election. When it comes to the governing part of their jobs, they got nothin’.
Asked about the poor attendance, Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is in charge of putting together the annual messaging retreat, told reporters that Republicans still have an “enthusiastic conference.” It’s just that all the Republicans who didn’t show up had to be back home to campaign in their primaries. Supposedly, it had nothing to do with the fact that some members would “rather sit down with Hannibal Lecter and eat my own liver,” as one colorfully put it this week.
The meeting wasn’t devoid of policy or strategy, though. Johnson himself had one big (sort of) policy idea for Republicans to campaign this year: They could split up next year’s funding bills into four tranches, creating four separate government funding deadlines, if they keep their majority. Now that’s something to run on: quadrupling the shutdown-threat fun! [LOL]
All that was left for Johnson to do with this small crowd of lawmakers was to plead with them to stop attacking and campaigning against each other. Johnson “just excoriated those who are campaigning against other GOP incumbents in their districts,” one of the lawmakers in a private meeting of about 60 members told Axios. “[He] said it violates our norms.” However, chances are that none of the people who needed to hear that message were in that room.
How pathetic all this is wasn’t enough to dampen Johnson’s can-do spirit, though. Here’s some hilarious hopium Johnson is pushing after the retreat debacle. “I think that overall we’re very excited about the fall, and that election can’t happen soon enough,” Johnson said Thursday.
Or maybe he just can’t wait for his horrible job of overseeing this chaos to end.
Several people have been detained for vandalism at polling stations on the first day of voting in presidential elections, Russian officials say.
Incidents involved green dye being poured into ballot boxes, the boxes being set alight and fireworks being set off inside polling stations, state media reported…
Baseball sensation Shohei Ohtani — perhaps best known for signing a record $700 million US, 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers last year, jilting hopeful Toronto Blue Jays fans in the process — revealed yesterday that he’s married to none other than former professional basketball player Mamiko Tanaka…
[…] Team Trump’s desperately thirsty efforts to get Fulton County DA Fani Willis disqualified from the Georgia election interference case and sent to legal Siberia have flopped, and the train of justice is once again chugging along on track.
In a 23-page opinion, Judge Scott McAfee ruled Friday that no, there was no actual conflict of interest in DA Willis hiring as a consultant her partner in banging Nathan Wade, but their (now former) relationship does look improper, so either Wade or Willis should step down. Oh, ok, fine, well, that was not a hard decision, he’s out, and bye!
McAfee’s ruling comes after weeks of a puckeringly cringy evidentiary hearing, courtesy of Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, an old-school election fuckateer and Koch Brothers protégé. Roman sent his lawyer Ashleigh Merchant to go down to the Fulton courthouse and sniff around for some kind of gotcha truffle that would prove DUE PROCESS DENIED KANGAROO COURT BIAS. Remember the manufactured outrage in 2008 about Black Panthers feloniously holding open doors for old ladies at the polls? Of course you do, Wonkette was on about that forever. That was Roman.
Team Trump was supposed to be trying to prove that Wade and Willis’s alleged bonery or possible smoochery benefited Willis financially somehow, but they gave up pretty quickly when the evidence was weaksauce. So they pivoted to days of bringing in friends, family, and idle gossips to fish for some gotcha proving Willis lied about when she and Wade first had the sexxxy sexxx sexxx, or at least about when they went to Panera and exchanged a lingering glance, which would mean PERJURY and the whole case is made up to prosecute pure and chaste Donald Trump and his very fine friends. They didn’t prove that either, though they made a valiant effort trying to humiliate Willis for being a lady who had sex.
They even dragged in Willis’s elderly father, who testified that Willis had actually been dating some DJ at the time instead. They found an extremely creepy cell phone expert to track all of Wade and Willis’s movements for 11 months, in hopes that Judge McAfee would gasp in horror that their two phones had been in the vicinity of each other, so therefore PENILE KICKBACKS LIES UNFAIR NO RICO!
Welp, McAfee wasn’t having it.
“Defendants were provided an opportunity to subpoena and introduce whatever relevant and material evidence they could muster.” Translation, they scraped the very bottom of every barrel they could find with a rusty spoon. “The Court finds that the Defendants failed to meet their burden.” Sad trombone. He goes on to say,
However, an odor of mendacity remains… The Court therefore concludes that the prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the State selects one of two options. The District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office, and refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for reassignment. […] Alternatively, SADA Wade can withdraw, allowing the District Attorney, the Defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case.
Sure, okay.
McAfee was also super pissed that Willis got all of us into this in the first place, which, also fair.
Without sufficient evidence that the District Attorney acquired a personal stake in the prosecution, or that her financial arrangements had any impact on the case, the Defendants’ claims of an actual conflict must be denied. This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment or the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing. Rather, it is the undersigned’s opinion that Georgia law does not permit the finding of an actual conflict for simply making bad choices – even repeatedly.
Yeah, yeah. They are surely the only two lawyer co-workers who ever dated, scandal scandal.
Let us now freshen our Friday afternoon martinis with loser tears. Whined Steve Sadow, lead defense counsel for former President Donald Trump:
While respecting the Court’s decision, we believe that the it did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade, including the financial benefits, testifying untruthfully about when their personal relationship began, as well as Willis’ extrajudicial MLK “church speech,” where she played the race card and falsely accused the defendants and their counsel of racism. We will use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place.
Translation: She’s Blackety Black Black. She goes to Black church in Blacktown. White people victim, Black people scary. Black lady no allowed to prosecute! Black lady who has sex, double extra not allowed!!
And Drunk Uncle Rudy G also wants attention:
This whole show-trial should concern every American, including those who won’t be voting for President Trump, because while they might be targeting President Trump and Mayor Giuliani today, they’ll eventually come for you too—that is the danger of remaining silent in the face of injustice. The encouraging news is that more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that this whole show trial is part of a larger effort to keep President Trump out of the White House and to silence his supporters.
So silenced you won’t shut up!
Willis and Wade have gotten hundreds of death threats. Willis had to move out of her home, and her dad had to clean spray painted n-words off of her house, and by the way the defendants tried to disenfranchise the majority of voters in Georgia. But who’s the real victim here?
Kari Lake and Mark Finchem continue their quest to outlaw Arizona’s vote counting machines, telling the U.S. Supreme Court they have “new evidence” that merits a “do-over” of the 2022 election.
All week long, My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, who is underwriting their lawsuit, has been touting “the most explosive evidence ever!”
“It’s going to be the biggest thing ever, and we are going to save this country!” he said on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast over the weekend.
By Thursday, he’d upgraded his promise to one of global import.
“It’s going to shock the world,” he told Steve Bannon on his War Room podcast, adding that people should buy his percale sheets to pass out to their friends along with the Supreme Court appeal. (“Get ‘em for everybody you know. Tell them about the Supreme Court case and here’s a set of sheets for you.”)
Strange, after reading the 52-page appeal — sans sheets — I didn’t feel a shock. Not even a slight zap.
Neither, apparently, did Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer.
“Nothing new,” he told me on Friday. “Same old crazy. Zero percent chance the United States Supreme Court decides to spend its very limited time on something so crazy that it got sanctioned to the tune of $100,000-plus at the trial court level.” …
Minnesota state senator Gene Dornink doesn’t know why he called pilot Laura Haynor a “stewardess” during a recent hearing in Minneapolis, but most women probably do.
Earlier this week Minnesota legislators heard testimony regarding amendments to the state’s “sick and safe time” law, which provides state employees guaranteed time off for illnesses, medical treatments, and care of family members. Furthermore, the time off also covers safety leave for employees to receive help regarding sexual assault and domestic violence, issues that disproportionately affect women.
When it was time for Haynor to provide testimony on behalf of Air Line Pilots Association International, which represents 2,400 pilots, she was met with an embarrassing blunder that reeked of casual misogyny. “My name is Laura Haynor, and I’m a Minnesota resident and a Minneapolis-based pilot for Delta Airlines,” she told lawmakers, per a recording of the proceedings.
Despite her clear and concise introduction, Dornink immediately asked Haynor to describe “what a typical workweek is like for you as a stewardess.” …
Seditious conspirator and multi-indicted Donald Trump has now clinched the Republican Party’s nomination for president.That means that it’s time for the would-be contenders for Dear Leader’s vice presidential slot to prove that they can suck up to the would-be strongman more than even Trump himself can handle.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina has been making a strong bid to be No. 1 Suck-Up, and on Fox News on Thursday, he sucked as hard as a sucker can suck. North Korean news broadcasters have nothing on this.
Well, let me tell you what. If there’s anyone who’s paying attention to the details of 2024, it’s Donald Trump. Who is now running, co-running, the RNC? Lara Trump. Why? Because he understands that the devil’s in the details, so he puts his brilliant daughter-in-law in charge of our RNC apparatus so that all that [former RNC chair] Reince [Preibus] talked about, wise wise man that he is, will be taken care of.
OH COME ON NOW. There’s sucking up and then there’s sucking up; at this point EMTs need to be called out to remove Trump’s whole upper torso from Scott’s throat.
He put his “brilliant” daughter-in-law in charge of the party’s apparatus? Putting family members in charge of the party’s cash supplies is among the first things authoritarian crooks do upon seizing command. And Dear Leader’s personal kin are always described as “brilliant” as Dear Leader himself, because if you don’t say that, then Dear Leader’s family makes sure your future political career is buried six feet under in an unmarked grave.
Lara Trump’s “brilliant” career is thin enough that even her Wikipedia page can barely scrape up anything to say about her. She worked as a tabloid news producer, married Eric Trump and his family’s money, and parlayed it all into a year-and-a-half Fox News career before devoting herself full-time to polishing her father-in-law’s copious golden turds while boosting the careers of the far right’s weirdest weirdos. Sure, buddy. Everybody should be very excited that the entire Republican Party is now in the hands of Trump and the increasingly shrinking set of family members willing to be seen with him.
You just know that Donald was pressing his daughter Ivanka to take the RNC slot, having previously made her his White House “adviser.” The joke’s on him, though: Son-in-law Jared Kushner was able to convert his own White House foreign policy slot to a $2 billion investment from the Saudi royal pockets, so Ivanka can steer clear of her indicted daddy. She doesn’t need to suck up to him for odd jobs anymore.
However, as Scott noted in his glowing assessment, “But at the end of the day you want the ball in the hands of the best player on the field. That player is Donald Trump.”
We’ll only give him a B+ on that one, because if Scott was really into that metaphor he would have found a way to wedge in comments on Trump’s bulging muscles and masculine athletic physique. Still a good try, though.
There’s been rampant speculation about Trump’s vice presidential shortlist and how far Republican hopefuls will have to debase themselves to stay on it, but Scott has spent considerably more time polishing his sycophantic phrases than some of the other candidates. There’s also been tedious press speculation—fueled solely by Trump’s own allies—as to whether Trump will attempt to pick a running mate who can better dance around the party’s moves to criminalize abortion nationwide, which would rule out Scott and in fact most of the current contenders.
You can discount those particular claims, because Trump cares about Trump first and foremost and will only be deciding who his running mate will be based on the extent to which they can flatter and extol him on his television screen. Trump has never shown the slightest interest in policy matters, allowing himself to be bent in whichever direction his most extreme advisers have wanted to bend him. He’s not going to start now.
Exemptions that allow religious organizations to avoid paying Wisconsin’s unemployment tax don’t apply to a Catholic charitable organization because its on-the-ground operations aren’t primarily religious, a divided state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The outcome of the case, which drew attention and concern from religious groups around the country, raises the bar for all religions to show that their charity arms deserve such exemptions in the state. The Catholic organization’s attorneys immediately promised to appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. If that court agrees to hear the case, any ruling could have broad national implications.
The Wisconsin court ruled 4-3 that the Superior-based Catholic Charities Bureau and its subentities’ motivation to help older, disabled and low-income people stems from Catholic teachings but that its actual work is secular.
“In other words, they offer services that would be the same regardless of the motivation of the provider, a strong indication that the sub-entities do not ‘operate primarily for religious purposes,’” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote for the majority…
If you have a dog or cat, chances are you’ve given your pet a flavored chewable tablet for tick prevention at some point. What if you could take a similar pill to protect yourself from getting Lyme disease?
Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is developing such a pill for humans—minus the tasty flavoring—that could provide protection against the tick-borne disease for several weeks at a time. In February, the Irvine, California–based biotech company announced results from a small, early-stage trial showing that 24 hours after taking the drug, it can kill ticks on people, with the effects lasting for up to 30 days.
“What we envision is something that would protect you before the tick would even bite you,” says Bobby Azamian, CEO of Tarsus…
The experimental pill that Tarsus Pharmaceuticals is testing is a formulation of lotilaner, a drug that paralyzes and kills parasites by interfering with the way that signals are passed between their nerve cells. Lotilaner is already approved as a veterinary medicine under the brand name Credelio to control fleas and ticks in dogs and cats…
An indicted Chinese businessman pumped millions of ill-gotten dollars into the bank accounts of some of the most influential figures in MAGA World—including former Trump aides Steve Bannon and Jason Miller—according to a raft of documents filed in federal court in February.
The materials represent an effort by the court-appointed trustee in the bankruptcy case of Guo Wengui, the self-styled billionaire and anti-Chinese Communist Party crusader, to recover money that Guo allegedly transferred as part of a “fraudulent scheme” to hide wealth from his creditors.
Guo has long bankrolled Bannon and Miller’s post-White House endeavors—even as critics accuse the former construction tycoon of serving as a covert double agent for Beijing—and the feds allege he swindled more than $1 billion from China’s dissident diaspora…
Hillary Clinton and Lin-Manuel Miranda will host a Broadway fundraiser for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign next month that will feature a performance of Suffs: The Musical.
The musical, which Clinton is co-producing, focuses on the women’s suffrage movement. The musical originated at the New York Public Theater and is set to start Broadway previews on March 26…
As Republicans in Congress have attacked President Biden’s handling of the southern border, some of them have turned to a far-right media figure with a decidedly extreme perspective. Online, Michael Yon has dubbed himself “just a simple war correspondent and cannibal hunter.” The latter part of his job description refers to his work tracking migrants and his fears they are part of “a planet of the apes style invasion” that is targeting the white race for “genocide and cannibalism.” This shockingly racist paranoia — including referring to migrants as “apes” and “Congo-Cannibals” — has not stopped Yon from collaborating with multiple Republican members of Congress who have turned to him to participate in inflammatory documentaries and junkets to Latin America.
[We know what Republicans really think about migrants when they choose to collaborate with people like Michael Yon.]
[…] TPM engaged in an extensive back and forth with Yon over email to obtain comment from him for the story. As of publication, he had not provided a response.
Yon, a Special Forces veteran [sheesh], gained notoriety as an independent blogger who spent extensive time on the front during the Iraq War. A 2008 profile in the New York Times said Yon spent three years in Iraq where he wrote reader-funded dispatches while “racking up more time embedded with combat units than any other journalist, according to the United States military.” The newspaper noted Yon had “an agenda” and described him as firmly believing the American mission in that country was “succeeding and must continue.” Since then, Yon has turned his attention to immigration — and his agenda has become far more strident and extreme.
In September 2022, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) put together an approximately 30-minute video called “Alien Invasion” that he dubbed “a documentary on the Biden border crisis.” The video coincided with Bigg’s push to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. It premiered at the Heritage Foundation and is still, as of this writing, featured on Biggs’ website. According to the credits, “Alien Invasion” was “presented by” Biggs, who served as a narrator and produced by two of his staffers. It features an interview with Yon about the conditions in the Darien Gap, a treacherous, dense jungle between Panama and Colombia that is traversed by immigrants who attempt to make the journey by land from South America to the United States. Yon, who was billed as a guest star of the documentary, has spent time in the region and was credited by Biggs’ team with providing some of the footage used for the “documentary.”
[…] Yon’s collaboration with Biggs is typical of how some on the right have used the specter of dangerous conditions south of the border to criticize Biden and to advocate for more restrictive immigration policies. This fearmongering reached an absurd peak with the GOP response to the president’s State of the Union that Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) delivered earlier this month where she falsely implied that a dramatic incident of sex trafficking which occurred roughly two decades ago in Mexico had taken place in this county and on Biden’s watch. Yon’s work also shows how, along with highlighting the real dangers faced by migrants in their home countries and on the border crossings, some on the right believe the immigrants themselves are a direct threat.
[…] Yon described foreigners as cannibals. On two occasions this month, he used the sci-fi movie “Planet of the Apes” to describe the effects of immigration. This included a March 13 post after Biden’s State of the Union where the president announced plans to build a pier in the Gaza Strip to deliver aid to starving Palestinians.
“That port will be to facilitate the ex-vasion from Gaza into Florida, etc,” Yon wrote. “And boy will all the people in SouthEast Florida be surprised when the Haitians and Gazans all arrive in a planet of the apes style invasion.”
[…] Yon has disparaged American minorities on social media. In February 2021, he wrote about his frustration with “black men murdering white people.” […]
In other posts made before and after his collaboration with Biggs, Yon openly referenced concepts popular in white nationalist circles, including the “Great Replacement” theory, the book “Camp of the Saints,” and the notion of white genocide. Yon tied all of this together in a July 2022 post on his website where he suggested the white population was being targeted by shadowy, evil forces.
“The Beast is setting conditions for famine and war that will include justification for genocide and cannibalism of selected targets. Specifically, the new Jews, the new Kulaks: white people,” Yon wrote.
None of this has stopped Yon from gaining traction in right-wing circles. He has amassed a six-figure social media following and crowdfunded nearly $70,000 for his work. [snipped details of Yon’s collaborations with other Republican legislators]
Along with working alongside Republican members of Congress, Yon made at least one trip to Capitol Hill — on Jan. 6, 2021.
[…] Yon has repeatedly promoted baseless conspiracies that leftists and antifascists were responsible for the violent assault on the Capitol. He also insisted that he did not break into the building […] Yon, who claimed to have been with Rudy Giuliani in the days after the attack, expressed frustration with Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the election. He also made a post during the violence urging people to “stand up” and one the night before exhorting his audience to “CONFRONT DARKNESS.”
Shortly after Biden’s inauguration, Yon made clear his version of frontline correspondence is a decidedly unconventional one. “I’ve never claimed to be unbiased, or a reporter,” Yon wrote.
…
Ramirez tells Rolling Stone that the Mothership, which he often refers to as “the mommy” in his posts, “has a chosen voice.” That voice made waves on social media Wednesday when he announced that he would be closing down the bar in mid-July when the Republican National Committee (RNC) is scheduled to hold its 2024 convention in the heart of Milwaukee…
“Sup idiots we haven’t lost a lot of followers in a while so here we go…as everything gets amplified with like the RNC shitshow coming to town Imao I would like to formally state that we’re shutting bar down during the week of because fuck that noise,” he wrote. “I’m not trying to get involved with or actively take money or rent the space out to that tomfoolery.” …
These are a couple of comments in the article I find incredibly disturbing:
-Dealing with trump trying to get the classified documents back and trump not cooperating. As FBI agents they should know that a search warrant isn’t issued without a shit load of evidence to support it but apparently many agents response was this:
“If he took documents, give him a call and ask for them back. Like … Seriously? My own agency …. A bunch of democrat political hacks up top…I’ve lost just about all faith in our leadership.”
I remember reading in an article a few months ago how several agents who did the search wanted to call trump and tell him they were coming.
More:
“There’s no good way to say it,” read the email to deputy director Abbate. “So I’ll just be direct: from my first-hand and second-hand information from conversations since January 6th there is, at best, a sizable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol and said it was no different than the BLM protests of last summer,” the person wrote a week after the riots.
When Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for the President many FBI agents lost their mind. Rudy has been a buddy of the NY FBI office and they were all behind him and he was behind trump. In fact, the Guardian wrote this article:
If anyone weaponized or politicized the Justice Dept and the FBI—it’s trump. [Trump] has pushed defunding the FBI and the Justice Dept. There’s not a pill they can take or a class they can go to. You just can’t fix stupid.
A shelter-in-place was ordered Saturday morning in a Pennsylvania township after multiple people were shot, according to local police.
Middletown Township Police Department said there are “several” gunshot victims in Falls Township […]
The police said they have ordered multiple stores and an amusement park to close in the Middletown area, and others have voluntarily closed following the shootings.
The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office and other law enforcement officials are assisting the Falls Township Police Department […]
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) said he has been briefed on the matter. […]
The Trump trial the Supreme Court can’t stop
Cartoon: The anti-sex league
Tests show high-temperature (20 Kelvin instead of 4) superconducting magnets are ready for fusion
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-high-temperature-superconducting-magnets-ready.html
Black Trump Supporters Are Being AI-Generazted
Hello, Readers,
I see that The Infinite Thread reached the 500-comment limit in the previous chapter, and the thread has now rolled over to begin anew with comment #1.
For the convenience of readers, here are a few links back to previous comments:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-5/#comment-2213708
Explosion Hits Bridge Used by Military Deep Inside Russia, Kyiv Confirms
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-5/#comment-2213704
Supreme Court justices —their ruling inverts the burden of effort required for congressional involvement
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-5/#comment-2213701
First over-the-counter birth control pill heads to stores
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2024/01/07/infinite-thread-xxx/comment-page-5/#comment-2213689
SCOTUS Unanimously Rules Disqualification Clause Can’t Keep Trump Off Ballot
Democrats are really ramping up the pressure on House speaker for Ukraine aid
How “weak” Speaker Mike Johnson looks (or does not look) should not be an issue. Don’t care.
Summarized from NBC News:
Possibly good news: Medicaid expansion is unexpectedly on the move in Mississippi
Ten states still haven’t embraced Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. In a pleasant surprise, Mississippi might lower that total to nine.
Barrett joins liberal justices on Trump ballot ban ruling going too far
Trump’s new promise to spread disease:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/trump-promises-to-turn-americas-schools
Washers and Dryers Are About to Get Way More Efficient
Um, that’s a bit of fancy footwork. So the efficiency standards for appliances are getting better. The least efficient models will be gone, but your savings will depend on how well your old appliances met or exceeded the old standards. And also, they won’t save you anything at all until the next time you change appliances.
Farron Cousins: “Republicans Sound The Alarm As Party’s Fundraising Completely Dries Up”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-99E1S6YUbI
Yum. Schadenfreude! 😄
Right now, donors are skittish, because they want their donations to influence political campaigns, not go straight into Trump’s legal defense fund. But they won’t stop buying the influence their wealth and the Supreme Court grants them. They will find ways to do it that do not channel their funds through the RNC. Such as:
Koch-backed group unveiling campaign showcasing ‘truth on Bidenomics’
Also, I expect that over time they will claim that Trump’s candidacy is inevitable, and so they will give up their “principles” and go ahead and fund him. This expectation is based on their complete lack of backbone and track record of previous behavior.
Judge rejects Sen. Bob Menendez’s claims that search warrants in bribery case were unconstitutional
“I met the Israeli settlers Biden placed sanctions on. They’re bad – but part of a rotten system” | Zak Witus | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/04/israel-settler-violence-sanctions
“Likely to weaponize intelligence”: Experts alarmed as Trump poised to get security briefings again
@ prev372 and elsewhere:
Indiana justices, elections board kick GOP US Senate candidate off primary ballot
Missouri GOP boots gubernatorial candidate tied to KKK and pictured throwing Nazi salute in front of a burning cross
Missouri candidates flock to file for August primary, but Unsicker blocked
Political parties, which are not mentioned at all in the U.S. Constitution, and yet they have more power over who can be a candidate than the Secretary of State and Supreme Court of Colorado or other states. Go figure.
10 measles cases identified in Quebec, 7 in Montreal, public health officials say
Reginald @17:
Easy enough to figure, just going by what you quoted.
A political party can veto someone from being a candidate representing that party.
(Why you find it strange that the GOP (silly name, that) can veto someone from being a GOP candidate is itself strange)
Lords pass five amendments to Rwanda bill in heavy defeat for Rishi Sunak | Rwanda | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/04/lords-pass-five-amendments-to-rwanda-bill-in-heavy-defeat-for-rishi-sunak
Text quoted by Reginald in comment 16:
That is such bad news!
In somewhat related news: Trump really seems to think he’s running against Obama
Moms for Liberty founders go on ‘60 Minutes’ and wow, does it go badly
Right. That’s because they lack reading material, because Nazi Moms for ‘Liberty’ has banned all the books.
NASA cancels a multibillion-dollar satellite servicing demo mission
This rare 11th century Islamic astrolabe is one of the oldest yet discovered
More about Gaza
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=1WY8vzVGpaw
“More about Gaza”
That’s about as lazy as anyone could be, birgerjohansson.
Three words, one obscure link.
No effort made to say what the supposed point is, how it is somehow novel or relevant, or by whom.
Just a fucking link to something I need to click just to find out any of that stuff.
So. Fucking. Lazy!
A video by some mob that identifies as “Secular Talk”.
28:24.
The blurb (when you click on “more”):
Bah.
What does that have to do with Gaza?
Probly one of the gentlest, kindest and fairest takedowns of YE Creationists “arguments” here by Clinton’s Reptiles w an evolutionary biologist and fave youtuber of mine – just over 30 minutes long.
CNN’s Amanpour FED UP With Netanyahu Advisor’s Flour Massacre Lies
You’re Going to Jail: Chris Christie delivers grim warning to Trump
.https://youtube.com/shorts/bqg2zAx2Lp0
Ah yes, Credible Chris Christie Conveys Cruel Caution.
By somebody on some channel, with or without actual imagery.
(Gotta click to find out!)
I browsed the blog of the bloodthirsty racist Jerry Coyne and found this lovely little gem (about starving kids in Gaza):
He is lying when is says he is supporting “relieving starvation” of course. Everything in what Jerry Coyne writes screams of his hatred for the Gazans. It’s absolutely shocking and disgusting.
I used to read Coyne’s blog — but nowadays it is like reading Nick Fuentes or something from the KKK, so I don’t bother. I suspected this would be happening when I discovered how welcoming he was to people from the Slymepit.
It’s a shame, too. I used to recommend Why Evolution is True to students looking for a basic primer in evolution, but not any more. Nowadays I hand out Ken Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God — he may be a darned theist, but he’s still a decent human being, unlike some of my former New Atheist compatriots.
Russian Black Sea fleet ship sunk in drone attack, Kyiv says
“Flashing Lights And a Clicking Sound Cleared Toxic Proteins in Alzheimer’s Mice: : ScienceAlert
-But this only clears amyloyid beta, not the tangles of tau protein.
https://www.sciencealert.com/flashing-lights-and-a-clicking-sound-cleared-toxic-proteins-in-alzheimers-mice
“They frankly laugh behind the backs of their own voters”: How Republicans bamboozle rural whites
“Mantle convection linked to seaway (Neotethys) closure that transformed Earth’s oceanographic circulation patterns”
(You may need to click on the map to see the details)
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-mantle-convection-linked-seaway-closure.html
Jack Smith strikes back at Supreme Court with big announcement
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FU7lPOikmp4
Yawn.
“Korean scientists behind bogus superconductor declare success again”
Maybe they should get a job at Fox News? No one ever holds them at account for being wrong.
https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2024-03-05/business/tech/Korean-scientists-behind-bogus-superconductor-declare-success-again/1994766
Elon Musk switched on X calling by default: Here’s how to switch it off
Albania, wary of Russia, reopens Soviet-era air base to NATO
Poland buys Saab grenade launchers in $1.63 billion deal
Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are all down
Relax. Stop staring at your screen and look at the world around you.
As I have spent months in helpless rage (and resulting insomnia) it is good to relax with another issue of God Awful Movies.
GAM446 Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=vezCQIhkM70
Saab are pretty good at making things that go bang. So is Bofors, but their corruption and perjury during a gun export deal to India has shamed them into changing the name of the company.
Tumbleweeds invade Utah neighborhoods by the thousands, reaching up to 10 feet high
Library cuts and teachers quitting: Texas’s takeover of Houston schools
Fresh evidence: Republicans’ tax breaks didn’t pay for themselves
Followup to comment 48.
Commentary by Mark Sumner:
Link
Cartoon: Floored
Kristin Welker Is The Chuck Todd Of Chuck Todd Replacements. Ugh.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/kristin-welker-is-the-chuck-todd
ExxonMobil Very Sad You Did Climate Change. Also: Suing People Who Don’t Want Climate Change.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/exxonmobil-very-sad-you-did-climate
Mr Woods is human garbage. Just like the tory government ministers.
.
First Defeats for Sunak’s Rwanda Safety Bill”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7VgPA26EGm8
2 million pound £ for each refugee Rwanda accepts!
Sweden should jump on the bandwagon right away! I mean, how much can it cost to teach new immigrants the language and give them an apprenticeship somewhere? Even if it costs 2 million SKR it will still be a 1000% profit! (1£=11 SKR)
And USA could absorb even more of those asylum seekers in Britain. Even if your education and job training costs are slightly higher, it would be a big boost for your economy. Sunak does not care how much it costs British taxpayers as long as he can show his voters he is getting rid of the (non-millionaire)* brown foreigners.
*Sunak himself is Indian-British, and richer than god)
Palestinians ‘beaten and sexually assaulted’ at Israeli detention centres, UN report claims | Israel | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/05/gazan-detainees-beaten-and-sexually-assaulted-at-israeli-detention-centres-un-report-claims
Kyrsten Sinema: Independent senator won’t run for re-election
NPR:
Washington Post:
NBC News:
Biden needs the press to do its job, but the press is trading democracy for clicks
Sigh.
Link
US looking into maritime corridor to get aid to Gaza: Pentagon
Study unveils the role of a neural substrate in the lateral habenula in value-based decision-making
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hungarys-president-formally-signs-approval-swedens-nato-bid-107811161
whheydt, what, relevant news?
(How will my habenula cope?)
Bit of context, since I am less lazy than some: Putin loses Baltic dominance as Sweden completes ascension to NATO | Dr Jamie Shea
Tech Billionaire Tries to Ease Fears of Hawaii Takeover by Donating $150 Million to Hospitals
Aussie live coverage of the Super-Tues primary elections here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-06/super-tuesday-us-presidential-primary-elections-live-blog/103542148
FWIW.
Philadelphia’s Bagels Are Boiled in Beer, and They’re Delicious
Sen. Bob Menendez hit with new conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges
Reginald, have you ever had one of those Philadelphia’s Bagels?
I never have, but I know damn well stuff other people claim is delicious seems disgusting to me.
For example, this business of putting honey/jam/molasses/syrup on meat and on fish.
Why you thought that was comment-worthy is something I consider comment-worthy.
(Obviously!)
Nothing like boiling beer to impart deliciousness on a bagel, I suppose. For some.
(Me, I’d just eat the actual bagel and thus rescue it from the boiling beer)
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #67, John Morales @ #70…
I can’t see that doing the boiling step in beer would in any way improve a bagel, as opposed to using plain water.
whheydt, it was so very, very obvious. No need to click. Hardly subtle.
For you, I did it anyway.
(https://thetakeout.com/about-the-takeout-1820471854)
—
Point being, at this point Reginald not only is ostentatiously ignoring me, but just posting random stuff with not even the fig leaf of opinion or of relevance to anything or even anything whatsoever other than a naked link. Fucking lazy.
I notice these things.
Schiff and Garvey will advance to California Senate general election , CNN projects
Who is Jason Palmer? Surprise defeat for Biden in American Samoa
The Next Governor of North Carolina Could Be a Holocaust Denier Who Hates Pretty Much Everybody
Alabama Republican becomes the first House incumbent to lose a 2024 primary
Alabama Supreme Court judge who concurred with controversial IVF ruling wins chief justice primary
President Joe Biden:
https://twitter.com/ammarmufasa/status/1765396245365788942
Reginald @77, bad news. Sorry to see the Alabama Supreme Court being so far rightwing … awful.
In somewhat related news, here is a followup to comment 78.
Commentary from Steve Benen:
Link
McConnell’s Trump endorsement was inevitable, but still pitiful
Common sense suggested that Mitch McConnell would never back Donald Trump, if for no other reason than to preserve his own dignity. And yet, here we are.
Musk and Trump becoming ever-closer buddies:
Link
Cartoon: Dinosaurs for asteroids
Partial transcript from a Jimmy Kimmel segment:
Commentary:
Link
Hope Liberty University Really Enjoyed Covering Up Sexual Assaults, Because It’s Gonna Cost Them $14 Million
https://www.wonkette.com/p/hope-liberty-university-really-enjoyed
At the same time, they were punishing victims for violating their special school code.
Physicists: Known Universe Too Small For Kyrsten Sinema To F**k Off Far Enough
https://www.wonkette.com/p/physicists-known-universe-too-small
Don’t let the door hit you in the quirky fashion sense.
More at the link.
Good news: Rep. Colin Allred won a Democratic U.S. Senate primary. Allred will run against Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in the fall.
Bad news: RNC resolution to prohibit paying Trump’s legal bills is ‘dead’
Trump’s takeover of Fox News is complete
PZ – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/06/animal-agriculture-nitrate-water (about Minn)
Everyone’s always “what about the poor farmers?” but what about the people who have to live amidst the filth they create? (Which is not to say that the farmers shouldn’t be helped to find better livelihoods.)
Sabine Hossenfelder: Compact Disks make Comeback: Memory could Exceed Petabytes
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6a_yxsJuOMY
Let Trump’s legal fees eat their resources. This is the optimal outcome, especially since his lawyers are from the bottom of the barrel and fucks up everything.
We have non-human Soylent Green!
“Scientists Discover Key to Making Plant-Based Protein With Good Texture”
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-discover-key-to-making-plant-based-protein-with-good-texture/
Followup to comment 81.
Elon Musk flies to Mar-a-Lago as Trump seeks cash for those pesky court fees
Sinema and Manchin are out. It’s time to win the Senate and get s— done
A bit overly optimistic, but the article made some good points.
Greene tells reporter to ‘f‑‑‑ off’ after question about Jewish space lasers
Classy as always.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/hooray-dean-phillips-fcking-off
Supreme Court news:
https://www.wonkette.com/p/supreme-court-wants-more-to-protect
Texas man arrested in alleged scam attempt against disgraced former congressman George Santos
Trying to scam the scammer.
@95 Dean Phillips drops out
It was probably his humiliating loss to Jason Palmer in American Samoa (@74) that finally crushed Phillips.
Followup to comment 59.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/new-york-times-polls-doing-that-thing
Attack on ship in the Middle East causes first fatalities in assaults on commercial freighters.
Video of White House press conference is available at the link.
Link
Link
WaPo:
Federal judge orders minority-business agency opened to all races
By Julian Mark / March 6, 2024
[The 5th Circuit is widely regarded as the most conservative Circuit Court in the country.]
Gabriel García Márquez: Sons publish last novel that late author wanted destroyed
$$$$
Cenk Uygur drops long-shot presidential bid
Uygur is not qualified due to not being a natural born citizen. I wonder if his situation would be affected by the most recent SCOTUS ruling. Would states require legislation from Congress to keep him from running?
Gaetz accuses Jack Smith of election interference in DOJ complaint
I accuse Gaetz of election interference by filing this complaint.
Ukraine Update: Russian missile strikes within a few hundred meters of Zelenskyy
Another consequence of that GOP-blocked border bill? It’s easier to smuggle fentanyl
The top 5 most loathsome Republican bills of the week
Link
Arizona Convenes Grand Jury, Issues Subpoenas to Multiple Trump Associates in Fake Electors Case
Followup to Reginald’s comment #75.
Huffington Post:
Re. “where women could not vote”.
It reminds me of Iran, and the obsession of the rulers to force women to wear something over the head.
I can understand if an archvillain wants slave workers for his uranium mines- that is normal archvillain behavior- but obsessing about headcscarfs is not profitable in any logical way.
For instance, if the GOP were rational villains they would dump the impopular abortion bans and go with some other culture war issue to trick low-income rubes to support them.
But they seem to be genuine True Believers in some aspects of their ideology. You know- morons! This is ultimately good, as we can see them tripping over their own feet in case after case.
Eventually, even something as ineffective and feckless as the Democratic party might stop them.
Source : https://theaimn.com/traditionalism-the-belief-that-could-doom-us-all/
It’s a very warped sense of “traditionalism.” For example the “life begins at conception” thing. A zygote has not been considered a person by any culture in human history. This is a radical departure. The goal of controlling women is very familiar, but not the implementation.
FDA warns consumers to stop using six brands of ground cinnamon found to have high levels of lead
Source : https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/06/politics/trump-campaign-promises/index.html
Another good CNN article notes :
Source : https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/06/politics/trump-presumptive-nominee-analysis/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc
Oh and also but on the other side of politics and I certainly hadn’t heard of him before :
Source : https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/05/politics/jason-palmer-democrat-biden-primary-american-samoa/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc
Huh just watched Colbert here where Palmer’s American Samoa win gets a mention among other things inhis opening monologue – a dozen minutes long.
@115. Reginald Selkirk : Truth.
Anonymous social apps face another reckoning as UNC System to ban Yik Yik, Fizz, Sidechat & Whisper
Apparently not. I haven’t heard of any of those.
Reproduction traditionalism so traditional they can’t acknowledge the traditions of others here. It fits.
Steve Bannon’s Refusal to Pay His Bills Is Costing Him Big
There’s plenty about Trump that voters still don’t know (yet)
Cartoon: Supreme Court-approved ballot
Link
Voyager 1, First Craft in Interstellar Space, May Have Gone Dark
Link
Campaign news tidbits, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Link
Democrats probe Musk’s SpaceX, examining Russia’s alleged Starlink use.
Washington Post link
Lawmakers say Russia’s alleged use of Starlink terminals ‘poses a serious threat to Ukraine’s security, Ukrainian lives, and U.S. national security’
Utility provider says massive Texas wildfire may have started at its facilities
Biden to announce US military-led mission to build port on Gaza coast to boost aid
Fulton County ethics board drops Fani Willis complaints from hearing
Link
Not sure what is going to come of all this when the Texas legislature reconvenes. Will have to wait and see.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/what-elon-musk-just-lying-his-a-off
Donald Trump told to pay six-figure costs of firm he sued
Exclusive: Feds to offer new support to open-source developers
He believes in the reptilians!
“Meet Mark Robinson: The GOP’s Next Top Lunatic” | The Daily Show
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZT6QGt9M91k
Myself @ 137
This is optimal. We need to see more bona fide insane candidates get nominated by the GOP.
Candidates under investigation for corruption and/or sexual assault would also be a plus but honest-to-god ceazy candidates rumning for the Republican party generate the most publicity.
This will give some slack to the campaign run by the Ineffective Party (D).
ADMIRAL Doctor Pill-Pusher Rep. Ronny Jackson? Haha, Ahem, No.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/admiral-doctor-pill-pusher-rep-ronny
Hamas Negotiators Leave Cairo With No Breakthrough in Cease-Fire Talks
New York Times link
Weeks of indirect negotiations appear to have stalled over Hamas’s insistence on a permanent cease-fire during or after any hostage releases, a demand that Israel has rejected.
Thousands of voters in Alabama district drawn to boost Black political power got wrong information
NBC News:
Tennessee vaccine law pits parental rights against public health
By Amy Maxmen / March 7, 2024
Many more depressing examples at the title link.
Kentucky Senate passes bill to grant the right to collect child support for unborn children
A handful of Iowa House Republicans trying to tie birth control to abortion
Caribbean Mountain frogs that taste like chicken born at London Zoo
“Out of control” behavior: Kyoto bans tourists from Geisha district
@#138, birgerjohansson:
Don’t kid yourself. Democrats were trying to encourage this behavior in Republicans before. They called it the “Pied Piper Strategy” in 2016. Remember what happened in 2016?
Growing back in the Devonian period and Calamophyton trees – like leafless palms but fern and horsetail relatives :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-08/worlds-earliest-forest-discovered-in-uk/103563412
If folks ar eintrested link to live youtube for the State of the Union address 2024: Watch LIVE as Biden gives speechStephen Hawking’s 80th Birthday here – looks liek they are stilla whil off starting.
^ Claruifying fix : If folks are intrested link to live youtube for the State of the Union address 2024: Watch LIVE as Biden gives speech – looks liek they are still a while off starting.
Source : https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-neptune-kuiper-belt-objects
@148. See also complete with artwork depicting the Calamophyton trees here :
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/mar/06/worlds-oldest-fossilised-trees-discovered-along-devon-and-somerset-coast
Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch gets engaged to Elena Zhukova
Biden’s SOTU speech about tobegin now -see link in #149.
Plus Aussie ABC live blog coverage of Biden’s SOTU here :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-08/us-election-state-of-the-union-president-joe-biden-speech-gaza/103557818
Speech starting now.
One LSD trip shown to provide rapid and lasting reduction in anxiety, FDA designates “breakthrough therapy”
Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard vetoes investigation into herself amid corruption accusations
Akira Toriyama has passed away at 68. While I haven’t watched any of his anime, I have certainly watched parodies of his Dragon Ball Z .
Reginald Selkirk @ 153
The molecular biologist is presumably an expert in animating corpses and getting them to emulate life-like activities.
I’ve travelled the world researching patriarchy – and found it is far from inevitable | Angela Saini | The Guardian
I’ve travelled the world researching patriarchy – and found it is far from inevitable | Angela Saini | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/08/international-womens-day-barbie-change-patriarchy
Official GOP Response to SOTU Has Republicans ‘Losing It’
Dad of Marine Killed in Afghanistan Charged After Heckling Biden During SOTU
‘What the Hell Am I Watching’: Republicans Torch Their Own SOTU Rebuttal
Iowa House OKs bill to criminalize death of an “unborn person” despite IVF concerns
@164:
Apparently this is the new thing in the anti-abortion movement; see also @143 for a similar bill in Kentucky. But these attempts highlight the fact that such laws have never existed in America, nor in any other culture in human history. Since Alito and his fellow god-botherers on the Supreme Court are more concerned with circumstances in the 16th century than what is happening today, such efforts will undoubtedly fail to impress.*
* This is sarcasm. I do not expect consistency from SCOTUS.
Indicted Serial Liar George Santos Announces New Run for Congress During State of the Union
Hot streak for American jobs continues in early months of 2024
The unemployment rate has now been below 4% for 25 consecutive months — a streak unseen in the United States since the 1960s.
Politico:
New York Times:
Commentary:
Link
My Name Is Katie Britt, And I Am Singing ‘Tomorrow’ From ‘Annie’ In The Style Of ‘Birth Of A Nation’
https://www.wonkette.com/p/my-name-is-katie-britt-and-i-am-singing
Video is available at the link.
She mentioned praying … and God, of course.
From ABC News:
It was hard to watch. Lot’s of horror stories about cartels raping women, lots of blaming Biden for anything and everything … and no policy details from Republicans that would solve any issues.
Health gains of low-traffic schemes up to 100 times greater than costs, study finds | Low-traffic neighbourhoods | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/08/health-gains-of-low-traffic-schemes-up-to-100-times-greater-than-costs-study-finds
From online comments about Katie Britt’s rebuttal speech:
It was creepy.
It is so cute. He thinks he is a wordsmith.
“Sean Hannity Deploys New Nickname For Biden And Democrats Actually Love It” | HuffPost Latest News
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sean-hannity-joe-biden-nickname_n_65eada88e4b0dce30d23ba9f
‘Jacked-Up Joe’ it is.
(BTW it should be possible to cut parts of the very long link but I do not feel like experimenting)
Excerpt from David Corn’s take on the SOTU speech:
Link
Remind me again; which political party is coddling the most prominent criminal in the nation and threatened to defund the Department of Justice and disband the FBI?
Now that one of the crazy Republican ladies seems to be leaving DC it is great that a new star is arising to amuse us all: Katie Britt.
Suggestion: Pretend to be concerned Republicans, write to her about the reports scientists are building “organoids” made from stem cells of aborted fetuses to repair the livers and kidneys of drug addicts.
Hint that the drug addicts getting fetal organ replacements are from Harlem, South Central or other mostly black places. She will buy it hook line and sinker and it will be hilarious.
Addendum: Bring in Sasha Baron Cohen to give Katie Britt the Giuliani treatment.
Tell her the Jews implicated in digging a tunnel to a synagogue in New York have been revealed to have helped digging a tunnel under the border, to finance their shenagians.
@ 167
I hope that’s true. Last week, it happened. After 13 years I was fired from my job. I won’t say I was the best worker; indeed, I had my share of problems. They told me it was because they simply had too many people, but I suspect that’s a fucking lie. I’m getting severance pay and I’m being let go in such a way that I can collect unemployment. However, I’m almost 50-years-old and I’m terrified that there will be no jobs for an old fart with mental health problems, especially after a certain beloved liberal,/b. icon rolled over and “ended welfare as we know it.” I haven’t even told my father yet for fear of what he’s going to do to me if he find out. In his tiny, 1950s world, people don’t get fired without a good reason and if I’m being laid off it’s because I wasn’t working hard enough to impress my former employers. I can’t win.
Oh well, can’t be helped. Just know that if I ever do drop off this blog, it will be because I can no longer afford Internet access and am either dying or dead in my spacious cardboard box behind the local liquor store. Thanks capitalism! You’ve claimed another victim.
@ 158
Awwww man, that sucks! I didn’t realize this until recently, but Toriyama did the character design for the Dragon Quest (aka Dragon Warrior for American NES players), my first video game RPG. Back the in the 00s, when I was working second shift for U.S. Cellular, I would often come home in the wee-hours of the morning and the only thing worth watching was the anime on Cartoon Network. DBZ was one of them. Yeah, it was silly, and repetitive, but it was just what I needed after a day of dealing with
moronscustomers. During the pandemic lockdown, I rediscovered the series in a new way via Team Four Star’s fantastic “abridged” version which respectfully made it A LOT funnier. He will be missed by many around the world.“Scathing Atheist Damn Fine Fine Edition”
My apologies for borking the link!
Whoops. Sorry about the unclosed tag. Serves me right for bad mouthing one of the Holy Clintons, right?
Money talks: Between 9:00 p.m. and 10 p.m. eastern, the Biden campaign had the best hour of fundraising this election cycle. Between 10:00 p.m. and 11 p.m. eastern, Team Biden broke the record that it set an hour earlier.
NBC News:
Pentagon Review Finds No Evidence of Alien Cover-Up
Sigh. Predictable:
Link
After Biden’s State of the Union, everyone on the right needs a new script, by Mark Sumner.
Nice photo at that link.
Methinks Trump is projecting. Maybe he thinks Biden scraped up the speed left behind by his presidential staff?
.
A perspective from Farron Cousins:
“Katie Britt Brutally Mocked For Worst State Of The Union Response Ever”
Russian spies keep hacking into Microsoft in ‘ongoing attack,’ company says
Goddammit. It is late in Sweden, I will not post anything else until I have had sleep and is able to handle links.
And just think of the competition! When was the last time you heard Bobby Jindal’s name mentioned?
Are you sure that was a reference to Biden and not himself?
Seismic Rumble From an ‘Alien Technology’ Meteor Was Actually a Passing Truck, Scientists Say
they mean Avi Loeb.
birger @185:
Yeah, I thought the same thing. If Trump is claiming that Biden is on drugs it means that Trump is on drugs, or at least that Trump takes drugs before he appears in public.
RNC installs Trump’s chosen leaders in merger with his campaign.
Washington Post link
Top advisers from Trump’s campaign will steer a party committee facing a dramatic fundraising shortfall.
Defamation suit against Kari Lake and her big lie will move forward. Her defense looks flimsy
Senate advances $460B spending package to avert government shutdown
Conservative senators could still cause a partial shutdown by filibustering the bill. We’ll see.
Trump posts $91 million bond and files notice to appeal in E. Jean Carroll case
The bond was needed to prevent Carroll’s attorneys from trying to seize Trump’s assets while he appeals a New York jury’s $83 million defamation verdict.
So, Trump did not use his own cash to put up the money.
Thousands of US kids are overdosing on melatonin gummies, ER study finds
Make medicine taste bad again.
Trump claims concern over possible TikTok ban, years after he tried to ban it himself
birgerjohansson @172,
It’s not possible. No parameters being passed.
A Massachusetts Library System Will Let You Pay Fines With Cat Pictures
Aid airdrop kills five people in Gaza after parachute fails
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/08/holidays-in-hell-behind-the-rise-in-war-tourism
Ireland’s Constitution says a woman’s place is in the home. Voters are being asked to change that
But what if it has unintended consequences… and they’re good?
Trump legal news brief: Judge rules Trump can know names of jurors in hush money trial — but can’t reveal them publicly
No mention of what penalty might apply if that is violated.
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #203…
Doing so would be contempt of court in that he would be violating the judge’s order. Whether the judge would land on him with both feet, or just slap his knuckles remains to be seen.
Reginald @203, Trump will probably find some way around the restrictions. He would not reveal the juror’s names himself. He would have someone else reveal them. Or perhaps he would simply set up circumstance that would lead to the names being leaked. Nobody should trust Trump with the names of those jurors.
New York Times:
Florida Senate Breaks From Guv—Doesn’t Confirm Moms for Liberty Exec to Ethics Post
Beware the Russians. This reporting is from The New York Times:
NBC News:
Followup to comments 169 and 171.
New York Times:
Here’s every member of Congress who isn’t seeking re-election in 2024
Not enough space here for the entire list, follow the link if you’re interested.
U.S. official rejects claims that U.S. air drop killed civilians
#212 is interesting.
Yeah… no. Whatever the good points of Biden’s speech (I haven’t watched it), this should not fool anyone. There is a perfectly good port at Ashdod, within easy reach of the Gaza Strip. Far more aid could be funneled through Ashdod than through a “temporary pier” – but the Israeli authorities will not allow it, because a key part of their strategy is to starve the Gazan population – a clear war crime. Biden has the leverage to force a halt to Israeli war crimes, but refuses to use it.
Yes, but it would wreck the longstanding but unspoken partnership between Israel and the USA if he did that.
The defence research and economics partnership, the geopolitical partnership, and whatnot.
Boring old realpolitik, sure, but that’s how it is.
(Imagine Trump at the helm!)
A hunk of junk from the International Space Station hurtles back to Earth
5,800 Pounds of Batteries Tossed Off the ISS in 2021 Fell to Earth Today
Attack wrangles thousands of web users into a password-cracking botnet
Senate passes 6 funding bills to avert partial government shutdown before midnight deadline
@218
Iowa’s Caitlin Clark breaks Steph Curry’s NCAA record for 3-pointers in a season
I find it confusing that some records only cover the regular season, and others include playoffs. And this is the conference playoffs, which are distinct from the NCAA post-season tournament (aka March Madness).
Spate of Mock News Sites With Russian Ties Pop Up in U.S.
But…
Kremlin says Russia will not meddle in the U.S. presidential election
Could it be that the Kremlin is not entirely trustworthy? /s
Trump-Loving N.J. Politician Accused of ‘Stolen Valor’
They had me going there right up until the last line. What is the GOP’s reputation these days?
Indiana GOP Sen. Todd Young renews his pledge not to support Trump in 2024
That brings the total of Republicans who are running for re-election who do not support Trump to at least one.
“Feminists vs Israeli Disinformation: the New York Times’ False Rape Narrative ”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=4dM7uzyYMuE
The Danish pharma company behind blockbuster weight loss drugs are developing an even more promising drug: Amycretin.
I am cautiously optimistic. The previous drugs – wegowy, ozempic,- all list nausea as one of the side effects and I doubt I would manage to stick to such a weight-loss regime (I have bad experiences with side effects of other medicines).
BTW weight-loss drugs get pushback because some see it as a moral failing to lose weight without the hard-to-stick-to ‘normal’ weight loss regimes.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pentagon-ufo-report-alien-spacecraft_n_65eb3b4ce4b0dce30d23f887
The thing I find interesting is the phrase “circular reporting”. This seems politically useful right now.
‘UAP programs either do not exist, or were misidentified authentic national security programs unrelated to extraterrestrial technology exploitation,” AARO acting Director Tim Phillips told reporters at a briefing.
“We assess that claims of such hidden programs are largely the result of circular reporting in which a small group of individuals have repeated inaccurate claims they have heard from others over a period of several decades.”’
@Akira MacKenzie
I’m sorry that you have to find work. That is awful and I hope your delay in finding a job better than the last is short.
@Brony, Social Justice Cenobite & @Akira MacKenzie : Seconding that
Dr Becky has this clip on 2 Earth-like planets found in the HZ (just 6% bigger than Earth!) here – almost 12 mins long.
Inside A Secret Society Of Prominent Right-Wing Christian Men Prepping For A ‘National Divorce’
A trove of documents obtained by TPM reveal the society’s inner workings.
“Some Chiefs fans needed amputations after frigid playoff game, hospital confirms” | Kansas City Chiefs | The Guardian
Never forget wind chill. Never underestimate cold.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/mar/09/kc-chiefs-fans-amputations-playoff-game
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey wins worst film at Razzies |
Director, screenplay and screen couple.
Followup to comment 229.
Posted by readers of the article:
The dumbest news story you’ll read is NPR’s profile of one undecided voter.
Not really surprised. I was waiting for this.
Journalist Uncovers Evidence Sen. Britt Lied about Sexual Trafficking Story
From Raw Story:
Katz video is available at the Raw Story link.
Authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Meets With US Christian Right Leaders
Re: #233
The Washington Post also parses all the details on this story and give Britt “Four Pinocchios” with its fact checker.
“The president at the time when Romero was kidnapped and ultimately rescued was George W. Bush.”
Lock him up! Lock him up!
Rebecca Watson.
Study: Guns, Germs, and Steel was Wrong
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=9-aK_Rwr7wI
Link
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/9/2228488/-Biden-signs-package-of-spending-bills-passed-just-hours-before-shutdown-deadline“>Biden signs package of spending bills passed just hours before shutdown deadline
Any pushback against Ron DeSantis is good news.
DeSantis faces pushback in Florida as voters tire of war on woke.
Washington Post link
Conservative lawmakers rejected a host of new culture wars proposals in the legislature.
Primordial Planets
This 36-minute podcast discusses things like when the first planets hospitable for life might have emerged.
Top US cybersecurity agency hacked and forced to take some systems offline
You will absolutely think I am making this up, because if it were fictional it would be too on-the-nose, but: Elaine Chao, a shipping billionaire and Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law, drowned yesterday by accidentally backing her Tesla SUV into a pond — the rescuers couldn’t break the windows to get her out and the car stopped working once it was submerged, so the doors wouldn’t unlatch. Here’s a source.
No, it wouldn’t: the USA has successfully halted Israeli aggression before – under Ronald Reagan. Biden could and should interfere in Israeli politics to oust Netanyahu, who has a vital personal interest in continuing the slaughter in Gaza – as soon as it ends, Netanyahu knows he’ll be out. Biden can simply make those substantial aspects of aid (financial, military and diplomatic) that are within his powers to withhold, conditional on Netanyahu’s removal.
Of course Trump would be worse than Biden – if I had a vote, I’d vote Democratic in November. What I’m pointing out is that Biden could do the right thing – by ceasing to enable war crimes – and probably benefit from it politically and increase US influence in the Middle East. But from an irrational attachment to Israel, he doesn’t.
KG @ 244
Yeah, I remember the time Reagan got though with Israel.
The Planetary Society every year offers journeys and or cruises to interesting places, preferably coinciding with any solar eclipse.
I assume they also offer activities in relation to the solar eclipse a month from now. If any American is reading this, you migh check out their website.
This year the path of full eclipse will be Trump-free. Also, the path of the eclipse will first pass through Mexico, and you know what he thinks about everything coming from there.
Continuing my #244:
Having got rid of Netanyahu, Biden – whose replacement(s) would know they owed their positions to him, and that he could turn the same measures on them – would likely be able to push through an Israeli ceasefire and de facto abandonment of the impractical goal of eliminating Hamas, in return for the remaining Hamas hostages’ freedom (together with that of Palestinian prisoners). There are, BTW, Palestinians in Israeli prisons who could compete politically with Hamas, notably Marwan Barghouti.
See, Middle East problem solved! (Not really, but some sort of peace and emergency aid to Gaza might result, and last through to the election at least.)
Home Office breaks pledge to fund sex-crime research after Everard murder | Crime | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/10/home-office-breaks-pledge-to-fund-sex-crime-research-after-everard
You knew it was going to happen:
Scarlett Johansson plays Sen. Katie Britt in a satire of her SOTU rebuttal on ‘SNL’
Controversial new theory of gravity rules out need for dark matter
Via space dot com :
Source : https://www.space.com/giant-telescope-projects-drama-tmt-gmt
So much money gets wasted on wars and other things. Surely we can do both here?
Also a good, thought-provoking op-ed here :
Source : https://www.space.com/moon-occupation-nearest-neighbor
On Jupiter’s blue spot which isn’t actually blue but which is mysterious, magnetic and has its own tiny fluctuating jet :
https://www.space.com/jupiter-great-blue-spot-time-changing-jet-why
A third of Bumble’s Texas workforce moved after state passed restrictive ‘Heartbeat Act’ abortion bill
@243:
According to your own source link,
It was Angela Chao who died, not her sister Elaine, who is married to Mitch McConnell.
It didn’t happen yesterday, it happened February 11, 2024.
There is nothing in your source about inability to break the windows. Rather
@243: If you want a source for the ‘inability to break the windows’ bit, try those reliable source,
The Daily Mail or Metro
The story from the Austin American-Statesman
If Nikki Haley is a RINO, Donald Trump is a RADAR and that’s a lot more dangerous
Two men accused of stealing $20K worth of calculators
I’ve now watched Biden’s SOTU speech. Pity about the extensive deployment of unconfirmed Israeli claims and the worthless “temporary pier” nonsense in the section on Israel/Pelestine; and the reference to an “illegal” (which he has now said he regrets). Otherwise, what impressed me most were the times he mis-spoke – specifically, how quickly and appropriately he generally corrected himself – and the ad libs, both of which demonstrated that he was not just following a script. He only seemed to genuinely lose his thread once, at the start of the border/”illegal” passage. He’s quite clearly not demented, and that will be obvious to anyone who watches the speech, whatever they choose to say. His performance made me think it more likely he will win in November, particularly if Trump agrees to debates.
@257 “particularly if Trump agrees to debates.”
I hope he doesn’t do that. There is no point in debating someone who lies with every breath.
Reginald Selkirk @ 258
A good thing would be if he refers to his wife as “Mercedes” again, in a TV program watched by undecided voters. Or if he doubles down on trying to pronounce words he can no longer pronounce. Senile dementia is horrible but Trump is even worse – let the world witness his decline.
.
“Dark Matter might form Stars that can Explode” -Sabine Hossenfelder is not impressed by physicists that have fallen in love with theories that are as obsolete as trickle-down politics.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=F-4ikKPEFAU
Reginald Selkirk@258,
I disagree: I think the constrast in degree of lucidity would be striking. Of course there are many Trumpists for whom this will be invisible or irrelevant, but bizarrely, there are still undecided voters, including those who might or might not vote at all.
Courthouse News Service:
Federal judge upholds Washington state firearm distribution law
Alanna Mayham / March 8, 2024
KG @ # 257: … particularly if Trump agrees to debates.
At this point, Trump wants debates and Biden prefers to play coy.
Looks to me like Biden knows he has the superior position, and continues to play his hand accordingly.
Fundie Baby Voice:
Link
Christine Pelosi calls on Sen. Katie Britt to apologize.
Video at the link. The video is about one minute long and it is quite good.
Sadly, Voyager 1 seems to have stopped working – after 46 years in space.
The same insurance company, Chubb Group LLC, that guaranteed Trump’s $91.63 million surety bond also insures oil and gas extraction and transport in Russia. The company recently backed Nord Stream 2, the natural gas pipeline built by Gazprom, a majority Russian state-owned fossil fuel company.
No dots are connected yet, but we may need an investigation to see if Trump is now even more in debt to the Russians. There are many caveats attached to this speculation.
Federal Insurance Company is a NY-based subsidiary of Chubb, and it is Federal Insurance that guaranteed the bond. Chubb is actually incorporated in Zürich, Switzerland. It operates in 55 countries, so really the whole financial picture is obscure. More information is needed.
It may simply be that appeals bonds are a big business opportunity and Chubb may have gotten sufficient collateral from Trump to make guaranteeing the bond worth their while. It’s also possible that Putin leaned on Chubb with something like offers of favorable contracts in Russia. It’s also possible that Chubb guaranteed the bond because it had a co-signer like Elon Musk, Saudi billionaires, or well, anyone with more money than Trump.
Caitlin Clark leads Iowa to a Big Ten conference championship, beating Nebraska 94-89.
You know she set some new records.
Nicolle Wallace interviewed Rachel Maddow.
Transcript and video (about 9 minutes long) are available at the link.
Excerpt:
For a change, here is some good news.
British conservatives are getting desperate.
“Should the Tories Replace Sunak Now?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=91PTbbDWvmg
Okay, so now the IDF is torturing UN aid workers in order to coerce them into claiming to have links to Hamas.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/unrwa-report-says-israel-coerced-some-agency-employees-falsely-admit-hamas-links-2024-03-08/
Israel is a terrorist state.
That needs to be said over and over until people get it. And it has nothing to do with Judaism so it’s not an anti-Semitic statement.
U.S. forces fly in to beef up security at embassy in Haiti and evacuate nonessential personnel
The neighborhood around the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is largely controlled by gangs.
Starship Flight 3 might take place on Pi day, March 14th, providing a bit of distraction from the awful current political situation.
Followup to comments 75, 112, 137, and 238.
Link
Biden may be old, but Trump is old, ignorant, indicted and dangerous
While microraptor is certainly right (I was chanting that massage at a demo on Saturday), Jean’s response reveals a fundamental misunderstanding. Antisemitism is not about Judaism. Antisemites generally don’t give a shit whether a Jew believes or disbelieves in any god, or observes the practices of Judaism such as attending synagogue and following kosher food laws. Jews were exterminated in the Shoah whatever their beliefs and practices, they are hated and excluded by antisemites today irrespective of their beliefs and practices. Modern antisemitism developed in the 1800s on the basis of racist pseudoscience, on which its more poisonous variants still overtly rely.
Redefining Human History: Scientists Uncover Advanced 1.1 Million-Year-Old Tools in China
https://scitechdaily.com/redefining-human-history-scientists-uncover-advanced-1-1-million-year-old-tools-in-china/
70 years since the Castle Bravo nuclear test that subjected thousands of polynesians to massive radioactive fallout.
Donald Trump won’t give ‘a penny’ to Ukraine if elected, Orban says
Kate Middleton Says Sorry, Admits She Photoshopped the Viral Photo of Her and Her Kids
Reginald Selkirk@280,
After FamilyPhotoGate, no-one will believe anything coming out of the Windsors’ spin-factories!
Republicans in Georgia put candidates through purity tests. Now they’re facing fines
Russia’s spy service accuses US of trying to meddle in presidential election
Why, is interfering in another country’s elections a bad thing?
Irish prime minister concedes defeat in a vote over constitutional amendments about family and women
Kansas Republicans criticized for ‘vile’ stunt with dummy in Biden mask
I guess today’s version of “conservatism” doesn’t include respect for elders.
@285: I left out the laugh line:
After coming back from the dead, the world’s largest aircraft just flew a real payload
For years, Republicans have tried to argue that Jan. 6 rioters were unarmed during the Capitol attack. The evidence to the contrary is now overwhelming.
After Lara Trump, Trump’s daughter-in-law, was officially and unanimously elected as part of the team to run the Republican National Committee, she said:
Sheesh.
As reported by Steve Benen:
7 stories to know: Katie Britt, Christian nationalism, and the end of the GOP, by Mark Sumner
I will post Mark Sumner’s take on other subjects separately.
Link in comment 291.
Mark also reported on a new drug cocktail that may change the outcome for cystic fibrosis patients.
Cartoon: Time after time
https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1767014641392132200
Jimmy Kimmel reading Trump’s post live at the Oscars, and responding. Video at the link.
Video also available here
@289 “It’s about good versus evil.”
Well, she’s right, isn’t she? Although probably wrong about which side she is on.
Biden unveils sweeping budget blueprint for next term
KG @276
I may well not know the origin of antisemitism but my point was that I wanted to preempt any reply from those who conflate criticism of Israel and antisemitism.
Having said that, saying that antisemitism is not about Judaism but about how people treat Jews is somewhat paradoxical because you can’t have Jews without Judaism (at least at some point in the past). Hating people for who they are or identify as, or even look like the may be, is rarely due to the belief and action of the hated individual.
So my comment may have been badly stated. But saying something like: “my judgement about Israel has nothing to do with the jewishness of the individuals making the political and military decisions” does not seem much better either.
Courthouse News Service:
Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro ordered to prison March 19
Ryan Knappenberger / March 11, 2024
Trump lawyers try to stop hush money trial until Supreme Court decides ‘immunity’ claim
Highlighting by me to emphasize the idiocy.
After Russia lost 2 prized A-50 planes, Ukraine struck a factory that’s replacing them, reports say
Virginia bans public universities from considering legacy in admissions
France Says Several Agencies Hit by ‘Intense’ Cyberattacks
Donald Trump’s fractured relationship with human decency is especially evident when it comes to those with disabilities.
Link
I had great fun listening to this podcast. Mike Marshall from Britain joined in to add comments about developments on the other side of the sea.
“Skepticrat 220 Daylight Savior Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=LlS6LTTjMd8
Link
This lady has an informative podcast but talks very, very fast.
Hallucinogenia
“The extinct animal that was flipped upside down”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=-xQmPYFm-0o
Lynna, OM @ 304
Trump is actually worse than Hitler, becsuse Hitler is the only person who managed to kill Hitler.
Elon Musk: “Winning an Oscar now just means you won the woke contest.”
North Carolina Republicans Pick QAnon Weirdo To Head Schools
https://www.wonkette.com/p/north-carolina-republicans-pick-qanon
California officer shoots and kills boy, 15, holding gardening tool | California | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/11/california-san-bernandino-sheriffs-deputy-kills-teenager
Ha, God Awful Movies once again has Cara Santa Maria as guest masochist reviewing a horrible film. She must have a patience made of iron. 🙂
.
Study: “No, an anti-racist program in schools doesn’t stress out kids”
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-anti-racist-schools-doesnt-stress.html
Automakers Are Sharing Consumers’ Driving Behavior With Insurance Companies
‘World’s oldest bread,’ dating back 8,600 years, discovered in Turkey
Mike Lindell promises new evidence in Lake lawsuit. ‘The most explosive evidence ever!’
Politico:
Netanyahu is a problem.
New York Times, with excerpt summarized by Steve Benen:
Followup to comment 316.
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/biden-and-netanyahu-rush-to-a-breach
‘Bloodbath’ […] 60 RNC staffers fired
Commentary:
Posted by readers of the article:
YouTube link to Rachel Maddow discussing the rightwing culture war against Bud Light which Trump promoted … and yet, Trump decided he loves Bud Light now. Why? Money.
Trump promoted rightwing boycotts of Bud Light right up until the point that he did a 180. Lobbyists for the parent company announced a $10,000 a plate fundraiser for Trump. On the same day, Trump posted that “Anheuser -Busch is a Great American Brand …” and so forth, blah, blah.
Maddow examined the same kind of relationship between Trump and TikTok. He hates it. He tries to ban it by executive order when he is president. Now he loves it. TikTok is giving Trump money.
Details in the video.
JWST And Hubble Agree on The Universe’s Expansion, And It’s a Major Problem : ScienceAlert
https://www.sciencealert.com/jwst-and-hubble-agree-on-the-universes-expansion-and-its-a-major-problem
Stephen Colbert:
Mocking Biden’s Stutter | Trump Loves Hitler, Admires Dictators | The Real Kate Middleton Photo
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=FjqbQSsKYKY
Jean@297,
I’m not sure why you’re so defensive. Your point that criticism of Israel’s government (I’d add, or even of its existence) is not per se antisemitic is completely valid. But it was seriously undermined by the way you expressed it. Understanding the nature of modern presudoscientific antisemitism, acccording to which Jewishness is an intrinsic racial characteristic not a matter of religious belief or observance, is vital to combatting it, while not allowing Zionists to weaponise it in defence of apartheid Israel.
Source : https://futurism.com/experts-nasa-james-webb-homophobia-decision
I should clarify that: it is not in itself antisemitic to say that Israel should not exist as a Jewish ethnostate, but should be replaced, along with the occupied territories (West Bank and Gaza) by a single, secular state where Jews, Palestinians and others all have equal rights (i.e. to advocate a “one-state solution”, as opposed to the “two-state solution” rhetorically advocated by leaders currently enabling Israeli war crimes, among others). It is antisemitic to hold all Jews responsible for the acts of the Israeli state, or to advocate driving Jews out of the Israel-Palestine area, for example.
East Asian skull implying near relationship wirh anatomically modern humans.
..I assume the Dali skull lacks teeth and is too old at nearly 300kyear to extract useful DNA from ordinary bones?
“Archaeologists Discover New Neanderthal Sister Species?”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=c2FCTi5L_Ig
‘Honest Don’ Coins New Nickname for Himself During Late Night Rant on Truth Social
Honest Don reminds me of a line in a song by Madness.
“…I am as honest as thr day is long,
The longer the daylight
the less I do wrong”
Reginald Selkirk @ 327
This shall be Honest Don’s campaign song
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ul_Kotlqi3k
Some states are now trying to ban lab-grown meat
“Migration of hominins out of Africa may have been driven by the first major glaciation of the Pleistocene”
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-migration-hominins-africa-driven-major.html
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-12/andrew-tate-brought-to-romanian-court-on-uk-arrest-warrant/103578946
Source : https://www.space.com/betelgeuse-red-supergiant-star-surface-spin-illusion
With some neat illustrations of what seems to be a very NON-spherical star.
As summarized from an article posted by Politico:
From the article:
Link
Trump: Pardons for Jan. 6 criminals will be among ‘first acts’
Trump is the first ever candidate to effectively tell the electorate, “Vote for me and I’ll deliberately release violent criminals back onto the streets.”
A Republican-led House panel took aim at the work of the Jan. 6 select committee. There’s a reason the GOP’s findings were so underwhelming.
House GOP hearing
Excerpts from the live coverage:
Cartoon: Electric vehicles gone wrong
KG @323,325
Yeah, I agree with your points and statements. I should have simply said in my initial post: “And please don’t conflate criticism of Israel and antisemitism” and leave it at that.
Followup to comment 320.
Yes, Trump is for sale.
Trump flip-flops on TikTok right after meeting with billionaire TikTok investor
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-12/boeing-whistleblower-john-barnett-dies-in-the-united-states/103577466
Followup to comment 319.
Link
Trump reportedly tried to sell Truth Social to Musk as SPAC deal stalled
More details regarding team Hair Furor’s plans:
Link
For reference, here is a link to Jennifer Cohn’s report.
Good news from WBEZ in Chicago:
Alex Jones (grifter and indicted liar) is fighting with Trump (grifter and indicted liar):
Raw Story link
From CNN:
From Mediate:
15 Youth Vote Groups Endorse Biden-Harris Campaign, Announce Initiatives to Support Reelection Efforts
Activism suggestions:
Main link. Scroll down to view the section presented above, with more embedded links.
Jim Jordan cuts off supercut of Trump being hot mess in disastrous hearing
Video at the link.
Anti-Kremlin Militants With Tanks Fight Russia in Border Region
We haven’t heard anything about these folks for quite a while.
Kristi Noem Hypes Texas Dentist in Very Weird ‘Infomercial’
I think her message is “dental care in the state I govern, South Dakota, is substandard.”
The neutralist-selectionist debate in 2024
GOP Rep. Ken Buck Says He’s Leaving Congress Early
Many Republicans plan to skip House GOP retreat as they grumble about location and spending time with one another
“Mars’ gravity affects Earth’s climate and seas, study finds” | Space
Deep-sea sediments show 2.4 million year cycle of orbital influence.
https://www.space.com/mars-gravity-influences-earth-climate-seas
A faster, cheaper way to synthesize diabetes and weight loss drugs like semaglutide
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-faster-cheaper-diabetes-weight-loss.html
One of the researchers working on limiting the chemical steps is named Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar’s limit?
Texas Appeals Court Rules That Dad Can Deny His Teen Contraceptives
Re: Reginald Selkirk @ #356…
Riffing off and old joke about the older birth control practices…there’s a name for people like Alexander Deandra…grandfather.
Washington Post:
NBC News:
Washington Post:
Scientists achieve record efficiency for next-generation roll-to-roll printed solar cells
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-03-scientists-efficiency-generation-solar-cells.html
https://www.wonkette.com/p/ucla-republicans-go-batsht-racist
Federal Judge To AstraZeneca: You Wanna Sell Drugs To Medicare? Then You Negotiate Prices!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/federal-judge-to-astrazeneca-you
Like, that’s literally the law.
Navalny’s former policy chief brutally attacked in Lithuania
Volkov had tear gas sprayed in his eyes and was beaten with a hammer, his colleagues said.
Groups like the Bruin Republicans are why I put Euromutt on the census form. It’s more descriptive than “white”.
Manufacturing Fear: How Fox News leveraged images of an exonerated 22-year-old to fearmonger about migrant crime
Fox News has aired images of Jhoan Boada flipping off the media in at least 66 segments since his arraignment.
Brony @365, LOL … “Euromutt”
Good choice.
I’m not a witch, I’m just a girl! #shorts
.https://youtube.com/shorts/kw0DkTV36p4
birgerjohansson, a short by whom about what? What’s the point?
Clickbait, is what it is. Whatever it may be, it will indubitably be bullshit.
Your stream of consciousness little dropped nuggets regarding your watching habits is about as interesting as my opinion of it. But hey, we can both indulge in that, no?
(Also, have I told you what #shorts are all about? Why yes! Yes, I have)
John Morales @ 369
I thought the witch-hunting-short fit nicely with the values expressed by certain House members.
But here is a more substantial item. Research from…one of those states I thought was giving up on modern science. But maybe non-leech phsrmaceutical science has not been purged yet?
If this stands up to peer review it is pretty big.
“A simple and robust experimental process for protein engineering”
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-simple-robust-experimental-protein.html
@ 370
My bad – the Republicans have not quite taken over Michigan yet, so their Universities are still teaching heliocentric astronomy.
Jean@339,
Kudos.
Jean @ 339
Listening to Fox News, I believe that conflating those things is written into the US constitution, you know, alongside ‘presidents have immunity’.
.
It seems USA and Britain have surprisingly similar cultures.
The biggest donor to the conservative party went on a ‘problematic’ rant. Here are comments from the podcast A Different Bias.
“Tory Donor’s Abhorrent Racist Attacks”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=2sAvoCE-jFY
I do not know if hydrogen will become a viable part of the energy landscape, but the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has come up with a method for membrane-free water splitting into hydrogen and oxygen, making it safer and simpler. Adding hydrogen to carbon would be the next step.
https://scitechdaily.com/producing-hydrogen-energy-new-method-is-safer-simpler-and-more-efficient/
Biden and Trump set for election rematch after clinching nominations
@375: the laugh line:
Japan’s 1st commercial rocket explodes shortly after liftoff
US-mandated religious freedom group ends Saudi trip early after rabbi ordered to remove his kippah
Romania’s president announces his bid to become the NATO military alliance’s next leader
Jets’ Sauce Gardner has hilarious response to talk of Aaron Rodgers running for vice president
Judge dismisses several counts against Trump in Georgia election criminal case, others still remain
New Orleans police evidence room overrun by rodents, officials say: “The rats are eating our marijuana”
Montana Man Pleads Guilty to Creating Massive Franken-Sheep With Cloned Animal Parts
As Vladimir Putin abandons the pretense about wanting peace talks, congressional Republicans in the U.S. are facing new pressure about aid to Ukraine.
Followup to Reginald at 375.
Trump continues to lose a significant number of Republican votes: Haley gets 77K votes in Georgia GOP primary after dropping out of race
You can tell what kind of campaign for president Robert F. Kennedy Junior is running. He is considering New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers as the Vice Presidential pick. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine candidate. Aaron Rodgers is an anti-vaccine football player.
Kennedy is currently polling at about 9%. That’s enough to spoil the race and to hand the presidency to Trump.
Sen. Katie Britt launched a fundraising campaign based on her State of the Union debacle.
Donald Trump said a Democratic video montage of his cognitive slip-ups was the product of “artificial intelligence.” That’s the dumbest possible defense.
Link
re Lynna @387:
Again, a republican refuses to recognize that the dystopian nightmare has been brought on by republicans.
johnson @390: Yes. And Republicans are working hard to make it worse.
Cartoon: Katie Britt
Followup to Reginald @381.
Georgia Court Upholds Almost all Charges Against Trump
Followup to comments 381 and 392.
What Just Happened With Fani Willis’s Georgia Trump RICO Case, And Should You Freak Out? An Explainer!
https://www.wonkette.com/p/what-just-happened-with-fani-williss
Spoiler: Probably fine. Might even be a loss for Trump in the grand scheme of things.
Sabine Hossenfelder is skeptic about the claims nade about quantum computers. She is cautiously optimistic about this ‘D-wave’ device.
“Record Quantum Computation: Millions of Years Down To Seconds”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=P2hn9kQHi_s
Followup to comments 197 and 320.
House passes TikTok crackdown that could ban app in U.S.
Washington Post link
The swift rebuke shifts attention to the Senate, where the bill faces significant political barriers and constitutional concerns.
Gillette Atheist’s $24M Lawsuit Over City Prayers Blocked By Wyoming Supreme Court
Low iron may play key role in long COVID
America’s 4th-densest city has wiped out traffic fatalities by taking a page from Sweden and eliminating parking spots
Might be good news, though too small a step for those who think the justice system needs a major overhaul:
Link
Noah, Eli and Cara Santa Maria unpack another religious “film”.
GAM447 “Consider It All Joy”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=6OB6cGXdvI0
World’s oldest known lipstick traced back 5,000 years
Video: Homes bulldozed by massive landslide, forcing evacuations in California
Link
Well, so much for the argument that Bad Guys coached Katie Britt to spout misleading bullshit.
Sen. Katie Britt has told her misleading anecdote about sex trafficking multiple times
An NBC News analysis shows Britt has brought up the same victim, who was trafficked under the Bush administration, at least five times this year to criticize Biden’s border policies.
Ancient Crustacean Has Largest Fossil Claw of Any Crab Ever Recorded
50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says
Surprise, surprise!
Another top manager in Russia’s oil and gas sector found dead
All eligible people at Chicago migrant shelter have been vaccinated for measles in ‘unprecedented operation’
Aaron Rodgers Says Jets Need To ‘Flush The B.S.’ Next Year & Avoid Distractions
Ex-Wall Street Banker Takes On AOC in New York Democratic Primary
@406
Will we actually raise taxes now? Hell no! Just because Reaganomics failed doesn’t erase the fact that most people are greedy shits (and they all aren’t rich) who don’t want to pay their dues.
Things aren’t going to get any better until the upper class is gone.
Trump STILL Seems to Think Hillary Clinton Used Acid to Delete Emails
Jill Biden teams up with Christina Aguilera for abortion-rights push
‘No Labels’ Co-Chair Quits Day Before Spoiler Candidate Committee Launch
New York Times:
Ukraine sank 15 Russian ships over a period of six months.
Vancouver’s new mega-development is big, ambitious and undeniably Indigenous
Starship 3rd launch attempt today. The launch window begins at 1200 GMT / 7 am local time.
MeidasTouch:
“Ron DeSantis trashes Libs of TikTok for misinformation”
Two trash trolls tussling ?
I feel like I am having a whole litter of purring kittens resting in my lap. 😺
https://www.meidastouch.com/news/desantis-trashes-libs-of-tiktok-for-spreading-disinformation
Does everything shady in American politics lead somehow back to Trump? This is another example:
‘US firm that paid indicted FBI informant tied to Trump associates, records reveal’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/14/company-paying-fbi-informant-trump-connections
The launch of the third Starship test was nominal.
The first stage flew back to the lsunch site but failed at am altitude of ca. 1 km.
The second stage/Starship entered the intended path and flew on a ballistic trajectory over Africa.
Contact was reacquired on the other side of the world after 40 minutes.
Contact with Starship was lost during descent over the Indian Ocean at an altitude of 65 km and a velocity of slightly more than 7 km/s.
It is assumed to have failed re-entry at this point.
The objective of the launch was to test the first and second stages during launch.
The failure of the first stage to perform a soft landing and the failure of Starship/the second stage during re-entry were expected.
Craig Wright Is Not Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Judge Declares
Followup to comment 319.
The RNC’s new “election integrity” lawyer is a “Big Lie” proponent and election conspiracy theorist. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty.
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug takes a look into the future in the New York Times newsroom
Trump: ‘Some people that I didn’t think behaved properly’ ruled out from VP consideration
Go ahead, let your mind boggle over what Mr. “Grab ’em by the pussy” would consider improper behavior.
Link
Link
Link
Yes, there is a picture of a pie.
Link
Link in comment 428.
Link
New York Times:
https://twitter.com/GOP4Ukraine/status/1768245699962179991
From Republicans for Ukraine:
The ad is a minute-long video that features Republicans speaking in favor of supporting Ukraine.
Link
Stefanik is the latest Republican to tout funding she voted against
In 2022, Elise Stefanik condemned a spending bill for advancing a “far-left radical agenda.” In 2024, she’s taking credit for one of the bill’s investments.
Blatant hypocrisy. Blatant lies.
Air defense for $13 a shot? How lasers could revolutionize the way militaries counter enemy missiles and drones
How Raw Milk Went from a Whole Foods Staple to a Conservative Signal
Biden-Harris Administration Announces $120 Million from President’s Investing in America Agenda to Enhance Climate Resilience in Tribal Communities
146 awards will support 102 Tribes and 9 Tribal organizations to strengthen preparedness, resilience in the face of climate change.
Yet another delay: Manhattan DA won’t oppose 30-day delay of Trump’s New York hush money trial
Allison Russell, Brandi Carlile, SO MANY MORE Release Fab New Song To ‘Tennessee Rise’ Marsha Blackburn Directly Into Space
https://www.wonkette.com/p/allison-russell-brandi-carlile-so
Just really fucking great.
Undersea Cable Damage Causes Internet Outages Across Africa
A Dog-Killing Worm Is on the Loose in California
Pornhub Bans Texas
Bernie Sanders Introduces Bill to Create a 4-Day Workweek, Republicans Melt Down
Japan same-sex marriage ban ruled unconstitutional again by courts
NASA hopes to resolve Voyager 1’s communication issues by ‘poking’ its flight data computer
Re: John Morales @ #446…
I would presume that Ukraine intends to do more than curb Russian oil exports. They probably want to impact the fuel supplies that the Russian Army relies on. No fuel and tanks, APVs, trucks, etc., etc. don’t move. Hard to move artillery ammo to where the guns are sited without trucks…
whheydt, I think a salient aspect is that Ukraine is taking the war to Russia in a way Russians can’t ignore.
The fiction of the ‘special military operation’ is more than threadbare, by now.
—
In other developments:
The ‘drinking bird’ makes a comeback and could power your gadgets with clean energy
UK to ban foreign governments from owning newspapers
Zimbabwe police charge self-proclaimed prophet Ishmael and rescue 251 children
Former Trump official mounts bid to buy TikTok, which isn’t shady at all
Scott manley ion the thrid Starship rocket flight
In the news: Props from botched Willy Wonka event raise over £2,000 for Palestinian aid charity.
I enjoyed this exclamation I found at Youtube.
“It’sThe End of the Tories as We Know Them (and I Feel Fine)”
“A 790,000 year-old asteroid impact could explain seafloor spherules”
Odd isotopes came from the Australasian tektite field.
https://phys.org/news/2024-03-year-asteroid-impact-seafloor-spherules.html
As Carl Sagan said, “extraordinary claims require extrsordinary evidence”.
Compostable Keurig Pods: How the Coffee Maker Plans to Tackle Its Waste Problem
Caffeine makes fuel cells more efficient, cuts cost of energy storage
Your Next Pair of Walmart Pants Could Be 3D Woven
Giant volcano discovered on Mars
Fani Willis and her office can stay on Trump Georgia 2020 election case if Nathan Wade steps aside, judge rules
Excerpts from a longer discussion of Trump’s frequent references to cutting Social Security and Medicare, and his frequent attempts to back track while not making sense:
Link
What Trump said most recently:
Oh FFS.
Link
Cartoon: Lara Trump
Link
@465 there was a famous Socks cat however!
Justice Ginsburg’s Family Decries Bestowing RBG Award on Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch
The awards are being handed out by a foundation chaired by a Trump donor.
Here they come again!
🙂
“Scathing Atheist Keeping it Rael Edition”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=7uaDfPJIxNs
Instead of pretending Joe Biden was the president in 2020, the Republican National Committee decided to skip over 2020 and pretend it didn’t happen
Campaign news tidbits, as summarized by Steve Benen:
Kristi Noem was just monetizing her elected office, like Trump. It is now all grift all the time.
Associated Press: The first ship to use a new sea route approaches Gaza with 200 tons of aid.
Video at the link.
Details concerning bloodshed associated with previous deliveries of aid are also provided in the Associated Press report.
Cartoon: Signs of change
Link
BTW, Mike Johnson blathered on a bit, but one couldn’t really tell what he was promising to do, nor what he will do. “Processing through all the various options right now.”
James Lankford Censured For Doing One Decent Thing In His Miserable Legislative Career
https://www.wonkette.com/p/james-lankford-censured-for-doing
hmmm … not sure this is a good idea. Remember Blackwater and Erik Prince?
Israel weighing the use of private security contractors to protect aid shipments to Gaza, officials say
Deadly morel mushroom outbreak highlights big gaps in fungi knowledge
Ouch.
Reginald Selkirk @ # 477: @467: “The honorees reflect the integrity and achievement that defined Justice Ginsburg’s career and legend.” Ouch.
“Reflect” in a high-distortion funhouse mirror way, as embellished by drunken vandals.
Robert Reich: “Seriously, again, how dumb is Trump?”
Stable Genius keeps repeating mistake that cost him 91 million $.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/seriously-how-dumb-is-trump
In a tug-of-war between greed and stupidity, the latter keeps winning. It is as if the frontal lobe of his brain has checked out, he can’t stop himself from blurting out things that he should know will have costly consequences.
This is Family Guy stupid.
Who would believe United Fruit could be evil?
‘I saw many people suffer’: former Del Monte Kenya guards speak of violence on pineapple farm | Kenya | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/15/i-saw-many-people-suffer-former-del-monte-kenya-guards-speak-of-violence-on-pineapple-farm
BTW, as nuclear weapons remain in huge numbers and Russia even intends to develop new ones, people need to be aware that the stability offered by Mutual Assured Destruction is illusory as it ignores the danger of mistakes.
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov and Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov are two names every schoolchild should have to learn.
Independently of each other, they saved the world from nuclear war.
I was so glad to see Fani Willis survive. Team Trump failed to get her kicked off the case in Georgia.
In other news: Mike Pence announces: ‘I will not be endorsing Donald Trump’
Link
The Burgeoning Bluesky Science Community
The ‘Secret’ Gospel and a Scandalous New Episode in the Life of Jesus
Russia election: Arrests for vandalism as ballot boxes targeted in Putin vote
Meet the newest sports power couple, Japan’s Shohei Ohtani and Mamiko Tanaka
Fani Willis’s Trump Georgia RICO Case Back On Despite All The Sex
https://www.wonkette.com/p/fani-williss-trump-georgia-rico-case
@315:
Mike Lindell’s and Kari Lake’s ‘explosive’ new evidence of election skullduggery goes pffft
Senator Gene Dornink Doesn’t Know Why He Called Pilot Laura Haynor a ‘Stewardess’—Women Do
Aspiring Trump veep hits North Korean levels of sucking up
A Wisconsin ruling on Catholic Charities raises the bar for religious tax exemptions
Tick-killing pill shows promising results in human trial
Chinese Mogul Funneled Millions to Bannon, Fox, Gettr, Docs Show
Hillary Clinton And Lin-Manuel Miranda To Host Joe Biden Broadway Fundraiser Performance Of ‘Suffs: The Musical’
House GOPers Teamed With Conspiracist Who Called Migrants ‘Apes’ And ‘Congo Cannibals’
This Bar Is Closing During the RNC So It Doesn’t Have to Serve Trumpers
Cartoon: Entitlement cuts
After Mar-a-Lago Search, FBI Agent Wondered,“Am I Dreaming?” New FOIA documents reveal raw hostility
Shelter in place ordered for Pennsylvania community after reports of ‘several’ gunshot victims
Developing story.